Not actually accurate Paul. Certainly I was mostly doing so in Westfall, although this in part seems to be due to me and Theresa seemed to stop having so much intra-party roleplay.
I have had alot of fun for the first few days playing; for example when I genned Varas the Paladin with you, T' and Gemma. We where playing the game at a relaxed pace, lots of fun roleplaying even during quests.
The main reason I finally subsume to joining WoW entirely because it seemed everyone in my social group was doing so, and hence when doing stuff it seemed to be almost the only topic of conversation for hours on end. I also *do* enjoy roleplaying with my friends. Doing so through the medium of a computer game is obviously inferior to LARP or tabletop, but is also alot more convenient.
If I'm riding on Theresa's coattails then that's down to: 1)We're playing through the game together, if I run off and do aload of quests, then I'll progress ahead of her and have to redo parts of the game as she catches up. Also, she happens to actually know where to do quests. 2)We get a lot more XP if we hand in quests together (so avoid grinding), 3)I know Theresa will roleplay through the game.
Since most of my friends are (understandably) playing their high level characters most of the time. To get a chance to roleplay with them, I need to reach that level To solo I lose the massive Recruit a friend bonus, and whilst there is still the potential for random and fun roleplaying with someone who isn't your real-life friend, it's rather rare and the norm on even a RP server is for someone to race past (normally far higher level than you) presumably to get to the place where to do the next quest (as Theresa describes above)
I have played the game a few times by myself, randomly logged into the Blue Recluse inn when the megapatch had downloaded to respend talent points and ended up spending 2 hrs or so Roleplaying with a random Paladin (who it appeared later logged inn to do exactly that). This incidentally technically provided potential spoilers for a later part of the game, however it was presented in an interesting way without spoiling plot, actually I'm not sure if it's even in the later game. Most of the best experiences from WoW appears to be in the Blue Recluse inn. Last night I also made a solo trip to Stormwind, to find a group of PC's where attempting to lock it down due to a zombie plague infestation (which I think is caused by one of the Halloween quests)
However, that seems entirely player driven and rather sporadic and as you point out, a distraction to playing the game. Since you unfortunately don't get XP for roleplaying. . At the moment the game itself mostly involves talking to random NPC's who tell you to either Kill X number of y monsters, or to obtain K ingredients who have a chance of being randomly dropped by J monster. Of course this is a relatively standard formula for CRPGs and it might be just a feature of levels 1-20 (which I've done).
In that sense the game itself without the roleplaying hasn't grabbed me too much, the combat system (unsurprisingly) feels a bit to diabloesc and not very immersive (if potentially very tactical) and if I wanted to play a CRPG by myself, I'd go and play Oblivion, which I consider a far better game. Oblivion however is single player so I can't roleplay with my mates whilst playing it.
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Date: 2008-10-23 02:36 pm (UTC)I have had alot of fun for the first few days playing; for example when I genned Varas the Paladin with you, T' and Gemma. We where playing the game at a relaxed pace, lots of fun roleplaying even during quests.
The main reason I finally subsume to joining WoW entirely because it seemed everyone in my social group was doing so, and hence when doing stuff it seemed to be almost the only topic of conversation for hours on end. I also *do* enjoy roleplaying with my friends. Doing so through the medium of a computer game is obviously inferior to LARP or tabletop, but is also alot more convenient.
If I'm riding on Theresa's coattails then that's down to:
1)We're playing through the game together, if I run off and do aload of quests, then I'll progress ahead of her and have to redo parts of the game as she catches up. Also, she happens to actually know where to do quests.
2)We get a lot more XP if we hand in quests together (so avoid grinding),
3)I know Theresa will roleplay through the game.
Since most of my friends are (understandably) playing their high level characters most of the time. To get a chance to roleplay with them, I need to reach that level
To solo I lose the massive Recruit a friend bonus, and whilst there is still the potential for random and fun roleplaying with someone who isn't your real-life friend, it's rather rare and the norm on even a RP server is for someone to race past (normally far higher level than you) presumably to get to the place where to do the next quest (as Theresa describes above)
I have played the game a few times by myself, randomly logged into the Blue Recluse inn when the megapatch had downloaded to respend talent points and ended up spending 2 hrs or so Roleplaying with a random Paladin (who it appeared later logged inn to do exactly that). This incidentally technically provided potential spoilers for a later part of the game, however it was presented in an interesting way without spoiling plot, actually I'm not sure if it's even in the later game.
Most of the best experiences from WoW appears to be in the Blue Recluse inn.
Last night I also made a solo trip to Stormwind, to find a group of PC's where attempting to lock it down due to a zombie plague infestation (which I think is caused by one of the Halloween quests)
However, that seems entirely player driven and rather sporadic and as you point out, a distraction to playing the game. Since you unfortunately don't get XP for roleplaying. .
At the moment the game itself mostly involves talking to random NPC's who tell you to either Kill X number of y monsters, or to obtain K ingredients who have a chance of being randomly dropped by J monster. Of course this is a relatively standard formula for CRPGs and it might be just a feature of levels 1-20 (which I've done).
In that sense the game itself without the roleplaying hasn't grabbed me too much, the combat system (unsurprisingly) feels a bit to diabloesc and not very immersive (if potentially very tactical) and if I wanted to play a CRPG by myself, I'd go and play Oblivion, which I consider a far better game. Oblivion however is single player so I can't roleplay with my mates whilst playing it.