Meet Mortiphoebe, Forsaken Warrior.
Mortiphoebe, Warrior Noob
Some time ago, I agreed to Ixobelle’s curious suggestion (seconded by Spinks) to try out an Undead Warrior for another spin through Azeroth. When I read of a blogger guild, curiously named Single Abstract Noun (SAN), I thought I might poke my abnormally large nose into matters that were little of my business. (Though as Pitrelli and Hatch rightly noted, SAN is a recipe for a wee bit of drama, as might be seen of late, but hey, it’s fascinating either way, even if I’m just on the proverbial sidelines.) It turns out that trial accounts can’t join guilds anyway, but so it goes.
SAN plays on Argent Dawn, a “Role Playing” server, so I spent a bit of time reading up on the Forsaken and the Scarlet Crusade, trying to craft a backstory for my little undead lady who was deathly afraid of the undead (hence the name she chose for her new self, a delicious portmanteau mixture of “cute, perky and emo”… or something like that). I’m sure my lovingly crafted story of a former Human Priest who joined the Crusade to fight her irrational fear of the Undead, only to be turned to the Undead in a botched operation, was the stuff of legend and totally original, but I wisely chickened out of playing it to the hilt.
Sure, it explained why she was a Fury Warrior, totally shunned by her former allies and the Light, driven by blind fury to destroy those nasty tricksy Undead that she was now surrounded by… and it even played into my own rather soloist tendencies, but in practice, since she couldn’t attack those of her own newly adopted faction, it just didn’t work out.
I had grand notions of writing a pair of diaries from her point of view, one of her old life, one of her new one, reacting to her old diary and the new circumstances in which she rather uncomfortably found herself. I took a LOT of screenshots (637) that could have helped this endeavor, and may get to it someday. I still think it could be a fun writing exercise, but with my lack of time and the difficulties it provided in actually Playing a Role, I didn’t bother with it. Ultimately, I’d like to write my own stories, anyway. Ah, the troubles with Role Playing…
When a random Forsaken player kneeled to Mortiphoebe, that sealed the deal. If a random stranger in an Undead body took the time to welcome my little zombie into the fold, well, the RP was irrevocably broken, and I just went ahead and played the dang game. See, Mortiphoebe as I’d imagined her would not have calmly nodded at the stranger as I told her to in the game, she’d have whipped out her two handed sword and lopped his ugly little Undead head clean off and then stomped on the rest of the corpse and scattered the bones, then shrieked until she was hoarse, running into the forest. (Of course, that she didn’t do that to the NPCs was easily attributed to shock and the fact that they didn’t actively talk to her. It’s a whole new level of interaction when a player takes the time to stop and do something welcoming.) Irrational paranoia and fear of your own faction doesn’t work in the WoW RP framework, even if they weren’t trope-laden emo gibberish to start with.
*ahem*
Sooo… I’ve played another ten day trial with this character, hot on the heels of playing Allods Online. I’ve gathered some notes of comparison, and have a few things I’d like to dig into from a game design and art perspective. That means more articles in this vein, likely all titled “Dead Again: Subtitle”… and lest one get the impression this is now a WoW blog, I’m done with the ten day trial, with no current intention of proceeding further. I have a few other articles in mind that I’ll toss in between the DA series, too.
After that, I hear the Meridians are worth exploring, and I really want to see what I can tease out of the 59th one.
Since that’s sort of what I do. Play, analyze, write. It’s like going to a movie; I’m trained in CG animation, I can’t help but analyze the things. It’s really hard to just go along for the ride.
In the meantime, though, a quick vignette that might explain a lot about just how hapless I was. I tried out the Random Dungeon Finder when the tutorial tips prompted me to at level 16. I wound up in Ragefire Chasm with some of those other players. It turned out to be fun (gasp!), and we steamrolled the boss. It was my last night of the trial, so I signed on for another random dungeon, and we wound up in Deadmines… whereupon, after downing one boss, we promptly wandered into a pack of goblins and wound up wiping. I’ll write more on that later, but what struck me as interesting was after that.
I “released my spirit” and wound up in a graveyard out in Westfall. I’d never been there before, so I was totally lost. I saw a player outnumbered by some sort of piggish bipeds, so I went to investigate. Her guild tag proclaimed her to be a part of SAN, so I figured I’d go help, though it took me a while to get there. I killed one of her assailants and then wandered off again into the unfamiliar hills. She thanked me and I nodded.
Only after I looked back did I realize that she was playing a Gnomish character. Y’know, one of those Alliance mooks. It must have been baffling for her, seeing a Forsaken come in and help, then wander off. What can I say? I was lost. Um… I was Alliance once? For the Alliance? Rah, rah, team? Gooooo Varian? Nice ‘do, who does your hair?
So, Steelspark of SAN, sorry it took me a while to get there to help (but you survived, which is all I was really angling to help with). Here’s hoping your evening went well. Don’t mind the unguilded teenaged Forsaken who looked lost and incompetent. First impressions can be misleading… or accurate. It’s not worth worrying about which.
Nice one, I’ll be popping in to check out the posts.
My time in SAN will unfortunately be cut back due to me levelling a resto druid on my PvP realm but there are alot of nice folks there (at least on EU side). I’ll probably just pop on when I hit drama on my real realm and need mothered by my fellow bloggers haha.
I cant access the link to the drama in which you alluded to but Im guessing its the Cranky healer vs too many annas?
If so it seems to me that it was two types of bullying which wasnt cool. Cranky was perhaps out of order in the plans to laugh at some peoples RP but anna took it far too seriously and had to edit her post which was bang out of order. The repercussion of it was the blogging community lost a very entertaining blogger. Two wrongs dont make a right is my little opinion of it.
Anyway looking forward to your posts and screenshots
Yes, that link is to a Pink Pigtails Inn article where she implores for peace. I don’t know too much about the kerfluffle (I’m not *that* interested in internet spats), but it really was only a matter of time before *something* blew.
It really is interesting to me how guild dynamics work, and I’ve suspected that a blogger guild may well be too many opinionated cooks in the kitchen, as it were. There is certainly a set of shared interests, but we tend to be a… vocal bunch, especially when it comes to a question of “you’re not doing it right!”
http://xkcd.com/386/
I mean, obviously I’m not doing it right, right? I should have “keeled that deerty Gnome” or something? I’m playing a Warrior, so I should have tanked instead of DPS in my initial RDF run? I’m playing a trial account (*spit*), for crying out loud. Noob.
I’ve questioned before if RP is really appropriate in online games (looked for the article but must have been on my old blog) and I still cant decide.
A part of me thinks it will never work due to other players and certainly the reason I left my original WoW realm was down to the community being boring and almost elitist in their opinions.
The only game I’d try my hand at with RP would probably be LoTRO *shrug* as it just seems like you would have to
Yes, I too had problems with wanting to give SAN a spin… and not being willing to renew my account to do that.
Oh, to be sure, if it had made me a Fulfilled WoW nugget again, I would have.
Which is why I find it very silly that Blizzard doesn’t allow trial accounts to join guilds.
I totally agree with and understand the not being able to talk on *general* channels, and tell to people who haven’t friended you first.
But guilds and private channels would seem to be one of the normal ways to introduce newbies and get them to stick around. And this is exactly what trial accounts are deprived of. Put a lock on the guild bank, who cares!
But to make trials totally unguildable well…
…had me shaking my head in puzzlement.
(Together with the added indignity of being unable to *explain* to anyone in the SAN channel that I wanted to talk to them and would love to join.. and I just couldn’t.)
Oh and RP does have, and will always have a place in online games…
…if they’re text-based.
Now if only the current MU* I’m quite interested in didn’t force me to go look up a whole pile of stuff on ‘Corax’ from WoD because they’re afraid of the legal repercussions of having it in the helpfiles.
One of the admins there used to play in ?PernMUD?, so I totally understand their paranoia with regards to intellectual property and rights… even though they don’t make money from their MU* at all.
hmm I dont know, I just think you cant police it in anyway and imo it brings out the worst in many people as seen by the recent drama and indeed my past experiences on Earthern Ring EU.
Im not saying your wrong Im just saying my view of it is it seems to be more hassle than its worth. Even the blizzard rules etc on RP are unclear and indeed are not followed up.
I don’t think you can realistically police RP in a “massive” game. Tabletop games work because you’re face to face (accountability), hopefully playing with friends (not random internet idiots) in a smallish group (which makes a lot of conflicts easier to resolve), and most of all, you have a GM who can alter the world and its rules on the fly if needs be.
I’m not convinced that there can ever be a cohesive RP setting in an MMO, since players do it differently, and the admins realistically can’t keep a handle on things. You can make your own nice little guild and play with friends, but that’s about it.
Can we please have private servers already?
http://ihaspc.com/?p=281
Mmm, with regards to text-based worlds.
It’s another world.
And a *totally* different culture from MMOs. Unless you’ve tried one (and a good one) – I recommend LegendMUD, which I no longer play, it’s… hard to tell the difference from outside.
I know I’m sounding confusing here. XD All I can say is… in text-based worlds, despite the politics that accompany all human societies and whatnots… the RP is done for love. And it shows.
Love the backstory, Tesh
You cannot have a world full of cohesive RP in MMOs. All those players, all with their own different ideas of what is good or bad RP, and how they want to RP, and so on and so forth.
And even if by some miracle you got 3000 players who all roughly were compatible RPers, you’d never be able to keep up with the ins and outs of what they all were up to.
No, it really does work better with a fairly tight knit circle. Although it’s nice to be able to /wave and /smile and do a bit of random pub RP with strangers too.
I do think that you need to create a RP background carefully in an online game, especially an MMO. Think about what you OOCly want to do in the game and make sure you’ve thought up a character which won’t ‘break’ if you do it. ie. If you think you might want to make friends or be nice to people, don’t create a character who cannot easily interact with others. If you think you might want to level up and kill stuff, don’t create a pacifist who is also agoraphobic (unless you intend for your character to change their views fairly quickly). Don’t try to buck the trend or buck the stereotype, especially if the gameplay drives you towards it.
I know it sounds restrictive but my experience is that it’s easier AND more fun to RP in games if you design a character that is motivated to do the stuff you OOCly wanted to do anyway.
Oh, of course it’s restrictive, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Restriction breeds creativity. I *do* wish that it were possible to attack your own faction or speak to the opposing faction, especially as a Forsaken who was formerly Alliance, but that’s just a limitation that one has to work around.
Thanks for chiming in, Spinks. I figured you’d have a thing or two to say.
I missed your google wave… just replied to it. : )
Might need to reroll RP myself. Good practice in the writing, I suppose.
Man, I think all your roleplaying urges are so out of wack with wows structure!
I’m not saying your doing something wrong, but it’s just a square peg in a round hole situation.
Not that any mmorpg I’m aware of supports what your trying to do. They are all only one evolutionary step away from wargaming, so far.
*chuckle*
Indeed, what I’d like to do just doesn’t work within the framework. That’s one of the things I want to dig into in another article. I’m not saying WoW is wrong, either, just that it’s a somewhat limited stage. (Which itself isn’t a bad thing either, rather, as you note, not a good fit for certain goals.) It’s not like Allods (or anyone else) really works either.
Maybe EVE, but that’s an entirely different animal.
I’ve never hidden the fact I dislike RP as for me it kills normal social interaction and removes personality from players and just seems weird to me but I fully agree with Tesh that in WoW seems to limit its scope in ways.
What is the WoW lore these days anyway? I dont think blizzard know themselves….. whatever keeps the bank roll ticking over would be my answer
Pitrelli, just curious, have you ever played a tabletop RPG?
I really have to wonder if there’s a significant part of the MMO RP playerbase who has, and wants to recapture that feeling online. I played a bit in my teenage years, and have a rudimentary understanding of role playing, as well as an itch to write and create, but I’m no long-term veteran. I think that there’s some potential for MMOs to scratch that role playing itch, but not in the same way a tabletop game could.
Spinks has written about it in more depth than I can, so I defer to her experience on this, but yes, it’s something that I wanted to at least scratch the surface of.
As to the lore, well… I’ve given up making sense of all of it. I get the grand sweeps and some interesting details, but they don’t always mesh. I’ve given up on trying to make them do so, it just strips the gears. *shrug*
*cough* yes *cough*
Keep it on the low low I have a rep to upkeep
I just think an MMO is too open ended for it to work properly so why bother *shrug* its certainy from my perspective more bother than its worth.
[...] 27, 2010 by Tesh Mortiphoebe is [...]
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