Roleplaying Online

[J.Gellert]

Today is one of those days when I'm missing the ancient NWN1 role-playing servers.

Before I get over it like so many times in the past, I wanted to ask if there is currently any game (MMORPG, or not-so-massive) that really lets you roleplay a character.

I don't just mean a game where you can talk about your own personal Mary Sue without getting mocked, but a setting where there are actually meaningful role-playing plots going on.

I don't want to discuss how most mmo's fail to do this, I just want to know if there are any who succeed. I have that itch now and I just cannot scratch it...

[Starwulf]

Today is one of those days when I'm missing the ancient NWN1 role-playing servers.

Before I get over it like so many times in the past, I wanted to ask if there is currently any game (MMORPG, or not-so-massive) that really lets you roleplay a character.

I don't just mean a game where you can talk about your own personal Mary Sue without getting mocked, but a setting where there are actually meaningful role-playing plots going on.

I don't want to discuss how most mmo's fail to do this, I just want to know if there are any who succeed. I have that itch now and I just cannot scratch it...

DDO maybe? I don't have any personal experience with it, but considering it's somewhat loosely based on D&D, I would think it might have decent roleplaying. Honestly, if you're used to RPing on an NWN1 private server, you're pretty much screwed in finding anything of that quality. Having played on the World of Caenyr server for a decent period of time, I'm not sure I've found any other actual game with that particular level of RPing. It was just absolutely amazing the kind of RPing that went on there, and how deep it all really went. Events that happened 4-5 years ago on the server would still be sending reverberations even now. I don't personally believe I've ever heard of any game that could match a top quality NWN1 RPing server.

Btw, quick FYI, there are still quite a few NWN1 RP servers going on, I'm 99% positive WoC is still around, and it wasn't even the biggest one around when I played.

[J.Gellert]

DDO maybe? I don't have any personal experience with it, but considering it's somewhat loosely based on D&D, I would think it might have decent roleplaying. Honestly, if you're used to RPing on an NWN1 private server, you're pretty much screwed in finding anything of that quality. Having played on the World of Caenyr server for a decent period of time, I'm not sure I've found any other actual game with that particular level of RPing. It was just absolutely amazing the kind of RPing that went on there, and how deep it all really went. Events that happened 4-5 years ago on the server would still be sending reverberations even now. I don't personally believe I've ever heard of any game that could match a top quality NWN1 RPing server.

Btw, quick FYI, there are still quite a few NWN1 RP servers going on, I'm 99% positive WoC is still around, and it wasn't even the biggest one around when I played.

So that's ruined online RP for me? That's kind of sad.

My experience with MMOs in general is limited, but I always assumed the NWN1 servers were only copying something else, and that there would be more of that experience (the events and characters that happened in 2005 still reverberating) to be found.

I know some servers are still up, but I wonder if they are still populated.

[Starwulf]

So that's ruined online RP for me? That's kind of sad.

My experience with MMOs in general is limited, but I always assumed the NWN1 servers were only copying something else, and that there would be more of that experience (the events and characters that happened in 2005 still reverberating) to be found.

I know some servers are still up, but I wonder if they are still populated.

As I said in my first post, I know WoC(World of Caenyr) is still up, I popped in about 6 months ago or so, and they still had a good many players posting on the forums and playing in-game. Stuff like that tends to not die very easily, very loyal players that will keep going. It's basically a never-ending D&D Campaign, and as long as the DMs for the world are good, there is no reason to move on to something else.

[Driderman]

Today is one of those days when I'm missing the ancient NWN1 role-playing servers.

Before I get over it like so many times in the past, I wanted to ask if there is currently any game (MMORPG, or not-so-massive) that really lets you roleplay a character.

I don't just mean a game where you can talk about your own personal Mary Sue without getting mocked, but a setting where there are actually meaningful role-playing plots going on.

I don't want to discuss how most mmo's fail to do this, I just want to know if there are any who succeed. I have that itch now and I just cannot scratch it...

So far as I know, there's nothing out there even remotely as good as the roleplaying environment of a Neverwinter Nights RP server. DDO is just another MMO I'm afraid. But as already mentioned, there's still several RP servers alive for both NWN 1 & 2.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Look up MUDs, aka "Multi-User Dungeons", and related games. (The term "MU*" may also help.) They're text-based multiplayer RPGs, and many of them can be heavily RP-intensive. You'd want to look around for reviews, though.

[Starwulf]

Look up MUDs, aka "Multi-User Dungeons", and related games. (The term "MU*" may also help.) They're text-based multiplayer RPGs, and many of them can be heavily RP-intensive. You'd want to look around for reviews, though.

I was considering mentioning MUDs, but having played on a dozen different ones, I only found 2, maybe 3(so about 25%) of them were any good, and I want my gameplay to be equal to my RP to be quite honest. But yes, MUDS can quite possibly be a good place to look around and hopefully get lucky. I"ll still advocate NWN1 RP servers though, quite a few of which still maintain a good healthy population at all hours of the clock.

[Eldan]

Yeah, I've tried a handful of MUDs, mostly those that had "WE LOVE RPERS" pasted on their front pages. And sadly, in most of them, your character would still mostly run around and kill the local continent's equivalent of rats.

[J.Gellert]

This is interesting. While my initial urge has subsided somewhat (as expected), I might not have been giving NWN1 the credit it deserved. I will likely bite the bullet and join a server if we continue failing to schedule an actual pen & paper campaign.

But I am still saddened that no other alternative exists.

[J.Gellert]

Was there ever a good one for Neverwinter Night 2?

[Rustic Dude]

We had a couple of good ones in the Spanish community, but I don't know about the international state of things.

[Eldan]

My problem with NWN roleplay servers was always that all the GMs were American, so they would come online at about the time I really had to log off (a few hours past midnight, so I missed all the events. I still remember that time when I logged back on, and the city was destroyed and overrun by demons. With only me and two other players online, who also had no idea what happened.

[Zen Master]

NWN persistent worlds like 3 towns and the other one are still there, and still good. Just in case you were wondering =)

[Erloas]

I guess it sort of depends on what you real mean by roleplaying. If you want game where you can have a real impact on the game and others playing it then EVE fits the bill. Though in general there isn't generally a large attempt to stay "in character," with its futuristic settings its hard to say what is in and out of character. Because a lot of the mechanics of the game and the planning and execution of events fit in with the universe naturally.
And people being jerks, scamming others, and causing problems just to cause problems is just as legitimate as the groups that work together and help each other.

One group decides to host an event where you take really cheap ships and sacrifice them to kill more expensive ships in what should be "safe" areas is perfectly acceptable, it is even written into new stories published by the developers. Later they decide to target the biggest trade hub in the game, one that is also normally safe, and hold a siege for almost a week grinding the economy of the area to a halt and it makes the in-game news.

The political control of the economy and a huge portion of the universe are all controlled by the whims of the player base with the developers do very little to steer what happens in the game.

It is definitely not a game for everyone and its a slow game, but it has some very die-hard fans.

[J.Gellert]

I guess it sort of depends on what you real mean by roleplaying. If you want game where you can have a real impact on the game and others playing it then EVE fits the bill. Though in general there isn't generally a large attempt to stay "in character," with its futuristic settings its hard to say what is in and out of character. Because a lot of the mechanics of the game and the planning and execution of events fit in with the universe naturally.
And people being jerks, scamming others, and causing problems just to cause problems is just as legitimate as the groups that work together and help each other.

One group decides to host an event where you take really cheap ships and sacrifice them to kill more expensive ships in what should be "safe" areas is perfectly acceptable, it is even written into new stories published by the developers. Later they decide to target the biggest trade hub in the game, one that is also normally safe, and hold a siege for almost a week grinding the economy of the area to a halt and it makes the in-game news.

The political control of the economy and a huge portion of the universe are all controlled by the whims of the player base with the developers do very little to steer what happens in the game.

It is definitely not a game for everyone and its a slow game, but it has some very die-hard fans.

While all I hear about this game does sound awesome, I'm not really into the sci-fi deal. I can enjoy it, but I wanted some "traditional" medieval fantasy.

But yes, having a real impact on other players is a prerequisite for role-playing. Just meeting in a MMO tavern and sharing character backstories between raids isn't what I'm looking for.

[Psyren]

@OP: Yes, NWN PWs are based on the MUDs of yore.

I played on some NWN1 PWs. I had some really fun times on ones like City of Arabel and Escape from the Underdark. When they work, there is nothing that comes close.

But one of the problems with truly open roleplay servers is they tend to attract griefers. Both evil characters who ambush you the moment you're alone in the woods together ("it's what my character would do!") and good characters who spam Detect Evil on everyone so they can metagame. ("Trust not thy companion! He carries the taint!") The DMs aren't always on to curb this sort of thing, and even when they are, they're usually off catering to their favorites with special events and too busy to make newcomers feel welcome. Finally, leveling up is a chore (you have to wait for server resets to redo quests usually) and being low-level is extremely boring for most classes - particularly when the handful of folks who kowtowed to the DMs enough to be high level run by in all their bling or shapeshifted into fire elementals etc. And threaten to lock you up or grief you for looking at them cross-eyed. Plus you really feel the limitations of the game engine when casters can't fly, or there are only certain spots where you can try to jump/climb/etc.

Add to that a single death (often due to lag) resulting in weeks of work being erased, and the frustration tends to eclipse the benefit.

[Starwulf]

@OP: Yes, NWN PWs are based on the MUDs of yore.

I played on some NWN1 PWs. I had some really fun times on ones like City of Arabel and Escape from the Underdark. When they work, there is nothing that comes close.

But one of the problems with truly open roleplay servers is they tend to attract griefers. Both evil characters who ambush you the moment you're alone in the woods together ("it's what my character would do!") and good characters who spam Detect Evil on everyone so they can metagame. ("Trust not thy companion! He carries the taint!") The DMs aren't always on to curb this sort of thing, and even when they are, they're usually off catering to their favorites with special events and too busy to make newcomers feel welcome. Finally, leveling up is a chore (you have to wait for server resets to redo quests usually) and being low-level is extremely boring for most classes - particularly when the handful of folks who kowtowed to the DMs enough to be high level run by in all their bling or shapeshifted into fire elementals etc. And threaten to lock you up or grief you for looking at them cross-eyed. Plus you really feel the limitations of the game engine when casters can't fly, or there are only certain spots where you can try to jump/climb/etc.

Add to that a single death (often due to lag) resulting in weeks of work being erased, and the frustration tends to eclipse the benefit.

Ouch, you must have played on a couple of lousy servers(obviously some good ones to though, with the mention of City of Arabel). One of my favorite things about WoC is the DMs make time even for the newbies. One of my most memorable events happened at level 4 as I was running through a goblin dungeon. A DM took control of a chest and had it follow me around like a puppy dog. At first I was confused, but then I started to treat it as a pet and I'd kill goblins and encourage him to devour their corpses. A few times it even got hungry for live meat and would swallow a goblin whole and spit out treasure in return. At the end of the Dungeon the chest helped me kill the big bad goblin chieftain and then spat out a ton of loot, plus a good chunk of extra exp(an entire level actually) for my RPing wtih the chest. It was some great fun, and was a good way to get acquainted with one of the DMs and help me through the early part of the game so I could explore some of the better content on the server.

[J.Gellert]

I played on some NWN1 PWs. I had some really fun times on ones like City of Arabel and Escape from the Underdark. When they work, there is nothing that comes close.

I have experience with both CoA (see below) and EfU. If everyone is agreeing that "there is nothing that comes close" then it has to be true. I mean, if a MMO had meaningful roleplaying, we'd probably know about it...

But one of the problems with truly open roleplay servers is they tend to attract griefers. Both evil characters who ambush you the moment you're alone in the woods together ("it's what my character would do!") and good characters who spam Detect Evil on everyone so they can metagame. ("Trust not thy companion! He carries the taint!") The DMs aren't always on to curb this sort of thing, and even when they are, they're usually off catering to their favorites with special events and too busy to make newcomers feel welcome. Finally, leveling up is a chore (you have to wait for server resets to redo quests usually) and being low-level is extremely boring for most classes - particularly when the handful of folks who kowtowed to the DMs enough to be high level run by in all their bling or shapeshifted into fire elementals etc. And threaten to lock you up or grief you for looking at them cross-eyed. Plus you really feel the limitations of the game engine when casters can't fly, or there are only certain spots where you can try to jump/climb/etc.

Add to that a single death (often due to lag) resulting in weeks of work being erased, and the frustration tends to eclipse the benefit.

The highlighted parts is why I stopped so long ago, and I refer to returning now as "biting the bullet".

[Starwulf]

I have experience with both CoA (see below) and EfU. If everyone is agreeing that "there is nothing that comes close" then it has to be true. I mean, if a MMO had meaningful roleplaying, we'd probably know about it...




The highlighted parts is why I stopped so long ago, and I refer to returning now as "biting the bullet".

www.worldofcaenyr.com The DMs are super friendly there, as is pretty much EVERYONE else that plays. They are so centered around role-playing that you can't even start playing on the server until you've decided what class/race you're going to play and have written a decent back-story that they approve of. Always in-character, and there are multiple guilds in-game that are quite fun to join, but you can only choose one IIRC(I was a member of the pirates guild IIRC, even though I was a monk, I used very detailed RP to explain why I joined them). You can of course create other characters, which is always fun. They probably won't remember me to much now, It's been a while since I last played, but just tell them that an old player, Starwulf, highly recommended them. Honestly, if D3 wasn't out, now that I've gotten a decent internet connection, I'd be pretty tempted to go back and play over there, that was always my biggest obstacle before, was that I was on a 26.4k dial-up connection. Basically, I honestly can NOT say enough good about WOC, it's just such a friendly place, and so much fun to explore. I only explored like 10% of the world, or less even, and it was absolutely mind-blowing the level of detail that they have put into their PW. Pretty insane really.

[Driderman]

I used to play on a heavy-RP PW named Forgotten Realms Cormyr. A quick google shows me the serverhost advertised for it November 2010 så I guess there's still a chance it exists.
It was very RP-intensive. Several restrictions to prevent powergaming and abuse, generally a good atmosphere and a very wellbuilt module all in all. You might want to go look for it.

[Carry2]

But one of the problems with truly open roleplay servers is they tend to attract griefers. Both evil characters who ambush you the moment you're alone in the woods together ("it's what my character would do!") and good characters who spam Detect Evil on everyone so they can metagame. ("Trust not thy companion! He carries the taint!")

Forgive me, but if you don't want, e.g, chaotic-evil characters to behave chaotic-evilly, isn't it rather silly to allow PCs of that alignment on an RP server? Folks who make this complaint seem to have odd conceptions of the terms 'chaotic' and 'evil'. (Also, having established that evil PCs would tend to be dangerous for those around them, I don't see why a good character wouldn't want to warn people accordingly.)

I'm not certain what you mean by 'metagaming' in this context, since using Detect Evil is supposed to be a legitimate aspect of the game's in-world metaphysics- it's not an expression of OOC information per se. But if this is the kind of scenario you don't want to see, well... again, that begs the question of why an RP server would allow players access to magic that, with minimal effort, lays bare other PCs' deepest motives.

I can't speak from extensive personal experience here myself, so I dunno- maybe I'm missing something. Maybe this really is largely symptomatic of a handful of rotten eggs who deliberately go looking for loopholes to exploit. But it might just be a case of (A) looking at the rules, (B) assuming they can ALL be used, and (C) trying to combine that with committed role-play.

[Psyren]

Forgive me, but if you don't want, e.g, chaotic-evil characters to behave chaotic-evilly, isn't it rather silly to allow PCs of that alignment on an RP server? Folks who make this complaint seem to have odd conceptions of the terms 'chaotic' and 'evil'. (Also, having established that evil PCs would tend to be dangerous for those around them, I don't see why a good character wouldn't want to warn people accordingly.)

"Behaving Chaotic Evilly" and griefing are not at all the same thing. Again, this is the "it's what my character would do" defense - 90% of the time, the murderers only give into their impulses once they've metagamed some info on their target to know they'd have a good chance of winning. (e.g. "I saw his attack bonus in the chat window - he can't be higher than level 3, I can take him.") Moreover, many of them attack first and try to RP it later, or do so without considering if that would be fun for you too or just fun for them.

The reverse is true too. The folks who "out" evil characters' alignment don't care if that means said player now needs to reroll, since nobody will group with them ever again. A real paladin wouldn't just denounce people in the streets for their sins - he would be more likely to join the group himself (without saying anything) and keep the brigand from trying anything funny on his unsuspecting companions.Maybe even try to convert him along the way. But a big city like Arabel would have plenty of folks that would ping on evildar normally - would a paladin that lived there denounce them all?

Also, players naturally metagame, often without even realizing they're doing it. Once you out a character as evil, even subsequent characters (that shouldn't have that information) will be wary about interacting with the evil one, or going off in the woods/dungeon alone with him/her.

I'm not certain what you mean by 'metagaming' in this context, since using Detect Evil is supposed to be a legitimate aspect of the game's in-world metaphysics- it's not an expression of OOC information per se. But if this is the kind of scenario you don't want to see, well... again, that begs the question of why an RP server would allow players access to magic that, with minimal effort, lays bare other PCs' deepest motives.

They allow it for the same reason they allow PvP at all - for immersion. Both are tools for roleplaying, but they're extremely easy to abuse - moreso when the watchdogs aren't online to enforce things.

A solution could be only allowing both when the DMs are online, but the NWN architecture doesn't allow that without some heavy-duty scripting (turning off PvP until there's a DM online, and then only allowing it in the specific area(s) the DM happens to be watching etc.) And again you lose the immersion with certain actions only permissible when the man in the sky arrives to flip the switch.

And even with such a "solution" in place, what happens if someone messes up? Does the DM shout from the heavens and force folks to rewind the interaction? Does everyone mentally "forget" that the druid that was about to tank for them is actually NE? Getting that honey back in the comb is nearly impossible.

But honestly, the metagaming - while annoying - wasn't a dealbreaker for me. The RP worked more often than it didn't - what frequently ground my gears was the combat. Frequent deaths due to server-lag and various bugs larded throughout the game itself. Coupled with the draconian policies around not restoring characters that got caught off-guard by them, and it ended up being a nigh-fruitless endeavor in the long run. Both PWs I played on were low-wealth, making it very difficult to adequately protect oneself from these additional vagaries of chance (beyond the natural flux of the die.)

Worse, the higher you got, the more you had to lose. I remember hitting 7 after weeks of play in EfU, only to die due to lag and lose 3 levels. Dying at 2 or 3 only loses you one, and there are more quests you're eligible for at those levels to make up the deficit. Once you pass 5 or 6 though, the only way to quest is massive adventuring parties, which the game seems to have trouble parsing (leading to a greater chance of something going wrong.)

[Carry2]

"Behaving Chaotic Evilly" and griefing are not at all the same thing. Again, this is the "it's what my character would do" defense - 90% of the time, the murderers only give into their impulses once they've metagamed some info on their target to know they'd have a good chance of winning. (e.g. "I saw his attack bonus in the chat window - he can't be higher than level 3, I can take him.") Moreover, many of them attack first and try to RP it later, or do so without considering if that would be fun for you too or just fun for them.

The reverse is true too. The folks who "out" evil characters' alignment don't care if that means said player now needs to reroll, since nobody will group with them ever again.

First of all, "caring about what happens to the real person" is, by definition, allowing out-of-character information to influence in-character decisions. In other words, just another form of metagaming. So... is metagaming inherently bad, or not inherently bad?

Secondly, picking on the defenceless when their guard is down, with no consideration for their enjoyment, and protesting one's innocence after the fact would seem 100% consistent with Evil conduct. Even if metagaming is a factor here, one has to consider the possibility that the kind of person who naturally gravitates to this pattern of misbehaviour might also be inclined to pick a Chaotic Evil character as their cover. I mean, I'm hearing two principle complaints here that I find rather difficult to reconcile:

(1) Nobody wants to team-up with Evil characters who stab you in the back, because they stab you in the back... To the point where 'outed' specimens are shunned like the plague.
(2) Nobody wants to play with Good characters who give you advance warning about the Evil PC's potential stabbiness, which is now somehow also bad. (Apparently, the "real" Paladin must move in mysterious and highly inefficient ways.)

Of course, you could do both groups a favour by simply banning Evil PCs in the first place. And then you won't need Detect Evil.

They allow it for the same reason they allow PvP at all - for immersion. Both are tools for roleplaying, but they're extremely easy to abuse - moreso when the watchdogs aren't online to enforce things.

I don't particularly understand how this is enhancing immersion. It's leading to situations that you apparently don't find conducive to an enjoyable role-play experience. Loaded shotguns are useful tools for hunting geese, but that doesn't mean you leave them lying around on the living room sofa when the kids come home.

[Psyren]

First of all, "caring about what happens to the real person" is, by definition, allowing out-of-character information to influence in-character decisions. In other words, just another form of metagaming. So... is metagaming inherently bad, or not inherently bad?

Good question! The Giant actually answered this dilemma better than I could (under "Decide to React Differently.") To summarize, good roleplaying comes from creativity, and creativity means finding solutions that allow you to simultaneously stay true to your character's goals while also being considerate of the feelings of the other players you interact with. Your evil character can be a colossal ****, but the moment the people playing with you start thinking that YOU are a colossal **** too is the moment you have failed at that creative exercise.

Unless that player doesn't care... in which case, why is he playing an inherently social game anyway?

Secondly, picking on the defenceless when their guard is down, with no consideration for their enjoyment, and protesting one's innocence after the fact would seem 100% consistent with Evil conduct.

As I pointed out above, that is surface-level reasoning. Again, I point out there are ways to play a consistently evil character without being a **** to other players. A simple method is to let the player know OOC what your intentions are and asking permission first before permadeathing their character. Or failing that, to use subdual damage to pummel them into the dirt before looting them - you could even ask them to lay low for awhile (representing their convalescence) while the DM sends the watch to stumble across them. Or to work things out with the DM/city watch ahead of time so that there is a massive manhunt around the city for your character, followed by being dragged to justice and getting his just desserts.

In other words, do something that can be enjoyable for all parties involved instead of just one. That applies just as much to tabletop as it does to PWs online. In tabletop D&D, you couldn't pull off anything like this without the DM signing off on it, so why try to pull a fast one online? Just because they can? That's griefing.

Even if metagaming is a factor here, one has to consider the possibility that the kind of person who naturally gravitates to this pattern of misbehaviour might also be inclined to pick a Chaotic Evil character as their cover.

A griefer certainly would, yes. Good roleplayers, however are capable of playing a variety of alignments. Rolling an evil character doesn't make you automatically a griefer, it's what you do with it that counts; just as truly great villains are multi-faceted, and in many cases don't even think of themselves as evil. (Unless they're Darth Andeddu.)

I mean, I'm hearing two principle complaints here that I find rather difficult to reconcile:


(1) Nobody wants to team-up with Evil characters who stab you in the back, because they stab you in the back... To the point where 'outed' specimens are shunned like the plague.

(2) Nobody wants to play with Good characters who give you advance warning about the Evil PC's potential stabbiness, which is now somehow also bad. (Apparently, the "real" Paladin must move in mysterious and highly inefficient ways.)

Of course, you could do both groups a favour by simply banning Evil PCs in the first place. And then you won't need Detect Evil.

Oh, I'd be perfectly fine with a purely co-op experience personally, but all the PWs seem to allow them. Grit and realism I suppose?

But they can be done right. The manhunt example I gave above did actually happen; there was also a clandestine cult operating at one point whose members were impossible to suss out (turning the whole server into a game of Mafia) and even one corrupt individual who succeeded in running for public office for awhile before having to flee the city.

But I digress. As I said before I did leave, so it's not like I'm subjecting myself to anything onerous anymore. I was just explaining why I did so.

I don't particularly understand how this is enhancing immersion. It's leading to situations that you apparently don't find conducive to an enjoyable role-play experience. Loaded shotguns are useful tools for hunting geese, but that doesn't mean you leave them lying around on the living room sofa when the kids come home.

And I suppose the "kids coming home" are the problem - PWs by their nature don't have much of a rigorous screening process, so immature griefers will invariably get in. But as I said above, the metagaming was only part - the smaller part, actually - of why I gave up on them. If the rules for restoring characters lost to lag, glitch and other uncontrollable deaths were more lax, I would still be into it.

[Carry2]

Good question! The Giant actually answered this dilemma better than I could (under "Decide to React Differently.") To summarize, good roleplaying comes from creativity, and creativity means finding solutions that allow you to simultaneously stay true to your character's goals while also being considerate of the feelings of the other players you interact with. Your evil character can be a colossal ****, but the moment the people playing with you start thinking that YOU are a colossal **** too is the moment you have failed at that creative exercise.

Unless that player doesn't care... in which case, why is he playing an inherently social game anyway?

I may be reading this wrong, but I actually find the Giant's advice a bit suspect here, since it sounds an awful lot like a blanket disapproval of PC vs. PC conflicts in any way, shape or form. As you yourself pointed out, there are circumstances where inter-character disagreements can actually be mutually satisfying for the players involved. I'm guessing, going by your description, that players are okay with PC vs. PC altercations when it helps to advance the current narrative, showcase motivations, carry a climactic payoff, etc. etc. etc.

I'm just pointing out that, in reality, genuine evil is rarely considerate enough to strike only when dramatically appropriate. Which means, if you truly had a rigorously faithful depiction of a morally-variagated background setting, and even if you somehow stamped out all metagaming entirely, you would still, statistically, get a not-insignificant amount of random 'griefing'. (I would consider Eve Online to be a noble, but ultimately failed, attempt at realising this ideal.) So when it comes to 'grit and realism', be careful what you wish for.

But yes- it's certainly possible to create an Evil PC with discernible long-range motives and principles that could allow them to work sustainably within a group for some significant length of time (most likely a specific brand of Lawful Evil, ideally subject to moderator/GM approval.) Unfortunately, to my knowledge there's nothing about this in the standard 3E rules.

I'm just mystified by server-hosts who seem to think "we ought to incorporate a demographic of player-characters who are by definition not good for their communities", and are then surprised when most turn out to be not good for the community. This wouldn't be so bad in a single-player or small-group game where all the negative externalities could be dumped on dispensable NPCs, but it seems inherently problematic in an MMO-type-scenario where real players are behind the bulk of the population.

(Now, on the flip side, it's entirely possible for the player to derive enjoyment/suspense/immersion from observing situations that their character isn't neccesarily enjoying at all. ...Which I suppose brings us back to where my rambling started.)

[nooblade]

One friend from another forum suggested BattleMaster for a roleplaying, strategic, middle-age-y, mostly text game. So the strategy is about doing something like commanding an army to aid your side (or some others I don't understand about anyway) and the roleplaying is geared toward being (usually) a knight or an adventurer or merchant or priest or something while interacting with the other people on your side.

I think it looks neat but personally never got the guts to start playing it even though I would like being a knight 90% of the time.

[Carry2]

Looks interesting. I can't comment much on the gameplay mechanics just yet, but the Serious-Medieval-Atmosphere is the sort of thing I definitely gravitate towards.

(I'm also not trying to diss openly metagame-reliant play, which can be wonderful when it's done correctly and shows sincere co-operation on an equal footing between participants. It's just that geek culture, on the whole, seems to have a kind of cognitive dissonance vis-à-vis the meaning of the term- that, e.g, it's bad for player-characters to act on information only available to their controlling players, but perfectly okay for the GM to have NPCs make decisions on the basis of pre-ordained plot requirements. *sigh*)

But anyway- when I talk about the 'noble ideal' that Eve Online was trying to realise, I meant the idea of a gritty, morally dubious 'bubble universe' where internal cause-and-effect were supposed to reign supreme, and not the idea of random griefing per se. The problem was that the former conception often made it difficult to distinguish (A) the authentic role-play of a merely rationally-self-interested, amoral sonovabitch and (B) players who were primarily motivated by the desire to inflict suffering on other, real human beings.

The other irony of Eve Online is that it's emphasis on laissez-faire, entrepreneurial autonomy and allowing the 'natural' internal logic of the setting to reign supreme entails a contradiction: the visibly artificial mechanisms of, e.g, CONCORD and system-truesec-values are desperately needed to prevent some corporation or other from eventually obtaining an insuperable monopoly-of-force and becoming, for better or worse, the setting's defacto unifying government. Anarchists usually forget that power structures abhor a vacuum.

Anyway, I guess that's more than enough of a tangential analysis for now. A lot of people really do like Eve, and it really does have some large-scale conflict going on and relatively little in the way of invisible walls. It might be worth investigating, but I'm skeptical that the average quality of, e.g, character development and IC dialogue is any better than WoW.

[Ramen&Malt Liqr]

I currently play on a NwN1 PW called Arelith. On average there are 40-90 playing at any given time, split up over 3 interconnected servers (one of them being the Underdark). As far as I can tell it's the most populated RP server that is active. The RP is pretty strictly enforced, the DM's mind their own business, unless you're doing something blatently against the rules. They also run server wide events about every other month, that normally last about a month. The most recent being a very well told undead invasion. There are no downloads or HAKS needed. Only the original game and the two expansions. I could continue to gush about how wonderful it all is but, it would be best if you found out for yourself.

tl;dr NwN RP server Arelith=your salvation

[Acanous]

The City of Heroes Roleplaying server is Virtue. Star Wars: The Old Republic has a number of dedicated roleplaying servers, but I don't play on any of them so I can't give you an accurate measure of quality.

Warning: On the CoH side, things range from silver age of comics, to stuff on Hentai Foundry. You have to put your roleplay tags in your bio, or people can't tell what you're looking for (which can lead to some serious confusion)

[Ninnykins]

Currently playing the Arelith NwN PW.

Pros:

- Very active playerbase. 100+ players is fairly common.
- Strictly enforced, quality roleplay.
- Plenty of advanced scripting, including settlements with automated political powers, permanent player-designed world fixtures, new class kits (called paths), and a well-realized crafting system and player-based economy.

Cons:

- Lacklustre dungeon design. You won't find many quests or unique obstacles. Transition spawns are also rather common, rendering latency and your ability to click around a flickering trigger one of your party's worst obstacles.
- Balance is very sketchy. Low magic level leads to overpowering casters, and many custom additions seem not to have been tested thoroughly (if at all).
- Rather catty admins. Somewhat terse, occasionally presumptuous. Though this is subjective, so YMMV.

Neither (Either/Or):

- Slow leveling rate. Some will appreciate it for the sense of verisimilitude it brings; others will grow impatient.
- No .haks. On the one hand, easy to get into. On the other, many solutions aren't as clean as they could be, and areas feel rather generic despite quality design.

Overall, a solid, though not flawless RP server. Certainly worth a try.