However, I suspect that the problem does not lie in the people’s attitude to the roleplay alone. I don’t doubt that it is the largest issue, as it certainly helps explain most of the uninteresting characters out there, but I believe that some people do not succeed in producing interesting characters simply because they do not have the skill for it.

I myself have often felt completely inadequate next to other roleplayers. My emotes are bland and repetitive and I sometimes find myself unable to keep up because I find my characters in complex situations in which I do not know how to make them react, or having to fake a skill that I do not really understand myself.
And then there is the issue of character building methods, and simply understanding how people think. Whatever my methods are they must be terrible. I often end up being very vague about my character’s backgrounds, even in my head, and unsure as to how they were actually formed by their background. Over time, after a lot of thinking, the characters end up crystalizing in to complete beings, but they never have the elegant structure of character that I see from far more advanced roleplayers.

I am still to figure out the greatest mystery of all. How have I managed to fake enough competence to be able to play with the masters themselves.

Anyway, I think this is a point to consider. The people behind Bioware are extremely capable at producing good characters. But we have to remember this; they are professionals.

I’m torn as to the pros and cons of this approach. Speaking as a long-standing community member over at the Jumpgate Evolution forums, one of the biggest complaints I see is that this “random Joe off the street” approach means you’re getting feedback off people that don’t necessarily have the drive or passion to provide meaningful critique of the game. On the other hand, if you want to make a game that’s easy to get into, accessible but ultimately complex to master (which I hope JGE will be…) then it’s a really good approach to take. But where do you draw the line? How much feedback can you get from someone that might not even have heard of your game or that doesn’t even play MMORPGs, let alone after only a couple of hours of gameplay? Maybe that’s where the “complex to master” element comes in; your random, focus testing public are the perfect testers to tell you what’s wrong with your user interface and to identify usability issues. Hermann Peterscheck (Lead Producer for JGE) has often been cited as touting that “first fifteen minutes” as being critical to capturing a potential subscriber in an MMORPG. Can you get the accessibility and polish early on in a project’s lifecycle (which is kind of the idea of agile, iterative development) with just internal focus testing? Is it crazyness to keep things internal (all use of cranial explosive devices aside)?

I’m interested to see how this pans out with a smaller developer like NetDevil. The game isn’t in beta yet but has been “Friends and Family” testing for some time so I’m guessing they’re listening to their testers and…iterating their iterations. Time will tell…

Andy :

Not too sure about the attack on male, cross-gender roleplayers at the end though…it comes across as out of context and debases the points you make in the rest of the article (even if I do agree with you). Eight out of ten.

I did consider cutting it – I left it in largely because bad drama isn’t the only story related cliche WoW roleplayers are guilty of, and which Blizzard encourages by giving female avatars come-hither bimbo animations. I should probably stress it’s not crossgender characters, or having a crossgender non-RP avatar that I mind – it’s the specific combination of crossgender, cybersex, and crying how it’s about the roleplay, not the cybersex (What, they’re embarrassed about liking porn? Most people do, I just wish they’d own up, then separate RP and ERP – the goals of the two are different enough that they very rarely mesh).

I’ll freely admit that’s a pet peeve. I have no beef with crossgender play where the character’s gender and sexual orientation are used to define the sort of person they are, not the sort of sex they like and want to have, please. But you’re right, that’s a topic in itself.

Brighteyes :

I’m scared shitless about SWToR but not for the reasons you state, all the designs I’ve seen so far point towards a brilliant single player game, which should have everyone worried as it’s a bloody MMORPG.

That, or more specificly a singleplayer game that multiple people can play. What I’m particularly curious about is, what are they going to do about voice? Filters, so players can communicate in a voice similar to whatever actor they’ve chosen for their character’s dialogue? Will they attempt to can enough phrases (in the style of online FPS or old console MMO’s) to allow at least rudimentary RP in voice, or will RP’ers become those weird geeks who insist on (snicker) typing? I have more faith in the project as an MMO now that Mythic is involved, but I’m still not sold on it being all that RP-friendly.

And yes, I agree with both of you about hard-ass RP’ers being a tiny minority. It does make me wonder though … with 11 million subscribers worldwide, Blizzard can’t afford to make one “nitpicky veteran RP’ers go here” -server per region? No extra rules to enforce, just the tag to denote that players here will be harsh on breaks of existing policy, and Blizz won’t care?

Andy :
Blizzard have more incentive to focus on the elements of the game that ensure that they maintain their steady revenue stream rather than pander to the likes of roleplayers.
….
I can’t say there is a single MMORPG that has been frothing at the bit at the moment short of SWToR – and as much as I love Bioware, I’m nervous someone is going to screw that IP into the ground as well. Maybe I should get around to setting up a pre-CU SWGEMU server. Sure, Tatooine may be quiet but at least it’ll be MY giant sandbox.

First of all I have to once more point out that the vast majority of roleplayers on WoW servers doesn’t give a crap about stuff like lore consistency or teen wangst ancient elven queens, oh how I loathe the silly bint, so I don’t believe they are alienating anyone but a tiny minority here. Far as I can see Blizzard is doing what is most profitable for their pockets, nothing stupid here. To put it in a different context, inteligent films like Memento (2001) are great and all, but if you want to make money you produce Independence Day (1996).

I’m scared shitless about SWToR but not for the reasons you state, all the designs I’ve seen so far point towards a brilliant single player game, which should have everyone worried as it’s a bloody MMORPG. The structure of an MMORPG should be vastly different compared to a normal single player CRPG, I predict a major fuck up incoming there. So please pre CU SWGEMU servers sound good about now.