Roleplayers in MMORPGs

It’s the middle of a busy quest hub, and people are in a hurry to get quests done, to cash in on those juicy question marks (well, it’s usually a question mark) that lead to experience points and resource rewards.  Orcs, goblins, marines, humans, elves, wolves, whatever your game has in it, they are running all about with purpose, some are hopping and bouncing gleefully as they do, others working in groups, and perhaps even a few high level players have set up camp to stand about and look pretty or provide assistance.  Yes, this is how an MMORPG should be.  This is the proper way of the world.

Karos Online – Juicy Question Mark!

Then, something changes.  People are speaking in perfect grammar.  They’re talking about things in the game world as if they were real!  They’re using /em to describe actions?!  Who are these lunatics, these freaks of nature?  They’re using the walk toggle to walk around!  They aren’t doing quests or grinding mobs.  They aren’t LFGing or QQing or dueling, no, they’re… heaven forbid it…

ROLEPLAYING.

Surely, we’ve all seen this scene at some point.  We’ve witnessed the horror of roleplayers at work, doing their creative writing, their character immersion, their… their hawt cyberz, even.  Have these people no decency?  Can’t they just call it a “toon” like a normal person and fall in line?  What are these crazy people trying to prove?  Disturbing.  Shocking.  Appalling!  Yet it exists.  We all know it exists.  So what do we do in response to them?  Well, I’m no expert on the subject, but I believe the natural, correct response is to GRIEF them.  Or laugh.  Or ignore them.  If it’s a PVP server, and the fools are in a PVP zone, then gank them and teabag them until the cows come home.  Roleplay that, nerds!

Age of Conan – A Game I’ve Rolplayed in before!

Personally, I’ve never understood the absolutely caustic, hateful reaction some people have to roleplayers.  In a time past, I never even understood why everyone wasn’t a roleplayer.  Then I realized that a lot of roleplayers aren’t very creative, interesting, or cool, even though most of the ones I associate with might be talented writers.  It’s fine to rip on RPers for being geeky little weirdos who are often just two female avatars sitting facing one another in suspicious silence without any gear on.  I’m sure plenty of us have stumbled on that before.  The horror!

I know how awful and goofy these people can be.  I ignore/make fun of them myself half the time, but that doesn’t change the fact that I still need character immersion and inter-character interaction to feel connected to a game.  What I mean by that is that to me, my character isn’t just a “toon”.  My character is a character that I’ve designed, fleshed out, and given life to, creating a kind of refraction of my own personality within the game (isn’t that what all characters are to an author?), which I will then use to interact with other characters designed similarily.

Perfect World – Creating Your Own Unique Character

This creates an improvised, freeform creative writing exercise that’s social (yes, RPers speak to one another as people behind the keyboard, anyone blurring the line is usually shunned) and sometimes highly challenging.  As someone who enjoys creative writing as both a living and a hobby, this allows me to keep my pen against the grindstone, so to speak.  It’s also just plain fun, and is a great motivator to level up and invest in a character.
A lot of people do varying degrees of roleplaying with their characters without even realizing it.  They may simply wear a certain set of armor because they like it.  They may have alternate outfits in their bank.  They may have odd little rituals they do that have no mechanical purpose in the game because it’s “what their character would do.”  Not everyone is perfectly comfortable getting into it as an actor/writer without a script, but most people enjoy feeling somewhat connected to the gameworld, and somewhat immersed.  It enhances the feeling of escape.

So, I ask you, readers.  How do you feel about roleplaying?  Do you like roleplaying?  Barring the fact that we all know some people use it as a means of getting WAY too involved in the game and substituting their social life, what does it mean to use as a vehicle for getting more invested and more immersed in the gameplay experience?  How do you do it?  Does it matter to you?  Or is every game just a cold, mechanical process, and every “toon” just a means to reaching an end?  Discuss!

By, B. Olivia