Roleplaying

If you have anything in common with me RP-wise, then you want your characters to seem more or less like real people. Sure, there are going to be blank spots compared to someone who's lived for the past 20-odd years, but you want to create the illusion that there's no real difference. And one of the best tools in that area is to answer questions that real people have an answer for in a few minutes at most.

Usually, if someone mentions a mundane aspect of a character's background, it's meant to play into something further on down the line. But my experience is that giving those questions mundane answers helps ground the character in a much more solid foundation. So I've put together a list of seemingly innocuous questions that can help you construct a more fully formed character, someone who at least creates the illusion of a real life to recall. That illusion can make all the difference.

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Have you ever thought about the fact that every single one of your characters is a murdering thief?

Picture the scene for a moment: You have a group of people living in an isolated and rural community. Without warning, a man with heavy weaponry bursts in and starts hacking his way through every inhabitant of the community, smashing his way into locked houses. But he also stops at the body of each victim to gather any money or important belongings, slowly working his way through the community until there's nothing left but carrion and a few trinkets he didn't deem valuable enough to steal.

On the news, this would be up there as a pretty shocking tragedy. In an MMO, this is a good chunk of the gameplay. And that brings to mind one of the major issues that faced by roleplayers hoping for verisimilitude: the horrible discrepancies between the social contract as we understand it and the one employed by the characters in the game. They're divergent sometimes, identical at other times, and universally ambiguous.

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Cozy. It's a word that seems more at home in a Martha Stewart magazine than in the column for a website about MMORPGs. Cozy can mean quite a few things, but I love the way that the word can instantly make sense to almost anyone. Think about it -- think about what cozy might mean to you. It means a place that makes you feel warm or safe, a place that begs you to stay for a while. The reason I am so attracted to cozier spots in MMOs is because they can be few and far between these days, or they exist but the content pushes you through so fast that you forget to stop and relax for a while.

That speedy content, in my opinion, has helped bring roleplay to its knees. I remember when it was more common to be roleplaying instead of the opposite. These special, inviting spots slow us down and help us remember that we're playing multiplayer games, games with other real people who are experiencing the same places we are at the same time.

So, here is a small list of five of the most coziest places in free-to-play. In my opinion, of course. Feel free to add your own.

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As you might have guessed from the title, I'm taking a tiny break from writing about Star Wars: The Old Republic this week. Although it might seem like odd timing to change the pace of my articles with Update 1.3 releasing today, I figured that the update will be here next week, but Star Wars Galaxies' birthday comes around only once a year. Last weekend, the first Star Wars MMORPG would have celebrated its ninth year in service.

Being the first Star Wars MMO will always be an honor Galaxies will hold. But that's not the only thing that drew so many people to the game. I often find myself thinking back wondering what could have been. Besides my love for Star Wars, that game held a lot of significance in my life. It was my first serious MMO and my first step into MMO roleplay. If Star Wars Galaxies were still around, would I still be playing? More importantly, what would I be doing in that game that I really can't do in the current Star Wars MMO?

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Harken back, o reader, to ye olden days of E3 2012, if thou canst recall, as a great and powerful force of dragons has arrived among us. OK, so E3 wasn't that long ago (although it often feels like it), but something dragon-like has certainly surfaced: During the expo, I saw an impressive demo of Dragon Eternity, a cross-platform fantasy MMO from Game Insight, and as of this morning, the embargo on all the details of that demo has finally lifted. Hit the break and I'll tell you all about it!

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There's no reason in the world that the idea of a dark past needed to become a cliché. I mean, it has; there's no denying that. Do a shot every time you find a character with a dark past and you'll have alcohol poisoning inside of half an hour. (Do two for every character whose past is dark and mysterious and you can just call an ambulance before you start.) But it's one of those things that's been cast into the realm of the cliché before its time -- it's a legitimate element to constructing a character that's become overused.

Of course, it's been sent to the horrid land of the cliché by people using it poorly and overzealously. You can still make an interesting and nuanced character with a dark past, but you have to do so with a gentle hand. You need just enough dark past that it's interesting but not so much dark past that it gets obnoxious or silly.

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Indie sandbox Origins of Malu plans to feature a very unusual PvP mode: a permadeath PvP duel system. Characters who voluntarily duel under this system -- and lose -- will be erased from the game. Forever!

Massively's staff roleplayers are divided on whether or not this feature will ever see much use, though. While most of us think it's an awesome system that will provide some spectacular entertainment, others of us have argued that it takes a lot of courage for MMO gamers, so used to investing time and money into their avatars, to kill off a character permanently. It won't be easy finding another roleplaying duelist who's both capable of putting up a good fight and willing to risk his own hide. Plus, wouldn't it be weird if every single RPer who wanted to off a toon did so in a gladiatorial duel to the death? There are so many other dramatic ways to end a character's story!

And that brings us to today's Daily Grind: How do you kill off your characters? Do you go for climactic in-game events? Do you field "can I have ur stuff" requests? Do you delete silently and never look back to avoid future temptation? Or do you cancel your accounts and let your characters slumber peacefully, awaiting your someday return?

Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!

I do not claim to have any sort of superhuman intellect. If I understand how people are likely to make mistakes in roleplaying and how to fix those mistakes, it's a product of having made a lot of mistakes of my own. Sometimes it's a result of failing to fix them and realizing what would have worked after the fact. And while I'll write advice on how to fix the things that you're doing wrong, I never want to give the impression that I'm preaching rather than practicing.

Last week's column was all about what happens when it turns out you're the problem, and there's a J'accuse-style rant if there ever was one. In light of that, I wanted to make it very clear that there have been situations in which my character was the problem rather than some hypothetical example. And so I pulled out three of the most notable examples of places where it turns out I was causing a world of disruption within the group.

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It's probably a bit predictable that this Holocron File would be about the Cathar. But I'm not above being predictable when it's important or timely. In this case, the Cathar were announced to be the next playable species in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Hopefully, it is just one of the next playable species. I know many people are looking forward to playing Nautolans or Togrutas, which are a bit more iconic if you consider the popularity of Kit Fisto and Ahsoka Tano. But the Cathar are not without iconic figures. Knights of the Old Republic fans will remember Juhani as one of your possible companions, and serious Star Wars fans will remember Sylvar and Crado from the Tales of the Jedi comic book.

Personally, I have yet to create a Jedi Knight character (yeah, I know, call me what you will), so I think the Cathar look to be a good species for that class. However, given the history and overall disposition of the Cathar species, I think it could easily fall into any class story. Maybe that is why it was chosen as the next species over the aforementioned Nautolans and Togrutas. As with any species I play, I like to learn as much about it as I can. Thankfully, the Cathar are a pretty easy species for gathering this information, not that Wookieepedia is a great source on the topic.

So what are Cathar all about? Where do they come from? We'll find out in this week's Holocron Files.

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TERA has been out on American shores for just about a month now, and that means the game is due for a patch. While the latest update isn't a huge patch, it certainly does bring some big changes, starting with the addition of the guild vs. guild system to PvE servers. Guild masters will be able to toggle their guilds as pacifistic or battle-ready, and new players joining a guild will be informed if the guild is embroiled in war.

Not up for the PvP road? That's all right -- there are a lot of other little additions in this patch. Daily quests for Hands of Velika have undergone some revisions, with slightly higher numbers required to clear but a greater individual reward. High-end BAMs now also drop Tier 13 crafting materials, with named monsters having a higher chance at drops. The patch also adds the ability to type custom emotes and several bug fixes, both of which should improve the quality of play in TERA.

There are a lot of ways that roleplaying can go south. Over the past two years, I've tried to focus on how to look out for problems before they happen, how to identify problems coming from others, and how to solve problems with a minimum of drama. It's important to try to fix miscommunications, after all.

Unfortunately, there's a problem that comes from analyzing everything other than yourself: Sometimes, the real problem is you.

Maybe you've been trying to fix all of the problems in your group without realizing that the real pot-stirrer was the jerk trying to fix everyone else. Maybe you've been trying to enforce a specific standard that no one else wants to adhere to. Heck, maybe you're just playing a character that you like a lot but everyone else loathes. Whatever the reason, you aren't the solution any more; you are the problem that needs to be fixed. And that means figuring out what to do when you find out that you have seen the enemy and he is you.

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Whenever I play a new MMO, the first thing I want to know is who I am supposed to be inside this particular game world. I would like to have as much control over the conception of my character as possible, but let's be honest: Great customization is not as common as many of us would like. This might explain my attraction to games that offer the ability to craft a true, unique character, even if only in looks. I love a good cash shop and the ability to make my character essentially me -- if I were the me inside that other world.

I don't play MMOs to be the hero, at least not most of the time. I don't want to kill the largest boss or get the best armor. I'll leave that to gamers who like that sort of thing. I play an MMO to sort of lose myself inside the world of a character of my own making. Over the years I've noticed a pattern in how I establish a great character, one that I want to continue playing. Originally, I wanted to refine this process into a list in case other players wanted to compare, but the list keeps evolving, so instead, I'll give some examples of how I have been creating unique and wonderfully flawed main characters in some of my favorite MMOs.

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There's aging gracefully, and then there's EverQuest II. Sony Online Entertainment's eight-year old fantasy flagship is pretty much the benchmark for MMO feature sets and functionality at this point. There's so much to do in the game that it's overwhelming at times, and that was before the introduction of the roleplayer's dream known as SOEmote.

SOEmote is one of those things that you'll either love or hate. In a nutshell, it's facial scanning technology that takes webcam input and outputs it to your avatar. EQII's toons already boasted some of the most visually expressive animations in the genre, complete with a laundry list of /emote commands that's longer than this article.

SOEmote takes that to the next level (and it also adds voice-modulating capabilities, though these weren't exactly listenable due to the din of noise that is the E3 demo floor). The tech is scheduled to hit the game's live servers toward the end of this month, and it'll be met with both huzzahs (from the roleplayers and the immersion enthusiasts) and WTFs (from the raiders and progression fiends).

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You know me: I'm the lollygagger. In no rush to zoom through games, I tend to wander about just taking a gander at things. I peek into all the nooks and crannies and am easily sidetracked by all the shinies. In the journey vs. destination debate, I am a proud pompom-waving, card-carrying member of "the journey is half the fun" crowd. It's a wonder I progress at all! But progress I do, and in Aion I had been max level for quite some time. Emphasis on "had." Then 3.0 rolled around.

It's actually odd being lower-level again, unable to participate in everything because of level restrictions. Sorry MJ, no dungeon for j00! It's my fault really, since I could level but have been distracted with housing, mentoring, etc. Then I got to thinking about just how many things there are to do even without being max level. Whoa! Sometimes people have the (in my humble opinion, erroneous) idea that Aion doesn't really start until max level, that everything you do before reaching that exalted pinnacle isn't playing. Don't be absurd! The game doesn't start at level 60; it starts at level 1. Remember the part about enjoying the journey? Why worry about reaching some magical number! Just play. After all, experience happens -- before you know it, you will level up.

Previously, Wings Over Atreia discussed some things to do once you reach endgame. Here, in no particular order, are 12 ways to take your eyes off your experience bar and just play with reckless abandon before maxing out.

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Roleplaying projects are great. They're good for avoiding burnout, good for stretching your roleplaying muscles, and good for giving you reason to explore something you'd otherwise ignore. Not every project works out all that well, but I'm a big fan of the idea, and I'd encourage everyone who likes to roleplay to try a major project.

The problem is that roleplaying projects are a lot of extra work and sometimes don't produce a lot of worthwhile results. Restrictions can breed creativity, sure, but sometimes they're just limiting. Roleplaying a character who never moves, for instance, is certainly possible but probably not a lot of fun, unless you really like sitting in a chair in-game while you sit in a chair in real life.

So while I'm not kicking off my own little project just yet (it would take time away from my latest round in Choose My Adventure, and that would be terrible), I thought it'd be a good idea to look at how to create and work within a project so that the experience is a fun break rather than an oppressive fun-sucking nightmare. Hopefully, even if it doesn't work out, you can at least have some fun with the concept.

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