[MUD-Dev2] Player Choice - How Much is Too Much?

[Amanda Walker]

On Jan 21, 2008, at 12:52 PM, Miroslav Silovic wrote:
> On the downside, most players don't even try to roleplay, which is
> actually not to far from how single-player Baldur's Gate is played.
> Still, there is a small, tight community of game lore collectors and
> roleplaying guilds. There were a small number of player-ran events,  
> and
> ArenaNet provided coding support for some of them (each time this  
> was a
> welcome surprise to the community). Also, a number of NPCs were named
> after active posters on the Lore forums. So I'd say that GW falls
> halfway between a grind MMORPG and a MUD in this respect, for the  
> people
> who choose to RP.

The back story is deeper than I expected going into it, but yeah, RP  
(that is, playing in persona) is almost non-existent.

My personal theory about this ("I have a theory, and it is mine") is  
that as the VR aspects get more immersive, the incentive for RP  
drops.  You no longer have to paint pictures in your mind's eye from  
the DM's description or a paragraph of text--it's all just there.

I've noticed this in real-life RP as well.  I'm a long-time SCA  
member, but the level of realism I experience today is much greater  
than it was 25 years ago.  Today, if I sit down with a piece of  
parchment, a goose quill cut into a pen, and grind up some ink, I'm  
not "re-enacting", I'm just doing calligraphy.  When a friend of mine  
builds a tatara and smelts iron sand into steel ingots and then forges  
tools and knives out of it, he's not "role playing" blacksmithing,  
he's just blacksmithing.

Similarly, modern games have gotten immersive enough that RP isn't  
really required--you just play (note how "immersivity" has dropped  
steadily as a topic on Mud-Dev over the years...).  Whether this is a  
success or a failure is, of course, open to debate.

--Amanda