I’m afraid that I just have to face it. The RP can suck a lot. So the game stopped being much fun, and so I tried turning to what I liked so much about it: RP.

After a few weeks in EVE Online I came back and realized what makes this game so RP unfriendly. You may think, “isn’t RP made by the players?” Well, it is, but it’s the system that limits them more often that it enables them – in any game – it’s only a question of how much. And so desperately trying to get something done, I realized I could only name a few roleplayers whom I had a good time with by now.

So this is a kind of guide, or list, of what is wrong with RP in World of Warcraft from the game’s point of view. Of course, the people are a different thing and I will touch on that too, but this is mainly about the game itself.

The mechanics won’t let me kill or be killed by the same people I RP with
The game has faction based warfare. The Alliance and the Horde. They can only kill the other side. Only. The side they don’t RP with.

But consider this. When I talk to people, I may sometimes make enemies, just as I will make friends. In that case, I may want to kill them. Actually, sometimes I really wanted to kill them. Strangle them to death.

And so usually fights are resolved as emote dueling, rather than actually trying to fight it out, as duel are not allowed in cities. It’s usually silly things, and they all too often end up in drama on either side, which means they go out of character to point that out.

Four out of five fights inside the RP hubs I reckon would have some element of going out of character.

So I find myself at a loss of tools to play out my character without a terribly headache.

Carebear players
They sometimes come up with the weirdest excuses. I am not kidding. At the moment, there are several terms in the community that I don’t like.

First of all, there’s something called “being out of character”. As in, RP is something you toggle on and off when you like to. And sometimes, especially in the new expansion leveling rush, you will find that most of your friends are “currently out of character.” Sometimes when they’re “out of character”, they find it fitting to fuck around and speak out of character.

What’s the point of that? Transfer if you don’t want to RP, damnit.

The second thing I hate is “RP armor.” Say you’re a paladin, a nice guy, but your armor (the one you use for PvE) is mostly black and evil looking. Happens. What people do then is collect a different armor set, usually called “RP gear”, and pretend that’s their usual armor, except it looks cool.

I’m not saying that they treat it in-character like two sets, no, they ignore the PvE set and pretend there’s only the RP set, and then they start whining about how you can’t duel them because they’re “wearing their RP gear and they will lose.”

Yes, that’s the point. When you wear armor that isn’t as good, yes, by right, I should be able to win, maybe because my sword can poke through your stupid tin can and kill you!. I wonder!

A complete disregard for any mechanic that you don’t like, even if it actually makes sense.

The best though, is when somebody tries to enforce the law. They don’t actually have a way to do it, they just try to get your cooperation. Sometimes it actually works. Usually nobody cares and they get offended that you’re a bad RPer and won’t respond to their “you’re under arreest!!!!1″ when what you did is likely legal anyway.

The amount of manure in the form of whining that comes out of their keyboards is sickening. They will spam general chat with “ur a bad rper!!!!”, they will speak with funny brackets around their text (like that makes speaking out-of-character any better…) and just act majorly retarded because they feel entitled. Entitled to do whatever they want or something.

RP unfriendly mechanics
You die and come back with no penalties, change your abilities completely for a certain sum of money and most PvE content is based on respawns of NPCs – some of which are named.

So raiding can’t be done more than once in character unless I either:

1. Forget it ever happened once I step out of the dungeon.
2. Pretend it never happened before.
3. Pretend we’re somewhere else.

But a raiding community I was in about half a year ago did this. And I am not kidding. We would go do Karazhan once or twice a week. Mostly because they were too stupid to do Zul’Aman, but I liked the idea of in-character raiding and so thought I’d try it.

They would pretend that all the bosses in Karazhan are resurrected on a weekly basis. Yes, resurrected. And that the Alliance gives us Badges of Justice via some teleportation after we reported kills via walky-talkies.

I am not kidding. That really was how they viewed it. It was plain stupid! Not to mention the lack of technical skill, the amount of drama mostly caused by one person and the idiotic space-warping HQ channel. So no matter where I was, I was actually in their HQ at the exact same time.

What the hell.

Battlegrounds weren’t quite a joy either except for maybe Alterac Valley, though even then, doing it a second time was out of the question. Warsong Gulch for instance is about capturing flags. Capturing flags? In-character? What do you think this is, a friendly game between the Alliance and the Horde?

All play and no consequences makes Jack a very dull boy
There really are no consequences to your actions, ever. Dying just means some broken equipment, which you will be able to repair for minor costs anyway. Murdering all the NPCs of an enemy town means nothing in terms of mechanics. You simply can’t change the universe.

I can’t own a house, I can’t be a guard, and territories never change. Talk about long meaningless grinds, battlegrounds don’t do anything and the Horde will own certain parts of the world, while the alliance will own different ones and never change except for say, Wintergrasp every two hours. The world is static.

I have to rely on people’s kindness in order to get anywhere

I can’t bump into people, I can’t shove them out of the way, and I can’t even threaten to kill them. That means, I have to rely on their kindness to cooperate with my RP style choices, in-character clashes between characters and our out of character relationship. So I want someone to move away. The only, yes only, thing I can do is ask. And if they say no – there is nothing I can do about it either.

And that is how I am subjected to others’ mercy.

They don’t really get us
It’s been said before, Blizzard doesn’t care much. The community has been asking over and over and over again to take action against griefers, OOC names and you name it. Rarely do they act on such tickets and when Jeff Kaplan was asked about RP items, this is the answer we got:

Jeff Kaplan: Well the role players, and I can tell by his name Wichdocta that he’s really into role playing, the role playing players are actually going to get a lot of items even before Wrath of the Lich King. We have a great event coming up, it is our Mid-Summer Fire Festival [...]

So there is a lot of really cool items, one of my favorite items was the Brazier of Dancing Light which is this brazier that you place down and it has this dancing figure all on fire and you can dance with her then it turns you on fire as well and it really is just a role play item but it is a fun toy for people to play with.

You can juggle torches, there is a robe that when you click on it, it sets you on fire and puts you dancing. So there is a lot of fun stuff that I think players will have and we are planning to continue that same concept – a lot of fun toys – we are looking into making for Wrath of the Lich King as well.

When RP means “dancing around a fiery figure and a robe that sets you on fire”, I guess I understand why they’re turning a blind eye: because they don’t know what we’re on about.

People don’t always roll on RP servers to RP and end up griefing
I tend to think the greatest issue is that most of the realm isn’t actually composed of just roleplayers. But also people who don’t want to have anything to do with it though hang around anyway. They don’t end up RPing, the end up not giving two shits and as I mentioned above – nothing can be done about them.