Roleplayers’ Role in Your MMO

Today Girl Unplugged opines about the experience of picking back up a pen and paper RPG and getting back to the basics, including the idea of playing a role, creating a dialog with others, and generally immersing oneself into a character.

To be honest, I’m not that into paper and pen stuff, not to mention live roleplaying, but I gotta say, especially when it comes to online games, the RPG in MMORPG is typically left out, sometimes even ridiculed. Roleplayers in MMO’s are sometimes maligned as the “serious business” people of the massively multiplayer world, choosing to craft character profiles and backstories that lots of players don’t find necessary. RP’ers are viewed as everything from less skilled, to the object of derision, to basement dwellers. Though some people retreat to the sanctuary of RP servers in an attempt to look for more “mature” players, even this is a bit of an assumption – especially when everyone else rolls on one with no intention of roleplaying.

C’mon guys and gals – roleplayers are MMO players too. To be honest, when we step into the skin of a character on the screen in an MMO, we’re all “roleplayers” to a certain degree. We’re controlling an avatar that is not actually us but which is perceived to be “us” from another player’s perspective. We use emotes and interact with NPCs, we chat with other people, and we otherwise create communications using our character within the parameters of the game’s limits. If that isn’t playing a role, I don’t know what is.

Roleplayers and non-roleplayers alike have more in common than you might think. In an MMO, and on the Internet in general, we’re all faceless and anonymous, identified only by the text on the screen, the occasional voice conversation, or our handles, gamertags, and usernames. To others, we’re “the hardcore rogue player” or “the nicest healer I’ve ever met”, or “some asshole who stole my kill”. These are all roles, played not just in MMOs but in other places online, and we’re doing it unconsciously.

Non-roleplayers who choose to point and make fun of roleplayers in RPGs and MMOs need only look at the Twitter or Facebook or Myspace or blogs they might have sitting around to realize they’re making fun of themselves.  These are all places where we mirror ourselves to others, where we open dialogs with people, where we are, in part, who we are when we are talking to someone face to face. In some cases, that isn’t true – but that’s another positive post for another day.

Overly Positive is a bit of an over-the-top example, but this blog, read by tens of people a day (hopefully not the same 2 people visiting from different places) is such a reflection. I’m generally a positive, optimistic person. I don’t sweat the small stuff and if things are grey or stormy, I can usually push through and find some idealistic anchor to hold onto. The optimist is indeed a role difficult to find and to play on the intarwebz, but it’s one I am happy to play nonetheless, even if no one is reading.

So the next time you’re tempted to look at an RP’er and try to stuff them into the proverbial locker because they like to be an arrogant Elf, give them a /hug instead and a /wave of encouragement. After all, you’re kindred spirits.