Those wacky folks of the Sleeper Cartel guild (on Perenolde) emailed to let us know they are having their annual summer party this coming weekend, July 26th at 7pm server time, and it looks to be a hootenanny. They'll have player-run quests, trivia contests, and scavenger hunts, there'll be a snowball fight and fireworks aplenty, and they're even planning to give away an honest-to-goodness epic. If you're a fan of player-run events, this is the Super Bowl -- as you can see from their last party, they do it up right. Roll Alliance and show up in Perenolde on Saturday if you want in on the fun.
And here's another player-run party: on July 27th, a couple of Hordies on Steamwheedle are planning a "Tribune of the Horde" RP event -- apparently they think the Horde needs leaders, and Thrall and the rest of the gang aren't cutting it. (see Update) So they're having a Horde meetup in ZG to talk things out -- one Horde member of each race has been chosen as diplomat, and diplomats will give their own speeches, while those in attendance will be able to ask questions and speak their mind as well.
Sounds interesting -- we always love hearing about (and hopefully attending) events like this. If you're putting one on, feel free to tip us about it, and if you go, take lots of screenshots and send them back to us so we can see what players are up to in the realms.
Update: I never did understand RP -- the people running the Horde event emailed us to say that they're not looking to replace Thrall at all. Instead, they're convening a Tribune of the various Horde races to voice their concerns and working up a scroll to take to the Warchief himself -- they're working in complete concert with the current Horde, they just want to make sure the voices of the little people (and trolls, and Undead, and so on) are heard. Our apologies for the misunderstanding, especially for the suggestion that anyone was trying to take over from Thrall. For the Horde!
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.
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 flesh our your character, and help it leap from the screen into everyone's imagination.
Your background sets up your character's story. It's where your character comes from, and often describes what motives your character's actions. But it's infinitely helpful to define more about your character than just the time the Horde ravaged your family and wrecked the estate, and maybe talk about...how he feels about children, or the summer holidays.
Let's talk about how to flesh out a character, behind the cut...
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 love this idea from Matt on WoW LJ -- he points out a few great examples of what he calls "incidental RP." The vast majority of players in the game wouldn't call themselves "roleplayers" (and lots of them might make fun of people who do), but all of us, in playing the game, are buying into the lore and the roles we're playing to a certain extent. If you've ever yelled "for the Horde!" or felt a strange hatred towards Gnomes, guess what -- you've been roleplaying.
His examples are a little more silly -- his girlfriend hates parrots (because one of them once killed her in Deadmines), and he'll sometimes answer NPCs, even though they never respond. I do the same thing -- /salute an NPC after grabbing a quest, or yelling "and stay down!" after dropping a major boss or a mob that's given me trouble. That kind of stuff is a far cry from the heavy RP that can go on in game, but just the same, it makes the game more fun. And just like good art, it puts you even more in someone else's (fictional or otherwise) shoes -- what would it feel like to be someone given a quest, or a real member of a group like the Horde? Maybe that's why roleplaying is the wave of the future.
Any other great examples of incidental roleplaying? It's another mark of how great Blizzard's game is that the setting, art, and experience of playing pushes people who wouldn't normally get into character to really think about what the person they're playing is all about.
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.
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.
When you look at games like World of Warcraft versus games like Dungeons and Dragons, you can see that in some ways they are just the same, while in others they are vastly different. Thematically, they're both about romping through a fantasy world having adventures, and depending on the kind of activity you enjoy most in your games, the actual content of either one can be very similar. The difference lies in the user interface: WoW takes over your computers screen and presents you with intensive graphics, while D&D relies on paper, dice, and your imagination.
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.
Getting into character isn't all that easy. First of all, as Matt demonstrated last week, one must have the desire and the gumption to just do it. You can't sit back and say, "But I don't know how to do it right!"or "But what if people don't like my roleplaying?" or any other excuse like that. You have to put your fingers to the keyboard and just start playing your role. Whether people like it more or less depends upon a bunch of things, including your skills and knowledge about how to do it well, but first and foremost it depends on your willingness to go out and try things out -- then look back and learn from your experience. You won't stop having problems and making mistakes, but you will get better over time.
Today I'll share with you one idea I found that helped me a lot with a problem I was having: when I found myself having a bit of trouble "logging in" to a particular character's personality, I found the concept of the "Character Diamond" to be extremely valuable in pinning down exactly who this character is, how she would respond, and what it feels like to be inside her head. This concept was originally thought up by a screenwriting teacher named David S. Freeman, but it has gone through a bit of modification to suit the MMORPG world. So, with permission from the folks at Dramatis Personae who first taught me about it, I would like to sum it up for you here as a starter's guide and reference for making character diamonds of your own.
Twice a week, our writers will tell you more about themselves, and let you get to know them and the characters they play a little better. Click here to read moreAbout the Bloggers. What do you do for WoW Insider?
I'm primarily a weekend blogger for WoW Insider, but I also stick my nose in during the week when I can. I am also a columnist for Hybrid Theory and I take turns with Elizabeth Wachowski writing Know Your Lore.
For the Horde or Glory to the Alliance?
Glory to the Alliance! While orcs bug me for some reason I can't decipher, I don't really have anything against the Horde. I started playing Alliance because that's where my friends rolled and we started a pretty awesome guild there, so I stuck around and came to love it. If those people had rolled Horde instead, I might be playing there. Both factions have their own feel, and they're both very cool.
All the World's a Stage is a source for roleplaying ideas, commentary, and discussions. It is published every Sunday evening. Except for this week, when it is more like the early afternoon.
Your usual AtWaS columnist, David Bowers, has found himself a tad busy this weekend. Due to this, I'll be nosing in on his territory for a day. Don't worry ladies and gentlemen, I'll take good care of you. Just yesterday we discussed a little about RP descriptions. That is, the physical descriptions you can give your character via addons such as FlagRSP2 or MyRoleplay. David seemed to think this was a pretty good topic, so we're going to go a little more in depth into the right and wrong way of writing these.
Right and wrong in this case is naturally up to the individual, but in general there are some pretty solid guidelines you should keep in mind. The first and most obvious is that you should always proofread your writing. In general, roleplayers gravitate towards people with at least some grasp of the English language. A sloppily written description is the first thing someone will see, and it's going to set off alarms in the heads of other people.
Personally, I like to keep my descriptions short and sweet. Lengthy ones certainly have their place, I just prefer being brief. A short physical overview- height, build, hair, that sort of thing. Then I plug in a few baubles or unique pieces of clothing people may notice. A tabard, medals, jewelry, something that could spark a conversation. Things that someone might walk up and ask, "Where did you get that?"
On my main, my human priestess, most of those things are pins on the collar of her robes that signify organizations she's involved with or support. For example: Her guild, the Argent Dawn, and the Aldor. All in all, her description is about a paragraph long to paint a picture of her and give some conversation inspiration.
Now, here's my request for all of you. Show me your descriptions! Copy-paste them straight from FlagRSP or make one from scratch, it's up to you. Long or short, tame or ridiculous, I'm interested in them all. We might even learn a thing or two from those posted. A little style goes a long way.
When you decide to roleplay, a whole new world of imagination opens up to you -- soon you realize that 
I love this idea from Matt on WoW LJ -- he points out a few great examples of 
Twice a week, our writers will tell you more about themselves, and let you get to know them and the characters they play a little better. 
We've discussed RP descriptions in the past, both their usefulness as well as their 
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