[World of Warcraft] I logged into a roleplay server and started a Dwarf Priest. Spent a little time roleplaying (nobody else was). There are corpses of Gnomes and Dwarves all over the place, with interesting names. Names like “Blizzsucks”, “Nocontent”, “Deadgnome”, “Dontplaywow”, and “Laggyservers”.
I decided to move on to Ironforge. After 5 or 10 minutes of running, I enter the big city. Lock up, crash to desktop.
So, I figured I would go back to my main server. Queue of 189 and 15 minutes later, I’m in. I log into my level 8 Druid, because I’m bound and determined to see Moonglade even though it is probably not anything special. It’s a goal so I make it mine.
Running around Darnassus, some level 14 Warrior is challenging all the level 6 and 8 players to duals and then calling them “pansies” if they don’t accept. Finally a level 11 Hunter accepts and beats him. The 14 Warrior called the 11 Hunter a “pansy” for using her pet. After that, a level 10 Rogue fought him 3 times, finally beat him on the third time. Meanwhile, a level 50 Hunter is telling everyone that he could beat anyone here up in real life, or he could go get any of his other level 60 characters and take everyone on. A few people confront him with accusations of “no life loser” and such. He proclaims to make $50 an hour so he wins in real life.
I went out questing and finally got to level 9. I returned to one of my quest-giving NPCs in Darnassus. Only this time he has been slaughtered by a level 60 Undead Rogue who is just waiting for him to spawn again. With no high level Alliance players around, he is pretty much left alone. I manage to turn in my quest before he could kill the NPC again, but it was close.
What fun.
– Ethic
I’d say people are just bored… there really is nothing to do in WoW. I’m just glad I got out early.
I know I’ve been ignored the other two times… but seriously go try armageddon just for a few days and then I’ll shut up about it. I think you will find the roleplaying is as close to P&P that you will find on the net.
When Bliz’ did the big server maintenance thing this last week (lots of servers down for multiple days) – the less populated servers were filled with hordes of foul mouthed, a$$-munches looking to pass the time until their own servers were back up.
I tell you man – I’m not selling blizzard stock or anything so I’m not going to sell you on a game that you seem to consistantly have bad experiences with. I haven’t ran into anything like that on my server yet (knocking vigorously on very real wood) – but have bounced around on some other servers and seen it.
We regularly have folks get on the general channel and RP things (odd – but entertaining) – as well as higher level folks that will offer to give out free (nice) items – provided the character that gets them – ask for them and plead their case *in character*.
Is it ever going to be like a PnP game. No chance – or at least I don’t think so. Some heavy RP guilds require that interactions on their main guild channel be in character. The same goes for their raids and special events.
My main characters guild was *supposed* to be heavy RP. Full on – all the time – non IC chatter was supposed to only occur through whispers or off the main guild chat. A ‘master’ and ‘apprentice’ hierarchy was figured out which matched higher level characters with lower level characters. That way someone was always around to help out with quests or raids – or just answer questions.
The attraction was pretty strong for a lot of people. Problem is, the guild leader didn’t regulate recruitment very tightly and the guild grew too fast. Rank structure was busted early on and with the size of the guild came the problem of organizing anything.
So what started out as something (potentially) cool has turned into something (while not bad) – not really much of anythign at all.
I think the toughest part of trying to RP on a MMO is the fact that people are people. The ones that really want to RP are afraid to do so a lot of the time. I know I’ve been approached by people in game who speak to my character and carry on In Character. It weirds me out initially because you never can tell if you’re being put on or not. When you’re sitting across the table from a bunch of friends playing PnP – you *know* that everyone involved has agreed to temporarily suspend reality and immerse themselves in the game. In a graphical MMO – the need to suspend disbelief is not needed. The reality of the virtual world is there and real. This leads a lot of folks to simply revert to being themselves (or worse – being the person they’d be if removed from the constraints of society).
It’s a weird dynamic. Intriguing to me I guess more than disturbing. I really hope you land somewhere that works for you. For now – WOW is still fun to me. I hope it lasts.
The “What fun” comment was not actually sarcastic. I did have fun. But mostly, I was laughing at the insanity of it all.
I’m going to pick the lowest population RP server I can find and roleplay the hell out of the next 3 weeks. We’ll see what happens.
Feeling better, none the less.
That’s cool – I was afraid the n3rf brains had burned you for good.
There are a number of new RP servers out there that show LOW in population that were just released last week (or so).
Rumor has it they’re going to launch an RP – PVP server….(yes folks a duck that eats cats and leaves bloody webbed track marks in your kitchen). There are a lot of RP folks that hope this gets done – but few seem to think that it will be done ‘right’ or that the mix of folks that flock to the server will give it the kind of play it deserves.
Either way – good luck!