I've still got a code if anyone wants!  So far I do a LOT of soloing, but I've run into some good rpers and I've some friends from WoW who are also playing too.

When I remember my character's name I'll put it here *cough*

I'll admit, I found EVE to be mindbogglingly dull.  I am...a speck.  A speck I cannot even see.  Fighting other specks I can't see which are killing me with rockets and things which are, also, specks.  There was a spacestation, but there was no place to interact with other people in said space station.  I never even saw my character other than a mini avatar.  And what does one do?  Mine.  Mine a lot.  Just let your speck float around a large rock and hurrah, you're now mining.  So simple my husband even created a bit of coding in order to mine when he was away at work. 

I will readily admit I need visuals!  I need to see people, hear people.  I need explosions, whooshy noises and fireballs and so forth!  It doesn't need to be brilliant but it needs to be there for me.   This may have to do with the fact I'm dyslexic and have a hard time even remember right from left (let alone north - MUDs were impossible for me as a result).  But give me those visual elements and I'm all over it.

As far as roleplay goes...well what can I say?  I've played Morrowind, so I will refute the statement that roleplaying in single player games is impossible.  For a laugh, I created a character who fought defensively with her hands, but never did any offensive fighting.  She'd defend herself, but that was it.  I did not do the main mission, I did side quests only, and she dedicated herself as a monk to a particular temple.  I roleplayed the frell out of it, even though I was doing it solely for myself.  It worked out rather well to be honest, and I got rather far until I realised what I was missing.

An audience.

Roleplaying is a very interactive, community thing.  It's also a rather "showoff" sort of thing.  There's something to be said for creating a storyline idea, gathering people together to interact in it, and have them tell you later "wow!"   For most people that's roleplaying's core right there.  The interactivity.  However, get nearly half a million people in the same spot, and eventually, everyone is going to start differing on what gaming, roleplay, or anything else should be. In a Massive Multiplayer game, there is no way you can be what several hundreds of thousands of people want you to be.  Also, this is about money. People out there in gaming want to be paid, and they have to provide to the highest bidder.  And, unfortunately, the highest bidder doesn't appear to be roleplayers.  Or at least these games aren't marketing to roleplayers, though I have said time and time again that we may be a SMALL fanbase, but we are a very LOYAL fanbase. 

Most roleplayers in the MMOG community aren't even asking for much these days; just a server that is actually policed by its own policy rather than the debacle servers that WoW offered would be nice.  Unfortunately, gaming companies have realised we'll pay them regardless, whether they deliver the goods or not.  We're addicts, and as long as the drug is still reasonably affective we don't care if it's been cut with rat poison.  So, we pay them even when xUberDooDx logs in and starts dancing naked at us.  We pay them even when an "immersive interactive environment where you, the player, can affect the destiny of the world" doesn't happen without a huge uber-raiding group of people who, more than likely, don't roleplay.  We pay them when they fire their storytelling staff.  We just sigh and "make the best of it".

However, witness in comparison the PvP community.  They rant.  They scream.  They beat a dead horse over and over again.  They go over things in minutae, in fine detail, they howl, they withhold their money.  Eventually, they get what they want.  DDO was a prime example.  Turbine said for ages that they were not going to add PvP to the game because it made no sense to have it in, it wasn't at the heart of the D&D experience.  PvPers didn't take no for an answer, and they kept beating the dead horse.  So, Turbine said they would "consider" adding PvP.   Still the PvP crowd screamed and swore and fell on the ground kicking their feet in a brilliant imitation of my three year old autistic son having a strop.  Finally, Turbine added PvP into a game that never should have had PvP in the first place.  Into a primarily old school roleplaying game - RATHER than hiring GM's to host scenarios or put forth gaming concepts.  What did roleplayers do?  Sigh and quietly kept going on.

Perhaps the roleplayers need to shout and rant more.  Perhaps we need to quit shelling out for mediocre gaming and really demand something better.  Perhaps we need to realise that MMOG's will never, EVER give us what we want as what we want is so far outside the norm (more rp, permadeath and no combat, if I read you folks properly), that we need to give up on them and LARP instead. 

But certainly, what we're doing now isn't working, and isn't being heard.

I don't know what the solution is...other than to get a bit louder, a bit more agressive, about what one wants.  And, also I suppose, to know when to pull the plug on your membership when it isn't getting delivered.  But I've been online gaming for over 12 years now, and I know when some of my dreams are just that...if I really want the sort of game I want to play, then I best write it, have my husband code it, and I'll invite a few friends to play it.  There's no way a gaming company is going to deliver a game to my own exacting standards...especially if they want cash.

You do indeed rock like a rocking thing.  Downloading client now and just waiting on ze code - at which point I'll actually go over to the Lord of the Rings section and quit hijacking the thread *cough*

Dear me....I come back to Ryzom and you lot are all in Lord of the Rings instead!

A quick hello to Perun, Kendrus, and all you fun people from Ryzom.  I am considering playing LoTR though I'm naturally wanting to rp or I can't be bothered.

*waves and so on to everyone*