Recently there have been some good questions being raised and insightful explorations on the subject of role-playing in MMOs. These discussions have prompted me to put down in words what I’ve been thinking for a while now about this paradoxical problem of a lack of RPing in RPGs — especially MMORPGs.
From the moment we are born we start playing. Our brains seek amusement. Eventually as little kids whether it is playing cowboys and indians, playing house or playing make believe we fantasizing about being someone else — we are role-playing. Even reading a book of fiction can be seen as a precursor to role-playing as the reader must mentally invest themselves into the characters, locales and situations described within the pages.
Most role-playing takes place when we interact and communicate with other people either as actors in a play or as players in a game. Role-playing allows us — and even those who don’t know what role-playing is and fail to appreciate it — to heighten the immersion that we so desperately seek when we escape into online worlds.
The ability to role-play is a tribute to the power of the human imagination. We can transport ourselves into any situation and pretend that we are there.
Why then do very few people role-play anymore in virtual worlds?
In Defense of Role-playing
When tackling the subject, the first thing we need to do is ask the question whether RP is good for MMOs and virtual worlds. The answer is a resounding “yes”. When players decide to RP they are fully investing in their virtual world. Instead of being passing strangers they become part of the world. They truly belong.
Fully investing oneself into a virtual world means that a player has suspended their disbelief with abandon. The more a player RP’s in a world, the more they and other players get out of that world. Yes, even those players who choose not to participate in RP benefit from the RP of others. Player organized guilds, events and activities all serve to enrich the player community when they are done in “character” and with a purpose that befits the setting of the world.
On the other hand, players who do not RP and carelessly bring their real world persona’s into a virtual world — you know them well as the leetspeak, naming policy violators and other assorted miscreants – have the effect of destroying immersion. No matter how hard the MMOs devs try to create a wonderfully immersive world, these people are the virtual termites that chew away at the foundation of online communities. They continually take and take and give back nothing except their monthly subscription fee.
So if RPing is a positive thing for virtual worlds, why don’t more people RP?
Could Technology be the Natural Enemy of RP?
Early primitive computer games, pen and paper games like D&D and MUDS required more active participation from the players and thus there was some real role-playing going on. People RPed out of necessity.
The more sensory data you provide to the player, the less the player has to “imagine” which results in less of a need to role-play. The quality of role-playing in a virtual world is inversely proportional to quality of information you give to the player.
People are lazy and always choose the path of least resistance. That’s how we are wired. Give them 3D graphics complete with surround sound and you create an environment where there is nothing left to the imagination.
Video Killed the Radio Star
The same thing happened in the music industry in the 1980′s with the advent of music videos. Many people rightfully complained that the visual images and memories of music were no longer their own and had been supplanted by the imagery concocted by the music video director.
How many people don’t think about dancing zombies when they hear Michael Jackson’s chart-busting song Thriller?
It used to be that music chronicled our own lives and experiences; we created our own imagery and interpretations of music.
Movies based on books commit much the same kind of sin that music videos committed. How many of us when we think of Frodo Baggins in Lord of the Rings, think of Elijah Wood? I wonder what Frodo used to look like in our mind’s eye before those movies were released?
So the more information that MMO developers give to us the less we have to rely on our imaginations to personalize our experience. Combine this with the fact that most new MMOs submerge the player with quest-based mechanics and large unfolding story arcs and you have the current predicament: role-playing has seemingly become an archaic and obsolete pursuit within virtual worlds.
Can Role-playing be Saved?
I believe the answer is “yes”. In order for this to happen RP has to be made more meaningful and efficacious in MMOs and virtual worlds. Instead of the token fluff that is normally reserved for RPing, serious game mechanics that reward role-players need to be an integral part of the design of a MMO from the outset.
Julian from Kill Ten Rats makes a great point that deserves mention:
The main problem of RPing in MMOs is that RPers are against a static framework that automatically tries to quantize something which cannot be, which is human socialization, actions, interactions, reactions and decisions. Games are static and formulaic in the sense that players cannot change the game’s mechanics. They cannot do anything which is not contemplated in the game’s framework.
I agree with him in general but why is it that developers have not bothered to at least try to quantify and incorporate role-playing and build it into their MMOs? Game designers are supposed to be creative people who see a glass half full — not half empty. Nobody said it would be easy.
The main reason that role-playing is currently on the ropes is because of the short-sightedness of the current pack of imaginatively bankrupt developers who have perverted MMOs into a frenzied pursuit of numbers and statistics at the expense of everything else. I believe they have either forgotten their history or they just don’t care about role-playing.
The sad reality is that the ability to RP in today’s MMOs is pointless and has no appreciable impact on the outcome of your character. If it did you can bet that the Elitist Jerks would be all over it.
The Lessons of Michael Crichton’s Timeline
I would like to propose a food for thought question to everyone — especially those who produce MMOs:
What if your very life depended on your ability to role-play?
This is exactly the scenario that the characters of Micheal Crichton’s amazing Timeline novel found themselves in. In his story, a bunch of modern day scientists and anthropologists travel back in time to the 13th century France and are forced to deal with the people and politics of the time in order to survive. One small mistake in dialect or custom and they would be imprisoned and even worse burned at the stake. The result was that they HAD to role-play — it was a matter of survival.
When you think about it this is the same kind of situation that undercover law enforcement and spies face on a daily basis. They must role-play each and every day or face in some cases certain death or execution. For them, role-playing is not for sissies like many of the ignorant fools on various MMO general chat channels would have us believe, rather it’s a matter of life and death.
Why then can’t MMO developers infuse the same kind of urgency, risk and immediacy into our MMOs and virtual worlds? Why are they so afraid to make role-playing more meaningful?
I suspect part of the answer is that the notion of consequences and risk have been all but eliminated as a design concept. Players also share some blame as they have learned to mitigate risk and play it safe by endless number crunching and worship at the altar of efficiency. These days MMOs have become largely populated with cardboard heroes armed with slide rulers and calculators. We no longer represent elves, dwarves and humans; instead we have become DPS, armor class and chance to crit.
What a sad and sorry roadside destination that the once venerable MMORPG has ended up at, seemingly out of gas on the virtual world highway that was full of such promise.
Conclusion
The ability to role-playing effectively is probably one of the most underrated and misunderstood talents that humans can possess both in the real world and in virtual worlds. Sadly, its potential has been wasted and discarded by the current crop of clueless MMO hucksters posing as developers. Maybe they just lack the wisdom to appreciate its power and impact. Perhaps they lack courage as well, as they have turned virtual worlds into a mindless and safe grindfest of numbers and statistics.
I know who killed role-playing: it was the gutless and thoughtless developers. And we let them get away with it because we let ourselves become mesmerized by the pretty graphics and amusement park sensibilities.
-Wolfshead
A prime example would be WoW’s achievement system. I can only imagine those on RP servers, getting distracted constantly by the “So and so has achieved blah blah!”. It completely ruins the whole point of role-playing immersion.
I agree with you about how the WoW Achievement system totally destroys immersion. It’s both absurd and inexplicable how a voice –perhaps from the gods — comes out of nowhere and congratulates you and announces to the world that you just killed 13 chickens and are now awarded the title of Chicken Master.
I wrote about this earlier this year:
http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/?p=1052
There’s one problem you’re not addressing: differing opinions on what “role-playing” is. Consider these different situations:
1. Someone who doesn’t talk about offline issues in public channels.
2. Someone peppering in “thee” and “thou” in conversations.
3. Someone role-playing an elf in UO (a game without elves).
4. Someone role-playing an orc in UO, mostly to kill other players.
5. Someone who adopts a persona and never “breaks character”.
All these are possible definitions of role-playing, but person #5 is going to be irritated at person #2. Person #3 might roll his eyes at person #4, because murdering is just normal gameplay in UO. Person #1 might be frustrated with person #3, because it’s obvious there aren’t elves in the world of Ultima.
Who is right? Now imagine all five of them in the same game. Now imagine one of them is the developer of the game, and therefore gets to define what “role playing” is by fiat.
I suspect this is the reason why developers don’t try to make role-play a vital part of the game, because some people just aren’t going to agree with what the developer says. Role-playing is a lot more personal than game mechanics, so a disagreement about what role-playing is would be more likely to force someone out than a poorly implemented game mechanic.
That said, there is a commercial (text) game that enforces role-playing: http://www.thresholdrpg.com/ As the post says, it’s simpler to role-play when you have to mentally fill in more of the game setting.
I agree that there can be different definitions of RP and certainly there are different degrees that a person can RP. I just don’t believe that justifies throwing out the baby with the bathwater and not addressing role-playing at all.
RP is generally seen as being “in character”. For example, if you play a dwarf you should attempt to act like a dwarf. There are many templates with which to emulate such as the movie version of Gimli from Lord of the Rings and even the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Dwarves have certain characteristics that are well known in fantasy literature:
-the like to mine ore
-they like precious gems
-they prefer to be indoors
-the like to drink lots of alcohol while sitting around roaring fires
-they are stout, sturdy and short
-they grow long beards
-they speak in Scottish brogues
-they’d rather be swinging an axe then using a wand
Any reasonable player can build on any of those characteristics to create a solid and well role-played dwarf. Any reasonable MMO dev *knows* full well what RP is and could easily devise game mechanics to support that as well as offering plenty of RP activities for players to engage in.
RP can be as simple as using a few emotes or as complex as being in character 24/7. While I daresay that RP is it’s own reward, there still needs to be mechanics that reward it within the MMO.
If my goal is to create a living breathing fantasy world based on a medieval fantasy world then it’s in my best interests as a developer to encourage players to play the part and role-play. People who RP enrich the virtual world that they are part of. People who don’t RP and instead using gangsta speak in chat channels are destroying immersion. If I was a MMO dev, I know the type of player I would be encouraging.
The problem as I see it is that we have current developers that have stunted vocabularies, are immature and have limited life experiences. They don’t know much about RP and they probably don’t care. Can you imagine Pardo, Metzen, Kaplan and Afrasiabi ever spending any of the down time playing the lute at a Renaissance Faire? I can’t.
[...] think the general discussion, triggered by Zubon’s original post has covered most of the bases, but my basic thought is [...]
I also blame the audience, not only the developers. But it was not WoW that started the minmax achiever-trends, it already began in EverQuest with Hardcore raiders that later on became WoW designers.
Many gamers that played FPS, RTS games and all that got into a world created by the more mathematical players and soon learned to embrace the +1 mentality.
They also got used to carebear worlds where dying was impossible and losing stuff, too.
So the PK’s and roleplayers “of olde” started dying out. I have hardly seen roleplayers in any MMO in the last years.
If the huge majority of your gamers consists of non-RPers it is over. Even dedicated RP-servers often have issues. Why? Because the games and the gamers are too much in love with their mechanics and “progression”.
Now I am almost back full circle to the GAME vs VIRTUAL WORLD debate.
Ttoday I was thinking about what I don’t like about the jousting Argent Tournament Dailies in Wow and it occured to me that its because they force me to feel like myself rather than my character. For example when I play a rogue, the way I tackle a fight is very different than a mage, this means that I can do the same quests on two different characters and they feel different. When I joust I don’t feel like my character, it ruins my suspension of disbelief. Its exactly the same as a rogue, or a mage, or a paladin. And what are rogues and mages doing jousting anyway! I am by no means a RP’ing player. All my toons have appropriate names but that’s as far as it goes. This “boredom” (not quite the right word), I feel when I do the Tournament dailies has shown me that in a small way I am an RP’ing player. I think if other feel this way too, the developers need to be careful with this type of quest or risk players losing interest.
I don’t quite accept that RP is dead in MMOs nor that it serves no function to power-gamers.
I used to run an Imperial PvP guild in Star Wars: Galaxies. It was very motivating for members fighting a losing defence that I rp-ed being an Imperial officer. “Don’t log off now, soldier, the Empire needs you!”
RPing has always been a way to draw players deeper into the game and players in lead roles naturally lose it. “One more try guys, are we going to get beat by a lousy widdle dragon?”
A related notion is the concept of corporate culture in MMO guilds. The Mittani, Goon’s spymaster writes very engagingly about it over at Ten Ton Hammer.
http://www.tentonhammer.com/features/mittani
The Goons’ corporate culture is based on an anarchic outlook and clever in-jokes. For example, when criticised or called immoral they usually reply with the stock phrase “Goonswarm is a Christian organisation and…” They are parodying.
Because they adopt this outlook all the time it creates a unique headspace. Mittani claims that they can spot spies and infiltrators because they don’t understand the Goons’ culture and make the wrong responses.
Not quite RP but it’s very interesting that a large player guild has such a dominant headspace – these players are adopting a different persona and worldview when they enter the game.
Where players will always RP naturally to some extent, games have indeed been designing it out of games. This may well change with SWTOR.
If SWTOR harks back to Baldur’s Gate style of making decisions with far reaching consequences when you interact with NPCs/quest givers this will naturally promote RP because it’s a hell of a lot easier to simply think “I always pick the goody goody option” than it is to alt tab and check Allakhazam every time.
Also Star Wars encourages player RP because it has very very clear sides. If I’m playing a Blood Elf Paladin in WoW I might have to stop for a minute to even remember what side I’m on. “Paladin? So good right? Elf, yeah must be good. Wait there’s an orc on my team – am I bad then? Aww, screw it, let’s just top the dps meter.”
Star Wars doesn’t have that identity crisis. Even when it should.
For RP to work you need to get non-RPers roleplaying because it’s just the natural thing to do. In a game about being an undercover cop where a dialogue error would blow your cover and get you killed everyone will roleplay because it’s the only way to play that makes sense.
Lastly please don’t imply that it is a problem that can be solved by going the sandbox route.
“pretty graphics and amusement park sensibilities”
Sandbox is thrown around as a magic word that will cure all ills. It won’t. Darkfall is a sandbox game which doesn’t encourage roleplaying (except perhaps in the context of motivational leadership). Planescape: Torment was a game that heavily encouraged role-playing but ran completely on rails. SWTOR will, I hope, do the same.
All “sandbox” really means in the context of MMOs is leaving stuff out. But the stuff you leave out can be exactly the rails that steer people into RP. Even if it’s not there is no guarantee that leaving stuff out will cause RP to emerge.
Something like this :
http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1014674 [I hate Daggerfall ...]
I am not sure if there are that many roleplayers in GoonSwarm just because the Mittani does it, Stabs. I know Ushra’Khan and some other roleplayer corps and there are indeed more roleplayers than in WoW and Co. by now.
I do not know what MMOs you played so far, but don’t you see a decline in the RP player base, too???
I know that the abuse of the word sandbox is your pet peeve, but so far only you mentioned it. What nobody mentioned so far is how RP could be brought back into our MMOs. I think it requires changes to mechanics, a bit like EVE, no more stupid pure grinding. Give people time to do something besides mechanically doing this or that to progress, I read your latest blog entry about automization, I am thinking in this direction. The developers also should put an emphasis on story and roleplaying and encourage players to start doing it, today’s market is dominated by the numbers game and “gamey” features, more games than virtual worlds.
OK, enough for now – more later!
“I know that the abuse of the word sandbox is your pet peeve, but so far only you mentioned it”
Not only me, L, Wolfshead blames “amusement park sensibilities” in his last sentence. Guess it’s just the fashion to blame theme park design for all evils.
When I use the phrase “amusement park sensibilities” I’m referring to many things. The fact that a person can show up at Disneyworld and jump on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and invest nothing but the price of admission bothers me because that’s what our MMOs have largely become. I think Free Realms has perfected this and it’s perfectly valid if that’s all a player ever aspires to.
When I get on an amusement park ride, I’m not in character, I’m a spectator, I’ve contributed nothing to the experience. It’s a few minutes of pleasure then I’m off to the next ride. Sounds much like a WoW quest…To me that’s cheating — you’re getting all the benefit of something without having to invest anything of yourself.
Virtual worlds were supposed to be much more then this. Players should be an active part of a world, not just a casual visitor.
The rewards that players can have are much greater if players have the opportunity to be a bigger part of what is going on instead of being mere spectators. The more a player emotionally invests himself into the MMO the more potential for deeper enjoyment he has.
It’s a pet peeve of mine that constructed content is considered so unfashionable as compared to emergent content.
In pen and paper games the contructed content is modules or scenarios. The alternative, when players go off the rails, is called “winging it”.
I’ve GMed both styles and the style of content has nothing to do with how well people roleplay. I’ve seen games where people go off the rails just for attention-seeking or to be contrary leaving the GM with nothing for them to do.
Call of Cthulhu is a great example of a game that’s just very dull if people insist on avoiding scripted content. If you don’t go up to the scary house on the hill then you’re just playing a normal person doing a rather dull job in the 1920s. Unless there’s a monster on every street corner (which totally goes against the IP) there’s actually nothing to do but follow up obscure hints.
Coming back to MMOs people contrast emergent play with scripted play. This logically leads to the conclusion that if you want an interesting game you should leave stuff out (after all putting stuff in is adding rails). This then leads on logically to terribly pointless virtual worlds where it’s very hard to find fun. Some of them are about as exciting to play around with as Internet Explorer – all you’re really doing is adjusting settings.
Coming back to WoW and Disneyland (and McDonalds or what have you) people LIKE taking a ride then going off and forgetting about it. Are you claiming it’s somehow immoral to make popular games that people enjoy without being required to make a major commitment to?
Different strokes for different folks. I personally would love a deep game where everyone is in character and immersed but I don’t mind if my 9 year old godson is just blowing stuff up across the other side of the room.
Who “killed” RP in MMOs? When did it ever exist? RP is something the players bring themselves, it has NEVER been something inherently built into the games.
Blame WoW all you want. Blame EQ. You’ll still be wrong. MUDs and MUSHes may have had more RP (probably because they were text-only so your imagination is already active) but I’ll guarantee they also had the min/maxers and combat-only crowd (probably one in the same). Go back to D&D (possibly even some of the old miniatures wargames like Chainmail or Warhammer) and it’s the same. Some groups of players liked story and liked to role-play. Others just ran the imaginary equivalent of a Diablo session: hack, slash, loot, min/max. Rinse, repeat.
It’s one of those “you can’t please everyone” situations, and as Brian so aptly noted above, role-playing means something different to everyone and there is no “correct” way to RP. What MMOs have done — especially the Trinity-based ones — is change from a virtual imprompu acting type of role-play like we’d have in a tabletop RPG back in the day to the concept of the class you choose fitting a specific role in a group.
Right now, technology is still a limiting factor and to be honest, a lot of us just feel it takes too much effort to work around the limitations and in turn we get limited results from it. About all the devs give us is extensive lists of emotes to work with, some of which may have accompanying animations. In other cases, not even that. DDO, for example, has always had a strong RP community and despite one of the more well-known RP players now working for Turbine, our characters still can’t actually /sit on chairs in DDO. LOTRO, however, launched with that ability so go figure.
On this:
Current you’d do an emote like this:
1. Click near a table
2. Select a bottle of ale
3. Goto Emotes > Actions > Food > Drink Beer
4. Watch a 5 second animation.
5. Find another action to do.
Emotes should always have worked like this:
1. Type “/me hang out in tavern”
2. Character interprets “tavern” as the nearest neighborhood tavern, goes there, and performs the “hang out” action indefinitely by sitting at tables, drinking beer, reading, etc.
Come on devs, syntactical parsing is not THAT hard, esp. if you can restrict the grammar (e.g. a [verb] in [place] construct, do [action] to [object] construct, etc)
I think what kills RP in MMOs is that most games that used to be built for that very purpose (Star Wars Galaxies was an MMORPG, remember) are dumbed down for the general masses that require cookie-cutter characters, grind missions, and PvP to determine who’s the most ‘L33T’. On one hand, the developers screwed the pooch, but on the other, it was the PvP players who really drove it home and made it nearly impossible to RP.
Also, sometimes (though it seems from my own nuggetty observations of MUDs), the min-maxers can be extremely gamer-gamer-gamer-numbers-baybee! … and still be strong RPers at the same time.
…I was one of those. If I went back to a MUD I could really fall in love with again, that I could believe in as a rich, living *world* again, I could be that again.
…but in MMOs? I threw away the RP part, because MMOs aren’t ‘customisable’ enough for me. ~_o in an MMO, I can’t do the surreal combination of text and nuggettyness that allows me to convincingly (lol) RP a chicken mcnugget. To be fair to MMOs, though, MUDs tend to frown on someone roleplaying a McNugget too. XD But it can be done!
MUDs run purely on text, and the effect of that can’t be underestimated. The verbal ‘sleight-of-hand’ that’s achievable with well… words… graphics, in some way, can’t match. Because words manipulate the reader’s imagination.
For example, in LotR (books), Saruman’s main power is supposed to be his beautiful *voice*. Just listening to that voice would make you go oooh-drooly-shiny-nuggets-eyes-glaze-obey-like-slave. (Ok ok I exaggerate but you get the idea.) That was (to me at least) impossible to achieve in the LotR movies. Everyone can ‘imagine’ a voice like that, and everyone imagines it differently. But to be asked to create an actual voice *like* that, well…
…off goes the Nugget, hoping for a MUD to love again!
This was quite a wonderful read and it touches on something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I’ve been trying to wrap my thoughts around the current developers we have and what they intend for us.
It seems to me when we hear from them we see a lot of “we can’t do that” or “we shouldn’t allow players to…” My question is, why not? MMOs are designed too much by rules now.
EQ1 was pretty up in the air and crazy. It lead to some terrible balance issues but they were always resolved. I think back then everything was a risk. Now developers are completely risk adverse. Role-playing is, evidently, just a risk they haven’t been willing to take in a while.
I continue to believe that the limiting factor preventing most people from roleplaying in MMOs is the static nature of the world. What our characters do in game doesn’t really change the world (except for phasing, which leaves players out of sync with each other and thus hurts immersion), and that really prevents most meaningful RP right there. Since we can’t change the environment, and can’t bring about lasting change to NPCs (who respawn a few minutes after dying, or return to their previous quest state after they’re through with us), we’re really just like ghosts – able to cause only the most transient of effects and changes.
For a game to truly support RP it should feature a dynamic world with true persistence. In modern MMOs only the characters are persistent over time; the worlds are unchanging.
Role playing almost needs power in the players’ hands. That’s scary for a developer trying to run a business, especially if they have investors demanding returns.
And yes, video totally killed my interpretation of books. I avoid music videos as a result, and only grudgingly dug into the LotR movies. I’ve come to find, like Professor Beej notes, that it’s best to enjoy them as separate entities.
…but the stronger the fandom and loyalty to the player’s preconceived notions, the worse the clash with the reality of the game. There’s no way around that. The most you can do is let players mold the world to their whim, hoping they have fun with it without blowing it for other people. That’s scary for devs to contemplate, much less enable.
Especially with all of those internet jerks out there.
[...] Wolfshead Online favors “the wall of text” like I do! It is here that you’ll find some of the most elegant design discussions on the internet. His blog is pretty much a must read if you’re a fan of old school MMO design styles and, if you’re not, it is still a great read. He also looked into who killed role-playing. [...]
[...] and, as a result, the amount of time I feel a connection with my character has decreased. I think Wolfshead explains the reasons for this best. The more sensory data you provide to the player, the less the player has to [...]
I’ve posted my thoughts on this separately. I think it’s a lovely dream, but it wouldn’t really work. You can’t stop players from acting like players.
http://spinksville.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/5-issues-with-roleplaying-in-mmos-why-you-cant-just-live-the-dream/
http://community.livejournal.com/bad_rpers_suck/
I want you to read this. Then tell me, do you really still want roleplaying in MMOs?
I’d say there is a big difference between hardcore RPing where people live out intricately detailed lives as someone else and the light RPing where Trevor the bank manager sits down to play Thull the Barbarian cleaving enemies apart in his quest for the chest of loot.
Just talking with a filter, and acting like a Barbarian (whether its the cartoony grunting style, or the more philosophical Conan style where he has a purity of thought about life that takes a bit of reading to really understand). If you don’t want to be a barbarian then the games should encourage you to be a character that does fit.
Instead the game designers paradoxically seem to be catering to the min-maxers, the same crowd of people who work against the whole immersion in a game to dismantle it into a simple clicking/fps game with only one result.
I role play in my head at times when i play WoW but RPing in Real life like in Timeline is pretty much acting. I was in a RPing guild and it was fun but most of them are way to strict and its rather hard to get organized and to get to know each other on a real level not just what you are in the game. That and having people flood guild chat with their toons back stories gets pretty confusing and rather old because a lot of the RPers i played with pretty much have the same kind of back stories . That and having to do put everything in (( )) if your not RPin gets real old.
What about the concept of motivations and enforced RP? Say that a dwarf character, to use the previous example, has a very high motivation to staying in taverns and a low motivation towards being outside. If he’s outside fighting monsters for a long time, his will to battle (some weapon attribute) will decrease until he finds a tavern in a nearby city (in fact, this could happen automatically, either by having the character travel there by himself or appearing there at re-login). In the tavern, he’ll act autonomously unless directed by the player. In-character convos could even be scripted if someone’s bored.
Also, each action that the player gives has a chance of rejection – in that case, the player is not a puppeteer (as with virtually all RPGs existing) but is instead a voice in the character’s head. For example, the action “exit tavern” has a very high chance of being rejected if the character finally found a tavern after a very long time (he’ll just ignore the command), while the action “drink beer” will most likely be accepted. When he’s satisfied, he gets a substantial bonus (satisfaction) when he heads outside again.
This is probably ridiculously hard to code, but I would be immensely interested in seeing such a RPG created.
Hmm… more “director” than “puppeteer”. An intriguing concept. Apparently “The Path” does a bit of this, allowing direct control, but when the players wants the avatars to interact with the scenery, they have to *let go* of the avatar and let the AI dictate what they actually wind up doing.
I’m not sure it would work all that well long-term (or at a constant threshold; variation in “puppeteer potential power” would be nice), but it would definitely be an interesting game.
Your summary is spot on with the current state of MMO’s, it seems to me like they are strangely going backwards in terms of development to a simple D&D type hack and slash game rather then getting more involving. When you see the sad popularity of Facebook games that involve real money and clicking I worry about the future
I don’t role play very deeply, so I don’t write everything as a Froglok with “Thou hast” olde worldy speech (give me a filter and I will
), but I do keep to the overly honourable valiant character, so I won’t just walk in to slaughter a bunch of NPC’s just because I know I can earn some AA from them.
Having a light framework of RP added in over a game with the philosophy and standard answer that “its our world” for all the min maxers would add a lot to the game. It would be really refreshing if people picked a race because they could act the way they wanted without penalty rather then +1% to crit.
Its one thing that does endlessly tick me off about our guild hall in EQ2 (I don’t have any say over its contents), its full of pretty races – Fae and dark elves. Lore wise it makes about as much sense as a troll at a beauty pageant and is all the result of having no consequences in the world.
[...] Wolfshead, Psychochild, Jay, Spinks, Jason, Chris, Scott and many others have written about Role Playing in one form or another, with more experience in the trenches. These illustrious folk are better reference than I for this topic, and I wholly welcome any other links to great references. There have to be bloggers who dive into this sort of thing. Take Ratshag, Orc extraordinaire, for example. Of course, I’m talking more about the layer removed from that sort of fun, but still, there are better sites than mine to check out for role playing. [...]
Let me ask you people, at the risk of sounding ridiculous, have anyone of you ever tried playing GTA San Andreas online? There is a patch for it called “San Andreas Multiplayer (or aka SAMP)”. Which allows you to play GTA:SA online. There are tons of RP servers there. People there RP lots, though there are many minor aged kids ruining the gameplay. Still, i’ve to admit GTA:SA’s online RP servers are the best RP gameplay I’ve ever experienced. Or maybe it’s just me. Also, if there are any current active RP-enforced mmo’s out there, please share the names of them with me.
Cheers,
Safwan R.
There was a game long ago (still around though very different) that enforced RP. They would arrest you and put you in jail it caught breaking character. Sadly as the tide changed in the MMO world so didn’t the enforced RP. The game was Dark Ages (not DoC) it was a 2D anime styled game. I miss that game so much! Anarchy Online offered some great RP back in its early days. Though, it helped that the Devs would come in and act out roles. I mostly blame WoW for the death of of RP in MMOs, or at least its hastened demise. Sure it may have died out sooner or later but WoW really sped it up…
Alright. I’m confused. You are all stating your wonderous and deep opinions. Seems calm and peaceful. A place to throw out your frustration etc. etc.
And yet. What are you going to do to fix the problem? This is what people should be occupying themselves with. What actions will we take? How do WE bring back roleplay?
And what if RP isn’t dead? I’m sure there are a few mmos out there that have active roleplay going on. And I’m sure some of you may even know what they are. Then shouldn’t we be pointing those out? Registering and playing them? Trying to make just that little bit more popular and rich? Imagine. In 5 years you and many more roleplayers helped elevate that MMORPG to unbelievable heights. And then Blizzard and all of those “Numbermongers” will be griding their teeth from envy.
So. Are there any MMORPGs out there with an active roleplayer base?
Wolfshead,
Sorry for the extreme necro of this article, but I just ran across it during random surfing of the web. I’m not even sure if you guys will make note of a new comment on this article.
At any rate, I’d just like to start off by saying that role-playing isn’t quite dead in MMOs. It just so happens that you can not go through normal channels to do so. There are a plethora of perfectly stable, fully fleshed out emulations of at least World of Warcraft and Ultima Online circulating. Furthermore, these “private” servers/shards have been completely re-engineered to promote role-play; all having been within the capabilities of their original developers. It takes but only a simple google search to find them, but I will talk about a few that I have played over the last eleven years, since I ventured from pen & paper role-playing to online.
1) Illarion (www.illarion.org). If I remember correctly, Illarion began as a project by game design students in Vienna around 2009. It is written in java, and included magic systems, alchemy, combat, and crafting. It had a very fleshed out world, with plenty of lore. I played there from ’02-’06 regularly, and have been back and forth to date.
2) CotH (www.conquestofthehorde.com). CotH is a private WoW server dedicated to enforced rp. One of the biggest issues they ran into was Blizzard’s issue with maintaining their own lore. So CotH had to go through and decide which canon lore they would follow (as blizzard has had to change it so much). They have implemented many features that (differ from WoW) enhance rp. For example, before WoW did the whole transmogrification thing, CotH had a similar system where you could easily acquire gear for role-play so you can look how you want (minus all of the asian anime-inspired equipment). Everyone was bumped to level 80 after a short introductory period (to see if you were serious about role-playing). The common tongue was in fact, common between all the race (as in the rts), and you could communicate cross faction. “PvP” was enabled across the board, because (and I agree with this) conflict is an integral part of evolution/(character/group)development.
3)Role-play enforced UO private shards (specific shards to be listed after). I have seen the most amazing things done with UO, in regards to private shards. Hunger/thirst, vampires (complete with abilities), werewolves (complete with abilities), a plethora of other races (complete with abilities), beautifully created words and architecture (much better then origin/osi), beautiful stories/lore, better and more interesting character progression. Most shards did away with everything osi and started with a big map of water. They build their landmasses, their towns, then hand spawned each area. Npcs would interact with each other (bandits would attack towns/villagers, wolves would eat rabbits, ect.). Npcs would communicate with players based on gender/race/faction/ect. Guard system which distinguished between friend or foe. Town systems affected by player leadership abilities (mechanical decision, and leadership skills). Breeding of animals to improve stock. A major design decision most shards made was to do away with champion spawns/paragons, and artifacts. Just because you’d end up with the guy who spend months capping his skills/stats, getting as much luck items he could get, and camping champions/paragons. Then you’d have a guy decked out in nothing but artifacts who would role-play a jerk, and it spur other playing to do as he did to defend themselves. Most shards had an equipment progression based on quality of the craft, then enchantment, followed by the rare gear that is found during seer-ran quests. Systems were in place which altered limits based on how you role-played your character. Was he young or old? Someone older would start out more skilled. Does he have any merits or flaws? Has he spent his life as a farmer or a mercenary? If the latter, then he would be considerably more skilled at combat upon creation. What sort of resources does he have? A rich noble would have had instructors available to spur his education, whatever it may have been. The only downside to this process was that bonuses/penalties would have to be applied by staff, if it wasn’t covered in established mechanics. It really made people read the lore and put a lot of thought into their character application. Its simple things like this, that made rping in these communities great, I mean, not being able to bandage someone when they are in full plate seems small, but it really ruins immersion (The x-healing brigades of OSI). One of the neatest mechanics came from a shard called Khaeros(dot net). They changed combat into a sort of mini game. You would tab-click the enemy like normal, but once in combat you had six sets of macros. Three attacks (swing, thrust, overhead), and a parry for each attack. each attack triggered a colored float above their character ( swing-blue, thrust-green, overhead-red) to make it easier to see what attack they were making (extra animations were put in so you could go by animations- which was more precise then the floats). It came down to a rock-paper-scissors type combat, which bridges the gap between old UO combat, and the action combat of a game like skyrim. Made it more interactive, more of a rush.
At any rate, I don’t know what it would take to make a commercial MMO geared for role-playing, I doubt it will happen (no money to be made with it, really). We can all hope and pray though. I even sent an email to Matt Firor with my hopes and prayers for the upcoming elder scrolls online.
Been going on long enough with this, I think.
Cheers,
Michael A. Herrera