The art of roleplaying is like a field of tender soil. You only get something back after you put something in.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. But wait... before we get serious about this new expansion of our relationship, Wrath, there's something you should understand about me: I may be a hunter, druid, rogue, warlock, warrior, shaman, and even a mage, but above and beyond all these things I'm also a roleplayer. Yes, I love all those promises you're making me these days about how wonderful our life together is going to be, but something inside tells me that you don't really understand what I really want. You only understand the part of me that likes to shoot, shred, stun, fear, strike, shock and even blast my pixelated enemies into oblivion. But what about my artistic vision?

Oh sure, I see you smirking. What does artistic vision have to do with "Warcraft," "Wrath," and "Lich King?" ... well, you're forgetting the very first thing that anyone ever sees or hears about you: "World." You may have lots of violence, anger, and nasty enemies, but in the end what you really are is a world, a space, and a stage, where my friends and I can get together and have a good time. This is what you don't understand, Wrath: I'm a person, and I like to have things to do and talk about with other people that don't involve damage, threat, or recovering from damage and threat.

Okay okay, you have a point. It's not like you've ignored this aspect of our relationship completely; I'll give you credit for that. In fact, there are some new non-violent things I'm really looking forward to, which I wouldn't be able to do without you.

When you decide to roleplay, a whole new world of imagination opens up to you -- soon you realize that all the World of Warcraft is a stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players. Michael Gray fills in this week for David Bowers to talk about how you can handle delicate subjects while achieving your roleplay goals.

I can't speak for anyone else, but one thing Momma always warned me about is that there are a few topics you just don't talk about over dinner or in polite company. Sex, drugs, money, politics. If you're like me, your sweetheart gives you that look if certain subjects are brought up. "Don't even get started," that look warns me.

I admit, I can be a powderkeg about feminism, racial equality, and general "do the right thing" subjects. But these issues do come up during the course of roleplay. There are more than a few victims among WoW's characters, and there are certainly some bad guys who'd do despicable things.

If you're going to play with hot-topic issues, there some things you can do to help keep everyone's sensitivities in mind.

From: The Consortium Ltd., Outland Branch office, Stormspire, The Netherstorm

To: All employees and independent subcontractors of the Consortium on Outland

Subject: Monthly Paycheck

As it is the first day of the month, the gem payments for all fleshing subcontractors located in Outland have been organized and are available from paymaster Gezhe at Aeris Landing in Nagrand, north of the Oshu'gun digsite. We would like to remind you to pick up your gems as soon as possible, as any unclaimed pay will be declared forfeit and void at the end of the month.

We expect another quarter of strong growth based on our investments into Ogre obsidian and biodome technology, and as a result, all exalted and revered subcontractors will receive their usual bonuses in recognition for their continued support of the Consortium. Thank you for all your hard work, and we look forward to another profitable month.

Signed,
Nexus-Prince Haramad

When you decide to roleplay, a whole new world of imagination opens up to you -- soon you realize that all the World of Warcraft is a stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players.

Blizzard definitely cares about roleplayers. They listen to us and there's a special place for us in their hearts -- which is natural, because in many ways, their whole world has its own story and background which means a lot to them, and while all players get to see that story unfolding through their activities in the game, roleplayers are the ones who participate in that story by making their own stories within it.

The problem is that Blizzard and its roleplayers are on pretty different wavelengths when it comes to what roleplayers want to receive and what Blizzard wants to provide. Blizzard wants to give us more neat toys and perfect places to enjoy, with lots of lore and story behind them -- and while this is all very interesting and everyone enjoys it, most roleplayers are wishing they had more sandbox-like tools, spaces and items they can easily bend or shape in their own ways, to use for their own purposes.

Blizzard may care, but do they really understand? Read on for insights Blizzard may be missing.

When you decide to roleplay, a whole new world of imagination opens up to you -- soon you realize that all the World of Warcraft is a stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players.

A friend of mine recently complained that lately leveling has been extremely tedious. Even with characters he might feel excited about at first, he eventually gets bored after just a few quests. We talked about this for a little while, and he brought up the fact that if he was going to play WoW by himself he might as well play a single-player game instead.

It got me thinking that, in spite of all the demand people have for more solo and casual content, this is significantly better when we play it together. Even when I play by myself, my eye is always on my friends list to see if someone I know is going to show up and chat with me. Thinking about my friend's problem, I thought maybe it would really help if he and I were to go questing together -- so we found the two characters we had with the smallest level gap between them and we decided to go at it. Rather than just just going through the motions of killing the various enemies listed on our little quest sheets as if we were buying groceries or something, we made it into a neat little roleplay experience.

In fact, there are lots of quests in the game that are very appropriate for roleplaying. When you get together with your friends to level up and quest together, you can focus on the quest that has the deepest possible connection to your own character, or the one with the most intrinsic storyline. Of course there are many other throwaway quests you can do along the way, like "kill 10 Generic Humanoids" or whatever, but it works best to pick one that seems to have some meaning to you or your character and start there.

I know I've complained a bit about Warcraft's lack of character customization, but I must say that it seems like they've been slowly but surely taking steps to make things better on that front. There's the dance studio and the barber shop incoming, of course, but here's another leak that's popped up from the Alpha: New emotes!

I know it sounds silly, but having pre-made emotes can really add to the fun factor of playing your character. Add them in macros (but don't spam them, that's just annoying) or use them to register your enjoyment, surprise, shock, or disgust at the situation. There's some really good ones in here that I've been wanting for a while -- although, word to wise, Blizzard: Facepalming is generally done with one palm, not two. I know you've seen the facepalm ASCII on the General Forums, too. Also, I would like to thank you for allowing me to finally act as my hero, Phoenix Wright, through the magic of emotes.

I know it's just a minor thing, but still, I'm looking forward to having a bit more variety in playing with my character in the social part of the game. Now if we could only get outfits and player housing too...

[Via Deathknight.info]

When you decide to roleplay, a whole new world of imagination opens up to you -- soon you realize that all the World of Warcraft is a stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players.

There are degrees to roleplaying. Some people like it "light," so that it never gets too intense, you never have to actually "work" to make your character profound or lore-worthy, and it's generally just a fun way to pass some time. Others like it "heavy;" they view their characters as works of art, taking special care to make their characters believable and interesting, and sometimes planning special roleplaying events for their guild to enjoy. Some even try to do everything in-character, from repairing armor to marking out targets with raid symbols.

Recently I joined just such a full-immersion roleplaying guild, and have been trying out their particular style. To be fair, I still have a number of friends on my server that I usually speak out-of-character with, because that's what we're used to, but for everyone in this guild, I do my best to stay in character at all times, with everything my character says and does. To some this may seem like an unnecessary pain, but to others it's a fun experience. Here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages of this type of roleplaying.

So it's Father's Day, the time when we all pay homage to the fathers or father figures in our lives, and thank them for all that they do. While we can't say for sure if they celebrate Father's Day in Azeroth, too, there's a lot of people in Azeroth and Outland who have reason to think back on their dads today. Many dads of Azeroth have affected their children's lives or been affected by them. The ramifications of the interactions of these fathers and children have then in turn affected the lore and story of Warcraft in ways great and small.

Therefore, in honor of the holiday, let's look at 10 famous and not-so-famous dads of Warcraft lore (listed in no particular order).

So like I was saying the other day, one of the things I'm looking forward to the most out of WotLK is the character customization options, such as the dance studio and the barber shop. I've already got a few ideas in my head for how I'm going to change my characters.

For my Night Elf druid, I've been tired of his green hair for a while now. It's not bad, and it blends in well with most Druid tier armor, but I feel like I want to stand out, so I'm figuring royal purple, one of my favorite colors, should look awesome. I'm also figuring I'll give him the short beard (he's clean-shaven), and maybe restyle his hair to be the long topknot style, if only because the Samurai look would be pretty sweet. As far as dances, I'll have to see how the system works, like if it lets you pick any dance currently in game or just gives you access to a couple extra dances for each race, but If it's an option, I am totally switching him over to the Tunak Tun dance, if only because I absolutely love that dance.

Gamers on the Street logs onto U.S. servers to get the word from the front on what's going on in and around the World of Warcraft.

The WoW roleplayer is a strange creature -- in a game universe almost completely designed for the non-roleplayer (there are enough pop culture references to make anyone sensitive to anachronisms apoplectic), they soldier on insider RP servers, taking their time leveling up, and having perhaps much more fun than anyone who races towards the endgame might otherwise have.

So for this Gamers on the Street, I decided to head to Moon Guard, an RP server. I had hoped to chat about what players were expecting for season 4, and maybe find out what casual players thought of all the new things coming in Wrath of the Lich King, but when I sent out my query for interviewees, what I found were two roleplayers. people who were taking the game at their own pace and having fun doing it.

I also made sure, due to past reader comments, to speak to Alliance this time. After the jump, meet two roleplayers who are playing the game their own way.

When you decide to roleplay, a whole new world of imagination opens up to you -- soon you realize that all the World of Warcraft is a stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players.

Last week, we took a look at how roleplaying a death knight will be different from roleplaying other classes, because death knights come pre-packaged with elements of a backstory for you to flesh out: they have, for whatever reason, at one time joined forces with the Lich King, learned from him how to be a death knight, and now are breaking free of his influence and striking out against him.

As Medeni pointed out in her comments, however, this can potentially lead to a kind of unlikable "celebrity in rehab" type of personality. Imagine, if you will, the death knight known as Marisoo: formerly a paladin of the Light, she sought to destroy the Scourge that plagued her homeland of Lordaeron, but eventually, as she was consumed with vengeance and hatred, she joined the Lich King instead of destroying him. Having learned to turn corpses into slavering ghouls and call forth armies of the undead, she eventually thought better of the whole "wickedly destroy all life" thing and decided to destroy the Lich King after all, only this time she would use his own power against him! Muahaha.

As you can see, there are some pretty obvious flaws in this idea. First of all, the first half of it is almost a direct copy of Arthas' own tale, and, while I can certainly appreciate the power of that story, and the possibility that other paladins could have gone through something similar, roleplayers who want to play a death knight character must realize that it's going to get old fast. Just as death knights aren't just human paladins, we can't all go around copying Arthas, brooding on how moody and wicked we've become. We have to come up with new ideas that fit the death knight mould.

So recently, Tobold was saying that excitement around Wrath of the Lich King is visibly much less than the excitement that led up to the release of Burning Crusade. People are tired out by the 2 year wait, WoW isn't innovating, WoW isn't adding the content fast enough: there's just so many reasons that the Wrath of the Lich King is being greeted with ennui instead of excitement.

My first thought upon reading that: Wait, people aren't excited over WoTLK?

While WoW is obviously a child of the early 21st century, all the practical tools used in D&D have existed for thousands of years. One might well wonder: "why didn't Plato (or any other suitably wise old figure out of history) ever think of putting together a dungeon adventure?" A recent Escapist magazine article asks that very question, and then provides us with a bunch of theories about what roleplaying is and why people do it. All these are interesting in themselves, but they leave me wondering "but wait... why didn't Plato ever think of it?" The answer I think the article is trying to give is that roleplaying is actually a form of social innovation that couldn't have existed before, because the culture and ideas to give it form hadn't developed until the '60s.

So tonight when you get home and log into WoW, especially if you are logging in to roleplay your character, remember that you are participating in an activity that is on the growing edge of human civilization. Just as, all those hundreds of years ago, it was a great innovation for the Greek playwright Aeschylus to bring two actors onto the stage at once as opposed to letting one actor and a chorus carry the show -- in our own era, the way players get together today to collaboratively create worlds, characters and stories with one another is a new and exciting innovation that never existed before. Roleplaying itself is one of many brilliant and beautiful examples of how society and culture continue to evolve and progress well into the the future... and beyond.

When you decide to roleplay, a whole new world of imagination opens up to you -- soon you realize that all the world's a stage, even if just an electronic one.

We don't know a whole lot about death knights in WoW yet, but what we do know is already enough to show that death knights are the class with the most background story already laid out for them ahead of time: The death knights we will be able to play are former servants of the Lich King who have now turned against him and joined the Alliance or the Horde instead. This background story is built into the class -- something each and every death knight roleplayer will have to take into account when they roleplay their character, and it will have ramifications upon everyone else in the entire global society of Azeroth as well.

Some other classes have a great depth of lore behind them as well, such as druids, paladins and shamans, who look to Malfurion, Uther, and Thrall for inspiration. These classes certainly look up to their heroes and follow in their footsteps, just as, in some ways, death knights follow in the footsteps of Arthas. And yet for other classes that has little effect on each individual's path to becoming a practitioner of his or her particular abilities. The transition from normal shmoe to level one hero is left vague for the player upon character creation, unless, as a roleplayer working on a backstory, he gives it special attention.

Indeed, some classes are pretty straightforward, and don't necessarily suggest a story at all. Instead, they present us with an image, or an idea -- when you play one of the existing nine classes, you can fit right into the role without a story, because the role feels like a basic archetype you already understand.