Is actual RP in MMORPGs another next impossible thing?
Patrice:
Quote from: Wolfen on January 21, 2009, 12:28:51 PM
But you're right. Exploration in the roleplaying sense does not happen in MMOs without RP. You can explore the game world, but that's an entirely different sort of exploration.
I'll take this agreement we sound to have stuck to give it a last try, Lance. I'm a bit concerned about the thread turning into a bare argument and I think this is because we both seem to think that what we're saying is obvious and blatant. From that, it's not easy to discuss because it's not so obvious for the readers which aren't ourselves, including me for you and you for me. Every time I read your answers I'm thinking "Gosh! Does he pretend not to understand or what? What is he beating the bush around?" and I'm pretty sure you feel something closely related to this from what I read of your answers. I want to put forward strongly that I have no private interest in the issue of this thread, I don't care being confirmed or wronged, I'm just trying to push it further to see where it gets us.
This being said, I'll get back to the very basis of my theory here. Let's say you play a MMORPG. Let's say WoW to stick to one for clarity's sake. You have never heard anything about RP. For you, as it is the case for about 95% players (insider figures), the game is called RPG because you play a fictional character and not yourself as you are. You begin to play this game: It's about smashing mobs, doing quests, stuffing your character, getting it in a guild and finally flaming a few message boards. Whenever needed you use chat lines to "discuss" with the others. You're talking about the last soccer match, your would-be girlfriend's boobs, tactics for raiding Naxx and the despisable nerf of the Rogue character class. Sometimes you need the chat lines to offer something, it goes like "T7 Healadin LFG Naxx 10" or "\\\WTS [mighty Icebane Frostlance] 2K///".
I say, in this game, the MMO itself as it is designed, there's no RPG. There's no RPG from MMO standards and no RPG from tabletop standards either. It's maybe a RPG for secret hardcore boardgamers from Pluto but I've never heard about them. I swear. There is a Virtual space, there is a Character, end of the story. There's no Sharing, no Exploration, nothing but Gaming as you would play Gamist a poker game. These are common features with MMORPGs and tabletop RPGs: There are Characters and it's about a Game. The similarity ends here.
Now, you have RP servers in WoW. 5% of the players aren't satisfied with what's described above as "the game", they want to play it differently. They want to feel immersion (Sim), they want to weave their own stories (I'm NOT saying Nar yet). So they wondered and they told themselves "what do we have?". They told, we have chat lines and we have emotes and we have a whole Setting with a background. We even have a Character creation system allowing us to derivate our Characters from the Setting. They wanted to Explore this universe. But. Wait. Explore? Yes, they meant explore, not Explore as we do in the Big Model because doing so, as you agreed with, is impossible in MMORPGs because the "Shared" (is it?) Space isn't Imagined. So they had to set something to Explore anyway. And they did, they created fictional things to happen (The Mayor), they created a RPG WITHIN the MMORPG frame and the Community Managers had to take them into account and to create servers for them. That's why I'm talking about a parasit game because the Exploration and SIS happens as a layer of fiction set upon the MMO. It's two different things we're talking about here. Two games.
Now, this population, the RP-ers, the kind of guys who like to talk to NPCs that can't answer them or to use chat lines all night long, looking at the sea instead of playing the f****** game has grown firmer and steadier and the new MMOs take them into account from the start (AoC, WAR). There's no question about this experience being great or lame in this thread. At a personal level, I loved that when I had enough time to play these games as I know we all did here.
I'm waiting for your answer here before moving on to the Sim-Nar thing.
Caldis:
I believe you are both wrong and that "Role Play" as it happens in MMO's is not necessary for there to be exploration and thus roleplaying . All that is required is for multiple people to be working together in the game, using imaginary characters to resolve imaginary situations. A group of players on a non rp server attacking a dungeon is still exploration even if they arent getting into character and speaking in funny voices.
When you discuss "Role play" of the role play servers and what goes on there you are talking about certain techniques and ephemera but it is not inherently anymore role play than that of the non-rp servers.
Patrice:
*Sigh*
[Social Contract [Exploration]]. Exploration means "shared imaginings." The sharing has to be explicit and agreed upon, usually through the spoken word although any form of communication counts. The imaginings have to be the subject that is shared, which is why me reading aloud to my wife does not constitute Exploration. We are independently imagining based on the spoken word, but neither she nor I is telling the other what we imagine from that point. Exploration means that such communication is occurring.
It is exploration. They explore the world, the dungeon,etc. It's not Exploration. Moreover, they don't resolve imaginary Situations, they resolve Virtual situations, their Shared imagination has nothing to do with their game experience.
I don't quite get where you want to go when you say:
Quote
When you discuss "Role play" of the role play servers and what goes on there you are talking about certain techniques and ephemera but it is not inherently anymore role play than that of the non-rp servers.
What is your point? Saying that there's no possible RP in MMOs whatsoever? What backs this assumption?
Callan S.:
Well from a strict reading of the forge glossary
Quote
Exploration
The imagination of fictional events, established through communicating among one another. Exploration includes five Components: Character, Setting, Situation, System, and Color. See also Shared Imagined Space (a near or total synonym).
It just means to imagine the same thing, together, as I'd read it. The act of imagintion, as I understand it, includes simply holding an image or impression - it doesn't have to evolve or change. To imagine does not inherantly mean to add to the imagined scene (for example, just because I ask you to imagine a vase that has been freshly pushed from a balcony, does not mean you have to imagine it falling - you can simply imagine it in freeze frame. If you imagined it falling, you went beyond what I asked you to imagine, of your own choice, rather than that IS what is involved in imagining. Just because you choose to imagine it falling, does not mean imagining forward is part of imagining). What you might imagine past that point, isn't a required part of this definition. Where did you get your definition from, Patrice? Can you give a link? There may be an inconsistancy between the two?
Under the forge glossary definition, I think Caldis has a point in terms of Exploration, with imagining that does not imagine 'forward' so to speak (though I'd suspect what he refers to imagines forward in gamist terms, imagining possible circumstances that could make them lose - but that's probably confusing things).
Patrice:
But, but...
I mean.
In a MMO you don't have to actually imagine anything. It's my whole point. It's not the game of your imagination, it's on the screen you know. Everything: Character, Setting, Situation, System and Color. And it's not established through communication among one another, it's just... It's just plainly here whether you communicate or not. And there's no fiction either actually because no one involves into imagining things that aren't here on the screen. Except in the RPG taking place within because.... (blah blah blah you know what I'm thinking already). I say, the MMO Rp-ers have had to build a fiction upon the MMO space which isn't fictional in itself. It's like it is, albeit Virtual. Even if we would debate and eventually discard the non-fictional thing, what we have isn't imagined and isn't established through communication. I'm sorry to stick to this, but hey, there's no SIS. Not a bit. No Exploration whatsoever.
My answer to this stands well before the fact of imagining forward or not. I say, there's no imagining at all involved. The definition I've found here in Ron's essay upon Narrativism isn't different from yours actually, it says just the same thing in other words (I don't know how to paste links, sorry man, but you'll find it at the very beginning of the essay upon Nar :/).
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