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Storyboard: Get them in a tree, throw rocks at them
The past week or so has been pretty terrible for one of my favorite characters in Final Fantasy XIV. Over the course of the last week, she's been drugged, been tied up, had her heart broken twice (more or less her own fault), broken someone else's heart, been scarred, and been screamed at, and she's managed to see one of her dearest friends begin to turn into an enemy. And I'm writing this on Monday, so I can only begin to imagine what's going to happen over the course of this week. Of course, there's a disconnect here because while she was knee-deep in roleplaying misery, I was having an absolute blast -- some of the most fun I've had roleplaying in a long time, actually. Now, there's something to be said there about making your characters miserable for fun and profit, which I intend to discuss next week. But it occurred to me that this is one of the fundamental disconnects between roleplayers and the non-RP part of any game's population. The goal in any MMO is to become more capable... but the goal of roleplaying, at least to start with, involves making things worse and becoming significantly unhappier.
