Roleplay in MMORPGs

[Knight Templar]

the only proplem MMORPG have is that people dont do roleplaying. people don't talk because if they do somthing wrong anybody with a higher leveal calles them a noob and yells at them. if you try and roleplay(even on roleplay servers) people yell at you. the worst offender of this is runescape. low leveal = nobody cares about you. when mineing if your a low leveal people go out of there way to mine rocks before you. its a very mean enviroment. its like gears only people dont give praise for wins. if you win and other people havent done it, you get called a hack, and if they have they say "so what?". and you have to do it too. because if you help somebody how do you know there not just going to run away? this makes dialog with people you havent met befor impossable. no dialoag not roleplaying, its that simple.

 

[Feehl]

First off: BonsaiK I'd love to be your prime minister in you up-coming aramada agianst non-RPers
Second: I've recently started playing Tabula Rasa and have found myself in a RP guild/clan and it's actually very fun playing the part of a fanatical Forntlines Sergeant who is always the first in the fight. Not many people there at the moment at it seems I'm one of the highest levels which is nice because I get to help out the "New recruits".
Third: I've found out long ago that if I want a proper roleplay that means I have to pick up the phone/skype call one of my RP groups and have them over for quick or perhaps long session. There's nothing like table tops because you don't have to melt your eyes infront of the PC all day AND you don't become an asocial freak who can't walk to people in person (I know people who are indeed like that(Too much PVP WoW))

 

[BonsaiK]

People often act like roleplayers are freaks but I reckon it's the non-roleplayers who are the freaks. They're the ones playing a roleplaying game and not roleplaying. Take the roleplay out of a roleplaying game and all that's left is a bunch of numbers. People who don't roelplay aren't even playing the actual game, they're just playing with digits while ignoring what those digits represent. Like people who trade millions on the stock market but never buy their children a present because they "can't afford it". I believe non-roleplayers in roleplaying games should be dealt with very harshly. I plan to set up work camps and stuff, let's get these people doing something useful for the greater good of society.

 

[Whoracle]

Hmmm... seeing all the comments here, maybe you'd like to take a look at an MMORPG Design Concept me and some friends are currently whipping up.

Granted, some parts are rather technical, but there are also parts that deal with actual Roleplaying.
Read it and tell me what you think:

http://home.arcor.de/sdsgilde/msorpg/oMSORPGe%20Concept.txt

 

[BonsaiK]

Okay.

1. Too technical for me

2. See 1

3. Not a bad idea but 1 character per player is really the best option for a hardcore RP game. Alts are an enemy of roleplaying because they can be used for metagaming so easily.

4. I've played on servers where all these points are already instituted. They all work well in practice.

5. Might work.

6. Death is death. Level shouldn't matter so much. Part of the point of RP servers is that level is secondary to story anyway. The more that control over levelling is taken away from the player, the better.

7. Generally ok. But reliance on twinks and alts is bad. Neither should happen on an RP server.

8. Better to put the ball in the player's court to do this kind of thing. But it's a nice fallback if they can't be trusted to RP (which lets face it, few can). Don't know about chopping text automatically though, in practice it would have to be done right or it would look very very silly.

9. Might work. Seems a bit odd though, surely some characters would be unemployable...

10 and 11. This is putting the cart before the horse (admittedly, most servers do exactly this, to their eternal detriment). People shouldn't be mandatorily given quests or questlines. Rather, situations should exist in the game world and it should be up to the player how they wish to relate or interact with those situations. It should all be optional, not just automatically farmed out upon a certain action like making a team up or whatever. Because what if my character doesn't give a shit about saving the princess or stealing the trolls' loot or whatever else? My character might have entirely different reasons for forming a party, staying in a party, or leaving it.