What I wish In-Game RP was.

[Nekrotix]

I wish I could go onto WoW on a boring sunday afternoon, all my dailies and dungeons and raids done, just get on a character, and have a swell interactive WoW story unfold before my eyes. With colorful characters, decent players, it's share of flaws, but nothing dealbreaking.
I wish I could feel emotional when the King must kill his son, the secret rebel leader,
I wish I could feel elated when good triumphs over evil,
I wish I could feel motivated when someone brings something new to the table that I didn't even think of.
I want RP to be a fun experience for all to enjoy, not an experience that you can only see through about as rarely as that Gear you really want dropping.
I want the players in the RP to actually care about the story, and know their role, and each of them play their own signifigant part, and even have a little sub-story going on as well.
I want Blizz to focus more on the RP element of WoW, not by much, but at least give us a bit more to play around with in RP to get us more involved with the story of the RP.

Unfortunately...
RP's usually only last about an 30-60 minutes before falling through the cracks.
RP's have people who give up when more then 5 people leave, instead of working with what they got and continue until the end.
RP's usually have people who don't give up, but instead dick around while waiting for everyone else to be done with whatever else they can do.
RP's don't have emotional moments that last for very long, before some attention whore breaks the mood.
RP's are fun for the first half, but the rest is just trying to figure out how other people want it to go.
RP's end up being messy, all-over, and end up flopping due to people either getting lost, spreading out way too much, or crowding around one area (I'm looking at YOU, Gilneas.)
RP's aren't focused on by Blizz, so it's not taken as seriously...

Why can't RP be taken seriously? Why can't we all just work on each others ideas and have fun? Instead... RP's just... die...

Please, if you RP in a server that does Kingdom RP's, Town RP's, etc., please, stick them out to the end. Have fun, and, above all, take them seriously.

[PomPomPop]

Ah, Town RP...
I remember when my old guild decided to exchange the busy city life of Stormwind City to the desolate forgotten corner of Theramore back during the beginning of the Cataclysm. The guild master was ever so excited; he pushed through to other role play guilds how he would revive Theramore and make it (once again) an active role play hub. Unfortunately, his excitement wasn't fully shared with the rest of the guild. While we were marines (we used the vacant ship in Stormwind harbor as our HQ) and would do well in Theramore, most of the guild members were rather content with being busy in Stormwind. We had visitors coming to our ship, we had our rules and laws, we had a certain authority and we worked together with the city guard guilds to try and keep some peace. We had our hands full and there was always something to do. It was why the transition from the harbor to Theramore was rather dreadful; suddenly the whole guild ended up in no man's land. No more civilians, no more visitors, no more fellow guards, no more city/harbor patrols or a full tavern to go to when off duty.

The guild members struggled with keeping an interest. While the officers tried to make events to keep the role play active and returned all too often to Stormwind City to recruit new people, nobody was interested in role playing with just the guild and the two visitors Theramore would receive once a week (levelers not included). Some tried so very hard to keep it all alive but after several weeks, only two people would be in character while the rest was hiding out in Stormwind and were 'secretly' role playing there. Eventually the excited guild master pulled his hands off the matter and also quit WoW. The moment a new guild master was appointed, we hightailed out of Theramore and returned to our faithful ship in Stormwind Harbor where the role play came back on track and people were content again.

Town Role Play takes devotion from everyone, every single member who is part of that town/community. If more than half isn't fully interested, then you can almost bet your subscription on it that it will fail. I always tried and I have been part of several Town and also Kingdom guilds, but only two of them actually survived and stuck around for more than a year. You can ask of people to stick around, but they pay to play and people don't wish to spend money on standing around in the middle of nowhere for hours solely for the sake of having someone in that place.

This has been a problem for years now and it is hard to fix other than with a true solid base which consists out of at least six to eight members which are active and don't crave for social contact from strangers (aka Stormwind City syndrome). They all need a role they can keep themselves and others busy with and also would like to return to after logging off or questing. Recruitment is a must and the people who recruit have to enjoy doing so; have people who were forced to recruit against their will and you won't get any new members which will last (been there, done that). The recruiters shouldn't also sugarcoat it; the new members have the right to know that their characters will suddenly have less role play opportunities than they had in the city they were recruited in. It is a challenge not many are up for and often they underestimate it to then regret it. It isn't rare for characters to sneak back to the main cities to find some role play there because their HQ isn't offering it.

It is hard to take anything serious these days; role play is growing, more and more new players are coming in and it has turned into quantity over quality. Guilds recruit anyone who doesn't wear a tabard ICly or have no guild name over their head; in their believe bigger is better and to be one of the bigger guilds seems like a ticket to success. To be guildless is like a sin in the role play community of WoW and you will be approached at least three times a day if you dare to roam the active main cities without stating explicitly in your RP add-on that you aren't interested in such recruitment. People don't seem to care for the quality anymore... It has been difficult to find the polished gems in the masses of casuals and new players, those gems which are actually ready to devote and work for some good old fashioned role play. While there are new and casual players who show potential in keeping Town/Kingdom RP alive, they are few.

After my little rant and vent I do agree with you, Nekrotix, on all your points. I do wish to lay down that Town/Kingdom Role Play isn't for everyone and some find that out after joining such a guild or community.

[Deleted]

It's my great ambition to design a game that embraces and harnesses the considerable commitment and energy RPers have. It's basically a form of largely unsupported, emergent gameplay (that' where players engage in 'fun' that isn't ostensibly encouraged, intended, or supported by the game design. Most MMos go about as far as Blizz has; they facilitate RP to a certain extent- insofar as they provide tools and opportunities for RP- but it still exists more or less as an accessory to the game design and equation of fun.

Example: pretty much every building with a pointless upstairs section, sittable furniture, emotes, transmog- these all make RP better, but RP is still entirely outside of the games generation of endogenous value, it's resource economy, and gameplay flow.

So what am I talking about? Well forgive me for this, but I don't entirely know as yet. I did say it was my ambition. I'm talking about enlisting RPers as a force of real gameplay. To do what supporting DotA did for emergent battle arena enthusisiasts.

The loosest idea I have would be to take the currently static and linear pillar of narrative; and deploy that as an arena of real impactful RP 'play'. That is, give players a setting in which aggregated RP could influence or feature in the canonical unracelling of game narrative. There are big challenges to this proposition; but it's something I'm passionate about and invest a great deal of time in, if there's a way, I'll work it out.

Not an idea for WoW, either way. It'd require a fresh game built with this pillar of gameplay in mind. The utopia would be an online game (probably unambitious and browser based, if it is to be in the realm of something I can achieve with some friends), where alongside more conventional forms of gameplay there existed an opportunity to engage the narrative of the game. Just as you have PvPers and PvEers as valid and endorsed wings of the playerbase, so to could RPers log on and have something that needed doing, probably with or against other players, with challenges, rules, goals, and rewards.

Crafting a stable, fun, grief-resistant, appealing system that achieves this goal will be awesome, and difficult. At this stahe I'm not directly working on such a title, nor will my next title be this dream. For now I'm focussing on reliably making fun, simple games with solid mechanics that might be elaborated or redeploued in more ambitious projects. Later, multiplayer and all the challenges it presents. Then... then at last, I'll have at it.

If I'm still around here in 5 years, I should have done it by then. Maybe as soon as 3 years, time will tell. I'll let you know if so.