Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
[Column] General: Where Have All the Roleplayers Gone?
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
It's funny that the games we adore are called MMO-RPGs since it seems that much of the roleplay part of our games has disappeared. In our latest Social Hub column, we wonder where the roleplayers have gone and offer a few thoughts about how to recapture the magic. Read on and then leave your thoughts in the comments.
Many gamers that found their way to MMORPGs, came from MUDs, tabletop, or the D&D tradition. There were rulesets and lore and lots of people took the time to really conceptualize their characters. Of course, games had their more casual players back then too, but even they could often muster a “hail” now and then. There were RP servers and naming conditions. You wouldn’t see IPWNURFACE99x running around your server. Guilds were generally plentiful and if you wanted it, RP in many forms could be found if you looked. Today, it’s scarce to find an RP flag or sometimes even official RP servers. Things have become more splintered as the genre has both expanded and changed.
Read more of Christina Gonzalez's The Social Hub: Where Have All the Roleplayers Gone?
)
Comments
Thanks Christina, a good read - I'm lookiung forward to part two.
In fact, LOTRO just might be the last time RP support was so blatantly built into a AAA game, with a flag, discoverable places you can use that serve little other function outside of festival events, buildings to enter, taverns, housing, a slew of emotes, the music system, and even naming guides at character creation.
The Secret World does a good job of catering to roleplayers. As well as the wealth of costume options, the addition of The Albion Theatre last year has led to some fantastic, open-RP for the community. Add in two official RP servers (though no naming policy or other restrictions), numerous RP-focused radio stations such as Radio Free Gaia and you have a great environment for roleplayers.
I admit, the cabal (well, three cabals under one aegis) I am a member of tends to roleplay within the group - at least for the purposes of the main, character-driven storylines we have; primarily as a lot of the storylines are gritty and adult - no, not THAT kind of adult - and we can't guarantee that we wouldn't be involving a character being played by a minor if we opened up our RP. That said, general roleplaying we do in the open world - The Horned God, at the RFG parties, etc.
I have to say personally, TSW offers me one of the best RP environments and experiences since the days of early SWG and MxO, both of which had very strong roleplaying communities (many of whom are also playing TSW). I hope Funcom continue to deliver to we roleplaying few!
edit: editor paragraph display fail
~ Hobyah Press ~ Wyldlands Celtic & Iron Age RPG ~
I really wish MMO's started properly supporting roleplay, it honestly triples if not Quadruples or more the time i spend in a game before ditching it.
It's much more fun when you're involved with your character and he or she is worth something more then just a Level grind and gear to you.
I figured I'd throw my two cents in since this is a topic near and dear to my heart. I belonged to some great RP groups in both Ultima Online & SWG. I'd say the biggest reason we don't see RP groups in many moderns games is simply because of the character advancement systems.
In a level based game, you are assumed to only fight stuff your own level, give or take about 4 levels. If you try to fight stuff more then 4 levels over you, you'll get slaughtered, on the same note if you try to fight stuff more then 4 levels under you then you won't get any exp in many games. Sure the number is different for different games, but the concept is the same in a level based system.
Of course the reason I bring this up is it's not about the monsters you can fight, but rather the people you can team up with to fight the monsters together. The players you can team up with to fight a monster at x level depends on if that other player is also within that monsters level range. This means unless everyone is progressing at an equal pace you won't often be grouping with the same preson multiple times. This makes grouping quite often based on convience rather then friendship.
Many level based games take this division a step further, not only do you not fight the same creatures, but you and players in a different level range occupy different microworlds within the game. One of these microworlds are for players levels 50-55, another for 55-60, and so forth, if your level range isn't in the range of the 'zone' then you have no reason to be in that zone. This again hinders the repeated contact with the same players that allows strong RP bonds to be developed. It also hinders the chance for RP guild members to interact with each other directly outside of guild chat, since many of the players may be at very different stages of the game.
One can argue that at end game this becomes less of an issue, but by this point players have spent their entire character development not RPing, and few RPer wants to grind to max level just to get to the RP component of the game.
The thing games like Ultima Online and SWG is that you could group a newbie with a group of veteran players. They may not always last as long in combat, or do as much damage of course, but they could still land hits, contribute to the group, and increase their skills, since both these games lacked a traditional level system that restircted what you could fight. The difference between a vererans performance and a newbies performance in these games wasn't so great that the two couldn't group together, and as the newbie advanced further, that gap would continue to lessen. This was a strong characteristic for RP guilds as a new player could still advance the life of their character by grouping up with members of their guild all along the way, rather then having to catch up to the members first.
Of course the other characteristic many games are lacking now a days to foster RP is mutual respect between players. This is probably why a game like Eve which could have been a RPers paridise isn't, isn't one. In a game like Eve many players seem to hide behind the RP tag to grief other players. Things like lag exploits, taking advantage of interface issues to scam, using a bot to automaticly mine resources, that's just "RPing" a villain in some of those players eyes. Ultima Online had similair issues prior to the release of the Trammel facet, while some PKers claim to be RPers, it's hard to feel there was an roleplaying interaction when the person ganking you is using a potion throwing script and using leet speak to hurl insults and call you a 'newb' the entire time.
RP ultimately requires cooperation to make it work, players need to agree on the extent and scope of the roleplaying interaction, without that it is hard to establish the mutual enjoyment that makes people want to come back for more RP, and feel like their characters and others truely exist within the same fantasy world.
(Edit: Hole Moley, that was way longer then I thought it'd be.
TL:DR version: Levels restricting what monsters you fight, and what ares of the game you can access can also hinder the establishing of a RP group. The lack of mutual respect in modern MMOs often prevents players from staying in character due to out of character frustrations they encounter from player interactions)
hardcore =/= rp. rp is its own thing, seperate from how many hours you log or how dedicated to the game you are.
I planned to note that while LotRO has indeed the most utilized rp-focus among present games, you missed TSW which is great too in the rp - but Mulli was faster
So I guess I'll just say great pics, Methel-stage is always a nice, cheerful gathering place, and the other pic with the recursive elves... Lol.
Currently playing:
Rift
Played:
SWToR, Aion,EQ, Dark Age of Camelot
World of Warcraft, AoC
How many delicate flowers have you met in Counterstrike?
I got a case of beer and a chainsaw waiting for me at home after work.
For me the reason for the lack of RP is the pace of games these days.
Up until perhaps 3 months into WOW I didn't notice a problem but since then there has been a gradual decline. Games got faster, combat got faster, queing for dungeons got faster,Levelling got faster, travel got faster...everything got faster.
I blame a combination of designers making games not worlds, the market openning up to the casual market and the need for quick fixes, the introduction of consol PvP leets and their desire to only talk if it is something rude about someone else and the move from enjoying the journey to enjoying the endgame type gaming playstyle.
MMO's are gloryfied whackamole timewasters for the most part and probably will continue to be so because gaming is a big industry now rather then a passionate hobby.
Originally posted by Arskaaa
"when players learned tacticks in dungeon/raids, its bread".
I have to disagree here that the roleplayers have gone away or that modern games have abandoned them. Yes, the MUD communities of old were more tightly regulated and controlled, but that is because they were SMALL by comparison to the overall playerbase today.
Support for RP has been a work in progress since the first major MMO's arrived in the late 90's, with some games setting the standard (EQ, SWG and WoW a few years later) with private chat channels, player housing, various emotes, etc. and some completely mssing the boat (any obvious console port like Defiance is a good example).
LOTRO is not the only game that has provided well for RPers, and even current offerings and games soon to launch offer similar support. TSW has a great RP community and offers decent support (though how Funcom managed to NOT include all the great emotes and character customization of their own Age of Conan continues to boggle the mind), GW2 also does a heck of a lot of things right and offers what is essentially RP flagging (its guild system is great for this) and has private player housing in each major city.
The issue isn't so much a lack of support or that 'the roleplayers' have ridden off into the sunset. It's more than we're vastly outnumbered by an overall playerbase numbering in the tens of millions and extremely spread out now over numerous games offering decent to really quite good RP support.
The roleplayers are either playing old games or are gone.
RP went the way of the RPG, this was bound to happen with the MMO stealing development time and dollars away from rpgs. Kind of sad how all this has gone down too, from the perspective of someone who is actually older than Advanced Dungeons and Dragons lol.
Computer games tried so hard to replicate the feeling of sitting at a table with a dm a few friends and a bunch of dice. Even being programmed with actual dice throws sometimes visible in the game's UI. Then in the late 90's early 00's something changed. TSR went bye bye and D&D became the property of the trading card kids. Across the board quality took a huge dive and everything started shifting towards action gaming. Each successive release of D&D by the card gamers has dumbed and stripped everything worthwhile out of it (the nonsense they produce today wouldn't have ruffled a single feather in the 80's) and all the computer games have become action adventures with shoddy rpg elements tossed on top to try and convince you you are playing a legit rpg.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
The article would have probably been better served with a title of 'Where did the roleplaying elements go' because the RP'ers are still there. They are just like every gamer out there and trying to find that one game out of growing ocean of games that fits their needs. They are spread out from one game to another. GW2 has an active roleplaying community as I am a mod on the site for the roleplayers of that game and we get several new folks every single day. TSW, Lord of the Rings and heck, they still have a strong community in EQ2.
But the elements presented by games have dwindled. At the same time you can say some games are changing that like Wildstar which has elements in it. I believe Everquest Next has spoken in regards to roleplaying and Camelot has stated they will have a RP designated server if the deman is high enough which means some voices have been raised in the first place. So yes, rpers are out there. They are scattered and sometimes not as vocal since they feel some developers/games simply ignore what they say *coughs* ToR *coughs* but there is generally a RP community in almost every AAA MMO.
There are plenty of roleplayers in role-playing games. The problem is that a certain elitist group refuses to acknowledge them as "roleplayers".
This is more a character flaw among the elitists rather than the lack of actual roleplayers in games.
RP becomes a lot less fun when it turns into ERP. I ran into it first in WoW, then in TSW. RPers get a bad rap from the non-RPers for the few who use mmos as pr0n.
RP is lively on the RP server in Rift and maybe the reason I haven't run across any ERP is because they can "get a room" and make it private.
More elitism. Why can't you accept that ERP has just as much right as you do to do their roleplaying in public? (Given that the actual EULA allows them to).
I think that this is a two-fold answer.
The brunt of the responsibiity for lack of RP in games nowadays, I think falls on the player. no matter what if a true RP gamer and his/her group wants to RP, I think they can always find ways around the system to do so. But I do think the change in MMOs has affected their focus... all but the truly hardcore have kind of shied away from RPing focusing more on the games, leveling, achievements and even end game itself more. Most of this is probably due to MMO games becoming more mainstream than anything because as the game genre has widened it's audience, it has gotten more casual players interested. Over time it has diluted the MMO gamer crowd so in time it has seemed to make it harder to find other RP gamers.
I do agree that it would help a lot for games to facilitate RPing in game, but I believe that with more RPers in game, the more the developers will take notice of them and accommodate them. So it becomes a vicious cycle. The more mainstream and casual focused that the games become, the more Casual gamers, the ratio of RP to non-RP player gets diluted, with that happening, the devs will always look at the numbers, it only makes good marketing sense and it influences the direction that they go with their development and therefore, again, the games become more casual and round and round we go.
i think the only solution for a good RP game is for a developer who is focused on RP to develop a game in spite of this on their end and on the gamer's end RPers need to stick together and keep on finding ways to do their thing, make themselves seen and let the devs know that there is still a community out there with a need for features that facilitates their gaming style.
The RP in MMORPG comes from the tradition of D&D, not phone sex. As such I would say it does not have the same rights as the type of RP that is inherent to the genre. People are free to say whatever they like to each other in private, though.
Currently playing:
Rift
Played:
SWToR, Aion,EQ, Dark Age of Camelot
World of Warcraft, AoC
The "RP" as the elitists have defined it, perhaps. Roleplaying as from "Role-Playing Game" has a far more inclusive scope and that roleplaying is still very much alive.
I for one, am not shredding any tears about how the elitists are crying about their situation.
What would be ironic is if those people who were used to get teased in school didn't become open-minded in response but instead became close-minded elitists.
the RP in the MMORPG is sadly obsolete.
It's MMO now, all most people want is advancement and they want it as fast as possible.
Try to go into a conversation with any MMO player, 99% will mention the words 'progress' and 'raiding' within 2 minutes into the conversation or 5 lines in a post.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"