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roleplaying neglect and harrassment is this happening to other games as well?
0k21
Member Posts: 866
Now I'm a roleplayer, yes it may be nerdy to actually 'Roleplay' in an Massively Multiplayer Online 'Roleplaying' Game, but for the most part, even people who have thought that in the past have left roleplayers alone and stuck to their own servers or communities without bothering anyone. Now though it seems that roleplayer haters are becoming more and more common these days, these people deliberately and go to quite ridiculous lengths to harass roleplayers, on the forums and even in game, regardless of whether they are on official roleplay servers and just normal servers. Now I don't know about you, but I played World of Warcraft for about two years post-release and during the first year I almost NEVER came across this kind of harassment before, but on the second year, all of a sudden there were tons of people flooding into official roleplaying servers and they were deliberately harassing roleplayers for no reason and regardless of what roleplayers did they wouldn't stop. I myself have experienced some of these situations before and quite frankly I think it's ridiculous that they would go to such lengths just to harass them, normally on the first year or any other time i was roleplaying I would come across the odd idiot or two sure, but nothing on this sort of level.
Even in City of Heroes/Villains I find that there are roleplay haters even though there are actually no official roleplaying servers on that game, what is the motive behind this if at all? Because I am sure as hell having a hard time trying to figure it out, like I have said, normally people actually don't really bother roleplayers that much but it seems that roleplayers have become a target for more and more hate lately, you even get Player vs Players or Power Gamers trying to roleplay except they try and put their own kind of systems within the normal type of roleplaying people do like for instance if a player gets into a fight with someone they can't be hurt by certain things because of their level, which I frankly find ridiculous... It's just a form of storytelling! What's wrong with people who are just trying to evolve their characters more beyond the usual "Look at me I'm level 50 and I have the epic sword of slashing!"
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=299083101&sid=1&pageNo=1
This is an example of the kind of threads I've seen where roleplayers either just get completely ignored or harassed, I myself tried creating several threads in order to get Blizzard to do something like that until I started getting actually personally attacked on the forums, it really is a ridiculous trend that I feel people should start knowing about.
Quoting people doesn't make you clever, in fact, it makes you all the more stupid for not bothering to read the quotes you post in the first place.
Comments
This isn't something particularly new. RPers have been getting bashed for awhile now. That's why I won't play an mmoRPG that doesn't have an ignore feature. RPers have always been a niche group of people and probably always will be and for many many years they have been ridiculed. I'm a nerd/geek/dork for rping and playing computer games and I'm well aware that I will be harassed for it. What amuses me is the hypocrisy.
Now try roleplaying in RL. That's tough since there isn't an ignore feature available.
I still can't pinpoint when computer gaming went from nerdsville to cool. Did it?
I'm a nerd/geek too, and a pretty old one. It's made me a lot of money. Now I own a high tech company and interview a lot of younger people for jobs. I always ask them about the kind of system they have (as we design cpu's for a living), and the type of games they play. When the conversation comes around to mmo's I always probe about how they feel about rpg'ers. I don't know what it is, maybe they begin to feel too comfortable, but some of them have gone on and on about harassing rpg'ers. Funny thing, none of them have ever gotten the job. I feel you can tell a lot about someone by the way they treat strangers (or strange people in our case).
I have all to often seen this kind of thing happen and all to often I have seen role players basically ask to be treated that way.
being arrogant snobs, treating non role players like idiots, using emotes to pretend they have god like powers, making you fill out job applications to play with them, and one of my personal favorites, writing their life story in their bio for the whole world to see. personally I dont see many people have their life story printed on their t-shirts why do it in game? is'nt that something you should be role playing?
As a fellow roleplayer, I think some take it to seriously, its is just a game & sometimes you just have to deal with it. I recently joined a guild in *cough* SWG *cough* that isnt a role playing guild simply because i found a great group of people to hang out with. Even though I see alot of roleplay tags over peoples heads that doesnt mean they will give you the time of day just cause you have one too.
as a side note, I think its really kinda funny that 9 out 10 imperial role players i run across in SWG are all jerks, the last one is an afk entertainer getting shot at by an npc rebel
I support manditory D&D sessions in all schools
As a fellow role player I obviously know what you mean. I've tried quite a few MMORPG's and there's just one that lets those that wish to role play in peace do so, perhaps I should be reluctant to post the name of the game in case some RP basher reads this! But, I'll take my chances.
As other MMORPG's grow and the none role playing group of people expands, it falls quite natural that the RP haters would increase, this is however not the case with Ultima Online. Ultima Online is, as far as I know, apart from being the oldest MMORPG out there, the biggest in features and the amount of role players it has. So not only does Ultima offers a broad variety of things you can interact with but it offers a large community as well. And as the larger a community is, the more it is left alone. As people tend to pick on the weak and unorganised they leave role players in Ultima alone. Now, don't get me wrong, there are those that want nothing more than to sabotage and be bad, but it's quite easy to ignore and avoid. (There are nice ignore and silence functions in Ultima!) And the game masters are more than willing to help remove of anyone harrassing your play time.
I have tried role playing in other games, but it's in Ultima where I found my haven and paradise. The bullies are far between and the game feels so perfectly designed for role playing. So if you want to get away from those trouble makers, just try Ultima! If you just want to try it, there's 14-days-trials to try.
I always think it is really pathetic when a video game player harasses a role-player for being a nerd. That's so utterly ridiculous and the ultimate case of the pot calling the kettle black.
I'm all for RP servers. I think they are good for users who want to embrace the lore and create their own stories.
On the other hand, I don't think that Blizzard or any other company should put any extra effort to enforce rules for an RP server.
Why?
Because if a player on a regular server decides to role-play in a group I can't page a GM about it. I just ignore it or kick them out. Now, if the player is cursing or otherwise breaking other rules I can understand paging.
Doktar - 70 Troll Priest - Perenolde
Some people are out of line on both sides I would say. The level some "roleplaying" guilds take it to is just ridiculous, and yes, they act very snobby and elitist at times. Of course there are non roleplayers who cross the limit too.
In the end, this is what you get when you play mmos. Unless they make a proper RPG server with strict enforcement, the conflict will keep up.
I like to RP but a lot of guilds I've run into have a very warped idea of the concept, at least in my opinion.
[DTE]
Maybe some rpers show a strict elitism, but it is mainly because of the same reason a beaten cat might scratch up even the kindest person's arm. They're defensive. It used to be that, yes, rpers welcomed other in with open arms, but now they have been bitten so many times that they no longer wish to give that helping hand and just want the nuisance that is making it harder for them to enjoy the game to go away.
I've heard all the arguments.. Role players require too much. Role players are too little of a minority to cater to. Role players bring it on themselves for being snobby. Role players are too unwilling to teach newer, curious people how to rp. As usual, it's all in perspective, so I'll give an rpers perspective of all of these arguments..
Role players require too much attention.- While it is true that roleplayers require more attention of GMs, they actually require less actual programming within the game to keep happy. Many can be happy without graphics at all, or quests outside of maybe a few class centered things. This is prooven by the MUDs made by Simutronics, DragonRealms and Gemstone. Role players, while loving new content, are more willing to wait for far off things because they already have things going on in the hear and now. They have their stories to keep them preoccupied. If a company can keep it so they can play out their stories without harassment, they gain a loyal set of gamers that stay just because their character already has developed a life within the lore and they don't want the story to end. Now, roleplayers will be towards this in varying degrees, but they are normally more like this than just plain PVE or PVPers that are looking for only fun in the here and now in the form of maybe a little socializing while mainly playing for achievement.
Role players are too little of a minority to cater to.- Saying this is like saying super markets shouldn't sell fish because people like chicken and beef more. There are plenty of rpers, more than what people believe still exist. Many rpers just have either gone into hiding with a small group, waiting for their haven in gaming, or given up entirely and moved on to being purely PVE due to the inability to do what they love. Because they hide, or are forced into hiding by harassment, there is less and less new blood coming in since the mmorpg community is beginning to forget what role playing means. Just look at this forum! It says "Role Playing Discussion", but it is mainly turned into discussion on any game with "rp" in the genre title. It is not like this because there aren't enough people wanting to talk about role playing, it's like this because of lack of understand what just role playing means.
Role players bring on the harassment themselves by being snobby to non-rping players.- I love my pvp too, so that's why I'm going to use pvp as an example here.. If I went to a pvp server and refused to land a finger on anything in it, even after being killed, what would someone think? Well...maybe at first they'd think I was a bot, but if I answered their question of "Why?" with "Because I don't believe in killing other players", what would the first thing the person who asked me would think? Most likely something along the lines of "Why is this person on a pvp server? She must be an idiot.." A nice person would describe to me that it is a pvp server and I might be happier on a pve server. If I still said no, they would most likely begin avoiding me. This is what happens on an rp server. The only difference is that most rpers really don't know when it's a lost cause. I know I don't. That's why I'm still replying to these threads. The rper continues to try to inform everyone that is not rping on the rp server of what the server is for, how to do what it's for, and where to go if the person isn't there for the rp. After a while, the rper gets annoyed because there's just too many and no one is listening. Frustration is a normal thing and takes two sides to keep it down. We'd really rather not have to ignore most of the game to avoid getting frustrated.
Role players are too unwilling to teach newer players how to rp.- This one I have very personal experience with. I used to try to help people being ooc on rp tagged servers learn how to rp, or offer at least. Most of the time, I was shot down, laughed at, stalked for a while after, and generally harassed. Reporting does little good with this sort of thing. I have tried, and it rarely gets taken care of. Just another rper whining. I could come back on days later, and some take up the chase even after all that time gone if they see me in a town and recognize my name. All I did was say "This is a roleplaying server. If you do not yet know the rules, they are shown at this address-<insert policy web address here> . If you have any questions on how to go about rping, I will ne glad to help you." Perhaps I was asking for it, but if that is considered "asking for it", the view here is a little skewed. Most rpers have indeed stopped this offer of teaching and such because of the harassment. It is all a two way street, and once a dog is beaten badly enough it wont be too willing to be patted on the head.
That's hardly the case everywhere either. You should put people in boxes, some people are elitist, some aren't. Some help newer members out, some does not. You should be put off by all RP just because you had one bad experience.
I used to be a roleplayer , Infact i learned how to roleplay with a great community in swg on sunrunner , But after i moved to wow and city of heroes i quite frankly hated the roleplay communities cause i found most of the roleplaying guilds there too eltist and had to have practically have perfect grammer .
Now we all know every mmo will have it's roleplaying griefers i don't condone it but needless to say i have very little respect for roleplayers now because in my experiences you have to write out a 5000 background they will entirely ignore alot of non roleplayers and i have alot of friend in both games that do not roleplay but are rp friendly .
In short in wow alot of roleplayers are complaining about their servers being overrun with griefers and i don't like that but at the same time when the majority of roleplaying experiences you have had are bad just because some roleplayers demand you to be perfect it will come back and bite you in the butt one day .
what does that make the rest of the "hardcore" game players?
can someone define nerd please, because now i get really confused..
Some peoples are just looking at an excuse to be rude or nasty on other peoples.
Personnally, if I feel a need to be nasty, I abuse a game/video game the best I can, without cheating. I redo the same thing, over and over and over again, always better, and better and better...up to the point it is grossly disturbing to some devs if they see me pwns their baby game!
Now, most peoples who are rude toward anyone, they are because they think the consequences for been rudes are not important. They feel, for some reason, that they can be rude with RPGers, gays folks or whatever else, and they think, for some obscure reason, that there won't be any retalitation.
This is why I am extremely vindicative; this way, if someone for any reason think they can abuse me, I return them the favor with the interests.
Seeing the instant aggravation is a potent warning that you don't want to play this game, and they don't want either.
RPGers are a very nice lot, that hardly defend themselves...and since your a weirdo, they think nobody will cares if they abuse you. Just show them some teeths and get a non-RPGers to laugh at him while you return him the favor.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
i have been a roleplayer for over 20 years (basic D&D red box) but i never started playing a MMO until i found out about EVE-online. Looking into it, i found out that there is only one server, and it is a persistant world. So if you get enough people together to wage a war, you have an impact on the underlying story of the game.
this roleplayer hate that is going around is springing up a bit there as well, but i haven't seen much of it. the developer also have noticed it as well, and i wanted to add an excerpt from a recent live dev blog.
________________________________________________
Ginger: Ok, part of the question was…are we gonna drag people…well not drag…well ok we’re gonna drag ‘em…non roleplayers into the events and storyline. We’d love to do this, like…the fresher and newer people we get in these things, in my experience, the better the events and the wider the story is. We are, we may have been, well we have been guilty of focusing a bit too much on roleplayers I believe, but we’ve got a few events in the pipeline and we’re gonna try and, with Eris’ help…the lovely, lovely lady, expand the scope of our events. She will touch a bit more on that. But yes, in answer to that, we are going to try and draw more non-traditional roleplayers in, and…I got a little rant coming up about the word “roleplayers.”
Because you say it and people just…
Gnauton: Oh man…here it comes, here it comes…
Ginger: Dude…dude…just!
Eris: Oh dear….
Ginger: Dude…come on now…
[Everyone laughs at Ginger. Note: that’s AT Ginger, not WITH Ginger.]
Come on…Come on, you gotta hear me now. Right…
There’s no like…roleplayers and non-roleplayers in Eve mate. EVERYONE of you…little people…and big people…and female people…and male people…and Ginger people most importantly. You all roleplay. You may tell me you don’t, but…you do, and I am not taking no for an answer. You do. You all roleplay. Your miners, and your pirates, pew pew, all of ya. But…the only difference is, is that some people choose to get more immersed in the story line, and some people don’t. Our job is to pull people into the storyline, and show them it can be quite interesting and funky. Then have them spin off, and do their own thing, ‘coz let’s face it, events are
never gonna be the ‘be all and end all’ of Eve and they were never designed to be. They were designed to add funky little…sand…and…points into Eve. Right…where’s my next point here. I’m still going! [A collective sigh can be heard, and the sounds of Eris packing some more Drop into a Test Bong to lure Ginger away from the Mic.]
Oh yes! I’ve got a new word for roleplayers! [Giggle] They love this one…
Gnauton: Oh man…here we go…
Ginger: Because of the negative stigma of “roleplayers”? We’ve got a new word. We’ll we got a couple of new words, but I like this one the best.
It’s called: “Immersioneers”
Or if you’re like, maybe from near Russia? “Immersionauts”
Gnauton: Hah!
Ginger: It’s a beautiful word, and I believe we should all use this now, and just not refer to roleplayers as…roleplayers.
Oh. Uh, I think that’s it? Yep. So, Eris do you want to say a few words? Or Abraxas?
Abraxas: Yeah, I just wanted to touch on…well, it’s hard to follow that act.
[More laughing AT Ginger]
I just wanted to touch a little bit on integrating the players into the Prime Fiction. That’s something that usually happens afterwards, like something immersive happened at we’ll write about it, days or weeks later. But it’s really something that’s extremely hard to plan. It’s really likely that we’re gonna sit down and go: “Oh we’re gonna this alliance now” or whatever because it can create a slight atmosphere of unfairness. Because if you cover one Alliance, then all the others want to be covered as well. But…there’s always a chance that if anything massive happens, it will be written about afterwards. So, Eris, do you want to…
Eris: Yes…
This nice little lady is going to drag you kicking and screaming into roleplay. That sounds a bit wrong, but…I didn’t mean it that way.
Ginger: Hang on, hang on…you said “roleplay”. It’s IMMERSIONALISM woman!
[The laughing at Ginger continues once more, and the sloppy sounds of a Fedo being fed all of Ginger’s drop can be heard momentarily.]
Abraxas: We’re on the frontiers of a new language here, I swear…
Eris: Are we gonna have different outfits as well?
Ginger: Alright, let’s not even go there…really…
[Laughing continues again, and the almost imperceptible sounds of Ginger sulking are heard.]
Eris: Ok…more seriously, I think that a lot of people are maybe a bit afraid of…immersing…themselves into the backstory of eve because they don’t really know the backstory that well. All the entities and how they work together, it might be a little vague. So I’m hoping that when we have White Wolf working on the missions more and explaining, everything…the relations in them, that people will start to know the Factions, the Empires, and how everything works together and they will feel a bit more comfortable playing around with it themselves. So I’m hoping that will help a little bit, and also make them realise that as soon as they start Eve, they are a capsuleer, they are flying a spaceship. They belong to the elite people in the universe.
So all those griefers who comes to the RP-servers when their own ones are down, just to make fun of the roleplayers, are actually there for revenge!? I really don't believe that. If they find those roleplayers to be pricks, isn't it great that you have the possibility to leave them all to them self on their own server (in some games) and let them kill each other in grammar and spelling competitions?
I think that's true in most cases with at LEAST World of Warcraft, good to see another ex-SWG pre-cu roleplayer around by the way, the folks there were top notch and that's what I enjoyed most about the game. The roleplayers I have met in World of Warcraft, at least the majority and I have said this before to other people as well, are the biggest bunch of bullies, griefers and general arseholes I have ever seen, that goes for most of the community too in all honesty, but then again I mostly played on Argent Dawn so I don't know whether your experiences would be different. I did have good friends there, heck I even have friends I still talk to on MSN now, but that's only a small tiny amount compared to the amount of people I thought were my friends, when my friend said that he had started playing WoW on a roleplaying server again, I think it was Argent Dawn, I just simply said when he said he found griefing them fun "Go ahead, they're a bunch of assholes anyway" and I stand by that comment.
I personally hate the average grind game like WoW or heck even CoX which I'm playing right now just to pass the time, simply because, the games award and protect griefers, the gamemasters in nearly all games are too slow to act and stop them and you can't actually do anything back to them because they're in the same faction as you because of there being no open PvP. Now I look back, I think partly the reason the amount of roleplaying griefing has increased is because they know they can get away with it and that we can't do anything against them, I remember in Pre-Cu SWG, if I started roleplaying with one or two people, literally entire crowds would swarm around us and roleplay as well and any jerks that came along could easily just be killed because of the PvP.
It's a rather depressing issue that I hope will stop eventually, I don't mind it for now, but what annoys me is the fact that it could just be easily solved by making a DECENT game with open PvP so that roleplayers wouldn't have to whine so much, not only that it'd make it easier to deal with the egoists who try to flaunt their levels in your face when you try to emote with them or something like that.
On another note though, I want to know if anyone has found a non-SOE MMORPG/Online MUD that follows the classic races like Elf/Dwarf/Men/Orc, I'm so sick of seeing these cheesy milked races that are practically the same thing except they have different lore and looks. Oh and just to say.... Not many people survive when they start trying to piss me off it's happened before even with other roleplayers that tried to throw their ego's around with me
this is just one of those issues that bite me in the ass occasionally really, thought it might make for some interesting discussion.
Quoting people doesn't make you clever, in fact, it makes you all the more stupid for not bothering to read the quotes you post in the first place.
I think that the bashing of RPers is happening because this genre of gaming is attracting larger numbers of people these days. It's a number's game. Increase community, increase asshats.
I kinda think that servers from game to game are pretty much labeled one or the other. RP or PvP or both. Don't recall seeing FOR CASUAL NON-RP ONLY. I could be wrong. If not, where do the non-rp people belong. Not all non-rp people like to pvp. So your probably gonna have non-rp people on the servers labeled rp too. Casual players who don't rp may find that people who do a lil strange because it's not something that you run into often in real life.
We all know how things that you may not know about or understand affects thinking. Racism is the prime example.
Personally I'm not an RP type of person in video games. I don't bother those that do it though. The good people in any game will be respectful of any path you choose. The bad ones will be bad. My experiences with bad rpers has been for the most part "I am teh elitist RP person in all the land and your not worthy of my company". My experiences with bad non-rpers for the most part has been, racist, uninformed, elitist noob calling all around asshat smacktards. I've even seen RP'ers bash other RP'ers for not using the games story line, but something they created on their own. I've seen non-rpers bash non-rpers for talking about real world politics or religion with others who are obviously listening and participating in the conversation (not necessarily arguing either). All in all, people will be people.
Hmm, I also think that the word nerd isn't an insult anymore. Geek may still be one though. Computer gaming is on the rise mainly due to computers becoming apart of everyones daily life. Video games is something I think that this, the last, the many more generations to come is just apart of the progression of things. More and more are spending time infront of the monitor. I could argue that many console gamers are looking for deeper experiences and are making the transition to the mmo's found on pc's. I truly believe that if your a gamer, new or old, you are going to try and experience all that gaming has to offer. PC gaming is a large part of the video game world. It's only natural.
Good to see all the I statements in every post also.
There is a very RP-friendly game out there that has inherited a large chunk of the Lost SWG playerbase. The name is Saga of Ryzom
Even though there are not as many Rpers in it everybody treats them with respect and it is quite common that a non-Rper will try to fit in the style of conversation of a hardcore RPer just for the fun of it.
No matter whether you RP or PvP you'll be treated with utmost friendliness and respect in this game - the Saga of Ryzom.
Maybe that is why they call it the sandbox style. The community is so great that noone ver leaves with hard feelings.
Come on try it and get hooked up for life like most of us
I tried Saga of Ryzom, while I liked the skill system the fact that I was actually restricted in where I wanted to go by barriers because I couldn't jump and such was rather depressing, also the roleplay community is not as good as it's made out to be at least on Arispotle which is where I started out at, I managed to make a few friends there, but they just clearly weren't interested in roleplaying, even the roleplay guilds that said they roleplayed but meh, I guess it's a matter of opinion mostly. It is sad for me as a roleplayer though, because I remember in Pre-Cu SWG when I roleplayed on Starsider, if I started roleplaying with one of my friends, literally entire crowds would suddenly begin roleplaying around us as well, even passers by that clearly looked like they were busy with crafting or some such. I don't think I'll ever find that kind of community again and even if I do it probably won't be the same.
People were friendly in Saga of Ryzom, but it's not the roleplay game it's made out to be and far too many developers these days I have found are trying to turn what roleplaying actually is into something else, it's supposed to be telling the story of your character, not just "I have a steel set of armour" or "Look at me I have a big flaming sword!" I'm not drawn into games that easily anymore just because someone says it's great.
Quoting people doesn't make you clever, in fact, it makes you all the more stupid for not bothering to read the quotes you post in the first place.
Oh I could tell tales of grief and harrassment aimed at RP'ers, tales about good RP'ers forced out of the game because the hostility was just too much, and tales about events held by RP'ers for everyone to enjoy ruined by the anti-RP players....
But I won't.
Since I and the guild of stormtroopers I belonged to in SWG-Pre CU left over the NGE, I've yet to find a game that could give me the enjoyment and RP community I long for... So to speak.
I have to admit tho, I may not be elitist and "snobby", but I sure am jaded and careful 'bout hanging around non RP'ers when I'm RP'ing these days. But then again, I was a Bria player in SWG, and those guys were cruel to the bone to anyone who didn't play the PvP pew pew game.
It's terrible in World of Warcraft, but not so in other games. MMORPGs have always been "geek games," mostly played by people who started out playing traditional RPGs. But WoW was marketed to a more mainstream audience, and has attracted millions of high school kids desperately afraid of looking like a "nerd" because they play a role-playing game (of course, they're already roleplaying, as Nurgles's post from EVE points out - they're just doing a shitty job of it). Don't expect Blizzard to do anything about the problem, or even to - if five thousand role-players cancelled their subscriptions today, they wouldn't even notice.
If you really want a god role-playing experience in an MMO, try Everquest 2. The role-playing servers are only "RP Preferred" with no additional rules and no additional enforcement, but they're of a much higher quality than WoW's RP realms. It doesn't have the same appeal as WoW, and you won't find the same kind of people - I think the "nerdy" reputation scares off the kiddies. I still think WoW is a superior video game, but EQ2 is definitely a superior role-playing game.
please excuse my bad english! This thread is very interesting and I just have to answer.
This is, what happend to me:
I am 40 years old now, female and I think I am a friendly and even-tempered person. But one year ago I have been very stupid.
DSL has become much cheaper in my country and for christmas last year I bought myself my first high-speed connection to the internet. I was very excited and happy about this and wanted to try out the possibilites at once. I had been playing offline-computer-games for many many years and I really wanted to try my first online game. Because I like fantasy books a lot and was fascinated about the idea of role-playing I bought a copy of WoW.
I had never role-played before, but naive as I was, it did not occur to me, there are other ways to play a role-playing game than ROLE-PLAYING it. Automatically I made up a little backround story and took a lot of time creating the avatar. Then I connected to the recommended server (as most people do) and was very confused at once. I did not understand what was on the chats - only internet-short-speak. What are they takling about? What does this mean? What I could see was, it was not role-playing, what people where doing.
I was very disappointed, because I really wanted to role-play. I always had wanted to try it, but never got the chance. I had hoped, my new high-speed internet would be a possibility to try it at last. But obviously this was a mistake.
But per chance I read about role-playing servers. So I was happy again, because I thought I had just joined to wrong server. I got to a role-playing server at once. Per chance I met someone from a role-playing guild in the newbie area. We started role-playing at once and it was big fun. I enjoyed myself very much. Of course I made many mistakes, but the people from the guild were very nice and I joined them.
At the same day I got heavily insulted for the first time just for sitting around a fire, having beer with my new friends and talking. Someone danced in our fire naked. At first I thought this to be funny. But he did not stop any more and started to shout more insults at us. I really felt offended and sad after this. But I thought there are idiots everywhere and hoped the next day it would become better again. Of course it did´nt. I got insulted, threatened and harrased several times a day - just for existing and playing a game the way I enjoyed so much with some people I liked a lot.
I learned how to write tickets soon. But this did not help. No one seemed to care about what happened to us role-players. After about three weeks of hope and frustration I was saying good-by to my guildies and quit my account.
I have tried some other games since, but it was more or less the same situation. Maybe less insults but also less role-playing opportunities. I had never thought people could be so hateful and aggressive before this experience.
I don´t play MMOs anymore. It´s no fun to get harrased all the time and I prefer to have fun in my spare time.
Why they are doing this? I don´t know. Maybe they suffer from a low self-esteem. But in fact I don´t care, what they suffer from. I just don´t want to have anything to do with people who try to humiliate others in order to cope with their problems.
I hope there will be more games like neverwinter nights soon. This is what I play online now, because of the possibility of playing with nice people on your own server. And I think, this is the future of role-playing online. Games with better and bigger multiplayer-functions and maybe servers and technical support to rent for role-playing groups.
MMOs definitly are no place to role-play and instead of allowing others to insult them and paying support for doing nothing about this, role-players should just leave the MMOs. Just quit and have fun somewhere else, while they will have to insult each other in the future!
For those of you who are interesting in roleplaying in a mature environment where role play is actually the standard of the game I will suggest PlaneShift. The game attracts many people who are former table top rpers as well as many who have found roleplaying, even on "rp" servers inadequate.
www.planeshift.it/
So long as RP in these games remains a tangential curiosity it like many other curiosities, minorities, or niches becomes a target for the close minded. The irony of course being that by even being in a game these same hecklers are actually RP just to a very minimal loose extent. If RP were to ever be integrated into a game as a core concept or one which provided actual tangible rewards or power it might gain more respect from others, and silence the critique sometimes levelled at RP'ers of being all talk and no action.