In a genre of gaming where the first word is ‘roleplaying”, its a bit humorous that almost no one actually roleplays. Seriously when’s the last time you saw a character act like there supposed to. For instance in LOTR lore we know that elves and dwarfs are not very fond of each other in, however in the actual game dwarfs and elves regularly quest together and are even in the same guilds. Once in a while you can find a elf, dwarf or hobbit in character, but after a joke or two the player would go right back to normal breaking out of character.
The obvious answer here is that most people don’t actually want to roleplay. Sure being a elf hunter with a mean bow shot is one thing, but who wants to go around talking like a Legolas or not joining a quest group because theres a dwarf in it. Hell its hard enough finding full groups for raids and quest without discriminating dwafts. Also think about what you type when your chatting. If your seeking a group for a quest you probably type somethink like “LFG – quest name”. If I had to write a long winded sentence in the style of LOTR, I’d never get anywhere.
With that said, I do enjoy running into people that actively roleplay. It brings the game more to life and it’s actually fun to be around them. While I don’t actively roleplay myself, if I run into someone that is, I try to get into it also. It’s quite fun once in a while, you should try it.
(img: http://www.tehw00t.net)
A lot of people do. Or at least want to. But unfortunately, most MMO games don’t give you many tools to work with in regards to roleplaying.
But if anyone is an avid roleplayer and looking for a guild, I recommend http://www.shadowclan.org
I agree, the tools provided are insufficient. I think a game like NWN, where you can have small persistent worlds run by essentially DMs, has the tools to create good RP worlds, but the quality is obviously going to vary tremendously from good RP environment to mini-tyrant.
For a MMORPG you need enough of a population that it makes sense to have racial alliances and dislikes and easily be able to incorporate that into RP, among other things. Of course then you run into the drawbacks of high online population areas and servers.
It will be interesting to see what upcoming game really crosses those boundaries, because RP can be fun.
Well, I used to play WoW (World of Warcraft) Although it charges 15 dollars a month, the roleplay is pretty active for many people, at least on the server I was on (Shadow Council). But I mean, there are some extremely heavy roleplayers there, you have to be good at it for people to acually want to do it with you.
i think now the only way u will see someone not join a party because someone is in it will b a pvp game where the dude pwned him or wen they r in rival guilds and even then i dont think they will matter wen it is between doin a quest or mission right away or waiting a possible ten minutes its sad but true granted i wasnt around wen the true roleplayin was goin on
I used to play Ultima online when I was younger, Recently I was seeking a little bit of nostalgia and decided to DL a shard to play. I started playing and realized once I hit top there is nothing to do but player kill so I went looking for a roleplay Shard. I found one. http://www.khaeros.net It is amazing. In case you don’t know about UO its old school 2d Graphx but you can do ANYTHING. tame horses, get eggs or milk from animals, meat, skins, furs, bones, Farm, have a house, decorate, make furniture, armor, cook, make weapons, make ships. And with the roleplay server they added a LOT with a 100% no tolerance. Meaning if you have 3 guards go to arrest you…. NO GODMODE! so you will HAVE to go to jail for 3 rl days in which you must be roleplayed with. It is an amazing amazing experience and out of over 15 years of roleplay from UO-EQ-EQ2-SWG-Horizons-Warcraft Ive never in my life witnessed such an amazing Roleplay atmosphere. I promise you it is worth your time. Heres my problem, the server is lacking members (30 on at its peak) and im trying to bring the game up to 100-200 players on at a time to really bring in some politics and border conflict with the north and the south. If you read thus far please give it a shot and pass it along to friends or family. Its 18+ due to nudity and language (Full nudity btw if you are wondering). It is a bit of a lenghty app because you must have a good background to weed out those trying to grief