The "RP" in "MMORPG" and will it die with WoW? (OOC)

Lore World's End Tavern: Role-play and Fan Fiction
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I RP and I am sure a lot of you do as well. As you probably know WoW has always done it’s best to look out for RPers. However WoW has not been doing the best of late and I fear that if WoW dies we will never find another MMORPG that is this friendly for Rp.

The other MMORPGs out there have done little to support RP and RP communities.

ESO has so much sharding it is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to rp with people outside the hub cites and while I have never played FFXIV stories of mods banning RPers for “Spamming” and stories and videos showing G modding, Mary Sues, toxic elitism, and RP that bascialy amounts to MG goldshire does not look good for RP there as well.

With newer MMORPGS moving farther away from RPers I am honestly concerned WoW may be the last real bastion for RPers. This is a shame because RPers tend to stick around in a game through good and bad expansions. I honestly fear that if WoW dies we will never find another MMORPG that supports RP to the extent wow does.

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I’ve found RP in FFXIV far more supported than RP in WoW, with the housing system and complex emote systems. Toxic personalities are all relative and not indicative of a game’s overall RP health. FFXIV suffers from not having designated RP servers, but on the flip side, you can find a small RP community on about every server. My small server welcomed me with open arms, even with my insistence that my character has a unicorn horn. :stuck_out_tongue: Never been called a mary sue for that or had any issues. Was just welcomed into the fold.

I’ve not heard of mods banning for spamming? That sounds like a lie just based on how it is worded. FFXIV isn’t WoW. Unless you seriously seriously break the rules, like buying stuff with IRL money, you don’t get randomly banned out of the blue. My boyfriend got in trouble for spamming sound emotes. I mean SPAMMING sound emotes. Every sound effect bound to every one of his healing spells with the tag “Give me 50k gil to stop”. In a boss trial. He did not get banned. He was take to gaol where a GM stood before him and talked to him about the rules and disruptive behavior. He was in there for about 10-15 minutes. Mind you this was his first offense, but he had plenty of time to explain that it was roleplaying, if he needed to.

FFXIV doesn’t have as much random walk up roleplaying as WoW, I’ve noticed… but I am also not on the “Big RP Servers”. RP is there though.

On the note about WoW. Blizzard has been slowly knifing their RP community for years. They randomly change items and tools the RP community uses and hasn’t really tossed them a bone since adding Transmog to be honest. The game isn’t necissarily dying, but sub numbers feel low. However, as long as there are enough dedicated players to fund the game, it isn’t going to die. We aren’t going to wake up one day to find WoW dead. It’ll be a process where they slowly stop adding content or expansions, stop having patches, hold the servers for a while, then in like 10 years there will be a big article of them finally shutting the servers down. If that.

FFXI seemed dead, and then it wasn’t lol. I don’t think a game this big is going to die anytime soon. Rough patches yes. Dead? No.

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Well small servers usually tend to be more friendly mainly because there are less bridges and thus no one wants to burn any. But from what I hear the quality of Rp on the big name servers is “Gilneas RP” at best and MG goldshire at worst.

I mean in the sense that Para RPers being reported for “Spam” by non RPers and those RPers getting banned by mods because since there are no dedicated RP servers the mods cant tell the difference between RP and Spam.

The only time they did that was when fixing an exploit broke an addon used for cross faction RP. But Blizzard saw this that is why they added the elixir of tongues.

There are plenty of cool places to Rp in the new Capitol cities

They have added things from RPers in the main Canon … remember Jed’hin, that was originally created on Rp servers BY RPers.

Blizzard has always looked out for us RPers, that is why WoW’s Rp community is so big.

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Ah forgot about that one but not what I was referring to. I was referring to costumes and toys contantly getting nerfed to durations longer than the toy cool down. There was something else too, but I don’t remember what it was.

I will give this thread link to friends of mine that RP routinely on Mateus and Balmung then, since my small server RP experiences don’t count.

In any case, FFXIV does not randomly ban people. There is no simple “right click report for spamming feature.” You can only right click and report for RMT and if you abuse that and report someone not doing RMT, you get action against yourself. In order to report someone roleplaying, you have to leave the game and go to the FFXIV website and put in a support ticket. The process is a lot less convenient than WoW, where I have friends who got mass reported and banned by the system before.

I was just saying that my experience with WoW vs FFXIV roleplaying is that FFXIV is above and beyond more RP friendly, tools wise. They add the most random features to allow very niche level of character immersion, from being able to set up literal blacksmith and tailoring shops in your house, to simply being able to have your character smile, frown, hold a pose, do group camera poses, etc.

I can’t speak for the big server communities in FFXIV, though I can say WRA and MG have elitist, toxic, godmodding, mary sue characters as well. My BF tried getting into WoW RP back when we were on WRA and got ripped a new one by about four people for daring to have an intelligent pandaren. Dirt bags exist in all mediums, WoW is not some glimmering bastion of RP safe haven.

Blizzard did not look out for us when youtubers harassed our servers and their fan bases mass reported our players. When our roleplayers spoke out about the disruption to their events and got forum vacations, blizzard was not there. They may add an empty building here or there, but only in the cities. What about out in the world?

ESO I’ve not played more than 5 min but you speak of sharding being an issue except for big city hubs. What about WoW? Sharding is a huge issue for the RP community here as well. Can’t even see friends in front of the transmog house in boralus because we are all sharded differently. Besides, where are you seeing RP outside of the big cities? Except when it is a guild or group event where people are partied together, I’ve seen very little in the many years I played on WRA.

I don’t feel as if Blizzard is some glorious bastion towards the RP community. I don’t feel that any MMORPG is. They all have pluses and minuses to them. The RP community just adapts and works within their medium. It is just about finding a community that works for you in a game you enjoy playing.

I am not trying to point fingers at one or the other. You mentioned having no experience with FFXIV so I was just pointing out some stuff about it. I know I have been frustrated with WoW’s RP support in game enough times to finally just leave the roleplaying servers behind and focus only on the forums, and I am not the only one to get pushed to that point. I know FFXIV’s RP environment also does not match my person RP desires either. I just go about my business and RP here on the forums where the in game doesn’t matter and the harassment typically stays away.

Yes, Blizzard has added a few things in honor of something the players created, as many games have. I think that is neat, but I don’t attribute that to why the community is so… well not big but passionate. I don’t mean to say Blizzard doesn’t support roleplaying in their game, but they don’t always lookout for it or tweak it. Roleplaying is a small niche subset of WoW’s community, no where near as populated as the raiding or pvp side of things blizzard supports. So blizzard often changes things for the PvP or PvE sides of things that trickles down and impacts the RP side of things. I am hopeful for the future though, with the transmog limitations starting to ease up and more little cosmetic things coming. Hopefully we will see more than “oh cool blizzard canonized x rp concept” bandaids going forward.

Maybe Blizzard will add more accessible empty buildings to the world of various types that can be interacted with. I was helping look for an inn or tavern styled building last week, somewhere ideally accessible by a wide level range, and couldn’t really find much to work with. Buildings are either populated by NPCs or Enemies, or they have no intractable triggers. Table with chairs? Can’t click to sit in them.

I love that you are passionate for WoW RP, I wish I felt as positive about Blizzard’s stance. But I’ve been cut by them before so I have no gilded view of them relating to RP. I don’t have it for any game. Most of my friends RP here and I’ve invested so much time and research into these characters. So here I stay.

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Actually if you on an RP server ya wont get sharded unless ya in War mode or in a current content zone.

I have NEVER seen that on MG,

And even if ya said its true sadly FFXIV has done nothing to moderate and nurture their RP community at least MG keeps the bad RP in goldshire. Let explain by quoting something else ya said.

That’s the thing everyone plays a Mary Sue so it has become the norm. Believe me that is NOT something that should be encouraged and it causes the quality of RP to sink.

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Kersia hit the nail right on the head, FFXIV 9/10 has a pretty chill community ESPECIALLY with RP I can say this having a few characters on the Mataeus server and while some may be over the top it isn’t really “Toxic marysue ish” as it may appear,RP there just has a wee bit of wiggle room where you can have fun so as long as you aren’t saying that you’re the sole warrior of light and did all the things. IE- My miq’ote [shares the name of this guy I’m posting on :smiley: ] is a budding red mage and apprentice chef whose studying magic,being taught to fight under his master who is also the one teaching him the ways of being a great culinarian. He’s often seen going on adventures with his free company,a rag tag group of privateers looking to make their dreams a reality and while he may be competant in his skills,he does have a few weaknesses such his naivete and insecurities which almost often get him into a hot mess here and there.

From my experiences,the only bannings I’ve seen were either bots or people who are caught harassing other players which unlike Blizzard,Square Enix tends to take more seriously and nips it in the bud before it becomes levels of cringe and toxicity the “Project 60” debacle had become almost 2 years ago…No thanks to cancerous bro-esque Twitch streamers.

Don’t get me wrong,I still like to RP on WoW from time to time,but to judge other games at not being to standard does seem a tad silly,especially when companies like Square Enix tend to give ALOT of love to the RP community where while Blizz does throw a bone from time to time,tends to favor the endgame/e-sports scene over everything else these days. Also had some pretty good RP experiences in Guild Wars 2 and on occasion [depends on your timing with the Celestial Hills server] TERA.

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I met someone who played on Mataeus and the issue was no one did any serious Rp story lines because as soon as Balmug opened it’s gates everyone would from Mataeus try to flood into it and there was a chance you could get in but the ppl ya were rping with did not.

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They have a little note thingy you can enter 9/10 you can type in Tag=IC a small description of your character and WU for Walk ups to convey they’re welcome. It’s worked for me so far and was how I joined my FC. :0 Try and see if that helps,if not and you see people having the RP tag on,walk up to them and engage with them,normally people have been pretty chill about it from my experiences.

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misses the point of the post was saying the person said there were no serious story lines on Mataeus because as soon as Balmug opened everyone would try to transfer there and story lines could be ruined because one person got on Balmug and another did not

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No,I got the point,thing is if you want a “serious” storyline then like most games,finding the free company to their tastes is probably what’s best for them,and what exactly would be “serious?” Film noir serious,war movie serious? Political thriller serious? It varies but in order to find it you have to look for it like you’d have to for WoW,and of course people would try to transfer to Balmung,it was one of the OG servers akin to how MG was around before WRA. You can still transfer to Balmung if that’s your preference by going on a lesser populated server and transferring after you leveled your person for a bit Hells,I started on Siren where some occasional RP can be seen going on [same can be said about faerie] but to dismiss RP on that MMO seems a tad silly,especially since one needs to convey WHAT specifically they’re looking for other than just “serious”. I’m just trying to help but if you don’t want said help just say so. Was also trying to convey that RP in MMOs aren’t going to suddenly die out if WoW somehow goes the way of the dinosaur.

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Why would I want to do a story line with someone if there is a chance I may never see them again because they got into Balmug and I did not?

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From my experience it’s not the games that are moving from RP, it’s the players. In every venue, I’ve been to I’ve seen RP communities. I’ve also seen a lot of noise that breaks immersion both here and others.

Either the players form their communities, or they don’t. It really doesn’t matter so much as to the game itself, but the communities that form inside them.

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That is what I was trying to communicate as well. It is the players that make the RP communities. Blizzard might kinda acknowledge them, but Blizzard did not make the community nor do they directly work to support it. Just about every game, MMO or not, has a roleplaying group. I can almost guarantee it. Even non games have roleplaying communities. As long as there are fans, there is RP.

World of Warcraft has moved a ways away from the RPG roots it started with and has become far closer to an action game. In the effort to push away from “cookie cutter” builds and towards an accessible atmosphere, a lot of character agency and build paths were lost. Classes are far more cookie cutter than ever before, with less unique options for character progress. Roleplayers are about all that is left for the RPG part of the game at all.

That being said, the doomsaying is silly. There will always be roleplayers, long after World of Warcraft ends. As long as there are fans of the series, there will be roleplayers.

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Actually it’s roots are in minature wargaming and the command and conquer RTS games that started the franchise. I think that Blizzard treats the RPG potentials of the game a step or two above benign neglect, the priority isn’t what it used to be, but they still take some steps in maintaining it, but the sharding of the servers makes it hard to preserve the environment that you had when RP servers were truly a separate thing.

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Yeah, fusing the RP servers out in the world really hurts the communities. Then WRA and MG were fused for the longest time, both High pop with vastly different communities, and the poor smaller servers were stuck in the cross roads of them. I had seen RP out in the world prior to sharding, at Lion’s pride on WRA, or people were RPing in rachet as I went through, but after I stopped seeing RP. Even with MG gone, it still hasn’t been the same.

Sharding on RP servers may not be the same as PvE but CRZ is still prevalent.

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Thank you for this post.

Customizability is important in RPing, because it allow you to better imagine your character within the world instead of relying on addons or external sources to make your vision more accurate. A good point for a title like XIV, is that even though the game’s character creator isn’t as ample, it combined with the amazing armor looks and emote systems, allows you to make quite unique characters.

WoW in the other hand, allegedly most successful MMORPG franchise out there, has the poorest character customization system, and you might think that 10+ years of expansions would give a vast array of transmog, it still suffers by the limitation of the ingame armor models and the xmog restrictions. Yes, they have been making improvements lately in the armor department, but still on baby steps.

The only think that I see WoW shining from everybody else is in the RP friendly interface. Custom chat channels make great venues, but the fact that Addons can allow for a much better RP platform is glaring. It would be perfect if our characters could be more unique, to be honest.

To end, I really wish that Blizzard, sooner than later, realizes that even for non RPers, character customization is a major selling point. Want a proof, just see how successful XIV’s additional options are, even the ones locked behind the cash shop.

So please, allow production resources to be poured into this. Sometimes isn’t even a lot… sometimes is just a matter of allowing players to use certain items already ingame but unavaliable, like the round gilnean sunshades. Sometimes is just a decision to allow less xmog restrictions on items.

Below, a brainstorm of things that would make the RPG aspect stand out more:

  1. Allow resources to upgrade old races too. Okay, we get golden eyes, black eyes… but then where are more impactful stuff, like new hairstyles, more skin colors?
  2. I understand that they want holiday items to be impactful only during their holidays, but then why not give a rare drop of a lookalike item that works outside of the holiday?
  3. Design more conventional items, like simpler pants, boots, etc with the new technology. We can use vanilla items to this matter, but honestly their age are showing, badly. Also since we’ll be able to hide the chestpiece soon, please take the time to design actual unique shirts, instead of reusing tabard or old armor models.
  1. Allow us to use composite names, this would greatly ease the burden of having to come with extremely unique names.
  2. More unique open houses and locations in the main cities. Actually, both SW and Org need an overhaul at this rate, because they can’t really compare to BfA cities.
  3. Let us use more emotes, choose idle stances. These are already ingame for the common NPCs out there, so it’s not like work from the ground.

Thank you,

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The big issue with FFXIV RP is from what I heard is the GMs nor the community itself has done anything to moderate it…thus they ended up with a RP community that is made up of As one poster put it…

So you can add as many new features as you like but if the RP is bad no one will want to RP.

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That is not exclusive to any game. You could say that about WoW, honestly. “Why would I want to do a story line with someone if there is a chance they might get sharded and I never see them again?”

“Why would I want to do a story line with someone if there is a chance they might get in a raiding/rp guild and I never see them again?”

“Why would I want to do a story line with someone if there is a chance they might hit financial trouble and quit and I never see them again?”

That possibility is ALWAYS there that the people you’re rping with might be gone tomorrow for a variety of reasons. People can server change in WoW too, you know.

“From what I heard” is a very key point in your post. Hell, from what I’ve heard from people who don’t come on these forums MG RP is entirely what Goldshire is famous for. You have to take that all with a grain of salt - maybe that kind of RP is more common on those games/servers but I’ll be willing to bet you that it’s not ALL going to be that. Hell, maybe the people you’re talking to only walked into one area and saw that kind of thing (maybe FF has an equivalent area such as goldshire) and they simply exaggerated saying it was everywhere.

Point is, you’ve got people here telling you that what those other people said is wrong. Maybe you should be a little more open to hearing different sources before being as convinced as you seem to be.

RP being good/bad is not dictated by the platform you’re using. I could find good and bad RP here on WoW, I’m sure I could find both on SWTOR. Hell I can find both in a D&D pen-and-paper group. The players are what make it good, features just sometimes help (or hinder as the case may be).

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I have seen HUNDREDS of Youtube Videos that show the kind of rp that goes on in FFXIV…it is NOT high quality.

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What makes it onto Youtube is not representative of the RP community itself. As a member of FFXIV’s RP community, I can assure you of that much.

Yes, there are ERPers. Yes, there are “low quality” RPers. Yes, there are powergamers.

Except, the same is true of WoW. And you RP on WoW anyways, despite the risk of meeting those people, don’t you?

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