Exactly. I had to sound flippant but "get over it" comes to mind. I've been an MMO roleplayer on just about every unofficial RP server out there. Lord Adraas is actually my first "official" one but it's more like an Unofficial RP server in the sense an broad-based community selected and is backing it. I've seen great RP on unofficial RP servers and in no small part that's because we start out "over it." There's no special title or support for what we do. So we learn to get along with the nonroleplayers that aren't a problem, the majority, and many of them eventually become roleplayers too. The ones that do set out to cause harm get reported under the general provisions that protect all players. But just having a dumb name isn't a sin. Behaving stupidly, if they're not being insulting or offensive, isn't a sin either. Many people just don't know better. I can't count the number of times characters with whacky names ended up with name changes because roleplayers didn't immediately leap all over them but suspended disbelief enough to work with them. The players would be embarrassed. The ones that seek out roleplayers to provoke hostile behavior or disrupt roleplaying are violating general rules and should be /reported. Document what they do with logs or screenshots. Make sure you've got 'em. Then let fly. Eventually, if Bioware is smart and handles RP servers half as well as Turbine handed unofficial ones like Landroval in LoTRO, they'll assign GMs that are roleplayers to our server. So the existing rules will be interpreted even more favorably in our favor and very often some of those characters wandering around and roleplaying at events will be the player-characters of the GMs. Some nimrod shows up and starts trouble? He vanishes to a point very, very, far away or finds himself locked out of the server all together. But it remains to be seen how smart Bioware is about these things.

No worries, I wasn't really addressing that to you but some of the other comments I've seen around. You'll like Lord Adraas if you do head there. You'll find that many other RP guilds are there besides the ones that intentionally showed up too. It's a pretty amazing scene. I can't speak to any other server because I'm not on them though.

Given I'm stuck at work...not too much. But I'm active in the RP forums here and at swtor-rp.com. When new roleplayers need advice I offer it (along with the metric ton of unasked for advice I tend to offer). In game I haven't done much real RP yet. I'm still getting a feel for the setting and the community. Takes me a while to find an interesting RP angle to work sometimes. Given I'm switching alts every two days probably doesn't help but it's to Bioware's credit that I'm more interested in their storytelling than my own. For now at least.

This. There's no law saying you have to roleplay with everyone that claims to be a roleplayer. Roleplay is about having fun in the end. If someone making outlandish claims is messing with your good time just edit him out of your story. A good roleplayer has an internal editor called the brain. Things that don't work get sidelined. Things that work get serious attention. Some of those things are people. That doesn't mean to be rude or to complain about folks whose roleplaying you don't like. But you're not getting paid for this gig. If something isn't working for you just don't do it.

There's no the RP server. But there are a ton of folks organized into an umbrella community already that are in Lord Adraas. Everything I've seen there makes it look pretty amazing. I'm not going to put down other servers. Starting some ego war about which RP server is better is silly. All RP servers are better than all non RP servers. That's the kind of silliness I can get behind!

I'm just going to be duplicating but might as well: 1) RP flag. 2) Appearance Tab. 3) Biography Space. I can live with or without text bubbles and player generated content engines can probably wait a while (there's so much content here already). Still PGC is always top of my list for long run developments in any MMO that wants to cater to creative roleplayers.

Whining about them ain't my job. I'm here to whine about RP stuff we need!

And Huttball?

I think many serious roleplayers are most definitely simulationists! We may not need every technical detail turned into some ornate and byzantine gameplay, like military simulationist rivet-counters, but we want things to look and feel as they should. And one of those elements, as a previous poster noted, is that actions have consequences. If PvP was more "realistic" it would mean 95% PvPers would tone it the hell down. We're talking permadeath, wounding and recovery times, realistic law enforcement or battlefield conditions as a context, etc. I've seen it in MUSHes and it does make people think before pew pewing and look at intrigue and diplomacy as realistic options rather than just jumping for guns and shooting every red dot on the scope. But PvP really comes down to pew pewing with little risk other than to one's ego. Roleplay is just a fun garnish, flavor text to make fights more interesting, on the side for those who indulge. And frankly permadeath and serious consquences wouldn't be fun for anyone in the long run. I've seen in those very same MUSHes populations of roleplayers decimated by Hatfield and McCoy feuds that not only drove off the players of slain characters but angered those who had important storylines and unfinished business tied up with them. You know how some fans of TV shows get pissed off when a writer kills off a favorite character? That happens too. But in this case they can gang up and "kill" the writer. So we're left with a choice of cartoon violence that's really just another kind of sporting event in disguise and asserting that's a meaningful option that somehow deepens roleplay or just avoiding it entirely and getting on with traditional consentual/cooperative roleplaying styles. I'd say that both approaches have merits but ultimately PvP does attract more hostile personalities and anti-RP nonroleplayers. So I go traditional.

I know this kind of thing is annoying. It is to me too. That's why I got on board early with a strong roleplaying community (swtor-rp.com) and followed the herd on their superserver project. Getting the right kind of people around you, roleplayers, is kinda key to having an environment you enjoy being in. But developers never, ever, do a good job policing RP servers whether they've strict policies or not. The most bitter MMO roleplayers I've encountered are WoW vets because they blame everyone but themselves for not having a good time. The GMs are lame, nonroleplayers suck, etc, etc, etc. The happiest roleplayers I know are from unofficial RP servers that communities have come together to create themselves. Because they aren't dependent on the kindness of strangers for success they figure out how to make RP work themselves. Because they know they're going to have nonroleplayers among them they learn how to tolerate and even cooperate with them. Because that's where new roleplayers come from. And when griefing idiots show up they learn the very basic secret of happiness, /ignore. Failing that, /report. And just get on with their lives rather than fuming about it and dwelling on it and feeling neglected or persecuted. They focus on the RP and just let the rest slip right on by.

That is a fundamental bit of useability that many other MMOs have. It does make a huge difference and I suspect with not a huge amount of development effort.

Propecius: There's no way to avoid being complained about! I get complained about! "That OddjobXL's such a know-it-all..." The very simplest explanation for how to get by (and avoid derailing this thread) is simply to talk like a character in /say. If you want to talk as a player to another player, not as your character but as yourself, send a /tell <character name> and say hi! Telling someone they've got a cool character or nice name or whatever isn't at all weird or creepy. Just don't always expect a response. Some people are private. It's not them or you being rude it's just life. Keep on being nice though. Most of us appreciate it. Don't avoid General chat. You'll need it for mechanical reasons (finding people for heroic instances) and also sometimes get useful tips as people chat. Just don't get into arguments there, don't be critical, and if people are being insufferably annoying for any reason...just turn it off for a while. You can always turn it back on later. For more I'd suggest checking out http://www.swtor-rp.com. There are tons of articles and a very friendly forum full of currently bored people waiting in queues who'll love to help a new potential roleplayer out.

General chat is OOC in every MMO I've played. Say/spatial and several player created channels are IC though. I haven't run into any griefers or anti-RP folks yet on Lord Adraas but there will eventually be at least a few. I've seen folks with dumb names. That's really as bad as I've seen so far. Of course that was prelaunch.

I suppose I don't understand why they wouldn't have just closed servers that were showing FULL at peak hours during prelaunch? They could always reopen them again after as needed.

There's quite a few things I'd like to see added but that can wait for another day and another thread. For now? /sign Kudos, guys, this is a damn fun game.

Well, it seems to have worked out for SWTOR-RP. They're definitely on the map and Lord Adrass was packed full of roleplayers pre-launch. The vast majority of folks seem to either be roleplayers or benign nonroleplayers (and I agree with you there, I like nonroleplayers just fine - they're future roleplayers!). I'm not worried about the queues. I tend to think long term. I can deal with some inconvenience for a month or so if five years from now I'm still playing with interesting people. Lots of interesting people. Community always trumps gameplay for me. If I've got a solid RP scene the rest of the game can be a shambles. I'm, uh, not looking at SWG mind you. Although it might be a prime example.

That's interesting. Do you have a link to any information about this? I'd like to read more.

I haven't been there in a long time but be that as it may the server population numbers show a shift and it was also reflected in forum banter. Folks from Cimmeria complaining about the experience and happy to have found Wiccana. Cimmeria RPers trying to recruit players from Wiccana back. But eventually it kinda collapsed on itself. First the hardcore PvP servers died, their players went to PvP-RP servers and made a mess of things, so the remaining roleplayers (many had already left) moved in to Wiccana. I think, if I recall correctly, Wicanna was the largest population PvE server even before the merges. Given the RP community picked it for having an obscure name and being at the bottom of the alphabet I have to think the reason Wiccana pulled that off has entirely to do with the fact it collected so many RP refugees from the PvP-RP servers. But, yeah, I do have to agree with the ERP assessment (though there was other kinds of RP and RP beyond the taverns when I was there). I kinda came for Hyboria and not Gor. So I eventually moseyed along...old fart roleplayer that I am.

Yeah, that is kinda interesting but it does need some perspective. There are only three RP-PvP servers compared to seven RP-PvE servers. Also, for a longer term perspective, look up Cimmeria, official RP-PvP, and Wiccana, unofficial RP-PvE, in AoC. You'll see how that population shifts over time. It is one way and not towards RP-PvP. And the crashing and burning of Bonny, Unofficial RP server, in Pirates of The Burning Sea was a very dramatic version of the same phenomenon. I don't think RP-PvP has very long legs. People go with high hopes and the best intentions but things usually go south because nonroleplaying PvPers just make life miserable for 'em. Most will migrate to RP-PvE servers within a year or two.

I generally hang out on the swtorrp channel myself. It's a bit chatty but, well, roleplayers. You know roleplayers.

Generally speaking MMO roleplayers don't use in-game storylines for their characters beyond as a source of information about the world or to get a feel for themes and places. Why is that? Because if everyone's using the official storyline everyone has the same story. Makes us all into clones! Your personal story, your biography, doesn't have to be heavily detailed. Some roleplayers do that but what's really important is that you have a sense of how your character will react to things and people. Usually there's a reason for that in his history. Characters can be built on the foundation of a strong biography. But biographies can also evolve from a strong character making his way through the game. Generally speaking I don't advise this approach. If I'm dealing with a non-roleplayer, even if he's on a roleplay server, I'll talk to him normally. There's no point aggravating folks. One of the biggest PR problems any roleplaying community has will be the sense that they're elitist and fussy. There's really no need for it. A nonroleplayer today, if treated decently, may be a roleplayer tomorrow. I'd say just stick with ((...)) for OOC as it's by far the most common usage these days. Most channels you get into will be OOC by default and you don't even have to bother with it. Party channels, General, Trade, PvP, etc. Guild channels vary by the guild. Often they'll have both an OOC channel (usually the default guild channel) and an IC channel (a created channel). Anything in /say, /emote or /yell is usually assumed to be IC. Then there is /tell. That can vary. Often people do the usual ((OOC)) double parens in out-of-character tells but some don't bother. In-character tells are usually prefaced by someone typing <comm> meaning your character is communicating electronically with a distant person. But, again, some people don't do that. It just depends on the players you're hanging with. In general roleplayers do control what goes on around them to an extent. The real key to remember in my book is that you're the boss of your character. If you like RP that's going on around you, dive in! If not, don't. If someone comes up and is just acting like a fool remember you aren't getting paid for this. It's not a job. This is for fun. Just send a private /tell and let them know you're busy and can't help them with their RP right now. Be polite but firm. Not everyone enjoys the same kinds of roleplay. Some do favor more freeform and conflict oriented situations where anything goes. Others are a bit more picky and choosy about what they get their characters involved with. That's ultimately a question more of taste than whether either approach is objectively better. True, dat. Going back to biography, that's really, truly why roleplayers use them. They're rudders that steer the story of your character. Every want or need, at least the important and non-trival (drink at a bar), ones comes out of biography and sets up goals and behaviors for a character. A behavior is really just a way of getting from biography to goal if that makes any sense. Behavior is what exists in the moment as you roleplay. Biography is where your character's been. Goals are where he thinks he wants to go.

There's lots of good advice already up there. I'd say listen in and see how other RPers do it. Not all characters are necessarily chatty and social. So you could be roleplaying by not saying -a single thing-! Kinda anyways. But it's a good way to see how it looks in practice. So the real key is to find spots where RP happens and keep in mind that not all roleplayers go about things the same way. If you see RP that looks a little sketchy or odd just keep on moving until you find people doing something interesting and fun. On my server a good place to look is the cantina at the middle of the Republic Fleet station. I've seen all three kinds of RP there so far: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. But mostly good to be honest. The most simple rule is to use spatial or /say only for things your character would say or do rather than you. If you have an out-of-character question send one of the other player-characters a /tell. Roleplayers often put OOC (out-of-character) tells in double parens ((like this)) to let the other player know he's not using IC (in-character) comms or mental abilities to communicate. But don't worry about it too much. Just let them know you're new and all will usually be well. Any roleplayer worth hanging with will usually take at least a little time out to help a new roleplayer. http://www.swtor-rp.com has tons of articles, essays and forums. In addition to the RP forum here that's a great place to ask for advice and look for people willing to help.

I won't lie, I ran as fast and hard as I could until I got my ship. But getting to that point was a pleasure. Had alot of fun with Bioware's storyline for the smuggler so far. Now I feel that I can ease off the gas pedal and enjoy my character, the storyline and the budding RP scene on my server a little more. Why the ship? It's a house to me. Might not be as spruced up as my old YT-1300 on SWG, I went to lengths to set that up -just- right. Might not be as impressive as the old bunker I had either complete with lavishly decorated rooms that took over a year to set up right (and I can't say I ever actually "finished"). But it's home and I like it.

On my server, one of the PvE-RP servers, even General chat isn't that bad usually. Only reason I bother turning it off is that I lose my other channels in the spam but it comes back on when I'm not busy with something. Yeah, I'm really impressed with the folks here. A surprising amount of roleplay going on. And, to me, any roleplay before launch even hits is a remarkable thing. Usually the scene doesn't even start to gel until several months after launch when folks are looking for something else to do after burning out on the content/grind.

Arion! Yeah, I mentioned your name in the swtorrp chat and at least one Landrovaller there swooned... Here we go all over again.