Roleplaying in MMOs

I saw different opinions about what is roleplaying for different people in MMOs, it became confusing, so I would like to know what is RPG side of MMOs for you and if you roleplay, then why and when. Or what feature would you like to be added.

I had two different experiences with roleplaying in MMOs.

The first was in a very small, free indie project (Planeshift). It was a pre-alpha back then, with very little functionality beyond the basics. You could explore a 3D world the size of a small game city, you could talk to other players, form guilds and pick up gems that spawned regularly throughout the map.

That was pure roleplay, unsupported by any game mechanics (except maybe the guild). Many people would just pretend and act IC most of the time. Even in forums. Quite astonishing experience, and a lot of fun, but lacking a purpose.

The features we wanted were proper quests, more interactive NPCs, more items and trading, for the sake of variety. Once they introduced XP, levels and combat, the game saw a major change in its population.


The second was EverQuest 2, a commercial MMO. Roleplaying was 99.9% of the time equivalent to levelling up, PvP, or getting epic gear, except for a very few I knew from the first project who went there to taste commercial games. Fun for a while, but definitely result-oriented and unsatisfying unless you happen to know friends who are like-minded (because there's little chance to meet someone like that by accident in that universe). I never saw anyone behaving IC.

We were interested in good quests we could do among us, often inviting other people to get to know them, discovering new areas and building a good knowledge of the game. Nothing we could wish to be added, except maybe what we couldn't have in an MMO: a more interwoven world / quests instead of many independent fetch quests.

Last MMO I played was the KoToR MMO and it was just for the story missions. I hardly interacted with the other players, and actually found most of them to be bothering.

Nothing like someone watching you fight and stealing your objective from you.

That reminds me of Project Gorgon, surprisingly still live:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3…roject_Gorgon/
they had quite interesting levelling skills mechanics and some social skills, but I downloaded their demo years ago, so I'm not sure where they are now.
I still didn't try Albion online, which should have also some skill progression and something like RP quests?
Generally in MMOs I didn't find almost any RP content, I saw some content even removed in the name of mainstream, so that area is a big unknown.
I saw a lot of players just talk in immersive areas, which was cool, but nothing for singleplayers rp.
I agree that SWTOR is currently the most singleplayer RP MMO experience. And they had that great feature of you being instanced to be able to focus on the story.
I know it is strange to connect that, but I wish MMOs would be about meeting points with other players rather than playing together. I was thinking about it recently. It could be anything RP related, but content, not just players guilds.
Like there is a quest in ESO starting zone, where you are suppose to dress as a servant and they give you an outfit for that. When there are other players around in the same dress, you don't mind that, because you are all servants, but if the story is about you being alone, it can be very distractive to see someone else there.
But they didn't continue with that idea of outfits integrated into the game. Maybe it wouldn't work.

SWTOR has distinct "RP" communities, though it is relatively hard to find them. They have special meeting / role-playing places, like the neutral tavern on Nar Shadaa.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think they have even their own forums.



When I'm doing solo play, my role-playing is usually restricted to dialog choices, but I'm nowadays fine with that.

For me RP is a self imposed, overall ethos which (very) loosely guides how I play a character and basically has little to do with interacting with other players, I'm not into that sort of RP. I often do the same in single player games.

I only experienced good role-playing in MUD's ( I love role-playing ), I don't know of any graphical MMO's which has any good role-playing though, probably because what you can do is very limited, when you write text you can do anything with the environment, or to express things your character is doing and so on, which in todays graphical MMO's is simply not possible.

Well, the RP groups I had seen in SWTOR seemed to be relatively "professional" about it.

I guess that a lot of things can be done with the use of emotes and chat.

One of the most sad things with SWTOR is, that combat logs can be logged onto the harddisk, but chat logs can not.
Says a lot about "what's more important in games".

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
I only experienced good role-playing in MUD's ( I love role-playing ), I don't know of any graphical MMO's which has any good role-playing though, probably because what you can do is very limited, when you write text you can do anything with the environment, or to express things your character is doing and so on, which in todays graphical MMO's is simply not possible.

Same here.

Back then, I enjoyed very much playing a mud called Faerunmud (that became Rauvyon once Wotc lawyers became involved). It was In-character only, based on 2nd Edition Dungeons & Dragons. The role-play level was excellent. After a few level, you even had to write a text after every time you would level-up to explain how your character progressed since your last level. I think I managed to get a character to level 12, which was quite an exploit.

Originally Posted by vanedor
Same here.

Back then, I enjoyed very much playing a mud called Faerunmud (that became Rauvyon once Wotc lawyers became involved). It was In-character only, based on 2nd Edition Dungeons & Dragons. The role-play level was excellent. After a few level, you even had to write a text after every time you would level-up to explain how your character progressed since your last level. I think I managed to get a character to level 12, which was quite an exploit.

I still have the itch, to role-play in a mud sometimes, but these days good ones with a lot of activity are hard to come by!

I have heard about roleplaying in MUDs, I tried the most popular, but I got hooked in MUME already, so I never pursued that further. But if even roleplaying was better there, then there is a lot to learn I think. But I think a lot of players stay away from text roleplaying, because they don't know English well, or they are slow/lazy with typing.
So maybe that is why for me roleplaying in MUME was NPCs who were implemented as another mechanic and skill system, you could say the world around me was roleplaying. Like there were Dunadains tracking down pvp Numenoreans, NPCs in Bree with their daily rutines, or harsh Tharbad with necromancers and guards with bribery. So based on that I just wish the worl would be more detailed without too much of impact on lag, maybe the bigger interactivity with things around could be another one added.