A roleplayers POV on the MMO market today

[CaptainV]

Hi, im a roleplayer, I like to pretend im a fairy, knight, badass edgy swordsman, generally play characters with dark, dim, gritty backgrounds, exuberant noble qualities, and garnish prowess.

Okay im kidding I dont rp those things *All* the time.

But beyond the point, lets go into what im actually here to talk about... the MMO, the Roleplayer, and its current state...

Lets be honest...

It aint doin' so well.

Put that gun down I know what you're thinking:

Now, I know what you're thinking, Ye who Moonguard, AD, Piken, Tarnished Coast, Progenitor, ThatOneRiftRPServer, Balmung and so on and so forth...

"ITS FIIIINE" well, no, lets be honest, its not, its pretty bad, like, *really* bad, lately.

But lets look at this objectivly as to whats actually causing the problem and how to fix it, as opposed to purely whats actually wrong with things and moaning about it.

Too many Games, Far less RP servers:

First and Foremost, Roleplayers... are much like the triggered young political belivers of tommorow, they need a safespace to call their own, unfortunatley, its a natural habitat for us reclusive, socially awkward individuals with no hopes and dreams of tommorow.

Escapism is like a drug, you love it so much you cant get enough and without it you feel, well, a little melancholic.

My point is, firstly, the MMO industry seems to be veering away from roleplay as a focus, focusing more on the numbers of people, than the people themselves actually playing the game. This.. can create alot of issues for people who like a game, and its lore, but cant find mutually like minded people to rp with and just, chill, make groups, communities, friends, one to one interactions er- *Slap* Yeah, that... anyway, the point is...

The first thing MMO developers need to remember is that the "role play" in RPG is a thing for people who "want" to role play, preferably undisturbed by tommy the tedious troll and his trope of derp pvp gitgud scrub qq mentality morons.

So... in conclusion, what we really need is an actual label, big, shiny and clear saying "RP" server for those trying to actually find, RP, with other people, and dont really *want* to interact-with-or-be-involved-with-non-roleplayers.

Thats... part 1, part 2, is a bit more tricky.


Its not just them, its you:

I know I know its nice to feel special and wanted and powerful and have friends that influence the server... but it doesnt change the fact your kind of a dick.

If you dont loosen up, then the elitist in you is going to stop "new" potential from joining this wonderful escapist culture trying to keep thriving in a time of reality crashing down on it. Basically, lighten up, loosen up, dont be a tightarse, let people in, at least, the ones that actually *want* to be involved.

Theres too many comfort circle socieites in the roleplaying community that get edgy and angry over the smallest detail being upset such as the lore, the group mentality and so on.

Living in a bubble means your making one, for you, and for people around you. Over time, that bubble isnt gonna get bigger, it gets smaller, and smaller until nobody is there anymore to actually show off your amazing guard rp/criminal rp/insert noble title here towards.

Im especially looking at people who rp in city hubs with a self entitlement complex, you need to stop treating people outside your special snowflake community as a threat and actually think "maybe" if we pause, think about what were doing and actually try to make interactions we can get more going here with productive results.

Food for thought, either way... moving on.


This ones for the Devs: Enough dodging the bullet, accept the fault:

Roleplayers DONT get enough love from MMO's these days, many, like GW2, dont include masses of emotes like ESO might, but ESO, unlike GW2, struggles to build a community in the first place due to terribly built interaction designs and a lack of ability to move from that.

Likewise... games like SWTOR, and WoW, which are built on the foundation of roleplayers, are currently struggling to support them due to other priorities. This again, just isnt helping, people like customization, character personalization, emotes to faff around with and more.

There is definatley an I in team when it comes to a roleplayer, they like to look different, they like to be, different, and define themselves, and their characters, weather its one char they play for life, or a hundred they bounce around with every so often. Weather your a DM making toons for a big plot or a random guy that just has a fashion sense in character alts. It doesnt matter the case, devs need to love Roleplayers and Roleplayers are desperate for it.

TLR, more Hair, More Races, more roleplay specific features such as housing (and housing lists so people can congrigate instead of being isolated). More interaction with communities, building channels for roleplayers. More roleplayer specific hubs such as city regions to just, chill in, for hours.

You know, devs, its entirley in your hands to make stuff like this happen, im not asking you to move mountains. E.g. ESO, GW2, a similar issue here with that oh so loveable, Mega, Server...

Mega, Server...

The bane, of Roleplayers on the continent of DnDmia.

Once you add that kinda crap the issue becomes a case of finding your friends... on the "right" server. Well theres an *easy* fix to this, why not just add mega-servers specifically within mega-servers. A roleplayer specific server would "fix" that issue in the first place... permanently, at least in city hubs, maybe not so much in the open world, I can partially understand that one.

Either way...

This has been a... random, weird rant from a guy about to pass out at 3 am GMT...

So I leave you with this thought: Do you think Roleplayers are still relevent in MMO's or becomming a thing of the past?

[Deleted]

I think they are still relevant, but they've always been a niche market, and unlike other niche markets like hardcore raiders, they don't bring in the "prestige" to the game.

I think the only game nowadays that is actively trying to get target roleplayers is the Old Republic, but honestly its not a large enough community to keep the game afloat.

[Kaeth]

What is garnish prowess? Do you like to pretend that you're particularly skilled at arranging the sprig of parsley on someone's dinner plate?

In the context of just WoW, I believe that CRZ sounded the death knell for RP, especially when it was applied to capital cities. Most players I meet in the world I've never seen before and will never see again. That doesn't give anyone much incentive to stick around when my gnome mage begins extolling the virtues of eating trogg meat and mass producing mechanical pets.

[PACOX]

I still find the occasional group of RPers in GW2. While GW2 has tons of environments and character options to play with, like you said it doesn't have much in the way of emotes.

I feel like Black Desert Online would be amazing for RPers, couldn't tell if you there is an RP scene though.

[Deleted]

Roleplaying was somewhat meaningful during the levelling process. 10 years ago. Now. Once you reach the stage, where you kill big baddy X with a bunch of your friends, the game no longer supports roleplaying, it actually impedes it. Killing X, the terrible threat that you and three million other players already killed a week ago, isn't just pointless, it's silly.

[Xargoth6634]

Others have said what I came in here planning to say, so I won't repeat all of it. I've never done any RP'ing in MMOs, but I have some friends who do and they really enjoy it so I'm glad there's a community for it. Still, by all accounts, it's a fairly small one relative to the overall population of a game like WoW. (Can't speak for many other MMOs) It seems to me that there's not really a market for a hardcore, all-in RP MMO, and those who really enjoy RP'ing will have to do so within the confines of existing games because it wouldn't be profitable enough (or practical) for any dev to try to make a game that appeals to the majority of RPers.

I can see how it'd be frustrating, though, being an RP'er and having to constantly deal with immersion-breaking on the part of people who either don't care about RP but play on the same servers, or are just out to troll those who are trying to RP. (The exception being the classic Deeprun Tram RP troll, that's comedy gold)

EDIT: I wanted to add (in response to your comments about mega servers) that people will always be looking to troll and fuck with RPers, and would DEFINITELY create characters on realms like these. How would such realms even be policed? I have the feeling that the sheer number of tickets from aggrieved RPers annoyed by perceived (and real) infractions ranging from the minuscule to huge would necessitate the hiring of a bunch more GMs.

[tikcol]

RP servers are dead because people don't care about RP. It isn't more RP servers that will fix the issue when not a single one is being fully used.

Half the people make fun of it and the other half don't care about it. This is the grim reality of your world.

[CaptainV]

Theres a strong attitude change too, I remember 10 years ago people didnt mind rping the "beginner" or the "newbie" in a heroes journey, since most of us were new to mmo's it only felt natural to roleplay a new character as if they were following that journey. Growing, developing, getting stronger and eventually reaching the pinnacle of their existance. Definately isnt a thing I see today, im even guilty of it myself, simply rping the top seems alot tess tedious, but then, when everyones doing it, nobody can really shine or stand out, so I suppose thats a thing too... but then it goes back to what I said about elitism and letting people in.

Lock the doors and keep people away and all your doing is helping kill RP at its core. The less new blood we have the more likely that RP will eventually hit a point in mmo's that it will be bubbled entirley to guilds who rarely recruit anymore than 2-3 people at a time.

Now dont get me wrong, this closet basement DND club thing isnt a bad thing when you have alot of rpers around and variable choices to select from what kind of roleplay you want. But when you thin the numbers to a point beggars cant be choosers, its time to actually start letting beggars in, rather than driving them off so that theres just no room for anything.

Still, Cross Realms definatley didnt help WoW no, nor did Megaservers help Piken/Tarnished for GW2.

I remember the first time megaservers came into the equasion, with the logic that it was designed to enhance roleplayers intergration with pvers.... but it honestly had the opposite effect, it scared roleplayers off and drove them underground for fear of being trolled by pvers.

The thing is... the theory about megaserver isnt bad, the delivery is terrible though. What needs to happen is a similar system that permits the use of server filtering or just sub-server menu's such as a roleplaying sub-server for every city hub in an mmo.

This allows people to continue doing what they wanted to do, while also enhancing it because *now* you have megaservers from every realm, connecting roleplayers together into one super RP megaserver.

Tbh, that doesnt sound like a bad thing....

Its not a perfect answer, since you cant force rpers to all get along, we all have our own tastes. But it is a start to moving in the right direction.

As to the point made by Sibut, the policing of such things cant be done now it wouldnt matter then. However what it would do is give rpers numbers, to congrigate and unite, thats a strong way to counter that kind of bullying as the sheer weight of 100 people vs 1 troll can be a deterrant for anyone stupid enough to actually try to piss off rpers.

Only the outright fearless and stupid would dare to piss off a horde of united rpers, its like pissing off a cthulu cult, you just dont do it.

Either way..., I get the concern, but I still think an open border for rpers is better than a closed one. Without intergration there is no room for development and evolution.

[corebit]

MMOs are poor games for role-playing, either the environment remains static despite your choices or you barely have any choice except to play as the lawful stupid hero who fulfills all the quests no matter the situation. The RP realms in most MMOs are not really useful other than offering you a playground with like-minded players.

To really roleplay you need an active GM/DM and MMOs cant offer that.

[Deleted]

Not that it necessarily fixes your problem, but give Project Gorgon (https://projectgorgon.com/) a try, lots of RP'ing going on there.

[Deleted]

This sounds like a NA problem, on EU Argent Dawn is the 3rd biggest server with an incredibly active cross faction community with very large rp/rp-pve events several times a year.

Unless you took this into equation, I just don't see where you're coming from.

[Shanden]

I don't think you can properly RP in an MMO. A virtual game table for a pen n paper system run by a decent GM is a vastly better environment

This and...

MMOs are poor games for role-playing, either the environment remains static despite your choices or you barely have any choice except to play as the lawful stupid hero who fulfills all the quests no matter the situation. The RP realms in most MMOs are not really useful other than offering you a playground with like-minded players.

To really roleplay you need an active GM/DM and MMOs cant offer that.

that. Even as a long time pen & paper player (15+ year) I can only see mmo "roleplayers" as weird folks with special snowflake attitude. Normal games can't even offer you the slightest freedom of real roleplaying, so why even bother? All you do is playing house in an online game. Better use your time on tradiontial p&p or if not doable, virtual version. Heck even a session over skype would be several times more fun.
If I were to develope a game I would never give such people their own server. It is a waste.

[Lycanroc]

Hardcore, never break character, role playing has always been very niche. While you may have seen more at the height of certain games I'm not sure there were ever enough for them to be truly relevant.

As a roleplayer, I know like two or three people who do that out of the hundreds of people I've encountered. (And one of them stays IC 100% of the time as a joke and one of the others is an extremely autistic girl. That is not a joke.). There are a lot of people that dream of doing it, but it's honestly not that entertaining in an MMO for most, and you'd need a very, very patient group to RP with. There's no way you can do it solo unless you've got a great sense of humor or you're actually retarded.

The death of the RP community is itself. As an MMO grows, less people are willing to interact with each other. It's just natural. Kind of the same principle that making friends in Kindergarten is easier than High School. New people are just less picky than older ones. Also, it's typically other roleplayers that troll other roleplayers. Most other folk will leave them alone after a while, but the RP community (especially on WoW) is petty and toxic af.

[unfilteredJW]

There are just better alternatives.

Look to MUDs.

[Orangetai420]

I think the only game nowadays that is actively trying to get target roleplayers is the Old Republic.

I always got the impression that FFXIV was very RP friendly from the time I spent playing. The amount of emotes puts WoW to shame and it has player housing. The character generator is also more robust.

[lawow74]

There are just better alternatives.

Look to MUDs.

This. A MU* is a vastly superior environment since you're still going to be writing anyways, and people are usually there to do it and not farm skinner box #17745 for the next tier of stat stick, while they do their best to distract the RP'ers when they find them.

[Tome]

RP servers are dead because people don't care about RP. It isn't more RP servers that will fix the issue when not a single one is being fully used.

Half the people make fun of it and the other half don't care about it. This is the grim reality of your world.

Yes and no. One of the most active servers in World of Warcraft, both EU and NA region, are roleplay servers. You can the argue over if it actually has roleplayers or not (I know for a fact that Argent Dawn EU does, a lot) but those servers are still very, very active.

- - - Updated - - -

What MMO roleplay is missing aren't more cosmetics. What it needs are more MMO's putting an official RP tag on one of their servers or open a new one, dedicated to roleplay. Others are questioning why we need that and why we can't just roleplay on the server we are on, and there's many reasons to it, one being that the roleplay community would be too split between different servers and unable to find any open roleplay, and also that harassment from people who don't roleplay is happening far too much. Roleplayers need a place to gather at, and that's why the community creates "unofficial" servers to gather at, for easier, more accessible roleplay. If it's so hard to find roleplay, why should developers waste their time opening an official RP server? Well, because the server would be worth it and home enough roleplayers, and every roleplayer would gather there to make it successful.

I always got the impression that FFXIV was very RP friendly from the time I spent playing. The amount of emotes puts WoW to shame and it has player housing. The character generator is also more robust.

FFXIV is a good example. Some of the community is actually actively working against roleplayers and roleplay servers and pretty much pisses on anyone mentioning it. Even though the game has amazing potential if it could just get a dedicated roleplay realm.

[Deleted]

I always got the impression that FFXIV was very RP friendly from the time I spent playing. The amount of emotes puts WoW to shame and it has player housing. The character generator is also more robust.

From what i've heard, the unofficial RP servers in FFXIV, and indeed, the reaction to anyone trying to RP, are pretty cancerous.

The Old Republic seems to be catering there Freemium model towards Roleplayers/Franchise fans, instead of the usual targets.