roleplay-servers
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The beginner's guide to roleplay-appropriate names in WoW
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. In World of Warcraft, that player is you! Each week, Anne Stickney brings you All the World's a Stage with helpful hints, tips and tricks on the art of roleplay in WoW. Regardless of whether or not you're a roleplayer, if you're on a roleplaying realm, you're subject to the guidelines of that realm. What many players don't realize is that this includes an extended list of naming rules that PvP or PvE servers don't really have to follow. Even if you aren't a roleplayer, being on that realm means that if someone notices your name doesn't follow the guidelines listed by Blizzard and decides to report you, you'll need to change your name. That sounds pretty annoying, doesn't it? Luckily you can avoid the issue altogether by simply picking an appropriate name to begin with. While that may sound like an onerous task, there's really only a handful of guidelines that you need follow. Don't worry, you won't need to dedicate hours and hours of time into finding the "perfect" name -- you just need to pick something that is deemed appropriate, without breaking the server rules that have been set in place. So what's appropriate? You might better ask what isn't appropriate.
Why public roleplay is a critical part of roleplay servers
All too often, I hear stories of roleplay realms with dwindling roleplay populations -- realms that can't seem to get back on their feet and make roleplay flourish. These realms try everything under the sun to cultivate roleplay, from creating roleplay websites dedicated to providing roleplay information to having monthly meetings discussing the roleplay situation on the realm. Yet there's still something that keeps people from rolling characters on these realms and sticking around for the long term, while other realms continue to flourish. That something is present on these flourishing realms in abundance, and it's the reason people flock to these realms and stay put. It's roleplay, pure and simple -- available in every tavern, every Auction House, every city and every town. Hundreds of players run around with roleplay addons that advertise their roleplaying status, and you'll see characters happy to speak to each other in /say, having intriguing conversations and in general, just being a presence. If your realm has lost the throngs of roleplayers it once had, how do you get them back again?
Storyboard: Police state
Sometimes, column topics get away from you. When I sat down to write last week's Storyboard, I realized at the halfway mark that I had spent a lot of time not really hitting the core of the issue, and the overall article wound up being much weaker as a result. So I went back, started fresh, and instead delivered a column aimed squarely at the central question of whether or not it's important to have a flagged roleplaying server. But there is an issue that I didn't really address in that column but still remains relevant. If you're going to talk about having an RP server exist even if it's not policed, you do need to address what policing a roleplaying server actually entails. A lot of it is just plain speculative at the moment, given the overall track record of the industry, but that doesn't mean it's not worth discussing.
