Features

Jim Moreno's RoleCraft is back. This bi-weekly column moves to Tuesdays and this week he calls it "Role-ing Solo" as he looks at roleplaying all by yourself, which sounds a lot worse than it is.

I was telling my RP friend Wendy a couple days ago about The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and how I easily roleplay my characters therein. Oblivion is the best and most current game I can use as an example, even though the game was released in 2006. Oblivion is a huge game, with an incredibly large and open world, and is a great game for RP. Simply remove the massively-multiplayer and online aspects from an MMORPG, and you could have Oblivion. The game, that is. Aside from speech, if you ever want to give yourself a test to find out how much of a roleplayer you (think) you are, make Oblivion your testing ground. I think you'll be surprised at what you find out about yourself and your RP style.

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Jim Moreno's column returns today with "What Level Is Your RP?", his latest in a reoccuring column that looks at the plight of sometimes lost section of the MMORPG community: role-players.

Roleplaying guilds, kinships, and clans very often label themselves as being either light, medium, or heavy RP, but what exactly does that mean? What are the differences between these three level of RP? Well, I am here to make an attempt at answering, or at least providing some helpful insight into, that very question.

Read it after the jump.

Jim Moreno gets back into the groove in 2008 with his latest column: Roleplayers Set S.A.I.L.! This is an acronym for "speech, actions, interactions and look", which are to him four main traits roleplayers focus on. Every other Monday, Moreno brings us a new column where he focuses in on issues that are important to roleplayers.

Taking a good look at my fellow roleplayers in the four MMORPGs I play, and across many other RPGs I've played, I see a vast number of ways we display our RP talents, way too many to count. Yet, I think these methods may all be categorized under four main traits that we focus on - speech, actions, interactions, and look - and are very easily remembered with the acronym SAIL.

Read more after the leap.

In his latest column, Jonathan Steinhauer continues his look at what he calls "The Killing Experience". He began two weeks ago in part one and today looks at more recent examples of this trend. It's all about RPGs and how they use killing as the primary form of advancement, or experience.

A second, much more recent, example is with Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series, particularly Oblivion. In this game which follows the standard RPG model, there is no experience gain from killing. In fact, there is no experience at all. Instead, character growth is built on an array of skills specific to a particular class. As those skills are used over an over again, proficiency grows. Once there are ten threshold increases in the class skills, a new level is gained. At that point health, stamina, magicka, and prime stats also improve.

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In Sean Bulger's latest column, he looks at the idea of competition between players as part of building an MMO community. Every other Wednesday, Bulger chimes in with a new community focused column here on WarCry.

One of the most controversial topics you'll run into with online game development - but certainly far from the only one - is competition between players. The very idea of Player versus Player (PvP) content can scare off a number of players and make plenty more question the potential community of any game with it. It would seem that a fairly large amount of MMOers believe that PvP is detrimental to their enjoyment of the game, that it draws in a fairly bad crowd, and it hurts the community for a game. Between the PvP severs of most games and the popularity of primarily PvE games and PvE content, tends to showcase this mindset.

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Jim Moreno's bi-weekly column "RoleCraft" examines role-playing related issues every other Monday here on WarCry. Over the last year, it has examined a lot of issues and began initially as a World of Warcraft column. Moreno does a year in review article here for those who want to catch up.

Last February, I began a little blog aimed at helping my fellow World of Warcraft roleplayers with their roleplaying. Since then, it has went through a few changes, and more than a few topics have been looked at. As the final word on RP here at WarCry this year, let's go back and review the path this RoleCraft article has taken in 2007!

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The period on December referred to as the "holidays" has come to mean many things and in this article, Robert Cox looks at what people can expect in some of the major MMORPGs. How do these virtual worlds celebrate this time of the year when so many have the time off work to peek inside?

If there's one thing the Horde and Alliance can agree on, it's a party. All across Azeroth and Outland, festive decorations adorn towns and cities as both sides begin their annual celebration of the Feast of Winter Veil.

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In his latest Monday column, Jim Moreno gives us a snapshot of the state of roleplaying in two new MMOs and two older ones. For more of his thoughts on World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Ultima Online and Anarchy Online, click below.

World of Warcraft
Wijon'bu Zentao (Earthen Ring), known as Wichdocta, or just 'Wichy' by his friends, is a troll priest of the voodoo discipline. He shuns being called a healer, and his skills go beyond merely using the powers of shadow. He calls no place home, and can be seen walking through Shattrath City or Thunder Bluff one moment, to throwing the voodoo around Shadowmoon Valley or Silithus the next. He meditates often, either in quiet contemplation inside the Pools of Vision, walking amongst the huge mushrooms of Zangarmarsh, fishing around Nagrand, or by mixing and bottling up the mojo at the Undercity Apothecarium. He is always open to helping fight alongside his Horde brethren, especially when it comes to correcting the ways of the tribes of wayward trolls. Don't hesitate to ask this old troll for help, and may the spirits be with you.

Role on!

Today we introduce a new column to our schedule. Every other Wednesday, Sean Bulger will check in with his look at communities and design. In the first edition, Sean introduces us to his column and talks about players as a resource for development.

While it certainly does come off a bit grim to refer to players as a resource, we are. In fact, we are probably the most important resource for an MMO. When a game begins to fail and starts to lose players it tends to cause a landslide - when enough people leave a guild, they often take other guild members with them. When enough players leave a server, server merges are needed. Many people play MMOs because they are filled with other players - even testimonies from primarily solo-gamers still mention that other players filling the world is a positive thing for them. It is what separates these games from single player, or normal multiplayer games.

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In part two of his series on Gold Farming (read part one here), Jonathan Steinhauer looks further at the RMT industry and ways to realistically combat the problem.

A full barter economy won't stop gold farmers, but it will make their job more difficult, especially if the commodities can be kept diversified (something AC failed to do). Then it becomes not a matter of simply harvesting cash, but of netting resources, completing quests, and so on. Looking at this from the flip angle makes sense, too. A dishonest player who wants to get a lot of capital can't simply go to an RMT and buy loads of universally useful cash, they have to purchase resources which may or may not be useful to them and may even become obsolete. It makes sense as a genre too. Most MMOs are founded on the fantasy model with the Middle-Ages as the base point of inspiration. Only in the latter years of the medieval era was money used at all. Prior to that it was all barter, be it chicken's eggs for cow's milk or lordly protection for feudal service. A barter economy doesn't hurt game play or the trade market; instead, it makes both more interesting.

Read more after the leap.