Quote Originally Posted by Twiddle View Post
Fill me in, I have never really understood the RP crowd... so I would like a little clearing of the mud as they say... What I understand about RP in a RPG is... people want to role play, while role playing?! This whole thing eludes me, aren't you already role playing in the first place?! I get it people RP in reality, that's fine... but in game's which are role playing to pole play... sounds like saying I want a drink of water, while am drowning in the ocean...

People role playing as an adventurer in a game, while said character is role playing as an interstellar fairy princes!?
Well, as a video game genre, RPGs got their namesake from the tabletop roleplaying games that they based their play mechanics off of, but considering the limitations of the hardware, doing any actual roleplaying as an in game mechanic is nigh impossible, as actual roleplaying requires that there be another human that can react dynamically to what your character is doing in order to put together an interactive narrative.

Roleplaying within an MMORPG simply puts the roleplaying back into the game by having your character interact in the world as if they were really there, and not like there's someone at a computer controlling them.

Instead of your Hyuran Dragoon just being a Hyruan Dragoon, he might be a grizzled curmudgeon who is the descendant of a long line of spear-wielders who hangs out at the inn for a drink every evening, and when interacting in-character with other roleplayers, he will react accordingly.

This isn't to say that roleplayers are in-character all the time, as we like to do quests, level, and do endgame, but when we're not doing that we often get together and play out our character's lives with each other.