Posted by Lethality | 34 Comments

Editorial: If It’s Red, It’s Dead – Proper PvP Etiquette

I like to consider myself a well-rounded player in terms of enjoying the various aspects within an MMO. I partake in role-playing, though I am not a role-player; progress in my share of raid encounters, though not a raider; I will gather and tinker, but do not call me a crafter. But if I had to label myself as any particular player, I’d fall into the category of a PvPer. Ah, yes. I can hear the boos and hisses already, as members of various other communities read these words.

Being a PvPer I understand the harsh stigma that is associated with my preferred gaming choice. We ruin role-plays, camp corpses, kill all members of opposing faction with no regard for level difference, ruin PvE, eat children, speak LEET, kill immersion and tea bag everything. We are the blight of everyone and  are vile, disgusting, and flat out terrible human beings. We offer very little, if anything, to the game and should all jump off a bridge or DIAF (die in a firefor those not acronym savvy). I’ve heard, read and seen it all. PvPers are generally not tolerated and our presence is not welcome in some role-playing circles. While most of the disdain is justified, it’s the bad PvPers that ruin it for the good ones.

Fellow PvPers, here is some food for thought before you venture out on your next hunt…

Read More

Posted by Sa Chi | 13 Comments

All The Galaxy’s A Stage: Your Mind Tricks Don’t Work On Me

All The Galaxy’s A Stage is a regular column at Ask A Jedi with some lofty, creative goals.  On one hand, we will be discussing and exploring meaningful topics to support the role-play experience and community.  On the other hand, we also want to introduce the casual Role-Player to the writing-acting experience that can add so much more to an MMORPG like Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Share your perspectives and experience as we co-create magical story in that galaxy far, far away!

Like millions of other fans I have many wonderful memories of the Star Wars movies. “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for” stands out as one of my favourites.  When I first watched that iconic scene I remember marveling at the idea.

Yet when I bring this idea together with RP I can’t help but think that we end up with one of the more interesting challenges for RP within an MMO.  I could go about my business but this column wouldn’t be the same if I didn’t discuss the more tricky questions.  With that in mind I will move along.

OK, I’m done now.

What are your views on powers like Mind Trick within RP?  Is your Force sensitive character going to ever attempt to use it (or other mind manipulating variants) on other player characters (PCs)?  Would your PC ever submit to such a power?  Do you find such skills too over powered and prefer to navigate around them?  Perhaps you might rationalize this with the game’s context that you are an elite member of the galaxy and your willpower and training is strong enough?  After all, a quick scan of examples of the power’s use on Wookieepedia does support this approach.

Read More

Posted by Sa Chi | 9 Comments

All The Galaxy's A Stage: Freeform and Structured RP

All The Galaxy’s A Stage is a regular column at Ask A Jedi with some lofty, creative goals.  On one hand, we will be discussing and exploring meaningful topics to support the role-play experience and community.  On the other hand, we also want to introduce the casual Role-Player to the writing-acting experience that can add so much more to an MMORPG like Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Share your perspectives and experience as we co-create magical story in that galaxy far, far away!

The more time you’ve spent Role-Playing, the more likely it is that you’ll have come to realize that there are many different styles of RP.  Whether you’ve experienced the cliques that form within real life or on-line RP communities, or the differences between those that prefer RP within a guild to mixing it up on forums, the reality is every RPer has their own preference and opinion when it comes to RP.

For those of you new to RP it is worth providing a little context.  Perhaps the two most obvious ‘types’ of RP in an online setting concern what I’m choosing to title as Freeform RP and Structured RP.

Read More

Posted by Sa Chi | 2 Comments

All The Galaxy's A Stage: Real-Time RP In An MMORPG

All The Galaxy’s A Stage is a regular column at Ask A Jedi with some lofty, creative goals.  On one hand, we will be discussing and exploring meaningful topics to support the role-play experience and community.  On the other hand, we also want to introduce the casual Role-Player to the writing-acting experience that can add so much more to an MMORPG like Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Share your perspectives and experience as we co-create magical story in that galaxy far, far away!

As I was thinking about RP in SW:TOR, one of the defining moments of my MMORPG Role-Playing experience came to mind.  When Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO) was launched I founded a RP guild.  It didn’t take us long to grow, and by the time of our first major RP event we had about 60 active members.  The leadership team had a real passion for creating guild story arcs, and one such arc resulted in what came to be an epic experience.  Players were morally challenged, sacrifice was required and all in all the event initially looked, from where we were sitting, to be a great success.

Have you ever been in an MMO-RP scene with 50+ players RPing at the same time?  Have you experienced that rush of text dialog and emotes in the chat channel?  And I’m not talking about random cantina RP (where you can easily see 50+ RPers in the same space).  I’m referring to big story events that have taken weeks or months to bring to a significant storypoint and most of your guild have shown up for.

Read More

Posted by Sa Chi | 18 Comments

All The Galaxy's A Stage: Enforced RP Rulesets?

All The Galaxy’s A Stage is a regular column at Ask A Jedi with some lofty, creative goals.  On one hand, we will be discussing and exploring meaningful topics to support the role-play experience and community.  On the other hand, we also want to introduce the casual Role-Player to the writing-acting experience that can add so much more to an MMORPG like Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Join in the discussion and share your perspectives and experience as we co-create magical story in that galaxy far, far away!

I know last time, I promised to discuss some of the challenges of real time RP in an MMO in the next column, but I caught a post by BioWare Senior Community Manager Stephen Reid in the Dev Tracker and could not resist.  He wrote something that I never expected to see even being discussed:

We’ll have PvP servers, and we may have ‘soft’ RP servers (ie, labelled as such, but with no enforcement)… however, enforcing an RP ruleset is a big decision and one that’s higher up the chain than me.

We’ve been getting wind of soft RP servers for a while now.  Given that folks such as Daniel Erickson are self-noted avid Role-Players themselves, there’s no doubt that the RP community of SW:TOR really has some important allies in high places.  Contemplating official RP servers is definitely a practical approach by BioWare – after all, they have to know that if they don’t give us RP servers the community will only go and select a single server to overwhelm as our unofficial home anyway, right?  But to read that the idea of an RP ruleset driven server is even on the lips of BioWare staff made me do a double-take.

That said, I do agree with Mr. Reid that this is far from a trivial matter.  Whilst I’m not going to get into enforcement of in-character elements of RP (that’s never going to fly), the idea of a ruleset on RP is still fraught with complications.  And yet, I will confess that the idea does fill me with a dreamy look of a young schoolgirl overwhelmed by her first crush.  The idea of a server where there are consequences for OOC (out-of-character) griefers disturbing the RP scene really is tantalizing.  And yet, I know I am definitely reading more into this than is realistically happening behind the scenes.  Perhaps this really is a heavy dose of wishful thinking?

Regardless of what Mr. Reid may have meant by all this, we would like to hear your perspective on this post and experiences around RP in MMORPGs.  What do you think?

Read More