Players in MMOs are well known to create their own fun apart from the developer-created fun. Guild Wars has had rallies to save an evil enemy race. Lord of the Rings Online has had chicken races going all the way to Rivendell. Even World of Warcraft players will take time to march in-game for presidential candidates.
One of the best fallback player-run events is role-playing, especially in Warhammer Online where dancing is not allowed. Role-playing can occur anywhere, and if you are imaginative enough (read: clinically insane) you could even roleplay with the NPCs. So it was that a band of three Greenskins: Bukket the Shaman, Teefs the Squig Herder, and Lolrus the Black Orc, set out to WAAAAAGH!!!, and along the way roleplay by macro.
We each created 3-6 chat macros, where our character would speak upon a simple button press. I am sure that more complex chat macros could be created, but ours were simply “/say [TEXT].” An example of one would be Lolrus saying “TEEFS SHOOT YER ARRERS FASTA, GIT!!!” Of course Black Orcs have to yell, but you knew that. The interesting part was that with only 3-6 sayings each we were creating whole Greenskin conversations, which probably only really worked because we were Greenskins.
Teefs: Bukket you iz a smelly fungus.
Lolrus: DAS GOOD, BUKKET!!!
Bukket: Shut yer git-face, Teefs, and shootz da stunty!
Lolrus: TEEFS SHOOT YER ARRERS FASTA!!!
Teefs: Lolrus, you iz da biggest git I knowz.
And so proceed ad infinitum (until Mythic told me in chat to think about what I am saying).
It was great fun, and just a few button presses (that really didn’t affect gameplay) enlivened the game a lot. I loved the Heroes (and Henchmen) in the later Guild Wars modules that would speak out during combat and down-time, and the ability to emulate it was great. You too might want to consider a button-press combat shout to make sure the troops are awake. It can only add to the game. There is an add-on made especially for such fun: Think Out Loud for Warhammer Online that activates when you use skills. If nothing else, it is super useful to auto-call rez’s.
–Ravious
UR RP KNO NO LIMIT!!! :D
Can’t wait to get that add-on going. It’ll be great for my Maurauder too to give gracious words of encouragement to the recipients of his gifts from the Raven God. ;-}
If orcs don’t think about what they are saying I don’t know why you should! :)
That is a lot of fun, to have stuff like that to yell in combat.
My shadow priest had a macro for whenever I was playing with warlocks “/yell Don’t cross the streams!” I used it a lot, got a groan every time!