Have MMO's lost the RPG?

[@skyblade7438]

Ok, seriously, that spellbook is dope though.

[@showboateee727]

I’d like to make a few myself

[@joshxwho]

It’s so great and adorable.

[@justascarecrow6988]

is that the sword legion icon i see? Astral chain isn't forgotten.

[@somersault1123]

Fool! that is no mere spellbook. It is the Ultima Tome!

[@mojolefevre2955]

I'm more than a little bit jealous lol

[@Alyxandeyr]

My absolute favorite roleplaying experience in a standard MMORPG was in Everquest 2. I played an erudite warlock, so I was a skinny bald, robe-wearing caster who primarily dealt damage with damage-over-time. Poisons, toxins, diseases, and frost damage and the like. I wore a black robe and wore a scythe, like I was the grim reaper, and played as a wizard who was utterly insane and completely obsessed with infecting and killing the world... Until. I discovered this area, where there are group encounters of gnolls. It was a big plain filled with dozens of gnolls, in packs of four to ten. I decided to grind a bit and tried my hand at a few of the groups, and I realized that, with my character's abilities, it took me about the same amount of time to kill a group of four as it did a group of ten. My kit included multiple DoTs and about eight AoEs, with the added ability to spread my DoTs to an entire group. I refined my method to a science, and I was able to kill the groups of ten without having a tank. I would just crash against them and kill them before they killed me. Well, I accidentally pulled too many. I pulled like two or three groups, and I had around fifteen to eighteen gnolls on me, and I gave it everything I had, and I scraped by. I had just soloed, as a tankless clothy, a battle that I couldn't have soloed as a heavy armor character. And I had to go bigger. I pulled five groups. And then six. And then I pulled eight groups. I was fighting nearly thirty gnolls --twenty-eight at a time, on average-- by myself. No buffs, no tank. Just a single cackling warlock. Now, Everquest 2 had this system where, by killing certain types of enemies, you would gain rewards. After killing a hundred gnolls, you got a title. 'hunter of gnolls' or something. And every couple hundred you would get a new title or something from it. After I think five hundred, you learned to speak gnoll. I cannot explain the happy chemicals that I would get when I would check the kill counter for gnolls and watch it go up. My gameplay turned into sitting down all day and just figuring out the most efficient way to mass murder gnolls. My character began to turn from a cackling madman into a cackling, gnoll-obsessed madman. He became determined to kill all gnolls. He swore to eradicate them from the realm. I started offering powerleveling in the area, once I had gotten too high to get experience anymore. I would mentor down to a few levels underneath the gnolls in the area, and then terrify people by basically saying "hold my beer. And 'DO. NOT. MOVE.' " If so much as a single attack was thrown, if aggro was lost for even a second, I would die, and we would wipe, because there just was no way for two or three people to fight this many mobs. If I had a tank, it didn't work. I tried, and they would die too quickly, or the enemies would move out of an AoE just once, and it would be over. I would finish fights with single digit HP, but I would survive, and people would lose their minds lol But my character started to be affected. He acquired the gnolls' language. He gained notoriety. Titles were bestowed by men, and he knew that the gnolls must whisper his name as a curse. He became convinced that he was a God. But not just any God. He was the God of the Gnolls. His perception changed. He deviated from his mission of extermination. He began to rationalize that the gnolls deserved to be eradicated because of how they were, not necessarily /what/ they were. But, if he was a God, and the gnolls were his dominion, then, shouldn't he be able to change them? He spent so much time amongst the gnolls that he all but forgot how to speak Common. He would speak Gnollish and his raving, cackling rants transitioned into growling, laughing and barking. He analyzed the gnolls. Studied them. Dissected them. They became the subjects of his inquiries, and, he was determined, they would become the subjects of his dominion. He would, time and again, attempt to explain to the gnolls that he was their ruler now, and they would rebel against his rightful rule. He was convinced that this was because they did not yet see him as a gnoll. How could he rule a people if they did not see him as one of them? I killed over a hundred thousand gnolls. I can't tell you how many people I powerleveled through that area. From level 18 to level 28, in like an hour or two. But Ryntz eventually earned his prize. After leveling to well over fifty by killing enemies in a level 24 zone, he had killed enough gnolls to gain the ultimate reward for the kill counter: A flute, that, when played, cast the illusion of being a gnoll on the player. And his transformation was complete. He needed only to quash the rebellions of his unruly subjects, and he would be able to collect his people under him, first as King, and then as God of the Gnolls. I don't remember a single fucking stitch of the story of Everquest 2. But I maxed my character level by mentoring down to powerlevel people through a level 20-24 area, and I don't know if I've ever had so much fun in my life as I had, after promising players "much fun, much death, many prizes" but only if they "stay right there. Wait. I will return. Do nothing. Touch nothing. Move nowhere. Stay. Watch." And this gibbering simpleton carrying a scythe instead of a staff would run off and pull the entire fucking map back down around them. We always --always-- wiped one time. Because they /had/ to help. There was no way one mage could tank thirty enemies. This was obviously a mistake. There was no way it could be the plan. We were all gonna die. All hands on deck. But that second time, after I managed to convince them to just stand there and watch. That first successful pull, when I would just barely scrape by, and they would have gotten sometimes a level and a half in one fight, was the height of gaming for me. I have never been able to capture the lightning in a bottle that was that farming experience, but I will never forget it.

[@silentdrew7636]

That sounds amazing

[@SquareBlock5]

Beautiful story

[@ХристоМартунковграфЛозенски]

I would never have thought that there's a way to make something as dull and mind-numbing as grinding mobs such an intense character-based narrative journey. What a great story !

[@viktor.m.]

Thank you for this story, that was so great i laughed throughout. Bless

[@Dangershroom]

I roleplay as a customer fighting the evil scourge of micro transactions and pay to win mechanics by trying to find fun without their evil power of influence.

[@TheRadPlayer]

You could probably make a compelling youtube series of that, seeing how far you can get in gacha games without spending a single penny.

[@Pallamut]

Roleplaying as a pirate, yeah we get it :)

[@Miraihi]

@@TheRadPlayer You can beat all content of Genshin Impact just fine without spending anything. Beating the main campaign and all the side quests is super easy, the only challenging content in this game that requires you to min-max your available resources is the ultimate "Test your steel" Spiral Abyss dungeon (The only reward being a handful of primogems two times a month), and some of the events happening from time to time (The rewards are usually pretty good).

[@zoron8952]

Personally I have no problem with in game purchases as long as it's cosmetic and reasonably priced. Then again it can backfire when games like adventure quest 3d have barely any stat gear and more useless costumes than anything else to provide an illusion of gear diversity

[@katziliaf]

Lol, same

[@ezekielgarcia746]

This video made me realize why I can spend countless hours in skyrim building the character my way, using the weapons I want and completing side quests but I cannot spend 10 hours on a mmorpg and usually just quit before really getting anywhere

[@toptiertech7291]

Because you are stuck in your own mind?

[@DrPotatoPerson]

This video has 100% summarised why I play mmos and even other semi-cooperative games solo. A couple of my friends were big WOW players, they convinced the rest of us to try it out. I really enjoyed my time exploring the world, doing the quests, but I never actually got to play with them because I wanted to read each piece of dialogue, talk to all the people there were to talk to, while they were all powerleveling according to memorized checklists of what to do at what level. For them, they were trying to get us all to the good bit where we'd get to enjoy what they loved about the game. But for me, they were skipping the good bit. None of them tried to guilt me for it though. We all knew that's just how I wanted to play, but it wasn't the same way as them, so we didn't end up playing it together.

[@CHEFPKR]

The last campaign I played was as a Chaotic Neutral Thief/Rogue in the Royal Guard. I only killed when necessary and stole when necessary. It was a blast to really make those decisions feel super heavy for myself and my group. Role-playing is awesome.

[@pelinoregeryon6593]

The last game I played I had a CE Elf in a party of good players. You can imagine how that went, or maybe not, because it went quite well. The DM was naturally worried about party cohesion so the way I sold it to him was "OK he's CE but even CE characters can have friends & family they care about & he's not stupid, he knows he can't really survive most dungeons alone & he's bright enough to plan for the future & understand the benefits of trustworthy allies, lets just say he never breaks his word to them or tries to harm them but everyone else is fair game, just say he's a bit insane if that helps explain it for you" Caused a whole other problem for the DM he hadn't considered, that alignment freed me up to act on my best guess & simply try to murder our guide when I concluded he was probably leading us into traps, nearly broke the DMs storyline with that one because he wasn't supposed to die then, failed, the other players stopped him, wouldn't believe me/him (my character) & tied him up so he couldn't try again, didn't untie him until after the DM gave me my 'I told you so' moment when he did the guides reveal as planned. One of the most fun characters I ever played, an otherwise CE Elf who never broke his word to those he self-identified as family :)

[@ugurtepe8690]

@@pelinoregeryon6593 rn im playing tiefling bard that has +9 on deception and our gm lets us use passive skills that we are profficent by our jobs, so i got 19 deception roll guaranteed. Now as my bards character, he always lies, he sees that deceiving people, or elves, dwarves, dragons, animals, any sentient creature is a victory againist it. Im sure one day a lie that i couldnt pass through "some being" will be the end of me but i like to see how it goes. Heres a small example ; Nakur enters a bar. He tells the barkeep that he just has 3 silver pieces but hell pay the 2 when he gets paid in morning while holding back a bag with 450 gold coins. Then he takes a sip of his drink, its absolutely disgusting but tells the barkeep that this is the best beer he ever had, checks his eyes to see a glimmer to acknowledge he tricked him. Then most beautiful lady sits near him (18 charisma out of 20) as she openly shows that shes interested in him. Ladies being his sexual preferences, he says "naa im not that kinda guy." and charms the men who was sitting next to him. He tells the man to pay for a room and they go upstairs. He says hes only into the wildest stuff and persuades the guy to bind the guy to the bed and blindfold him. Then he takes his 5 gold coins from his pocket and jumps out of the window, goes near the forest to sleep under a tree.

[@tedferkin]

Must say, can't see that working well. As my local groups describes CN as chaotically nutty. To us CN is a person that will do what ever they feel like at the time. They answer to noone, they don't necessarily kill for funsies, but they won't help unless there is something in for themselves.

[@realdragon]

Last session my character punched our cleric because he made deal with fiend that killed my character's brother (and for few other things). That fiend have been nuisance and cursed few of our character

[@Grimdock]

Played FF14. Had a player concert come in with lalafells and it was amazing. After that I spent a few hours hanging out with some dudes while we "drank up" and headed out to a chocobo race after. I can tell you its real. EDIT: Seeing you guys with awesome stories like this is really making me happy :)

[@runawaygemm5397]

I think some Minecraft servers have stuff like that too, even like 2b2t where it’s all chaos people still get together and do stuff that widely affects the world and the history they’ve created

[@OsirisGrimoire]

In ESO my brother and I would clear out Dolmens and start playing instruments using it as a stage, then a few of the randos would come up and join the band while the rest danced below

[@hkoizumi3134]

For the first time I joined a night club made by talented ex DJ in FFXIV. He made his FC mansion to be a giant night club where everyone was dancing. He even stream it in twitch. It's an amazing thing I have never thought of doing in game. I know this isn't a traditional RP but damn, being able to do that in a fantasy game is really weird and awesome.

[@vanyel_etc8695]

I'm a mythic wow raider and esports player, but I often find myself in limsa lominsa sitting by someone on an instrument enjoying the gorgeous music they make, or walking past a group of people sitting together who are all in the same guild and I wonder what they're saying to each other. The problem isnt that players "lost" the rpg. It's that games stopped incentivising it. Ff puts active development time into so much meaningless beautiful shit like instruments and player housing and that incentivises us to enjoy those things. Wow doesn't put any developmental time into any of that, so players don't feel like that's what they should do

[@Grimdock]

@@vanyel_etc8695 I think its the immersion. The fact in FF is players have more freedom to move around, music to play, food to cook; etc. It gives life to the game, and its life that you can immerse yourself in and get lost inside. It's fuckin beautiful dude.

[@3qui1i6riM]

I rerolled a new character on an RP server in wow classic and one day I was running through Org and saw a Tauren on his wolf mount just slowly RP walking along. I stopped and chatted with him for a while and asked him what he was doing and he said that his wolf, who he had named (I’ve forgotten the name unfortunately), was just wanting to go for a walk. He explained that he walked his wolf every day and I told him that that was really cool and I did a /pat and told the wolf that she was a good girl, wished them well, and then went on with my day. This happened over a year ago and I still remember it. RP servers are the best!

[@anvos658]

The wolf wasn't wanting to go for a walk it was hoping its large cow would find something to kill it so it could have steak dinner. Sadly he spent the day RP walking in safety.

[@jasonnchuleft894]

One of the most fun adventures I had in Final Fantasy XI was roleplaying as a Blue Mage absolutely obsessed with .. Blue mage superiority. When he was looking for a party he didn't recruit other classes. Any role needed to be filled with Blue Mages. So in the beginning it was a hard and lonely journey. After a while however this approach due to some strange coincidence attracted some purely mechanical players as well. They wanted to explore the Blue Mage as a class and its viability as part of the meta. So we adventured together and soon we formed a static. The static grew into a shell(guild) consisting entirely of heavily specialized Blue Mages. Initially I wanted my character to have an arc where the struggles broadened his world view and let him see the value in working with other classes. The adventure however turned out different than I could have ever predicted and I had an absolute blast while it lasted. The dungeon runs were pure epicness and we probably did a few things the devs would never in their wildest dreams have considered a viable strategy not to mention we found some rather funky bugs along the way. In the end even the most hardcore of the meta players in our shell admitted they had more fun than they usually had playing the game.

[@The_MightyJingles]

Well this is all very interesting but I what I'm sure most of us really want to know is how did Rob Stark get a job presenting videos on KZbin?

[@JoshStrifeHayes]

Winterfell was gone, sister killed the night king, felt like the right time.

[@Runescapevidproducer]

@@JoshStrifeHayes your accent... I can’t put a finger on it. I’d guess somewhere north of London. But not the savage lands that is the North East of England.

[@JoshStrifeHayes]

@@Runescapevidproducer pretty much correct :)

[@Runescapevidproducer]

@@JoshStrifeHayes it’s the way you pronounce words with U’s that gave it away, love your content btw!

[@Runescapevidproducer]

@WhatsCrackinPlayer I say this as a fellow northerner myself. Only a northerner is allowed to slate the north.

[@lesterduncan9845]

My First MMO was WoW. I was playing a human paladin. Don't remember his name. A friend and I were just south of Goldshire when we ran into a Roleplayer. While I'm not a roleplayer outside of DnD, it was a great interaction. We were trying to give him directions while in character to help keep his immersion....which was easier said then done XD

[@jamescampbell720]

you don't even have to be an RP player per say, just the older MMO's didnt have all the player aids. In original WoW you had to actually read the quests etc. to have any clue what was going on. and when you read it, it was something to the effect of "find timmy, hes somewhere in Kalimdor" not very specific, and there were no dots on the map to tell you exactly where to go. You had to read quests, and talk to other players and help each other.... thats what aided in the immersion and RP for me. Now these kids have so many addons and shit that they are basically playing a single player game surrounded by other people. its just not the same.

[@acolyte1951]

@@jamescampbell720 Can you tell me more examples of how oldschool gameplay enhanced the RP/Immersion indirectly? I'm asking this for research purposes.

[@user-bo6vy5eg8g]

@@acolyte1951 Not James, but if you wanted to go find Timmy in Kalimdor in a classic MMO, you'd go hunt him down, maybe follow clues of things Timmy dropped. If you wanted to find Timmy in a modern MMO, you'd follow the bright yellow arrow. What's more immersing?

[@acolyte1951]

@@user-bo6vy5eg8g Obviously manually tracking Timmy. But doesn't the method/journey of finding Timmy determine the immersion? For instance, if the only clues were in obscure locations around a specific area with little to no hinting, then I'd rather follow a bright yellow arrow since it wouldn't be annoying and time consuming. Thanks for the reply, what you said does make sense and is helpful for my research.

[@MrJokerX69]

@@acolyte1951 .mj

[@Frawracopter]

In eso, I was doing my usual playthrough as a mechanical character. Then I seen a group of RP'ers, so I decided to watch them as they walk to a desert bandit camp. I just so happened to have a goblin form and thought to myself Ill use this just incase I get caught. After watching a while they noticed me peeking from behind a rock. I ran and they gave chased. Eventually I found myself surrounded, I would throw rocks at them. After that I was invited to their castle as a guest. I arrived to a proper dinner party with titled mages and nobles. All dressed for the occasion. When I arrived I would hide at first just to get the read of the room. after a while I got into things like jumping on tables to eat, or set traps down to "catch prey" and throw rocks at strangers that wasnt already there. I was surprised that the group seemed to really enjoy this chaotic goblin in a fancy place. Months later the leader disbanded the group. That was a fun surprise that I won't forget.

[@realdragon]

i played goblin in DnD, I refuse to believe there's other way to play goblin than being chaotic

[@mattf967]

When I first started playing ESO, I wanted it to be just like every other ES game I'd played and in every other ES game I played an Argonian Battlemage who used heavy armour, alteration and restoration while also picking pockets. The problem I had was that my brother had joined the Daggerfall Covenant and while I fixed it easily by just buying that one thing that lets you ignore that, I also decided I had to explain my character. Thus was born Hetuk Memuni (Yes I thought I was clever) an Argonian thief forced out of his homeland by his endless crime sprees taking shelter in the Daggerfall Covenant. His talent came from the things him being fascinated by the thing's he stole since his first proper set of heavy armour and staff he used was stolen from an NPC. I then steal a sword and decide fuck it, I'll use sword skills for when my magicka runs out and have it be that he self taught swordsmanship entirely because he stole a cool sword and wanted to use it. He was far from meta since he didn't get the magicka regen buff of cloth armour and his points were spread out pretty liberally but he was generally quite tanky, able to defend himself and great at pumping out healing since my brother had ended up making me a special set of heavy armour that buffed my magicka. The group I was playing in was great (mostly) because they didn't mind I was off-meta because they were just glad to have a healer since they otherwise had 2 tanks and a wizard and we decide to go through some dungeons because we really enjoyed them. Then we encounter this one boss a Necromancer with a tonne of corpses around him that he'd resurrect throughout the fight and so our game plan was, 1 tank takes the Necromancer, 1 tank distracts the zombies while the wizard blasts and I keep the tanks alive. This didn't work because there were too many zombies and we got overwhelmed but we noticed the zombie's health was really low so we suggest the wizard use's his AoEs to kill the zombies and the tanks would just whittle down the necromancer. The Wizard's response was to insult me repeatedly about the fact my build was off-meta and shit and that I was dragging the entire team down and that it was my fault he died (and not the fact he let himself get surrounded by zombies and then refused to move once surrounded, meaning I just couldn't outheal the damage he was taking). He said that I'd have perfectly been able to heal him if I just wore cloth armour when in reality I never ran out of Magicka, I just physically could not cast the healing spell fast enough to keep up with the dozen or so zombies beating him to death. We managed to convince him to try the other plan and it was working great up until the point he just decided that I could kill the zombies because he wanted to go kill the necromancer despite the fact I was a dedicated healer who just happened to be tough and we died again. He then proclaimed me useless and shit because my combat skills were terrible despite me 'speccing into them' (I just had armour skills and a high sword level) and we ended up quiting that dungeon. That Wizard is the reason I stopped playing ESO because even if you can prove to a 'Meta Player' that your build being off-meta isn't the problem, they just won't believe you. On a better note though, Hetuk still had a great time like how I decided to make him a god-tier chef entirely because fishing reminded him of home but then he had the problem of too much fish so he needed something to do with them all. There was also the time I couldn't afford a horse but everyone else in the group had one so they agreed to ride alongside a river so I could use the Argonian's increased swimming speed to keep up.

[@Amoreyna]

This isn't so much as people being meta-slaves, or in a different group, but more towards the fact that people refuse to take responsibility for when they fail and/or learn what is going on around them. And it doesn't matter if you personally are following the best build or not - it's always going to be your fault when they kill themselves. While I typically prefer melee and run tanks, I have spent a good amount of time as a healer and it's what I like to play in many PvP scenarios. The amount of times people have run off and died to stupid so fast that even my fastest heal couldn't go off before they splatted is immense, along with the rage of ' You suck healer, you totally should have been able to keep my squishy ass alive in a 1 v 15 fight'. While it can be funny, it's also draining to have to deal with these players. There's a disconnect for too many that just because you have the meta doesn't mean you're good. It's not going to save you from a death mechanic, it doesn't mean you can ignore everything around you. I've seen a lot of fail with people raging at everyone else, especially people who aren't set up in the most optimal way when in reality the problem was caused by that player themselves because they didn't know what they were doing. MMOs in general have helped to foster this mindset more - fast, fast, fast, go, go, go, everything's easy, if you need help you're stupid, go watch a video noob, you suck. It's an attitude that's been festering more and more, especially since people seem to feel that end game content should just go down and how dare the group wipe. While rarely directed at me, I've seen enough of it go to other players who aren't doing anything wrong and it makes me shy away more and more from MMOs in general.

[@TheKazragore]

People like that Wizard are the reason I stopped playing League of Legends. Fuck winning if its just going to be another chore. Thats not fun. Winning is only fun if the journey was _also_ fun and unfortunately League's journey each game stopped being fun. It's part of the reason I don't play MMOs. I like to explore gameplay and find weird combinations.

[@OlafJorigson]

@@Amoreyna Tbh, if you ask me and I know, I am not the meta player or anything of the standard: If you die, its completely your own fault. I know thats hard to get (especially for me, because I play games like League of Legends and its always easier to blame everyone else for losing. Its really hard to stop that.), but thats how you will appreciate supports way more. Because in my opinion, I can't be thankful enough for players being supports and helping in dungeons. Most of the time, being support, is not the funniest thing to do. Its not very flashy, you don't do big moves and your skill won't get recognized that much. So, again, from my perspective, whenever a support joins a group of mine and gives buffs and heals, I am very thankful to that person, because it is not common.

[@Elurdin]

If you ignore dungeons ESO can still be amazing Elder Scrolls experience. Without names above their had other players mesh into game as if they were npcs and ESO usually doesn't release obnoxious skins that glow like crazy like GW 2 do. Personally Id say for me out of all mmos ESO is indeed the most RPG one. You build your character the way you want, maps scale in a way that let you do that.

[@Violins77]

100% agree with this. No one is forcing anyone to do vet trials, and a ton of fun can be had exploring, doing quests and making your own adventure!

[@lydiacolvin4192]

My very first MMO was Everquest 2. My boyfriend introduced me to it in college so I could spend some time with people and feel a little less lonely. Until this video, I didn't realize that the reason I loved that game in the time that I played it heavily, and the reason I can't dive into any others, is that I am more roleplay-focused. I created a whole backstory for my main character, decorated a whole house and peppered in pieces of her personal lore, completed whole quest lines just to flesh out her journey... Sadly, I never found a group that did much of this. Soloing it was fun for a while, but it eventually felt hollow. No one else was in on it. Before I realized how much I hated it, I let some more mechanically-minded players power-level my character. That drained her of all life, and made it harder to get back into the game. Your comment that it is important to find people with your playstyle for groups was a good one, too. I am still extremely reluctant to join public groups in MMOs because of one time I grouped with someone who clearly cared more about numbers. I didn't perform up to their expectations because I was roleplaying, and I got berated and dropped from the group for it. I thought I was just weird, that I was playing wrong, but it turns out that there are players like me out there! This video has inspired me to find a new MMO and just try to play how I want, at whatever pace that may be. Don't worry about hindering anyone or not being the best, just roleplay. So happy I found this video, thank you!

[@jamescampbell720]

This mental lore is what I enjoy with single player RPG that I stuggle to find in MMOs

[@moonmun]

NGL, my choice for that 1st question was Healer only cos I was already thinking that maybe there's some reason behind such default actions and maybe they're hiding something! Character Development let's go! Also, roleplaying is honestly such a fun thing to do in games. Even if you don't actively search for the RP w/ RPers, it's already fun if you end up thinking of backstories and headcanons in your head.

[@Slynkee88]

I'm one of those players that doesn't lean 100% toward either mechanical or roleplay player, finding a balance of the two instead

[@GepardoS666]

This. Yes.

[@yahyamusseb]

Oblivion offered that and they killed it

[@neron93939]

If a video game separates game mechanics and role-playing, it is not a role-playing game.

[@anvos658]

This, rpg vs mechanics isn't an either or unless your on the top meta or hard core role play ends of the player spectrum. Personally I've always found it best too have a character's backstory more be about how you see them reacting to the scenarios the game's story puts them in rather than trying to pretend the story conforms to your role play.

[@ghoulas]

I think RP is still a thing in RP communities. I never roleplayed in MMORPG i prefer table top live RP to do this. MMORPG are more of a social game to ineract with players instead of in-game characters. The focus for me is more on the person than the chara he's playing.

[@aeravan]

yeah, that's pretty much it from my experience, too. but as long as the social interaction stays I am fine with the limited roleplay in MMOs. that's why I play FFXIV because a lot of people like to just hang out and spam emotes or invite you to their house to show off their creation. I wouldn't call it RP, it's more like RP Lite, but it can be really refreshing to have a chat with a rando while doing something else with the characters

[@ghoulas]

@@aeravan Social aspect Is the best thing in MMORPG's, sadly we get that less and less :D

[@doubtful_seer]

I’d like to do table top RP, however I have no friends and I must cry

[@SiisKolkytEuroo]

For me, the "plot" or "story" of RuneScape is "explore the world, have an adventure, do what you want, train the skills you feel like doing, meet new people and make friends"

[@Grogeous_Maximus]

You can always roleplay in the community, sure, but that's not the same as the game itself having RPG mechanics. Disco Elysium is like a noir Monkey Island game loaded with RPG mechanics. Many MMOs are just Multiplayer games (Massive or not) with few RPG mechanics.

[@jeff581]

I met my fiance through roleplay in SWTOR about 5 years ago, we still do roleplay from time to time through D&D and text documents and are getting our first apartment together in two weeks!

[@kazumablackwing4270]

Swtor definitely has solid roleplaying potential.. especially if you're in a diverse group (i.e. one of each core class). In that way, there's the main quest for that area, as well as each individual's tasks that need to be done while there

[@TheFrostedfirefly]

Congratulations!! It's always super pleasant to hear the stories that changed people's lives thanks to them just doing what they love. It really shows that you don't need to conform to what's "optimal" to get the most out of something, since the most successful people in MMOs are people like you who have managed to embrace the social side that MMOs were inherently created for.

[@Aine_Evergreen]

My buddy who got me into FFXIV (who’s like the last guy I expected to RP) now regularly roleplays a fortune-teller in Limsa (and got me to play his underpayed skeptic bodyguard), its so fun to just spend an hour or two just having funny interactions with other players after a busy day grinding levels, thats time we COULD spend Raiding, Questing, or Crafting, and we love doing all that, but sometimes its just really nice to chill, I think its the main reason that, after two solid months of playing (I just finished SHB 5.0), I haven’t felt even the slightest hint of burnout like I do with other games.

[@timothyraffertyjr2126]

So D&D 3.5e , I was in a party of 6 people , most of them were min/max style players just taking a concept to the highest numbers possible , we had one power gamer who just, all the damage all the time, so being fairly proficient with the mechanics of the game , having an understanding of what the party composition was I decided to focus entirely on roll play , let them do the numbers I want to play out something creative. I made O’Rielly McFlinigan the Rock Flinging Ranger! (A level 4 ranger Gnome) I used a sling (David and Goliath style), rode on a majestic St Bernard with the barrel of alcohol dangling off her collar (this was how I kept up with the groups movement speed) this beautiful majestic old dog was retired from the “stables” and became my loyal companion , I had a “pet rock” that was my ammo for my sling as I would go out of my way to find my rock after every use , the role play aspect was so complete I even spent valuable skill points in performance “play flute badly” annoying my team when I took the phrase “it’s too quiet” literally and started playing hot cross buns really badly , I didn’t use spells that the ranger had access too I instead used saddle bags filled with marbles, would pull cords opening the bags spilling marbles everywhere causing enemies (and sometimes ally’s) to trip and fall down , I didn’t accept coin as payment as O’Rielly just wanted to have fun and collect shiny objects , the party loved the character but began feeling like they were missing something in their own, I didn’t do much damage, I didn’t use half of what the class could do, yet I was taking out baddies , solving problems, and having so much fun, that eventually the numbers driven players stopped focusing on numbers and feats and skills and just started playing for the fun of it, the whole games mood shifted to lighter and more fleshed out characters with just enough numbers focused on to make the whole thing viable , anyway I just wanted to share as the rogue story sounded so interesting, love your channel Josh! Keep up the great content and I look forward to more videos from you!!!

[@Tall_Order]

This is also why I like when a MMO gives you the ability to replace the appearance of a piece of equipment. Preferably give me a second character sheet tab for appearance items. If I want to be a man wearing peasant clothes carrying to board with nails in it, I should be able to do that without this equipment sucking.

[@johndipietro9301]

Glam/transmog is a huge tool for RP, 100% agree.

[@Tall_Order]

@@johndipietro9301 Transmog is one way sure, but I've noticed the MMOs that have that generally charge gold to convert the appearance of the items. its fine if you can afford it but not so much if you can't. I prefer having a second character sheet for appearance items, similar to how its done in EQ2. If you find a nice looking tunic that has terrible stats, you can drag it to an appearance slot. It overrides the appearance of whats in the regular slot. No charge.

[@johndipietro9301]

Ah, see, I'm only familiar with FFXIV's system, which is all sorts of broken but ultimately costs nothing out of game for usage (and is really easy to get resources for in game). You can either glam an item onto another compatible item with a prism or put it in a dresser with a prism to create plates with (which can then freely change all applicable items, assuming level/role restrictions are respected). There's a TON of logistical issues, but the actual use of the system is easy and free IRL

[@Tall_Order]

@@johndipietro9301 Glad it hear FF14 doesnt charge for that. WoW did. lol

[@johndipietro9301]

@@Tall_Order Good to know... yeah, as jank as it is, using it is free. Certain ITEMS may cost money, but the number of items in the online store is a drop in the bucket compared to what you can find, buy, earn, or make in-game.

[@lateknight4754]

i have always enjoyed levelling up more than end game, although apparently I'm supposed to hit max level in an hour these days so maybe the rp is dead

[@Gloomdrake]

Man, the meta can just heck off. I don't wanna be good if it means using characters I don't like and equipment that looks ugly

[@boilingtreeofexcitabledrea1368]

I'm with you on that one. Ultimately, it made me quit WoW because I could never finish the main story of the expansions due it always being locked behind raids and the required gear grind was wholly unenjoyable to me. That along with learning the meta and abiding by it religiously was so far from what I played the game for: An adventure in a fantastical world where you occasionally join up with other adventurers to take down foes. Instead it became homework.

[@Noface121]

@@boilingtreeofexcitabledrea1368 I just do LFR and use minimal gear. It's not too bad.

[@protectordraco]

I’m definitely one of the more role play focused players. One of my current favorite quirks for my character is his obsession with making plushies. He does the sewing crafting in game and loves making them to sell to friends and others. His room in the in game house I have is even filled with plushies he’s made and a background he uses to take pictures to sell them.

[@zeilke5361]

That sounds cool, but I could see a faux-style hoarders episode revolving around your character xD.

[@randomusernameCallin]

How do you role play in the game play?

[@knightwolf4612]

@@randomusernameCallin Chat functions with other freinds and strangers. Glamor system where the item is changed into another item via another item to make it look as such. Using emoji's, stances and other aesthetics related to in game social systems.

[@coreywhite4073]

Sounds gay

[@geofftottenperthcoys9944]

wow, so sad.

[@dmbstash4119]

You say "Lost" but I don't think most MMO games ever really had what you are talking about in terms of the tabletop version of "RP" in MMORPG. Even the most story-focused MMOs like FFXIV are more of the "JRPG" school of design, with a linear pre-determined storyline that the player journeys through. Even in its peak, WoW never put its storyline or narratives in general at its forefront, and I'd argue that has never been what players come away from the experience thinking about or remembering years later. The player must go well out of their way and put a significant effort into focusing on the RPG element in these games, and consciously stop themselves from falling into the intuitve natural rhythm of going from Level 1 to the end, and take in the story that was just meant as a thread to connect a series of locations the player goes through. Also, it's somewhat of a false dichotomy to break the category down into 2 halves -- one being fully story-driven vs. the other being fully stat/mechanically driven. The character stat development and mechanically driven nature of the game isn't really exclusive to someone who just wants to ignore story. It's more of a pillar that exists in the foundation of all RPG and MMORPG games, I would actually argue the 2 categories are Story vs. Social. Social would mean that a player seeks out and plays through a MMORPG for the benefits that can only exist in a world filled with other human players. Someone who seeks that emergent human-nature-driven environment and atmosphere which leads to gameplay that any solo RPG cannot provide. You can be a mostly 'Social" category player and still be almost always soloing, and even avoiding direct socializing too. It just means that you wanted to play a game designed around concepts/mechanics specifically catering to the cause & effect dynamics of thousands of human beings interacting in the world. I'd argue these are the 2 categories rather than Stat/Mechanics vs. Story, because Stat building is inherent to RPG games in general, and can't be avoided even for a story driven player. Social, however, can avoid Story, and Story can avoid Social, but neither of them can avoid Stat/Mechanic focus.

[@Malidictus]

This rings true. You can easily have both, and a well-designed game will let you. City of Heroes was a great example of a game with a loose setting where players could - and did - create all manner of crazy stories for their own characters. Most MMOs out there don't really facilitate that due to having a generic Fantasy setting or awful character creation or characters look defined purely by gear, or very stat-heavy end game. City of Heroes let those of us who cared squeak by on "just enough" performance to where ability choices could be story-driven, rather than mechanics-driven. I spent years refusing to take the Stamina power up until the developers made it inherent because I'd rather take things like a fire snipe or the ability to teleport across zones, as fit the character concept. You can't play an MMO without min/maxing stats to SOME extent. The game simply won't let you progress if you don't. However, some let you min/max just enough to where character concept doesn't need to be compromised. The kind of LARPing described in the video doesn't even enter into it. Next to nobody actually does this in MMOs, and the people who do only do so in sessions. The difference you propose strikes me as much more accurate. Do you play for the experience of playing with other people in a shared environment, or do you play for the experience of immersing yourself in a setting the way it's intended? This is why people "solo" in MMOs. It's entirely possible to enjoy the game and be social without ever being on the same team as other people.

[@CorpseTornado]

E V E R Q U E S T

[@Yomom12388]

I mean, I’m not an RP guy but I have friends that play WoW pretty much exactly as you’ve described. The one dude has an entire backstory for his main toon that’s basically the length of a young adult novel. Who he is, where he comes from, what his motivations are, how he met his guild mates, what deities he worships and why. Basically everything you can think of, he has covered. He loves role playing, but he also tries to maximize his DPS and he participates in the gear grind like every other WoW player, and he has a ton of fun doing it.

[@7dayspking]

'Even the most story-focused MMOs like Japanese games don't really have Role playing'. It's so wrong to extrapolate from modern MMOs as to how much Role playing MMOs 'ever' had, even worse to extrapolate from a Japanese one when the Japanese have never widely produced role playing video games, ever. No shit a Japanese MMO is going to be as far away from an RPG as you'll get. A genuine story-driven online RPG is SWOTOR developed by American studio Bioware. MMOs were around for 10 years before World of warcraft. Many of the earliest MMOs were sandbox style games and completely supported collaborative storytelling and role playing. Stat building is NOT inherent to role playing games. Many traditional (non computerized) role playing games have NO stat building. The emphasis on mechanics is something that developed in early Dungeon crawling & hack'n slash computer games that were too primitive to simulate narratives, let alone truly interactive ones that role playing games require.

[@7dayspking]

@@Malidictus Settings, character creation, difficulty & 'stat heaviness' have nothing to do with how well a game supports role playing, just how much a game restricts attempts at artificial role playing NOT supported by the game. What you're describing is nothing more than character builds and doesn't involve any actual role playing. Genuine role playing games either encourage players to directly interact and collaborate with their narratives or with other players to form stories. When as a player you feel you're forced to role play through your stats rather than how you interact with other actors (characters, players, whatever) you can tell you're not playing a game that supports role playing. Most of these MMOs are no more role playing games than JRPGs, Diablo style hack'n slash games & Looter shooters are, not at all.

[@persephassa217]

I can't thank you enough for such informative video, really. I've been a very hard mechanical MMORPG player since now - not anymore. You see, I never had the opportunity to actually roleplay with my friends, I straight up jumped into MMORPG games when I first discovered them and thus, didn't really know how to play this way. I do love Roleplaying though and just imagining ALL the amazing things I can do now is exciting. Just by using my own imagination, by immersing myself into the character I just created, by literally being able to tell my tale which REALLY happened. That's insane!! Thanks again =) Loving all of your videos

[@Lewufuwi]

I absolutely hate that in the OSRS community, there's a whole meme around spacebarring through quests. Because new players see that and then don't read quests when they might otherwise do so. I spacebarred through quests on my first few accounts and had no idea what the point of quests even were. They were boring and you just ran around clicking on NPCs. Then I actually read the quest dialogue on my later characters and got invested in the stories. Now I love Old School Runescape lore. I highly recommend to everyone playing Runescape to actually read and follow along with the stories, it makes questing so enjoyable and I love questing now. Even quests I've done 1000000x before, I still read the dialogue for the small details I forget.

[@matthewroberts4595]

Yeah, reading through all the quests on my first character to quest cape and then skip them on alts. Though they may release a quest + soon to be able to redo quests which is good for catching up on lore as well as creates speedrunning content

[@DaemonRayge]

The lore and story in RuneScape is quite nice. A very large amount of world building too. Like how in one quest, they explain how all Trolls are named after the first thing they ate. Which explains why they have all sorts of weird names like "Dad", "Burntmeat", and "Drunken Dwarf's Leg“.

[@InfiniteMonkeysSA]

Most of the quests and lore in Runescape are extremely boring and generic, though.

[@TheMusicolophile]

This is hilarious. What should be taken as a given comes across as, “Folks, you’re not going to believe this but Libraries are actually pretty fun! You know all those rectangles stuffed into other rectangles all around the inside of building? They can be picked up and read! Really folks, you’ve got to try it. You’ll never think Libraries are boring again!”

[@TheBrazilRules]

I really love the haunted house quest. It is quite the experience

[@Otacanthus]

What I feel is the difference personally, at least how I play mmos. You meet a ton of people from all different walks of life, just that they enjoy playing the same game as you. It's not as much the character, as the person behind it that's the interesting part. To see what type of fashion they have and like, how they'd like to present themselves, trough their character. And if you dig deeper, you'll see their hardships and success stories. Which is a much more real experience than another role playing character made by the same group of 8 people. So the healer that heals, who's behind that character? How did they get to that position? How does their focus on gameplay differ to yours, and why might that be?

[@1un4cy]

"I'm a pacifist." >must kill things to level up

[@Bored_Barbarian]

Runescape has a lot of skills that can be done without any combat. Lots of quests too

[@JagoDragon]

Most of the MMOs that I've played have at least one way to get experience with out killing. Most of these methods are centered around gathering of some sort or skill. One of the games I played you could level your character by using the cooking skill and become the best cook on the server.

[@mikemikemikemikemikemeup]

I think it would be cool if some of the side skills in games could level you better in mmos (I know you can do it but it’s slow). But I have a feeling that mmo creators are afraid of creating XP exploits. I feel like RuneScape has done a pretty good job at this.

[@JohnSmith-ox3gy]

Beliefs and actions can differ. A pacifist may have to defend themselves. And sometimes we act against our morals and contrary to our self-image.

[@Tory-JJ]

You've clearly never rp'ed as a pacifist if you don't think they can defend themselves when need be. It's natural for any living being to defend itself when threatened with unavoidable confrontation. Any less would be a completely unnatural, albeit ***stupid***/ILLOGICAL at best, response.

[@nathans1787]

As a role-player, the advent of RP servers was a godsend. When Everquest opened their first RP server (Firiona Vie) in 2002, it felt like coming home. That community was utterly magical, with open roleplay in the city streets, frequent guild and server roleplay events, and an incredibly lively and robust out-of-game presence on its unofficial message board, filled with stories, whit, and banter. Sadly, I've never encountered its like since.

[@eric_of_weird2776]

One of the best MMO's I've seen cater to both groups was Star Wars Galaxies. The combat folks were all about the mechanics, the stats, the gear, etc. The support folks were heavy roleplaying back in town. Each had fun and they made it so we were all vital to each other.

[@ima6pack]

I am so glad you brought this to light. As a heavy role-player, and I've felt incredibly ostracized by mechanical players in the past who act as if our play style is inferior. I do think that modern mmorpg developers should address this by perhaps creating separate servers for people based on what you like to do, creating options that allow you to choose gameplay styles when queueing up for group content, or creating content that doesn't demand players hit a certain number to get through at a reasonable pace. On a positive note, I have done a lot of RP in ESO, I was always inclined to create myself as my primary to live out my dream of being a hero in a fantasy world. My favorite guild in ESO was Mara's Embrace. We played as a holy order dedicated to Mara, the goddess of love, and I was the captain of the knights of Mara, who fought to protect the people of Tamriel from those who did evil, like daedra worshippers for example. We also had priests, mages, and rogues, each of them serving to bring Mara's love across the continent. A lot of the players were also non-combatants, opting to work as healers, laborers, and students, among many other occupations. The group regularly participated in overland RP, we used the housing creatively, and did dungeons together in a very slow, role-play heavy fashion, and everyone had their own story to tell and their own reputation within the guild. Honestly I would love to get back into it should time allow

[@KalebSmart]

I think one issue with the mechanics vs roleplay in MMOs that you kind of touched on is that in tabletop RPGs you are also rewarded much more strongly for playing creatively. As an example, being undergeared or underleveled in a gearcheck instance in WoW will end up with you wiping, but in a TTRPG, a cleverly laid trap and planning could easily incapacitate the lich in the dungeon you were sent to kill, even if you're only level 5 with 1 major magic item. I can't imagine how complex and slow an MMO with mechanics that allowed that style of mechanics would be

[@Chibi-Luka]

It was the character creative aspect that actually drew me into FFXIV. I spent several hours creating my cherecter while coming up with a bases for his story. I started in Ul'dah as a Black Mage. Which suited him because the idea was that he came from a well off background. His family had business in Ul'dah and due to a fall out with his family, had chosen to leave his old life behind and start anew as an Adventurer. I had unironically made my toon look like Haurchifant, and one day I was exploring player housing when I came across his portrait. I had thought it so cool that you could "have your own portraits", which I was wrong about, that I created his older brother semi off that. Black mage worked as my main class because the idea was that when he was young, he was the only one in his family to show to have destructive magic. Going through life as an Adventurer worked as well cause of his family background. When MSQ started to make him a famous WoL, I decided to roll that into his story as well. Having his younger brother working with others to try to find a way to get rid of him. Due to him un-ironically becoming the heir to his family's inheritance. SB is when I started to really struggle with writing the MSQ into his arc. One, the writing for the WoL was more bold and brash. The opposite of my toon. Second, a lot of the stuff they made you go along with were things he would've just flat out questioned. But aside from all that I was able to have my own fun lvling and weaving around the adventure that was set out before me.

[@KokoMakesThings]

I've been doing something similar with my WoL! I've found that I tend to seperate my character from the MSQ, and treat those more as stories that she as a bard tells about the REAL Warrior of Light. She's a bard that manages her own little drama troupe with my other roleplay friends.

[@Azural]

I thought background lore because ul’dah was half of the larger city started by survivors mhach civilization, and black magic is outlawed and practitioners were hunted down to almost extinct… only lalai and wol can use BLack magic… just like only wol and padjals can use white magic in the world due to war of the magi…

[@CharlesChaldea]

I really appreciate this video. I've been one of these types of gamer in MMOs for quite a bit, and it's always a sad story whenever I wind up in a party full of people who, understandably, don't have much of a tolerance for my lack of interest in mechanical optimization. What really gives me joy is the sense of immersion that comes from looking like I'm a part of the world. Very often, if there is a way to make myself look like an NPC, I will gravitate towards that. Uniforms are a great one; if there is a faction that has a uniform, and is one I think I'm suited to, I'll definitely try and get my hands on a uniform of theirs to stride about in. When people see me typing in area chat and have to do a double-take because, for the entire time previous to that, they thought I actually was an NPC, I am elated. It's satisfying to have achieved that level of immersion, that you are functionally camouflaged within the game world by looking like one of its inhabitants. If my character is an older one, I'll usually have them "age" with the game, using outdated equipment that served them well in their glory days, still wearing that uniform, muttering about how kids these days think new and fancy toys will make them better soldiers. (It will, funnily enough, but he's too set in his ways to put time into appreciating that, usually.) When I get to that point, though, I'll often wind up being the one giving the younger ones pointers or showing them the ropes, while leaving them enough to figure out that it replicates that feeling of the new generation surpassing the old when they get to those higher levels of mastery and optimization that I don't often aspire to. -More faction uniforms, please!--

[@somenitrogenconsumer8859]

And faction armor variants 🥹

[@twls153]

I remember years ago on Runescape (around 2011) roleplaying with a dude we were guild leaders, and our guild has a uniform (basically a specific combination of armor pieces), he was a very creative guy and we played and roleplayed for weeks until he suddenly stopped playing Runescape. I had other moments of RP on Runescape too, like Roleplaying I was a wizard who know a lot of spells, I walked everywhere with wizard cloths and a lot of runes on my inventory, so I had access to all spells possible at any moment. Roleplaying I was a revenant hunter with other players, but we were all low-levels so the revenants that was hunting us (we basically spent more time chatting and fleeing from revenants than hunting them). I'm now playing TTRPG since 2019, and what make me sad sometimes is that I don't feel Roleplaying like I did in MMORPG's, I can make good characters but when the time come to RP them, I just don't do much.

[@Semblance_of_Chaos]

22:25 lol that Lalafell slapping the Miqo'te's butt True quality roleplay right there

[@myrcellas]

AHAHAHA that’s me!

[@Aeity]

@@myrcellas Go home Dolly you're drunk :)

[@nathanfay1988]

I think it would be really neat if MMORPGs added an edit-able journal. The way it would work is that the game would fill in player names, enemies defeated, quest logs, quest story, equipment tags, and other shortcuts to help each player remember that game session. Then, allow players write in their journal about their adventures, catalog their progress, the friends they made, really reflect on their experiences. A drag and drop would let players rapidly build their story with links back to those gameworld shortcuts. The game could then save the experience and players could export their story to be shared with whomever they like

[@3qui1i6riM]

I’m not usually one to RP that much in MMOs but RP servers are **always** the best servers to roll on.

[@martinsgakke]

High five for that!! On the spot!

[@kreenbopulusmichael7205]

sucks that they always end up getting ruined by non RPers though, grobbulus was the best on classic until transfers came and now its nothing but people AFKing in SW spamming boost requests

[@MoStLy1aWaKE]

I remember just chilling on the runescape RP server just to watch the RPs. It was some of the most fun I had.

[@3qui1i6riM]

@@kreenbopulusmichael7205 Not always, but often. I think its more a symptom of high population. I played on Deviate Delight a bit too which is MUCH lower pop and it wasn't ruined at all. It was the best server I've played on in a while. Whereas Grobb, like you mentioned, did suffer from that.

[@TheAzureGhost]

Remembering back when i played WoW, PVE players rolled on RP-Servers to have better chances of world first kills and stuff as there are less "serious" pve players there.... and then they complained about those in dungeon Queues who roleplayed their characters instead of rushing for the quickest finish...

[@Mothware]

Early on, when playing Guild War 2, I ended up inventing my own RP for a couple of my characters; for my asura anyways, always had more difficulty with figuring out backstories for the other races. It turned into one of them running a news organization and I'd write articles about the game online, in the context of the character's in-world perspective. Did that for a few years and even podcasted with a friend, until getting burned out, but those times were the most fun I ever had with that game or any other MMO. Thanks for the video, it helped put my preferences into context. I'd been looking for a way to get back into GW2, so maybe a roleplay group could just be the thing I need to do that.

[@rigelestbit]

I'm not even done with the video (yet), but I can already tell you how our mmorpg guild manages the roleplay vs gameplay. We have serious roleplay events with our characters, sometimes even taking them through dungeons or high level areas for story, and we have serious farming events. If its not explicitly either, then you can goof around while grinding, or just be yourself when answering the people who roleplay as their characters in chat!

[@anudderrudder6880]

An RPG experience I have fond memories of is playing Baldur's Gate with a friend. I roleplayed an archer with bad eyesight and they roleplayed a clueless wizard with a pet ferret that told them to do terrible things. Good times.

[@TheBadassTonberry]

That sounds hilarious

[@ad-skyobsidion4267]

Aims for foot accidentally gets a crit headshot

[@Weiswolfe]

@@ad-skyobsidion4267 wait, wait wait wait, how does that even work lmao

[@Kylesico912x]

@@Weiswolfe Ricochet

[@DeceiverIX]

Yo that's awesome!

[@Ralkern]

It's funny, despite playing tabletops when i got introduced to MMO's it was always as a mechanical game. It took until many years later when i played space station 13 that i truly understood how fun roleplaying over optimal play can be. SS13 Rant: When i first played SS13 i joined a server as a 19yo lawyer with a smoking problem, it seemed like something fun to do. So one of the first things i did was go looking for somewhere to find a smoke. This lead me to a vendor that sold smokes, however when i attempted to buy one i got the message: Warning, underage purchase attempt, a warrant has been sent. This confused me for a bit until i ran into the stations head of security, who promptly told me i had a warrant, that he was gonna ignore it and that i should get someone to buy smokes for me. While i was looking for someone to buy my smokes for me i ended up running into a security guard who immedietly beat me up and pulled me to jail, since the head of security evidently hadnt removed my warrant. The point of this story is that all of this together fully immersed me into a character only represented by a 16x16 sprite and some basic clothing. Roleplaying in games can truly be magical if you can just find a community that can be part of your experience.

[@SeppelSquirrel]

I agree, community is really important. There are, in fact, still plenty of highly active text-based roleplaying communities out there, from horror worlds, to surreal landscapes, to cyberpunk, to a billion generic fantasy settings. "MUSH" (Multi-user Shared Hallucination) is a genre of game where roleplaying is king and sometimes you roll dice for your skills. Here are a few good ones: Arx: After the Reckoning - Lords and Ladies fantasy. Spirit Lake - Stranger Things in a fantasy setting. Gray Harbor - It's like X-Files with vampires. Savage Skies - 1920s Nazi-punching with airplanes. The Network - If The Truman Show were multiplayer. "RPI" (Roleplay Intensive) is like a MUSH, but most skill checks are performed by the game automatically, and there are some coded systems to automate some game elements. Here are a few good ones: Sindome - Cyberpunk dystopia. Armageddon - Fantasy dystopia. Be very careful around any World of Darkness games you may find. Very few of them have a healthy game policy or staff. I'd also recommend against TI:Legacy or Castle Marrach for similar reasons.

[@hanzo5q]

Back when Burning Crusade first came out. my very first interaction with roleplay happened...completely on accident. I was young, i dont remember how young but i believe i was still in elementary school. My mom got me an account and i started playing as a night elf rogue. But when i reached level 8, i went to the main city of Darnassus, and saw someone with a pet. I thought that was really cool! so i asked them how i got a pet, and they told me i had to play a hunter. So i did just that! I deleted my character on the spot, and remade him as that hunter. But...He had the same name, the same look, everything. I essentially just made him change his profession. I wanted to keep the character because i spent time with him, i liked how he looked. I feel that even if this was unintentional, its still similar enough to roleplay, because i became immersed and attatched to the character. i wanted to be him with a cool crab pet. To this day i still invoke in RPG elements in just about every game i play. I usually have two ways of playing, the mechanical where i just. play the game. And the RPG version where im actively just exploring the game, hanging out with other likeminded folk. I enjoy this immensely. and ask that everyone give it a try for just a little bit. as Josh said too

[@tazbom2470]

That's always the best way to play any game. Put yourself in the shoes of your character and everything gets better. A mundane escort quest becomes a story of you and your new friend in need bonding and fighting your way out of the orc infested caves. The only better thing is rping with other players which I'd always suggest everybody to try out

[@BusterXlistaBOTRA]

@@tazbom2470 just dont talk to people about it because it can sound very cringy

[@FlamespeedyAMV]

@@BusterXlistaBOTRA very

[@tazbom2470]

@@BusterXlistaBOTRA Thanks but I'm good. I don't feel insecure about my hobby

[@YTRattle]

I actually stopped playing MMORPGs for this very reason. I just wanted to enjoy my character and explore the world and get lost in my head for why my character is riding up the snowy mountains at the dead of night. And I did do that for a long time. And then I would inevitably hit 'end game' and it all flipped on its head and suddenly all I had were raids and dungeons and all the fun quests and interesting things to do were all gone. DC Universe Online actively gives you the option to skip the early game content and jump straight into the end game. I actually did this, and I instantly started a new character. I wanted the struggle and story; I honestly didn't give a damn about the optimization or 'epic battles' I wanted to go on a journey with my character. Thanks for this brilliant video and sorry about the long post! ♥

[@zomgl2pnoobffs]

I was a member of a RP server and guild back in early WoW. It wasn't either/or. We played the mechanical game and got the gear so that we could unlock the content (because otherwise you just can't) but then we invented and improvised roleplay stories based on those experiences, or just made up stuff about how we'd come by the gear. Good group RP is like improv theatre! We had a lot of fun.

[@SirBanana1992]

from my experience in MMOs, it seems far easier to perform short term roleplay than in-depth due to how many immersion breaking mechanics can occur. I've roleplayed for a night when I found another Nord in ESO that looked almost exactly like mine down to the minute detail and we acted like long lost brothers who found each other, drank mead, laughed, made racial remarks about other in-game races, etc. My friend roleplayed as a daedric prince of chicken strips and spread teachings of chicken strip love across multiple zones as me and another friends were his disciple. Fun memories to be made for a short time but hardly roleplaying experiences that can be upheld over time as game/life events occur that get in the way. I have created characters that I intend to use to go through the story making choices that I think would reflect their personality but I know intuitively that I will never fully experience their character with other players around and in-game limitations that can go against their flow. So while I wish I had the freedom to make all the choices they would make, I am forced to adapt to the circumstances of the game. Maybe my character would sooner kill someone than help them, but that NPC is not targettable. Maybe my character would fight dragons but there is no scenario available within their game decisions that could possibly lead them into that situation.

[@TS-LordPhrozen]

I would say that MMORPGS do have a session 0 if you have friends... Our group always pre-plans our class/race setup. Which by comparison you'd also need some freinds to have a game of D&D. If we're, you know, trying to be objective here. I'd say the MMORPG is more akin to showing up to a D&D Adventurer's League event where you're thrown into a party with some other randos.

[@zippydipity42]

Exactly, and if you get your playgroup setup before starting the game, like you would in D&D, then people will have the same objective. D&D would have the same issue if you were matchmade randomly.

[@finallychangedmyname3614]

Reasons to roleplay: you can make your character Taquito Bandito

[@Matt_the_pirate]

Reasons not to roleplay: the name Taquito Bandito is probably taken already.

[@Eralealea]

Your videos make me have the weirdest realisations. I wouldn't call myself a roleplayer and I have never participated in tabletop games or roleplay forums, but "roleplaying" is apparently how I play my MMO these days. I stopped chasing the meta years ago (it's expensive p2w and the powercreep is bad) and just went full customization. Nowadays all my playtime is spent dressing up my alts, decorating their houses/gardens, and giving them weird hybrid skillsets, e.g. one's a pyromaniac with various fire skills across multiple classes, one's a sharply-dressed bard-slasher, one's a (male) elf who only wears pretty skirts and high heels etc. Most of them carry brightly-coloured weapons that are only suitable as ornamentation. I still have a main character who has maxed out all classes when I'm needed in raids and other end-game party content, but I tell people that her main class is "dye merchant" because making and selling dyes is how I fund this ridiculous fashionista play style. Sometimes I go weeks without touching any of the combat-based content. Still don't think I'm a roleplayer, but I might link this video the next time I have to explain my play style to someone.

[@sexylexy22100]

Uh no that pretty much makes you a role player honestly if you like acting or building your own story you should probably go try a few table top rpgs

[@sexylexy22100]

Because there's no better time to be had than sitting around a table dying from laughter as your friend dose something contradictory to their personality in service of the in joke that only the people your playing with will ever get

[@7dayspking]

None of the things you described is really role playing and role playing itself isn't really supported by the majority of MMOs, to the extent that it's not possible within the game's mechanics and content and is simply something artificial players have to do entirely within their own heads. Multiplayer role playing is only really possible in sandbox games and singleplayer role playing only in genuine singleplayer role playing games designed specifically for players to role play. Role playing is about characters NOT builds.

[@7dayspking]

@@sexylexy22100 They never mentioned acting or building a story. Just customizing and building their stats & gear.

[@sexylexy22100]

@@7dayspking just a recommendation if they like those things if not ignore recommendation

[@ZekeRaiden]

One of my favorite roleplay moments came back in Wrath of the Lich King, when I was still an active WoW player. I was in an RP guild, we did events, had in-character guild meetings, etc. I played Abraxxis, a draenei death knight specifically made for *defying* all the dumb cliche DK characters you'd see (half of them were emotionally-broken fountains of tears and melodrama, and the other half were _secretly evil and so amazing at hiding their TWISTED WICKEDNESS from these FOOLISH FOOLS_ and it was just SO tedious). So Abraxxis wasn't like that. He had done some horrible things while under the Lich King's thrall, but even that couldn't take away his honor, it just made him ruthless and cruel as opposed to merciful and benevolent. Becoming a DK took away everything he used to have, he couldn't be a Paladin anymore, other draenei were unlikely to want to be around him, and he'd been used like a tool, a puppet--but he *adamantly refused* to let the Lich King take his morality and honor too. He lived as he had before his untimely death (sacrificing his life to get more Exodar passengers to the escape pods): an upstanding and wise man, albeit one who struggled to express his emotions and to adapt to rapidly changing situations. None of that is specifically relevant to the story coming up, I just wanted to reminisce a bit about the character. Anyway, one night, shortly after the dungeon released, four of my guildmates and I got together to do Halls of Reflection for the first time. Along for the ride were Abraxxis' very good friends (names abbreviated) Captain H., a hard-smoking, tough-talking human paladin with an unshakable resolve to do what he knew was right; Lady C., a respected older human Kirin Tor wizard, insatiable knowledge-seeker, and _everyone's_ grandmother they never knew they had; Druid N, a talented practitioner of many different transformations ready to appraise any situation with a cool eye and a quick hand; and Sir T., a night elf rogue born from a man with nothing to live for giving his body that someone else could have a chance at life, often distant but terribly insightful and always speaking the truth, even when it hurt. We hadn't done Halls of Reflection before, but we liked to go into dungeons "blind," to find out how things go, to learn by doing. We weren't actively roleplaying per se, just some casual IC banter in the chat box and OOC banter over Ventrilo. First boss was a little tough but we figured it out. Felt good for both Abraxxis and Captain H, freeing more souls twisted by the Lich King's corruption. Second "boss" was more like a mini-boss encounter: instead of fighting an enemy, each player must fight a _ghostly version of themself,_ and it's a bit of a race against the clock to save the healer! But we got through it just fine, and were feeling pretty good about things. We entered the room beyond...and faced off against the Lich King himself. Or, rather, we knew we _couldn't,_ so Jaina Proudmore froze him in place and yelled at us to RUN. So we did! And it was an incredibly tense and scary experience--constantly fearing we couldn't get through the newest ice wall in our path, _barely_ slaying the hordes of ravenous ghouls while the Lich King slowly...slowly...slowly marched forward, taunting us, totally certain of his victory. We were absolutely freaking out in voice chat, scrambling to keep ourselves alive--until finally, we've cleared the last ice wall, there are no more ghouls, we've gotten to the outside! ...but it's a dead end. An empty balcony, looking out over Icecrown Glacier. The ground was thousands of feet below. There's nowhere to go, and all five of us...we just fell completely silent. For those long, terrible seconds as Arthas approached the cave entrance, we knew it was the end. We were toast. And then the cavalry arrived! An Alliance airship swooped in to save the day, blasting the side of the glacier, sealing the door under an avalanche. The sheer, unadulterated _relief_ from all of us was palpable. We took a few moments to unclench, breathe, and come down from that adrenaline rush and come back from the shock. It was good enough that I started to write a short story about it, but never quite finished it. Of course, _in hindsight_ we knew that that had to happen. They couldn't have just made a normal dungeon with a genuine no-win scenario--it would have been decidedly not fun. But in those few, brief moments--for just a little while--we got caught up in the emotions. We genuinely felt the fear of fleeing for our lives, the sweet relief of escape, the horrible dread of realizing it was all for naught, and the joyous surprise at our rescue. It was an INCREDIBLY effective emotional scene, and one that wouldn't have been half as impactful if I weren't a roleplayer or had done it with a group of random strangers. I don't miss WoW, but I do sometimes wish I could get more memories like that one. They're rare and special, so they shouldn't happen all the time. FFXIV has given me some moments like that (such as the events that occur in the final zone of Shadowbringers). But...well, maybe it's because this one from HoR was one of my _first_ gaming memories like this, but I'd really like to experience something with that intensity and impact again.

[@rarestheshooter]

The story sounds absolutely wonderful so, even if you didn't manage to write in the style that you would've liked, you should know that it made a total stranger feel the thrill of the dungeon and quite a bit of emotional attachment to your group of adventurers. I myself started playing mmos thinking that the roleplaying aspect was the most interesting part of (it might have had to do with my childhood - I used to invent these short but intense roleplaying games whenever I met up with my cousin). However, as I was a pretty shy kid, I couldn't really roleplay with more than one person, even though going through a dungeon with a group of friends sounds fantastic! Eventually, as I grew more accustomed to the mmo I used to play, I began to obsess over efficient ways to play and to try and become as good as I could at the game. It was also that most of the efficient players mostly made fun of roleplayers, so I began to think that roleplaying was meant for bad players. Now I feel the opposite way: it is usually the efficient players who burn out or get angry when things don't go their way which leads to having little to no fun in game. And while I love endgame raiding and I made quite a few friends in that environment, I was inspired by this video and the many beautiful comments like yours to try and search for more story oriented chill groups to play around with.

[@TheLorissy]

Sir T. was the Night Elf Mowahk in disguise? *giggles* I can feel your story as a Draenei Death Knight... between those "hardcore roleplayers": "How could a Draenei be a Death Knight? In Warcraft 3 there where no Draenei!" - Well, the pre-event to WotLK tought us that there were nekropolises hovering araound all Azeroth. That was after The Burning Crusade, when Draenei where introduced into the world (yes, I know the same event played in vanilla WoW before Naxxramas). So a Draenei DK it was for me... Recalling the Halls of Reflection Dungeon: To me it was like The Caverns of Time dungeons a "first time I see it - AWESOME!" experience, but later visits were more of the annoying type.

[@lordmawkish1286]

HonestIy, they have Iost a part of each. They are Iess MMO because peopIe are Iess incIined to commit to sociaI obIigations and the modern systems aIIow for more soIo pIay and independence, and they are Iess RPG, because peopIe reaIIy mostIy just care about what the best thing is, and about either baIance that is perfect, or baIance that is tipped in their favor - not about the fIavor of their roIe. However, they aIso retain some of each as of now. So we aren't quite at the point where we have to shorten MMORPGs to OPGs. Yet.

[@coldchilln1988]

I just think people have more options for games now. More ways to play them. And because of that many dont want to commit so much time to one game. Which is what MMOs require. Which is why you see so many f2p p2w mmos popping up. Less time to spend in game well here spend some money. People in general have a shorter attention span now. I dont think it has anything to do with being less social. People know their time is limited so they wanna get in and get out. There's plenty of socializing in other games like BRs and other genres

[@CrashTheRed]

@@coldchilln1988 Maybe this is a symptom of trying to attract a larger audience instead of taking a niche and growing out of it? I feel like if a company dedicated its time and effort into making a game that stands out from the rest, they'd build a dedicated following that may be sustainable in the long run; Though the lower monetary gains may be hugely against such a design philosophy. There certainly are a number of games with very small followings but they are still alive and well due to their fanbases. Anyways, hopefully we see something that's done with the devs heart put into it, as a good standard game is better than a bad niche/unique game.

[@leadpaintchips9461]

@@CrashTheRed One of the issues of an MMORPG that JoshStrifeHayes has said multiple times is that the cost of an MMORPG is astronomically high. It's just not feasible to continuously develop an MMORPG at a rate that players consume content profitably without having a large player base.

[@Taylor_Lindise]

I disagree, FFXIV is able to be very social and free forming and having zero player incentive to do so. Even non-rp players go and chill at coffee houses made by other players just to do it. It's not that it's dead. I think developers forgot how to give players tools to do so.

[@dale7326]

Yea the sightseeing log from ARR is pretty much a RP element. While I don’t think any other games outside of FF and Runscape encourage players to role playing with the fact that they add fellowship as a RP exclusive where you can find other players and doing things like a Facebook or Twitter feature. It probably need more updates and the dev team probably know that since they add it in along side with gpose. For a pc players, it might unnecessary. Buy a console player, many games have that type elements that ppl so use to do from time to time. In fact, because the limitation of the console. It took more time for ppl to do conversations and it invented the shortcut about trying to Role Play to just save time to talk. Animal crossing is the extend to that feature. Ppl might hear the name, but not everyone actually understand how important that is a someone who can’t speak your language or having a different approach. So far, the o/ is the only thing that XIV players did whereas other MMOs use a voice chat or just type in text or don’t even reply back. FF does forcing ppl to talk if they want to play the game, which is why the game require you to do most content synced whereas othe games tend to let you play however you want more or older players usually just bursting through the dungeons with optimized abilities.

[@Injustify123]

You just turned a light bulb on for me. I’ve always looked up “efficiency guides” and “best class guides” when playing any MMO. I’m going to go into my next MMORPG focusing on the RPG aspect of the game, I have a feeling I will have a far better experience by doing so. Thank you!

[@josephmayfield945]

Did you do it? What are you playing?

[@7dayspking]

There's no RPG aspect in modern MMOs.

[@7dayspking]

@Pedro Henrique Among video gamers yeah. But not anywhere else. Most adults know what 'role playing' is as well if asked OUTSIDE the context of video games. It's just when discussion centres around video games everyone stops making sense.

[@juliusnesakysiu4778]

when i started out palying albion online (Like 3 or 4 years ago), i started playing a tanky character. I used plate armor that is more for pvp than pve, and went around recruiting people for a giant dungeon(inhabited by giants) saying that we will clear the dungeon in the name of justice! This started out as a joke because i could not find anybody, but after about 10 mins i found a healer, that healer brought her guildmates and i joined my first guild that actually felt like a guild. What fallowed were good times in pve raiding, listening to our guildmasters solo pvp 1vX stories, betrayal and theft of guild storage and a burning rage against the thief. The guild became inactive after a while and people went their seperate ways, i joined a new guild and spent my time on pve and pvp, but it was never as fun as the Guardin Greg character i had. P.S. after i joined a guild that was in a big alliance, i found the thief that stole our old guilds loot in another guild in the same alliance. Some drama happened but nothing came of it. I will always remember that racist thief and if i see him in the open world ill go after him (in game ofc :D)

[@Uberphish]

This was the great strength of something like Star Wars Galaxies, I think. With so many non-combat modes of play, communities of roleplayers, or even just 'secondary social circle' groups popped up everywhere. My sisters knew the dirt on everyone in their circle of the world because they were entertainers people visited to cure their wounds and chat. Some people kept to characters, some were just earnestly making connections, but it was a beautiful thing you don't see being attempted or supported as much in games.

[@epistimonkapetanios]

1:36 Dungeon master 😂😂🤣🤣 11:59 I am exactly this type of player in EVERY rpg/mmorpg I play. 17:11 That's EXACTLY me!!!!!!! I can recall so many names. My NPC allies in Warframe were Less Meko and Sahekk Craa. When I played Enlisted, where I control a squad of ww2 soldiers, my corporal was Terrence Morris, with Albert Salazar being the next in my squad. I have so many memories of playng those games. When I talk to other players about that, they never understand me. But whenever I hop on my gaming chair and boot up a game, I immediately get immersed, and say "I love this character, I hate this one, these are my friends, these are my enemies", and whenever I close the game, I instantly snap back to reality. And especially, because I didn't know about videogames in my childhood, and I feel like I had no childhood, seeing everyone saying "When I was a child, I used to play this". Therefore, I consider the games I was playing when I was 16 years old as childhood memories. The three games I can recall and remember the most of are Enlisted, when I was going knife only in an urban map, Escape from Tarkov, that I used to play during online school lessons, and Conqueror's blade, where I commanded a battalion of grenadiers. And I do have the feeling of "magic" that all those rpg and mmo players describe. 18:38 I have allways hated meta-obsessed tryhards. They don't even understand the concept of fun, they just play to win. I never go with the meta, instead picking weapons and gear in general, that looks and feels the coolest.

[@mpldr_]

In Guild Wars 2 there is Knödelbert, who walks around hardcore-roleplaying. I think he gets banned every so often.

[@alihorda]

why he gets banned? by hardcore role play you mean ERP? xd

[@PkmnLovar]

@@alihorda I'd imagine because people might consider it trolling

[@tehlingo481]

Can already tell you that they have.

[@Dile0303]

Mordhau is the one game that understood. There are 2 kinds of players 1- warriors 2- guitarists

[@Blackjax137]

MMORPG's never really had RPG elements to lose outside of gear customization, subclass (or specializations) and classes themselves. WoW, the most successful MMORPG of all time, never gave players agency over the story. Indeed the only MMO that did this and tailored the story for the player, to my knowledge, was SWTOR and this was ONLY made possible by isolating the character's story from the rest of the game. In reality, MMOs have always been a Last of Us-esque story experience with online functionality. A single overarching storyline at any one time, with multiplayer components such as dungeons, raids, PvP content etc. Players are told the story, they don't dictate it through their own input. It's disingenuous to call many of them RPGs when compared to single-player RPG games, cRPGs and good ol' tabletops.

[@SponTen]

GW2 kind of does, though the changes you make to the world don't stick around forever. It would kind of suck to start new in a game, only to have it completely warped beyond understanding because the game's been overtaken by the original players who are now too powerful and rich to stop. Wasn't there an MMO that this happened to? All the in-game land got bought up and it was impossible for new players to own anything?

[@Aereton]

most RP I ever had in any video game was in DayZ, funny enough

[@7dayspking]

Gear customization and classes aren't role playing but even still you're not quite right there. A lot of the earliest western MMOs were full blown sandbox games like Ultima online. So called 'Last of us esque' story experiences, raids, designated 'pvp content' and 'Dungeons' didn't even exist in the mid 90s and what 'stories' existed in these games progressed more similarly to contemporary singleplayer games of that time like Ultima 7, Wizardry & might & magic. Early MMOs absolutely not only supported role playing but required players to be so immersed in how they were interacting with other players they were basically role playing anyway much in the same way as happens in modern multiplayer sandbox games like Conan Exiles, Rust & Dayz.

[@7dayspking]

@@SponTen Hahahah, sounds like you're describing Ultima online with all of the land being bought up hahahah. That game was a full blown sandbox though, nothing like modern MMOs.

[@7dayspking]

@@Aereton The oldest MMOs played very similarly to DayZ, they were all sandboxes just like that. Though they were far more developed than DayZ.

[@Outside998]

The thing you said about Limsa and the people playing instruments is so true. I remember that one day, where I was playing a session, and it just consisted of me sitting in front of a bard playing a lot of different music from other FF titles, and me and the other people in the audience were just chatting about their character's lives. It was a lot of fun, and a breath of fresh air.

[@renaulde9982]

You know something, that last bit about "Trying the RPG" resonated with me in a way I wasn't expecting. Maybe that's what I missed in FFXIV. I had to hit the high numbers fast and do the dungeons at the end. I had to be efficient. I was tired of it and stopped twice, neither time "getting" why people enjoy it. Maybe that fresh perspective could help.

[@cookiecreep9204]

This is why i absolutely love the musician guild in gw2. Its not that roleplay is gone, you just have to find people for it, and see how great they are. They actually learn to play all their songs!

[@willbear2173]

I mean people cry when mmos have rpg elements such as having to make important decisions impacting gameplay so its no wonder why devs tend to stop making those decisions a thing.

[@ElectrickFun]

Well becaue as it was said in the video, most players care about numbers and being efficient, myself included. Having to make a choice midway through a quest that i didn't read the text of that will impact how well I'll do at the end game without knowing the consequences is bad.

[@willbear2173]

@@ElectrickFun Im not really talking about the kind of decisions you can easily miss without noticing. WoW covenants for example give players a meaningful choice and theres currently a boatload of people crying because chosing a covenant affects their gameplay. Its like people can't handle this very specific RPG element.

[@Noface121]

@@willbear2173 Well to give you another point of view, I'm an RPPVP player; I took a shit covenant for my class for lore reasons and it really sets me back in PvP.

[@willbear2173]

@@Noface121 That issue is exists in every mmorpg. Its impossible to perfectly balance everything so youre stuck having to choose between competition or RP. Sometimes the stars align and you can have both but someone next to you wont. This obsession with balance only neuter some of the games most fun aspects. Racials ? Made super boring or unimpactful. Talents ? Same thing because some tryhard is going to cry that one is much stronger than the others. Rinse and repeat for literally everything that offers choices to players.

[@waterbottle3860]

i played BDO in its early years when it was not p2w and roleplayed as an outlaw and fortunately i found a guild that had similar thoughts and we were outlaws all together, that was probably the most fun i had in an mmo like ever

[@ginsu85]

I'm a bit of both worlds here, I like the Mechanical but I also like the RP, I've written up the backstory for my Samurai in ffxiv and any time something happens within the MSQ that would affect my character emotionally I add to the story so I can remember it like rescuing his parents from the Garlians so they could return to Doma and a better life was a part of that.

[@Skywardflare758]

That’s something I love about Final Fantasy XIV. Even if I have my issues with the gameplay and design, I love the side stuff I can do. I love how I can customize my character’s appearance and make a bunch of outfits or how I can design a living space (though the lack of instanced housing is infuriating) or how there’s areas where people just hang out and enjoy themselves. If I want to do suboptimal old content, I can, and I can find others doing it. Heck, there’s tons of players and guilds who use their housing to make bars or clubs or other public places for players to enjoy. Heck, I could go and play a side card mini game, raise racing chocobos, or play mahjong if I wanted. There’s so much side and suboptimal content to do for stuff I want. I’m not bogged down by a bunch of gameplay chores either to keep my character viable either, so I have time to do other stuff. I have two standout memories from XIV. One was mechanical (a particularly clutch first time clear of Dun Scaith). The other involved a roulette run of Haukke Manor where one of the players acted as a tour guide, describing parts of the Manor like it was a house for sale with some history. As a side note, one of my favorite memories in MMOs was in Guild Wars 2 where I was leveling with a friend who went for a mining node in a cave. I was jumping around trying to climb stuff while he mined and passed through a fake wall into a volcano with energy platforms. It was absolutely ridiculous, but we went through and eventually managed to clear the platforming (having to cheese one of the sections as it was brutal at the time). The reward was basically worthless, but it was such a memorable experience. Technically not role play related, but I think it fits under the suboptimal for fun playing.

[@fang4223]

Triple Triad for liiiiiife~ Shame I was never that good at it. >_>

[@rottenpoet6675]

My best roleplaying experiences comes from Space Station 13!

[@rootatouille180]

I see you are a man of culture as well!

[@CrashTheRed]

I think that's going to be one of the best experiences in roleplaying anyone can have. It certainly is for me as well, putting aside some of the less desirable topics of the community.

[@highbahamut6188]

"help, he is turning her into a papa john's"

[@FairyRat]

Oh man I love that game.

[@raydark8007]

@@highbahamut6188 hahaha i am 100% sure ssethtzeentach says that line going to rewatch the video again XD

[@Millienify]

Why not both tho? I can play any mmorpg mechanically to level, have fun with friends out-of-character. And after that i can switch to my characters persona and do roleplaying with other people

[@youtube-kit9450]

Pretty much my stance. Don't do some dumb roleplaying shit with people who want to be efficient, don't be some tryhard crybaby whining about optimization if someone's looking for a group to roleplay with. When I do dungeons, I quietly join a PUG, go through the dungeon, get off the dungeon, go into a city, and if I feel like it, I take part in some dance party happening or do some roleplay shenanigans there. Or have multiple characters doing different shit.

[@MaakaSakuranbo]

Largely because at that point, the game is just a chatroom for your roleplay. If it doesn't mechanically support it, may as well RP on Discord

[@MaakaSakuranbo]

Plus a lot of people who complain about a lack of RP(G) in MMO's want there to be actual mechanics that underline that. It's nice and all to come up with stuff to write in chat, but it's much nicer if the world acknowledges what you do.

[@jameshubbard7075]

Absolutely top tier video. I've played virtually every major MMO since original EQ, and even back then, I was a more mechanically focused player. Something changed for me once I started playing Star Wars Galaxies. I suddenly took on a persona, my guild would spend time hanging out in cantinas chatting, playing music, laughing and then we'd head out to track down some rancor or fight some night sisters. Setting up a forward base with the ranger in our party so that we could rest, recover and talk about what was to come and to prepare. The memories of suddenly being ambushed by a group of Rebels and we'd scramble to take up defensive positions. There were just so many strong memories of camaraderie and adventure with a bunch of citizens of the Empire. Good times.

[@oliverjamesatkinson]

Be interesting if backstory would limit or re-direct quests, interactions & bonuses one could partake (not an mmo player, but its a good idea for solo games too) Your channel & presentation is fantastic btw Josh

[@specter8660]

Untill today i didn't even realize that that type of role player in mmos even existed. I guess I have been through indoctrinated into the stat chasing play style

[@SessyoinKiara]

They lost both the MMO and the RPG, they're massively solo paying games

[@enot2140]

That's what the market wants and in my experience if I go out of my way to be active in my guild or just socializing in hubs/areas people tend to just... walk away and not want any of that. It's all small talk and that is why I believe the issue aren't just the games themselves, but people saying they want "more social" MMOs without understanding that being social takes effort or smth. And my favorite part is when you talk to people about the game they are literally playing rn and unless it's drops, raids, market or crafting many don't have any idea of what is going on. My hypothesis is, the reason MMOs became glorified "massively solo playing games" is bc the majority of players don't want to put effort into being proper part of the community. At least they pay as everyone else making bigger MMOs a possibility.

[@JagoDragon]

I'm not sure this is entirely bad. You can find interesting people who don't conform with either the MMO or the RPG aspect. Say they only have a couple hours a week, they don't care about being the best or becoming a cog. They just want to chill for an hour and chat with random people. Seek these people out and RP as you help them grind while chatting with them. You may both enjoy it.

[@BT-ex7ko]

@@enot2140 People trash the RP communities in MMO's a lot, but in my experience, they've been the most social and into the RPG elements of a game. Even when out of character they've always just been more than happy to talk about whatever for as long as possible. Yeah I know there are people in there that only do a certain kind of RP - but overall I feel like this is where the more social and RPG focused players go nowadays - and that disdain for these types of players now seems to me like a culmination of the average player's hate for social and RPG elements in MMO's and has divided the community into very niche and fringe communities of all types, not just my example of RP.

[@TheZenytram]

@@enot2140 the game itself must support social behavior, if the game has only dailys and raids to do, of course ppl wont bother interacting with any one, "time is exp".

[@ShadowGun625]

@@TheZenytram okay so how do games support social behavior then?

[@gomezrodriguez9059]

In short: There are two giant groups of players. Some who name their avatar "xx_wolf_fire_mage_xx" and others who name him "Ceionius Firerclaw from Kingshill Palace"

[@Jeff_Rekona]

Absolutely incredible video. I'm so glad I found your channel, you've brought out thoughts and opinions I've had for years but didn't even realize. Keep up the amazing work Josh!

[@RadicalJawzFunnyMoments]

I would try mabinogi for this. It seems to go for more of an rpg. I have a character there named Phoenix and he is a giant who is obsessed with music and wood cutting. He goes around to collect instruments and trying to master them. In his free time you will find him chopping wood for fun in the forest :)

[@erykrejner2528]

Well in 2006-ish in Lineage][ I got almost married. The first time to an orc fighter and the second one to a human wizard. I was a human palladin.

[@thechurchofsupersampling]

Grindddddddddd, ahh the good times

[@InfectedKura]

This reminds me when I was playing aion with my friends years ago. We weren't roleplaying but in secret I wrote a ton of stories of our characters and how they met and all. Good times

[@LFRUIZ15]

What a wholesome comment

[@PkmnLovar]

I still do that for games!

[@Asin24]

The sad part is in many cases even in a Tabletop setting the later versions of the more mainstream systems tend to value having a 'good' party composition. A homebrew system can help alleviate it a bit but so much more of the systems seem to push a lot more focus on a 'gamey' kind of setup.

[@snood4743]

D&D 5E seems like a big step in the other direction to me. You can still do fine as an unoptimal party unlike the early ones. My current group didn’t synchronize our classes too well and ended up with two archers, no dedicated healers, and no tank. We’re having a blast and have somehow avoided any character deaths.

[@reallyreal8055]

i like guild wars 2 a lot for roleplaying. the personal story and origin choices, the class variety, most builds being usable most of the game, and it hasnt been hard for me to find other roleplayers to play with. also there's a new roleplay add on that came out that makes roleplaying even better and connects the community even more.

[@Cassapphic]

Personally in mmos I tend to play to a mix of the two, leaning towards mechanical, but I do have a backstory for my character that forms as I play and learn more about the world, even if during an endgame raid the backstory barely comes up, it helps with my immersion in the game overall and I have a greater attachment to my character than just “gosh she’s pretty”. It may mostly be outside of actual gameplay but just imagining how my character fits into the wider world adds that little spice of role-playing that helps keep me invested.

[@ZeroWalker26]

when I play mmo´s there are 3 things for me that makes or breaks if I keep on playing or not. 1. Main story I love to do the main story in most mmo´s I play no matter if they are great or not I read every main quest dialog if they are not voiced acted. 2. Also how good/fun us the crafting/housing when im not doing main quest I like do basically play the game like I would play Rune factory meaning I craft, I farm and I try to play the sims with the house system or fishing. Because to me that´s relaxing and some days I just want to relax. 3. The most important factor is how fun am I having becuse at the end of the day I play games to have a fun and enjoyable experience. I never ever cared at all to be most efficient or having the best gear or be the nr1 in pvp or gvg or so on to me that´s boring and stress full and just bleh. I mean the reason I enjoy BDO to this day is I don´t give a rats ass about AP or DP I don´t give a dang about pvp. Im there to level do some fishing and explore a damn beautiful world. Yeah BDO may be pay to win or pay to skip but that does not matter at all when you don´t care about being the best or being efficient or having the best of the best gear.

[@doltBmB]

Having a main story is bad for an mmo.

[@ZeroWalker26]

@Zyn Abila yeah I totally understand you I still play BDO when new classes comes out and do some horse training or cocking and farming and fishing when I feel like relaxing. The new Corsair will be fun to level a bit I think.

[@ZeroWalker26]

@@doltBmB in what why is it bad ? I don´t think FFXIV would be as popular if it did not have it.

[@doltBmB]

@@ZeroWalker26 It turns it into a single player game where your character is the special protagonist. WoW did it right, have a world full of stories that you can discover, and that you can choose to engage with or not, instead of one big mandatory story that doesn't mean anything.

[@Diothaen]

As a former role playing player, who's now a mechanical player, I've had to give up on the RPG part of most MMO's due to the toxicity of the mechanical players. But this has also driven me to become one of those more solo players that avoids groups when ever possible and doesn't engage in any form of end game activities. I spend all of my MMO time quietly running around solo doing side quests or crafting/gathering. I do all my Role Playing in solo games like Fallout 4 or Skyrim where there's nobody to give me grief for not being the best at any one thing. The Mechanical MMO community has led to me having social anxiety in online gaming to the point where I avoid human interaction and stick to solo activities. Sadly there are days that I can't bring myself to even login to an online game as I don't want to feel the need to be social. I do miss my online family, however, due to the actions of a few online, I can no longer bring myself to be outwardly social or even Role Play as I once did so many years ago.

[@XiluxXivir]

I think there is nothing wrong with choosing a different way to play a game. Those who are being mean to someone for playing in a different way are just so close minded that will think because the majority of people do something in one way, then everyone should. I encourage you to not stop trying to socialize and have fun in MMOs. The best time I've had is because of the people roleplaying and doing stuff their own way.

[@theMPrints]

@@XiluxXivir well most people have no clue what is roleplaying , i have noclue why they play mmos-s first place, probably they suck in competitive shooters , and rts games :P

[@soul0172]

Lmao

[@otrikas]

@@theMPrints because as Josh also said you way more people play MMOs not as rpg and that's 100% fine you can't decide how someone enjoys a game. MMORPGs that focus on rpg are dead for a reason

[@drave8991]

I get it, I stopped playing Counter Strike much for similar reasons. I always look at it as these people expect something from you like they do from a tool, and if you don't perform they berate you. Reminds me of how people treat retail employees and such.

[@phungusamongus5547]

Started playing tabletop D&D in 77 and been playing video games since the beginning.Both have changed considerably for better and worse.The latest releases of mmorpgs in general have lost it but every now and then something pops up that is crafted in the old school approach.I do agree that mechanical based players way out number pure rpers and those that are a mixture.

[@awesomeangel90]

when i first played TERA, i played on the RP server and used to play with a guy who would't use the Pegasus fast travel because he was afraid of flying. Walking everywhere actually made the game more fun and we had more adventures that way. My character trait was I was bad at aiming as a gunner so we did a "campaign" target practice adventure. The best part was, it genuinely helped me aim better cuz i was more used to tab target games at the time. I wonder what he's up to now...

[@gethriel]

back in the day, early days of WoW, I purposely joined a heavy RP guild on an RP server with a CLOTH wearing female warrior (because armor is "too uncomfortable." To be fair, I only had a couple roleplay adventures, for all the obvious reasons, but one of my favorite experiences in WOW was when I needed to complete the level 30 warrior quest and it was impossible, even with my best shield (shields at the time were most of a warrior's armor anyway). I utilized guild chat to get a group willing to roleplay the experience, decide how we were going to meet up (the party was to catch her crying in a tavern, and we roleplayed the meetup and adventure) then off we went. a second experience with the guild that was eye opening was joining a dungeon as main tank in cloth armor. everyone knew ahead of time it was a roleplay choice and I even suggested I should be off tank, but they welcomed me to try my hand as main tank. after the dungeon (which we successfully completed), I inquired of the healer how hard it was to keep me healed, given my gimped status; the healer assured me it was no trouble. best MMO experiences ever.

[@meinname3414]

Since people are busy chasing carrots, they don't have time to RP. And when they take a break from chasing they just afk in crowded areas to show of their achievements.

[@JouishishiGin]

Runescape's quests were what kept me playing for years.

[@MisterDillPickle]

fr, memories of doing quests back then are what brought me back to RS recently esp as imo the core gameplay is rather meh lol

[@kerianhalcyon2769]

I think it's telling if when Roleplay at all gets mentioned in the zone chat of an MMORPG people assume you mean what people back in the day called "Cybering," essentialy doing it for NSFW purposes, forgetting that the mechanical tagline for their video game comes with "RPG," short for Role Play Game.

[@sarysa]

Back in the 90's, the "rollplayers", aka players who rerolled a ton to get max or near max stats and overall focused on minmaxing mechanics, were the minority. Now it's the roleplayers who are outnumbered. MMOs would be wise to cultivate their roleplaying base, however, because they're the ones who will stick around when the "rollplayers" are fed up and quit.

[@harshand3992]

As a roleplayer in Final Fantasy XIV, I do do content yes, and I enjoy it, but I play classes others find sub par just because my character would be that class. My main is a Scholar for instance, because that's something he would do. And I focus his glamours on that. I focus everything around that and around his story and friends etc... Your video is so very informative and really helps define the difference. Keep up the great work!

[@xeponx]

I know this was months ago, but I'm curious. Having never run into more than a super small handful of RPers (most of which were RPing as Ishgaurdian Knights), how would one explain being a SCH lore wise? As far as I remember from the SCH questline years ago, shouldn't there only be a single SCH in the whole world?

[@harshand3992]

@@xeponx as far as we know there is only one, yes, and that is the WoL. Though in the quest line as well, it is explained that ocassionally the soul stones are found on expeditions into Nymian style ruins, and Alka Zolka, the Scholar quest giver, does mentioned wanting to rebuild the Nymian Marines, so it is implied throughout the quests that the order is slowly being rebuilt, similar to the Red Mages with the Crimson Duelists

[@xeponx]

@@harshand3992 It's been ages since I've done the SCH quests (back in ARR) so thanks for the reminder on them finding more. Seems like it could be explained in the same way that the Immortal Flames are making a SMN contingent then.

[@harshand3992]

@@xeponx Exactly! I believe its mentioned during the Heavensward arc of story quests, if I recall correctly. It's been like, 2 and a half years since I leveled Scholar

[@nat040496]

I feel like Elder Scrolls Online breaks that rule of MMOs having bad stories. The way it's presented, with fully voiced dialog, more face-to-face camera angles with NPCs, and in general just phenomenal writing, means ESO has some fantastic stories that aren't even related to the main story. I still remember some of the throw-away storylines in the starter zones or while leveling cuz they're very well written.

[@calebb7012]

The mary sue "chosen one" and that guy, and that guy over there, and that guy over there, also that guy...That's a good story in your opinion?

[@goldenferitas2614]

I played ESO... and while the Story itself is fun, playing the story, the quests themselfes, are not. At least for me. There is about zero quest variety, always "Run trough a cave full of unneccesary mobs to kill one specific one, run from one place to another for 4 times in a row without combating anything, that is a serious pain for me. I can farm the same mobs for hours, but this? Nah. I then started roleplaying there instead, it was way more fun than the actual game itself.

[@Talents.z]

Nah, they've lost the MMO since they just stick everyone in instanced areas now.

[@franciscooliveira8939]

I think you meant the rpg

[@taliats]

I don't mind some instancing. The amount of times I have tried to get immersed in exploring a dungeon in a game and completing whatever quests are in there and some rainbow coloured player has just come along and nuke everything in sight............

[@TinchoX]

True

[@shutup1037]

Because it's the only way to progress, repeating the same instance over and over fast as possible

[@taliats]

​@@shutup1037Is it though or are you just telling yourself that?

[@bean3550]

Your rogue reminded me so much of one I ended up playing for a campaign set in Baldur's Gate! His name was Felix and he tried to convince the party he was a master thief so they'd hire him, only for it to eventually be revealed he was living in the sewers with his only friend, a rat named Snips. Joining a party under false pretenses can be really fun, especially if the other players don't even know it OOC

[@thegamer101n]

I remember back when I started ffxiv, I picked a sunseeker Miqo'te and gave her a very human name and I didn't realize how lore inaccurate it would be so I put in an embarrassing amount of time to make up this deep backstory to explain why and eventually added more into said backstory to justify my main classes with the character (monk&red mage). In the end it made appreciate the character much more than just an avatar or a waifu, but an actual character in a story

[@Kobalos]

I RP in FFXIV and even have a RP venue, my character has been through so much from loosing his best friend to getting engaged. Though with FF you can glamour over gear sets and play multiple jobs. So when I am rping i'll have a job that I use and when I am playing the game mechanically I will play properly with descent gear and weapons.

[@KoiaKiss]

How do you find role players in ffxiv? I'm on louisoix and I never see any 😔

[@kreenbopulusmichael7205]

all Im gonna say is, MMOs have been catering to mechanically focused players for over a decade now and the genre has been dying, it just isnt fun for most gamers.

[@MoonTiger88]

I love how Jesse Cox said it in his last video when comparing WoW and FFXIV. WoW is an MMORPG while FFXIV is an RPGMMO. Even if you take away the MMO part, you're still left with a pretty damn decent RPG.

[@myrojyn]

I'm just filled with salt about the state of Blizzard in general

[@chronoatog5650]

I would still call them really bad at it the both of them. FFXIV players like to thing being pushed into a story that every player is a part of takes advantage of it being an mmo, it could be very much a single player game for that part. I'd say FF XI did a better job from the ground up. As there is many solutions to a problem, one could use to deal with the problem, it wasn't always your healer did X, your dps dpsed, your tank tanked. There was amazing gear, but never really the best piece of gear, as a lot of high end gear was varied and never the solution to every fight. A lot of the combat was also reactionary, instead of rotation based so your character and how you play them is more important as you might have MANY solutions to the problem. So when a player played X he really brought his flavour to the fight and his problem solving or his CHARACTER to the fight not the class destined to do X/Y/Z. Benediction is a good example of a well made skill, it was a 2 hour ability that instantly brought everyone to 100% hp and cured all status conditions... BUT you will get every mobs aggro So there is two WHM you will see 1. The WHM who will use it when everyone is close to dead sacrificing himself to give the team a fighting chance a move of self sacrifice (a compassionate/empathetic character who cares more about others.) 2. The WHM who saves it for a scenario they would be dead anyways, giving themselves a second chance (a greedy/self focused character), where he would let one person die while healing the rest. 3. The player who binded and slept the mobs before hand since they picked black mage or red mage as their off job before using the ability, (an intelligent/calculating character who plans it out.) The thing is, these three where re-actions to the situation. Which how they use said ability isn't wrong. A good RPG would make even your skills and how you use them part of your character/player. The mechanics have made it so someone rping and someone playing the game mechanically are not at odds. If you take it to DnD, the spells prepared/learned + the feats chosen build your character. Sure there is high meta value spells, but there is so many spells that could be even more useful than said meta spells/feats could ever provide. Disrupt undead does amazing damage, so much more than magic missile ever could and since you get to make multiple choices, it's up to the player which thinks is good. That single disrupt undead you hold onto could become a saving grace to an encounter. That can't exist in modern mmorpg's I think a good MMO and RPG would design the abilities to be more than a rotation and problem solvers (or starters for the enemies.) How a fight is played out is more dictaed by the tanks/healers making the choice with their cooldowns, and DPS are just playing number DDR.

[@darrellscoggins8161]

I think that this is one of your best videos. You really articulated a feeling that I have found hard to describe. I think some people think that having a character with a story and an emotional connection makes them unique and you feel like what you accomplish matters. As opposed to getting the highest dps or best gear. It matters from that mechanical standpoint, but anyone and everyone can do that. Only you can write your own story and act and behave within the bounds of the character you created. Good video sir.

[@D3NL1LL3P]

I started playing WoW in 2006 as a gnome made called Wendy Wu. I couldn't understand English yet so my cousin guided me on a run to the human start area so we could go together. I got to level 20, saw someone change into a bear and started a druid instead

[@JarlBSoD]

The old Ultima online (pre 2004ish ), though having limitations still being a PC game afterall, had allot of freedom to roleplay. No levels, No quests and the abillitty to have housing in the world and be able to place more or less any item anywhere in the world, made for allot of Roleplay, the players created the storry rather than being told one, and seing as there were no levels (skill based) Everyone could tag along to any place (more or less sucessfull hehe). We had people equiping orc helmets on their characters roleplaying orc clans, we had people reole playing elfs, Drows, Militias, Knights (Mind you, UO used to have only one playable race, Human), Orcs having their own language, Elves having their own language, Larg scale wars, Diplomatic missions, Sports tournaments, Joust tournaments, Weddings, Funerals, Player run towns, Taverns and much much much more. Even though as i said uo was still a game (it is still around but they change the game a bit to much to make it more item focused etc) it was some of the best roleplay i have ever had in my life! Seeing how the economy was largly player based, there were crafters who were known on the whole server for just one thing, they were crafters!

[@josephmayfield945]

That's what ive been searching for. I loved UO -- but find all modern MMOs so boring. Play anything recently that has some of those elements, and people willing to RP?

[@JarlBSoD]

@@josephmayfield945 Not realy, Elderscrolls online suposedly has some good RP communities but i havn't done any sort of organised RP myself in ESO so i can't vouch for that. Most mmos today are just focused on constant progression and RP in the name often dosn't mean much. ESO might be the best contender. The inofficial follow upp to UO, Legends of Aria, is utter crap so don't even bother :( The lack of good RP communities is one of the major resons i don't play MMO anymore. Last realy good MMORPG when it comes to roleplay for me was Starwars Galaxies.