MMO Question

[ciwell]

Being a long time fan and player of text-based roleplaying games where (in my experience) the quality of roleplaying both from a player perspective and creator perspective is generally high, I am hesitant to make the leap to the MMO"RPG" communities. What I am curious about, and I figured here would be a good place to ask, is which, in your collective opinion, MMO"RPG," either currently out in the market or coming out, do you think would have either the same general quality of roleplaying as stated above or exceeding the same? In other words, I do not find the appeal of constant level-grind-go-kill-everything sort of MMO's much to my taste, considering the content (and subsequently the playerbase) usually is tailored to fit just that. I tried Guild Wars a bit and, although I found the story to be interesting at best, the focus on the action third-person combat fest instead of actually roleplaying left much to be desired.

In any case, pardon my rambling questions, but I just wanted to put my finger to the pulse of the MMO"RPG" world, so to speak. Thank you for any meaningful, insightful, and overall constructive points and suggestions you may make.

-Ciwell

 

[pontifex]

you aren't going to get a truly immersive roleplaying experience from an mmo. its just not possible yet. with an mmo YOU have to make the effort to do the roleplaying, they don't hand it to you.

stick to single player games if you want good story and roleplaying provided for you.
if you want to make up your own roleplaying and play with other people, then try an mmo.

 

[ciwell]

Thank you for the response, but perhaps I need to put in some clarity here. My issue is not really with whether or not I can inject any roleplaying into the experience as a whole, but whether the community/ies out there actually respond and interact in kind. I found in Guild Wars, for example, that when attempting any sort of roleplaying, no one would typically respond...not really a fun experience when you are the only person attempting it.

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

Undoubtedly, your best bet is Ultima Online.

You won't find a server that's 100% roleplaying, but some of the servers have large role-playing guilds. The neat thing is the incredible housing customization allows actual communities to be constructed. There may even be role-play only emulator servers out there.

The bottom line is that you won't find role-playing on a massive scale in any MMORPG.

 

[Bateluer]

Some MMOs are more receptive to RPing than others. Some MMOs/Servers, you get openly mocked for RPing(WoW). When I was playing Horizons, the 3 other people in the game RPed with you. In Shadowbane, if you joined an RP guild, they guild usually RPed with you. In EQ2, people usually RP with you if you RP with them. All of those instances were only designated RP servers though.

The thing about RPing in an MMO is that you have to know the lore of the game pretty decently, and know your character. Games like Shadowbane and EQ2 have extensive lore and racial backgrounds that are needed to properly role play. Having a fleshed out bio for your character also makes RPing easier. A lot of people merely create a character and jump into the game. In that case, its merely an image on the screen, no life or background to it at all. And its boring.