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  • All the World's a Stage: A little help from my friends

    by 
    David Bowers
    David Bowers
    01.20.2008

    All the World's a Stage is a column for cooperative minds, playing with roles every Sunday evening. Roleplaying a new character can be hard, even for advanced roleplayers. Usually you only begin with the fragment of a character, some vague idea of what you want your character to be like. Even if you have a pretty clear idea of your character already in mind, you may discover that actually playing that role in communication with others causes issues to come up that you never could have thought of all on your own.Thankfully, roleplaying is a cooperative activity. Unlike PvE and PvP, there is no "versus" in RP. Even if two characters are bitter nemeses, still their characters must cooperate with one another to share an interesting story. Otherwise, they will find themselves "god-modding," or roleplaying in such a way that they don't give one another any room to improvise. (Two god-modders may fight something like this, using custom emotes: "Darkmystery stabs Elfman and cuts out his heart," followed by, "Elfman dodges Darkmystery's sword and then rips his head off," and so on.) These people aren't really roleplaying in the same way that two people shouting at each other in different languages are not really communicating. Roleplaying's very nature requires that each person work together with every other person, or else it isn't really roleplaying at all.Though the rare "god-modder" can attract a lot of attention, in fact most roleplayers are quite eager to cooperate and assist one another as much as possible. For every one drama queen or king who simply must be the center of attention at all times, there are 5 roleplayers standing in the background listening quietly, wishing that someone else would talk, and 15 more who went off to roleplay their own stories instead. Most roleplayers reach out to each other for support, suggestions, background story ideas, and are more than willing to lend a helping hand in these areas to anyone who asks. Such mutual reciprocity forms the foundation of what roleplaying is all about.

  • Breakfast Topic: Defecting from the Horde

    by 
    David Bowers
    David Bowers
    01.18.2008

    I've often heard of Alliance players who get fed up with their fellow teammates for whatever reason, and decide to defect to the Horde. Perhaps they say the Alliance complains too much or seems too crowded, or even seems "less mature" somehow. But we've talked about that quite a lot already, and Horde players often say they have just as many maturity problems as Alliance has.Yet I was still surprised to discover that one of my relatively new friends had actually defected from the Horde to the Alliance. As a roleplayer, apparently he felt that the Horde roleplayers kept on rehashing the same roleplay material, about death, trollish accents, and "strength and honor." I admit that my experience with my Horde hasn't been so in-depth, but so far I'm thoroughly enjoying my Horde characters, and I haven't had the same problem at all. In fact, it's my (limited) experience that Horde tend to complain least about their faction, in the same way that warlocks complain least about their class, though not at all with the same consistency. Have you or someone you've known ever left the Horde and made new Alliance main characters? If so, why?

  • All the World's a Stage: If looks could kill

    by 
    David Bowers
    David Bowers
    01.13.2008

    All the World's a Stage is a column for inquisitive minds, playing with roles every Sunday evening. The media usually portrays WoW as a "boy's game." That's not to say girls don't play too, of course -- just that the game is basically about qualities such as aggressiveness and violence, and our culture expects males to be interested in that sort of thing. Whether such a designation is true or not, the "masculine equals violent" stereotype is very pervasive, and it is natural for many male players to begin the game with a powerful and intimidating character in mind. The player may imagine that his avatar is warm and kind-hearted inside, but outwardly, his character looks as though he could rip out your throat with a flick of his pinky finger.But there are many men out there who don't like such exaggerated manliness in their characters, just as there are many women who don't want their character to look like a dainty barbie doll. Being a person isn't just about just one gender attribute, after all. Indeed, female characters in WoW can achieve a full range of human attributes in their appearance; they can look friendly and intelligent, yet lightning quick and deadly at the same time. However, the appearance of male characters is often so filled to the brim with "strength and honor" that there's not much room left for any other human quality.

  • Behind the Curtain: More Plot Please

    by 
    Craig Withers
    Craig Withers
    01.10.2008

    So, I've been playing Bioshock pretty much non-stop for the past few days, and it's got me thinking. Not only did it get me thinking that I'm super clever for figuring out the twist about ten minutes into the game, it also got me thinking about story and plot and the importance they play in games. The story in Bioshock is handled masterfully – it's handed out to you in a careful and controlled manner, feeding you it piece by piece with just enough to keep you hooked, but not so much that you're getting hit with an info dump every half an hour. I'd like to see more story in my MMOs. Certainly, an MMO needs to have a good story set up around it, something to give the world some life, and get you interested from the word go. Or it may not, maybe you just want out-and-out PvP with no RP noobs or lore geeks to bother you, in which case I feel a little sad for you and I ask you kindly to move along and find another column to read.

  • RP Spotlight: Pets can be more than decoration

    by 
    David Bowers
    David Bowers
    01.09.2008

    In WoW social situations, combat and non-combat pets alike usually just take up space looking pretty. Hunter and warlock pets have many actions they can perform to help fight an enemy, of course, and for a normal gamer there's no reason they would need to do anything more. But sometimes, as a roleplayer, if you pat your pet wolf on the head, you might expect it to look up at you with those adorable puppy eyes; or if someone else pats its head, you might expect it to bite their hand off. However, with the emote system as it is, we can only type out custom emotes with our own character's name at the beginning of the sentence, never the pet's.There's a way around this problem, which is actually quite obvious once you think of it, yet roleplayers rarely use it, so far as I have seen. If you write the possessive apostrophe-S as the first part of your character's custom emote, you can make your pet seem to do something on its own: "Isabeau 's pet wolf growls and bares his teeth." It takes a little bit more typing, and it leaves a space between your characters name and the apostrophe-S (since that's built into the emote system), but effectively it lets you roleplay two entities at the same time. Hunters and warlocks can use the PetEmote addon to help make this a little more streamlined. Our reader Ellyndia, for instance, roleplayed a very introverted character that normally would not introduce herself to others, but using such custom emotes, she could have her Jubling walk up and interact with people first to get conversations going. Pets can reflect what your character is thinking but not saying out loud (by hissing or purring perhaps), or they can do anything that such pets in real life might do. Special non-combat pets such as the Children's Week kids, the interactive Animatronics, or even the magical Mojo, could all be especially fun to animate a little now and then. Certainly this technique would become very annoying if overused, but in moderation it can add a extra spice of humor, entertainment and even a touch of realism into the game.

  • Breakfast Topic: Relieving stress

    by 
    David Bowers
    David Bowers
    01.08.2008

    Usually we think of WoW as a way to relieve stress that we acquire in real life. Yet sometimes stressful things happen in WoW, and we need to find ways in real life to relieve them. I find that whenever something like this happens in the game, from battleground whining and insulting, to trouble finding good roleplayers, it does me a world of good to write about it on WoW Insider in some constructive manner. Not only do I address the problem in myself this way, resolving my own attitude towards it, but I do something that, I hope, helps other people who are experiencing the same problem in their own gaming as well. Many WoW players have blogs of their own, and I presume writing there has a similar effect.What do you do in real life to relieve stress from WoW-related problems?

  • All the World's a Stage: Something to remember me by

    by 
    David Bowers
    David Bowers
    01.06.2008

    All the World's a Stage is a column for creative minds, playing with roles every Sunday evening.The best characters in novels and movies often leap into your mind from the moment you first see them -- something they say or do sets them apart and captures your interest, and from that time on, you're hooked. Likewise, when we roleplay, our characters should always have some memorable trait which can hook other people's interest. Too often, I see roleplayers focusing too much on dark secrets that they only reveal to their closest friends, and neglecting those mannerisms which could give everyone they meet an instant and profound impression of their character. Of course, if some people prefer to roleplay this way, that's fine. But to my mind, roleplaying is best when it avoids cliquishness, and the best roleplayers are those whose characters stay with you, even if you never see them again. When I'm creating my own characters, I think of such memorable traits as "gimmicks," but that word usually has a negative connotation that doesn't apply in this case. For now, the best word I can think of is "quirk." It's an instantly recognizable pattern of behavior or speech that can let others know who your character is right away. Below you will find some of my favorite quirks I have seen people use in their roleplaying in WoW, each of them entertaining and inspiring it its own way.

  • A question of culture clash

    by 
    David Bowers
    David Bowers
    01.05.2008

    Just a few days ago, I was questing on a new alt in order to check out how the roleplaying was on a new server I'd heard good things about. As I went through Ironforge to pick up my Winter Veil presents, I saw one of those ads for a new guild, "<Guild Name> is a new RP guild looking for mature new members! PST to join!" and I thought, "Why not check it out? At least there'll be someone to talk to." So, when I whispered this person, his only real question for me was to ask my age. Satisfied by my answer, he sent me an invite.I wrongly assumed that guild chat was in-character, and immediately introduced myself in what I hoped was a humorous way. A couple members said "lol," and the leader introduced himself as a former Horde player who was getting started on a new server too. Somewhat disappointed that this guild was not so "RP" as it had advertised, I proceeded to ask some questions about the status of roleplaying on this server. I must not have impressed them this way, however, as I logged in a couple days later to find myself kicked out of the guild already.One of the members I remembered from that first day happened to be online, so I asked him what had happened. "Oldman" (who's name I changed somewhat in this story) replied that, in the view of his "elder" guild members, I was "too wordy" and also "too juvenile." Thoroughly perplexed, I asked him what exactly I had said that was so juvenile. He told me that was itself a juvenile thing to say, and then used "/ignore" on me. I had been disappointed enough to leave that guild anyway, but to be dismissed offhand like that was rather hurtful until I made a realization: These "elder" members must think that asking questions is itself "juvenile" behavior, especially questions they deem unimportant; while according to my worldview, sincere questions of any sort are paths to more knowledge and understanding, and in themselves a sign of ever-growing maturity. Besides, completely ignoring someone just for asking questions doesn't seem like the pinnacle of maturity to me, either, but who am I to judge? Maybe there was some good reason I don't know about.Have you ever encountered social situations in WoW that left you completely befuddled? Have real-life cultural values and judgments ever gotten in the way of your gaming, especially in ways that caught you by surprise?

  • All the World's a Stage: The past, present and future of roleplaying

    by 
    David Bowers
    David Bowers
    12.30.2007

    All the World's a Stage is a roleplaying column for thoughtful minds, published on Sunday evenings. "David and his ilk are the last of a dying species!" cry out the Scrooges of WoW, "soon the creature 'Homo Sapiens Theatricalus,' more commonly known as a 'WoW Roleplayer' will go the way of the dodo, only to be spoken of in the annals of gaming history! Roleplaying is dead! Long live cynicism!"Thus you may have heard -- but fear not: these rumors of roleplaying's demise have been greatly exaggerated. They're just reflections of a negative attitude on the part of people who don't really know what roleplaying is all about. Yet many roleplayers still get genuinely frustrated these days. "Things used to be so much better," they can be heard to say, "Back in the day, RP servers were just full of people roleplaying with everyone else... but now... <sigh>... it's just not the same." Indeed, Blizzard originally set up special realms specifically for roleplaying with their own special rules of conduct, and in the beginning these same roleplayers used to stand up for themselves when they saw others ignoring the rules that made their environment so special.But then the WoW population doubled, tripled, and again quadrupled. It's been good for Blizzard's business, but not so good for the RP community, who thrived on their tight-knit system of knowledge and interaction. Nowadays, some players who might hope to give roleplaying a try start a character on an RP server only to find that no one seems to be roleplaying there. "Where did all the roleplayers go?" they ask. "What ever happened to those roleplaying rules? And how can I find people to roleplay with now?"

  • Do summoning stones need neutral guards?

    by 
    David Bowers
    David Bowers
    12.26.2007

    I play on RP servers only, but when they first came out, I tried an RP-PvP server for a while. I kept plugging away at it till I got to my mid thirties and finally gave up. Ever since then it's seemed to me that players on PvP servers are people who like their game to be extra difficult, and they don't mind if that means they have to suffer through the kind of situations that would submerge a "normal" gamer in intolerable frustration. They just accept that leveling up means doing lots and lots and lots of ghost runs, because other high-level characters will gank you and they will camp your corpse, and there's not much you can do about it. That's just the cost of being elite, to them -- having gone through it, it's as though they feel baptized by fire.That's why I'm always surprised when a player from a PvP server asks for some sort of help from Blizzard with such frustrating situations. A blood elf hunter named Arkdemon is asking for neutral guards at all summoning stones -- apparently he's had trouble getting to his instance when there's a bunch of PvP going on there. But isn't that the whole point? Isn't PvP on a PvP server supposed to get in the way of PvE stuff, just like all the other struggles these players go through leveling up? The fact that you can effectively conquer a summoning stone, raid entrance or otherwise important spot on a PvP server is the whole reason people play there. If you take away this sort of challenge, or nerf it until it's not so serious a problem for people who just wanna PvE that night, then what's the point of even having a PvP server to begin with? (Zul'Aman is a possible exception to this rule, since it's so much more accessible to the Horde than the Alliance, but even in that case, a number of hardcore PvPers cried out how much they hate the addition of guards there.)Bornakk seems to agree with me for the most part, but he mentions that Blizzard will indeed add guards (or indeed do whatever they want) if they feel it is necessary. What's your opinion?

  • All the World's a Stage: Top ten ways to roleplay the holidays

    by 
    David Bowers
    David Bowers
    12.23.2007

    All the World's a Stage performs for you every Sunday evening. Reserve your tickets early! This is a season of holidays for many people around the world, and indeed many of you may be faced with the peculiar situation of logging on to WoW only to discover that your entire guild is off with the family instead of playing online. So there you are, thinking of what to do, not entirely excited about joining a PuG with some random elf, and suddenly the idea comes to you: why not roleplay the holidays away? Even if your friends are online during their vacation time -- do you really want to just kill the same old monsters? Why not roleplay as a form of celebration?In this edition of All the World's a Stage, we bring to you the Holiday Roleplay Top Ten. Some are serious and some are silly; some are great for spontaneous fun with random strangers, while others can be a bit more theatrical and planned out with trusted friends. Read and discuss them all, then add any of your own ideas in the comments! Let the countdown begin: 10. Have a friendly snowball fight: Any snowy region in the game has these handy [Snowball]s just lying around for you to pick up and throw at each other. I myself have enjoyed running around trying to hit my friends with these things while at the same time dodging their tosses by hiding behind walls. You can count hits if you're feeling competitive, or else just toss recklessly and have a blast. Be sure to express your playful glee with /giggle and /rofl, and say things like "Ha ha! Gotcha!"

  • All the World's a Stage: RP-PVP - Killing in Character

    by 
    Zach Yonzon
    Zach Yonzon
    12.16.2007

    Zach Yonzon covers for David Bowers, who regularly writes All the World's a Stage every Sunday. While David is away on vacation, Zach sneakily mixes RP with his favorite thing: PvP.One of the first choices that you make when you start to play the World of Warcraft is to pick a faction -- the mighty Horde or the proud Alliance? This choice largely determines the "role" you play, with an implicit animosity between factions that often bleeds out into real life. More than most things about the game, loyalty to one's faction is perhaps the most role-played characteristic that players exhibit. You don't need to be on an RP server to feel not so much a love for one's own faction, but rather an intense dislike for the enemy. As it is far easier to hate the enemy than to love one's faction, cries of "the Alliance are such noobs!" or "Horde suck!" in each faction's respective channels or Battleground chat are standard fare.This begs the question, then, of how one can role-play this animosity towards the enemy when communication between factions is extremely limited? It's easy to play the role of a battle-hardened Orc, for example, while recounting war stories by the Battlemasters in Orgrimmar. The role of a spaced-out, Bloodthistle-addicted Blood Elf can be played while wandering the streets of Silvermoon City in a psychedelic daze. A womanizing, ale-guzzling Dwarf can make passes at all the ladies (and Night Elf men, for that matter) in Ironforge. With several channels to talk in -- the easiest avenue for role-playing -- as well as a variety of custom /em emotes, it's easy to get into character and show it to members of the same faction. But what about the enemy? Exactly how does one act out a role to an audience that doesn't understand a thing you say?

  • All the World's a Stage: Turning stumbling blocks into stepping stones

    by 
    David Bowers
    David Bowers
    12.02.2007

    All the World's a Stage is brought to you by David Bowers every Sunday evening, investigating the mysterious art of roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.It is an art to turn any negative situation to your advantage, and no less so when roleplaying in WoW. In the fine tradition of "turning stumbling blocks into stepping stones," it pays for a roleplayer to reconsider a number of in-game situations which seem to get in the way of roleplaying, yet which actually offer a special opportunity to showcase your creativity.The biggest stumbling block WoW roleplayers trip over is often some aspect of the game mechanics themselves. Your roleplaying may lead your character into a deadly conflict with another player, for instance, and yet even if you kill the other in a free-for-all PvP arena, he or she can just resurrect and be back to normal in a few minutes. Alternately, you may find an epic BoE drop off a Skettis Kaliri and be hard pressed to explain how a rainbow-colored owl was flying around with a huge sword inside its body. You may even ponder why every single ogre you've ever seen is male.Naturally, of course, there are ways around all these problems -- it's just a matter of finding plausible reasons for things. You may say to your bitter rival, in the event of a deadly conflict: "I do not kill fellow members of the Horde! We shall duel for honor and be done with this!" Likewise, when recounting your discovery of your BoE epic sword, you might explain: "As I killed the strange owl, I suddenly noticed something gleaming in the grass just next to its corpse! This [Blinkstrike] was lying there, sticking out of a stone in the ground!" Your character might even make an effort to explain away in-game oddities: "I have deduced that the entire race of ogres must be hermaphrodites -- both male and female at the same time! They are so ashamed of this that they all hide the fact, pretending that ogre females are hidden away somewhere!"

  • All the World's a Stage: It's not about saving the world

    by 
    David Bowers
    David Bowers
    11.25.2007

    All the World's a Stage is brought to you by David Bowers every Sunday evening, investigating the mysterious art of roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.All those people who say "Roleplaying is dead" simply misunderstand what RP in WoW is all about. It's not at all about stepping into your favorite fantasy novel and acting out an epic story in which you are the great hero, sacrificing everything to save Azeroth from the legions of evil. For that sort of storytelling, there are pen-and-paper role playing games, which allow for a great deal more flexibility than any computer system can. While the majority of fantasy literature uses this "save the world" motif, it doesn't work at all for roleplaying in WoW because things happen in the game that couldn't possibly happen in a story. But that's okay, because when we roleplay in WoW, our focus should not be so grand and epic in scope. Instead it should be more personal and down-to-earth, about our own characters, their hopes and failings, and their relationships with others. For all the game's outward appearances of epic battles and the fight against evil, WoW roleplaying is really all about character development, relationships, and the expression of who you are. Think less of the latest Oscar-award-winning fantasy epic, and more of your favorite sitcoms or drama series. Your character is a savior of the world and a regular nobody -- both at the same time. All of us do exciting, heroic things in the game, but, while Blizzard has put a lot of story elements in there, none of it is actual storytelling. For a roleplayer, most PvE is just background to the storytelling, something your characters do offstage -- kind of like food, paperwork, bathroom breaks, and sleep in the movies or novels you enjoy. Of course any event in life can be an important moment for your character, but in roleplaying, you have to let all the repetitive hero stuff fade into the background while your characters interact with one another.

  • Tabula Rasa RP bloggers wanted

    by 
    Chris Chester
    Chris Chester
    11.20.2007

    Though there are some among us who espouse that roleplaying is dead, Destination Games apparently hasn't gotten the memo. As part of their on-going community-outreach efforts, which have been fairly awesome to date, they're looking for capable roleplayers to blog, in character, about their experiences fighting the Bane in Tabula Rasa.All you have to do is head over to their fansite registration page, fill out a few forms, check a few boxes, and you could very well have your work shown as part of their on-going Soul of a Soldier feature. So far a lot of the content they have posted is from the perspective of humans just coming to terms with their place in a pitched-battle that encompasses nearly all of the known universe. Granted, Tabula Rasa is less than a month old, but I think there's a big niche that can be filled beyond this sort of "wow, I'm fighting aliens" material that is up there so far. So hop to it, Massively scribes, and smite those bane with your thesauruses!

  • PvP FTW

    by 
    Jonathan Northwood
    Jonathan Northwood
    11.19.2007

    Do you prefer the blood-lust of PvP to the bloody boring banality of PvE missions? Do you live for the bloodletting, the torment, the outrage of the poor fool who tried to walk in front of you while you were sharpening your dagger or honing your casting skills? Do you like the thought of playing forever, with no subscription fee required? Do you want to avoid all the banality of role-playing and focusing on what your teammates want at the expense of your own needs? If so, you're in luck.Guild Wars, one of the best-known games NCsoft has produced, has catered to your wishes with the Guild Wars PVP Access Kit. If you don't have Guild Wars, and you're interested in the PvP aspect of the game instead of the role-playing elements, then this is the kit for you. It allows you to install Guild Wars with only the PvP elements active, allowing you to move foward with shanking friends and enemies alike. At under twenty dollars (plus tax, of course), it's a pay-once model, with lifetime gameplay and service updates at no charge. So buck up, little camper: you don't need to worry anymore about whether or not your guild is going to be impressed by your ability to mine for fish: all you have to worry about is whether or not you've ganked enough n00bs to ensure your place on the boards.

  • All the World's a Stage: Raiding and RP don't mix, or do they? -- A question of continuity.

    by 
    David Bowers
    David Bowers
    11.18.2007

    All the World's a Stage is brought to you by David Bowers every Sunday evening, investigating the mysterious art of roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.The Warcraft storyline is part of a great tradition of fantasy literature, and, as with any form of storytelling, the entire span of WoW lore involves a series of events and changes. Arthas wasn't always the Lich King, Illidan used to be able to wear shoes, and your character was once a little child, with no spells or epic weapons at all. All these things fit together in a single story universe, in which the progressive changes taking place in the story made the world what it is today.But what is it today? Is Illidan now dead or alive? Is VanCleef dead or alive, for that matter? As a gaming environment, any boss you kill today has to be there for me to kill tomorrow. The WoW game world needs to remain basically unchangeable -- but over time this can stifle a roleplayer's sense of immersion in its narrative. To illustrate the impact this sort of immutability has on storytelling, let us take a page from a certain fantasy story you might have read, and see how it might work as a WoW raid instance.Welcome to Mines of Moria! This raid instance will reset in 6 days, 10 hours and 41 minutes.[Raidleader] [Gandalf]: Beware! There are older and fouler things than orcs in the deep places of the world. Follow my glowing staff! [Raidleader] [Gandalf]: ... and um... get ready to pull that first group of orcs. Kill order is skull, x, circle... Gimli, can you offtank that cave troll?

  • All the World's a Stage: Yes, and...?

    by 
    David Bowers
    David Bowers
    11.11.2007

    All the World's a Stage is brought to you by David Bowers every Sunday evening, investigating the mysterious art of roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.Roleplaying is, at its heart, a form of improv. Of course there are many differences between improv and roleplaying, but when you look at the actual practice of each, you can see that they both live and breathe by the same basic principles, and they both crash and die when these principles are ignored."Improv" is an interactive performance art that requires a certain level of training and rigor. The audience pays the actors to appear on stage, and the actors shape their performance around cues from the audience. It's entirely spontaneous, and as you can imagine, it can be quite crazy for an actor, not knowing what's going to happen next. To help with this, they use a special technique they call "Yes, and...?" which lets them handle whatever sorts of situations that might come up without getting thrown off-guard. Basically it means that each actor always accepts what the others say is true, and modifies the performance to go with whatever comes up. For example, if one actor says "hello mother" to another actor, now the one he spoke to is his mother for the duration of this scene. The "mother" accepts this new reality and offers something of her own in response, such as "Where have you been all night? Your father and I have been worried sick!" Alternatively if any actor denies what another actor just said or did, that's called "blocking," (as in, "No, I'm not your mother!") and it tends to stop the scene right there unless the initial actor can roll with it and accept it in his turn (as in, "Oh. I'm sorry... My mother was standing there a moment ago... I'm blind, you see...").

  • All the World's a Stage: Drawing the line on ERP

    by 
    David Bowers
    David Bowers
    11.04.2007

    All the World's a Stage is brought to you by David Bowers every Sunday evening, investigating the mysterious art of roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.There are some people out there who use online games as a venue for their erotic fantasies, from husbands and wives spending some imaginative time together online, to complete strangers flush with desire and looking for some sort of satisfaction in each other. Most of these people who try out Erotic Role-Playing (or ERP) in WoW realize the need to keep it private; they do whatever they do in private chat channels, where it stays their own affair. But there are a rare few who take ERP to an extreme: they form a guild whose whole purpose is to engage in ERP, and proceed to garner a largely negative reputation for themselves. They wear their suggestive guild name like a sign above each of their character's heads, as if to draw as much attention to themselves as possible. Their members indulge in various sexual fantasies, some of which may even be extremely distasteful and objectionable, played out in an environment where everyone is encouraged to "explore" with one another in anonymity. Obviously, the moral danger here is that young people may be tempted to wander in, way before they are mature enough to understand or deal reasonably with what they experience there. We generally assume adults to be responsible for themselves in such matters, but children may very well be confused and curious, even willing to lie about their age in order to unravel such adult secrets. Indeed, ERP is a subject matter that the vast majority of players do not want to see -- least of all parents who like their kids to grow and learn from their interactions with others within the game, or at least have a safe and fun experience. Therefore, roleplayers of any sort have a responsibility to keep the public environment clean and safe for all who play there, and for the few involved with ERP guilds to do otherwise is dangerous and unethical.

  • Encrypted Text: How to be evil

    by 
    Elizabeth Wachowski
    Elizabeth Wachowski
    10.31.2007

    I am not, generally, a mean, vicious, or all-around evil person -- except when UNC plays Duke in basketball, when my venom becomes more potent than a black mamba's. I help my friends move, I call my mother every week, and I give money to beggars on the street if they can come up with an entertaining story. I even volunteer with rescued dogs at the SPCA, as the many pit bull tooth marks on my shoulderblades can attest to. But yet, I'm also a rogue -- one of the two least ethical classes in WoW, along with those demon-loving warlocks. For us to be effective in WoW, we have to be sneaky, deceptive, and just plain evil. But how can those good-natured rogues among us find ways to be bad? Sure, we can gank, but in the end, ganking is just an artless exercise of brute force. And ninjaing is just tired and outdated. Real evil/insanity requires a bit more creativity. Fun with Lowbies