MMORPG - world of Warcraft: "This is an RP Server...&am

[ADGBoss]

I realise that Actual Play and indeed the Forge are 99.99999% about table top, P& RPGs. The topic of talking about CRPG in general and MMORPGs in particular has been debated before and I am not really looking to open the debate up again.  However, I was playing WoW on Sunday and opted to play with a character who was on one of the newest Role Playing Servers.

For the uninitiated, there are basically 3 Kinds of MMO servers:

-PVP or Player vs. Player - Gloves are off and Players can basically kill one another as well as the scenery.
-PVE or Player vs. Environment - The Standard or normal type of server where PVP is optional and totally choice drive.  You cannot accidently get hooked into PVP.
-RP or Role Playing - Where ideally, there is no PVP except as in PVE above and everyone has to be role playing.

"Well isn't it all RP, I mean it's an RPG..."

This question comes up quite often and came up quite often yesterday on the general chat.  The debate seemed to rage on for an hour or so at a time when it would restart with new people.  In fact on the supposed IC channel, the debate never ended.

The behaviours exhibited on the game were very interesting to observe and it certainly illustrates how different Agendas, I hesitate to use Creative to describe some of them, simply cannot co-exist.

#1 Casual RP guy.  that would be me. I like to go to the RP servers to avoid names like "ArragornSatanXXX" and similar silly names that do break down the veil of disbelief.  I can have an interesting IC conversation, but when necessary I can jump to OOC.  I do not know how many people fit into this catagory but I would say probably half.  

#2 I RolePlay 100% of the Time, guy... This person is like #1 above but refuses to OOC, sometimes ever.  "Dude your house is on fire." I do not own a house, I live in a tree with berries made of honey....

#3 I came here for the low population, guy... He has not interest in RP, he just wants to go on the server because he is not afraid of #2 above and realises the server population is low because many people are.

#4 I want to be an ass and ruin your RP cause RP is stupid, guy. Yes these people do exist and sometimes they are obvious "SerLowCalBurger" and sometimes they disguise themselves as #2 for a few levels or days until the time is right to start killing off needed NPC's or they start robbing the newbie zones or other such childish behavior.

Having played a number of these games and been on a number of RP servers, it has been my experience that it is the worst RP experience of any of the 3 server types. There is no real social contract and even if there is, people delight in breaking it.

One more thing which seemed to be more clear to me this weekend. As I was playing I realised that, even though I still think that a Computer and an MMO can offer Shared Imagined Space (one of the many arguments against inclusion of their discussion here at least by some) is that the group has to be able to control who and what is allowed in the SIS.  In some ways this can be true of Con games as well, because they person has a "right" to be there, because they paid their money and you really are at a loss to control what comes out of their mouth. As long as they do not violate Con Rules / Terms of Use, then the rest of us are stuck.

Anyway it was an interesting time watching this all go on and it goes to show that Graphical CRPG/MMO have a long way to go to catch up to In Person with regards to satisfying people's needs.


Sean

[Danny_K]

I don't play MMORPG's (not because I wouldn't like them, but because I'd get obsessed in a very bad way, very quickly), but I browse the RPG.net forum dealing with such things occasionally, and it seems that there are at least some people interested in a RP'ing experience.  Not deep immersive, as far as I can tell, but at least as much as you'd see in pickup game of beer n' pretzels D&D.

The big difference between a MMORPG and a LARP or big gaming group is that MMORPG's all seem to have a population of "griefer" players, who, if I understand the concept, get their enjoyment out of annoying and harassing other players.  

There's probably more veiled sadism and "grief" play in LARP and tabletop play than most gamers would like to acknowledge, but the anonymitiy and lack of accountability brings out a lot more of those behaviors.  

It seems to  me that there would be ways to cut down on griefing, but that these players make up a significant and durable proportion of online gamers, so nobody wants to eliminate them from their game.

[Andrew Norris]

I think this topic might be more relevant to RPG Theory than Actual Play, but I'm not sure. Just giving you a heads up.

Way back around when EverQuest came out, I would encounter "heavy immersion" gamers frequently. Everything they said was in character, although interestingly enough I never saw one of them do anything while roleplaying that wasn't within the usual social contract for playing the game. (For instance, they wouldn't run from a monster until the party leader had said to.) They also seemed to have a large amount of character backstory written before play, and would try to work it into the conversation wherever possible.

The overall experience was something like watching a heavy Sim D&D game, where "my guy" is the one thing the player has any control over.

The issue I have with thinking about MMORPGs from a SIS perspective is that there's no method for apportioning out credibility. If the server says something happened, it happened; if someone emotes or says something, it's up to everyone around to accept or ignore that character's behavior. And one learns to tune out most players fairly quickly. I've also seen similar behavior in text-based MUSHes, where a player changes the room description to represent some event, and the rest of the players in the room carry on without giving the stated change any credibility.

[Roger Eberhart]

A GNS breakdown of WoW servers:

Simulationist - RP server
Gamist - PVP or PVE server, the more hardcore gamist definately PVP.
Narrativist - nothing doing.

I prefer narrativist play, so I really don't dig MMORPGs.

[zobmie]

ADGBoss
what server are you on and whats your character name? i wanted to start on an RP server cause all the power gaming lvl grinding on the PvE server is getting old fast without some kind of vested interest in my characters storyline.

[Lance D. Allen]

I also (nominally) play WoW, with a group of my friends who are heavily into the Sim/Nar concerns of roleplaying and storytelling. The fact of the matter is, MMORPGS do not offer any real support for 'Roleplaying'. They offer minimal support which makes it somewhat possible, (though chat ability is all you really need, if you're determined enough..) but there are none of the design features which make it possible. There is no mechanical reward for roleplaying, (unless accomplishing class missions counts as roleplaying, which some people might credibly argue DOES count) nor do the rewards in any way encourage roleplaying.

Frex: My Paladin is using Verigan's Fist. Anyone who has a Paladin of middle-20s probably knows this weapon. It's a monster of a two-handed hammer. My problem is that I've set him up as a sword-and-shield type. So why the hell am I using Verigan's Fist? Because the damage output is vastly better than my best sword, and outweighs the protective ability of a shield. I could, and sometimes do, make decisions in game based purely on RP concerns, but in general, doing so means you're making a bad gamist decision. When the mechanical aspect of the game rewards only gamist decisions, you're potentially losing out on one of the biggest reasons to play the game. You'll kill less, die more, gain less experience, gold, stuff, etc. than everyone else, your friends included, unless they handicap themselves the same way. Once you fall enough behind, it loses some of the entertainment value to actually play with your friends. Either you're too weak for their level, or they're too powerful for yours.

Is this the way it has to be? I don't think so. While I'm not entirely sure how to encourage narrativist decision making in an MMO, I'm working on ideas for how to move away from gamist focused MMO design. Making decisions based on sim-roleplaying concerns shouldn't disadvantage a character (unless you intend it to be a disadvantage, but that's something else...) nor should telling stories and addressing serious themes.

[Callan S.]

Having played a number of these games and been on a number of RP servers, it has been my experience that it is the worst RP experience of any of the 3 server types. There is no real social contract and even if there is, people delight in breaking it.

It's interesting to note that the most stimulating feedback you can get from a game is not directly from the game but from other players.

When the reward of other peoples reactions outweighs the game, as it does, then people will seek that reward.

Without any help in constructivly getting feedback from others, they will go with whats available. Being jerks.

It's an interesting continuation of the blind spots in roleplay culture, where many people (including myself in the past and probably still a bit today), ignore the social level that is going on at the table, which can/does support the game.

Ignoring it, all the MMORPG programmers have failed to facilitate this social level in the computer game. It's not particularly difficult to do in a rough and ready way; transfer of resources to reward behaviour one likes in others (as one does at table top, by even just smiling because of someones effort). But nah, that's meta game and forgotten because of it...even with the money involved.

[Victor Gijsbers]

Is this the way it has to be? I don't think so. While I'm not entirely sure how to encourage narrativist decision making in an MMO, I'm working on ideas for how to move away from gamist focused MMO design. Making decisions based on sim-roleplaying concerns shouldn't disadvantage a character (unless you intend it to be a disadvantage, but that's something else...) nor should telling stories and addressing serious themes.

One thing to keep in mind is that the disadvantages you are talking about, in fact the whole reward/penalty system in almost every cRPG, in itself facilitates Gamist play. You solve nothing if you ensure that making 'in character' decisions does not disadvantage your character's effectiveness in the killing of monsters and the amassing of treasures - it would only make what were previously simulationist decisions into gamist decisions. A huge part of the rules of AD&D2E, and I suppose D&D3E as well, takes this form: forcing the players to conform to the class/race/alignment of their characters because not doing so would make it harder to achieve gamist goals. In D&D, being true to your alignment can very easily become a gamist decision. If you stray from it, you'll lose XP.

(Contrast this with The Shadow of Yesterday's mechanics for buying off keys.)

I think the problem is that Sim and Nar are much, much harder to program than Gam. Pre-made adventures can work perfectly for Gam-play, but it is almost a matter of logic that they cannot work for Nar-play at all, and they can only support a very, very limited subset of Sim-play. I mean, how do you make an algorithm that creates Bangs?

[Christopher Weeks]

I mean, how do you make an algorithm that creates Bangs?

You enable players to create bangs for one another.  And somehow, you reward them for it.

[Victor Gijsbers]

I mean, how do you make an algorithm that creates Bangs?

You enable players to create bangs for one another.  And somehow, you reward them for it.

Yes - but I don't need a computer program for that. I can make bangs for other people without a computer program 'enabling' me to do that.

[Christopher Weeks]

But you can't make bangs for any subset of seven hundred or seven thousand players from around the globe that you happen to have grouped up with for an evening or three in an on-line graphical playground that narrows your creative freedom, placing interesting constraints on your SIS-manipulation.  And, clearly, there is an element of fun going on with the games that currently exist.  What if the goodness from the current generation of online games can be retained while developing a "real" online role-playing game?  I really do have great hopes for the MMORPG as a medium of RPG-expression.  It's just that there's nothing even close...yet.

[hyphz]

The thing you have to bear in mind is that "role-playing" tends to have a completely different meaning in online gaming than it does for tabletop gaming, and gains a whole bunch of different dynamics.

If you take the literal meaning of role-playing as used by tabletoppers and apply it to computer games, you get into a strange situation where any game with something resembling a Dream that can be explored is considered role-playing.  This would include, for instance, Super Mario Brothers.  But nobody in computer gaming would refer to this as a role-playing game.

Second is the fact that the "imagination space" is no longer shared - not even in social games.  You can't exercise any imagination in deciding what something in the world looks like or how it behaves, because it's right there, rendered on the screen in front of you.  Your control over the IS is significantly limited by the fact that a) most games will not allow you to modify the IS, b) in many games that do allow you to modify the IS, any changes you make are clearly apparant (aka, "upstairs downstairs"), typically because they are either not integrated with the automated aspects of the System or because they have lower production values than that which is created by the game authors, and c) in games which do allow you to modify the IS without those changes being apparant, doing so will take an exceptionally long time because it tends to involve creating media with production values adequate to integrate with the game.  If you want the Sword of Farmoor added to the SIS, you can't just invent it: you have to pull up your 3D Modeller and draw it, or else have it clearly distinguished from everything else in the game because it doesn't have a 3D model.

In that situation, Narrativism pretty much cannot work.  The best example of a reason why not is a small game called Castle Marrach, which appears to be a well-meaning attempt to run a Narrativist RPG on a textual MUD client - but with a strictly controlled IS.  The admins encourage players to make up "their own plots" and even objects to go with them, but at the same time maintain a heavy "upstairs downstairs" distinction between items and properties which are represented in the game system (and can be manipulated with commands like GET, DROP, TAKE, HIT, etc.) and those which are not (and the players have to use dialog to create the illusion of the items existing).  The game's forums are alive with arguments about the split, the most infamous example being that a guard's ability to grab a player and prevent them moving is "upstairs" (a guard player has a special permission flag set on their character, and if they then give a RESTRAIN command, the game system disregards future movement instructions from the restrainted player) whereas anything the player might do against this is "downstairs" (since there are command representing struggling, moving around, trying to escape, etc. but their only effect is to print a message stating that the action is occuring; there is no system modelling of the results, and no way to cause the guard's RESTRAIN command to be disregarded by the system)

As a result, Marrach has a lot of trouble with players standing around complaining that nothing is happening.  Technically players are able to create Bangs, but only "downstairs" - which players tend to ignore, since they expect that any followup will have only "downstairs" reward.  On the other hand, there have been real example of ridiculous non-Bangs that were "upstairs" yielding great rewards (in one example, a new player picked up several items of furniture owned by a senior player and restored them to where they were supposed to be, and were rewarded with an "upstairs" rank promition - causing the game system to permit them to enter extra areas of the castle - while others struggling with "downstairs" plots had never seen such a thing)

There is also the MUSH model, which tries to tackle "upstairs downstairs" by giving players varying amounts of control over the IS, although it's obviously necessary that the game's administrators maintain ultimate control.  This, however, also tends to fall apart when it comes to players providing bangs.  The reason is that the "mass game" model is very bad for social contract between players.  Most of the time, players can have a contract with the game managers or the game system, but they tend not to have contracts between players, because there is no back-end social relationship between the players on which one could be built.  

Most attempts to rectify this have been by making the contract with the game administrators so fine-grained that it attempts to ratify a contract with every single player at once.  Yet this fails to address the problem that such a contract, without a social relationship, can address safety (ie, it can ensure that no play occurs which players aren't comfortable about) but cannot address liveness (ie, it cannot ensure that play actually does take place, and involves the player concerned).