Greetings!

I have a few questions regarding Roleplaying within TESO. Simply because I am rather curious as to whether there has been attention paid to such in terms of places, emotions, communication and so forth. I've played my games and tried many MMO's. Especially ones such as WoW, GW1/2 and SWTOR. Eventually all the MMO's have sort of the same system in bare essence and most striking is that WoW has kept me playing the longest. Not because of the game itself just the socialising and RolePlaying kept me around for many years.

With trying out GW and SWTOR I found myself being dissapointed in the terms of Roleplaying, as a community and what was done to aid the progress of a RP community building up.

It is therefore that I and many people with me are curious whether attention has been paid to this subject in TESO.

I hope anyone can answer this for me.

Think of:

Facilities(empty/semi-empty bars, houses, castles, fords, own housing)
Easy way of communicating with others and emoting stuff/animations
Gear that can be used for asthetic purposes.
Areas without many people lurking about that are not interested in Roleplaying
And so forth.
Guilds and perhaps reputation scores between them?


Many thanks for the person to answer this!

Well there won't be much if any RP between the three factions because the devs had said there will be no communication between opposing factions so RP is left to those within your own faction, and because there is no consequences associated with that type of RP I am not to sure that RP will be a thriving game play feature of ESO unless the developer changes their mind and makes a limitted cross faction speech mechanic that can only be used in Cyrodill (the PvP zone) with in hearing distance, /say only no dedicated chat channels or whispers.

YAFLT. Second post Rahl, a new record!

After 5 years, I can only hope that they've included things to make the game feel more immersive for a role player. Personally, a key part of being able to role play is a good UI that fits into the world. That's why in New Vegas/FO3 it was easy to role play because the pipboy fit so well into the game. Skyrim made it considerably harder for me to get into the world because their menu was a glorified list with a black background. A chat filter would be nice, so if enabled anything a player says to you is in line with the speech of the npcs.

Actually you need to learn to count it was the first post after the OP heh

hey he asked I answered!

I'm pessimistic about this to say the least.

I havent experienced an MMORPG with actual roleplaying involved so far, the closest I've seen was in the M&B Warband Napoleonic War multiplayer, which is a shooter.
There are normal and roleplaying servers in most of the MMORPGs, yet 95% of the people on the roleplaying servers dont even try to act in character, and some may even try to ruin your immersion (I'm not quite sure if deliberately or not)
ESO is going to have a single megaserver, with some filters for what kind of players you want to play with. I have no knowledge of how this system works, so it could go either way.

IMO ZMO should put the roleplaying checkbox (or whatever it is) somewhat separate from the other filters, and at least explain the guidelines to players who tick it.

I hate to be a gloomy gus, but I think if you are expecting great RP in an MMO, you'll be disappointed. LOTRO, argulably has the best foundation to have it, utterly lacks roleplay. Its no different than any other. Its all about gathering troops to raid for the next piece of their uber gear set or selling something. Most playing ESO will be fans of MMO's more than fans of TES and will have no knowledge of the elder scrolls universe, and wont have any interest in it.

The main problem with developers including SOCIAL roleplaying elements in any video game, is that it is not the primary or even a secondary purpose for developing the game. Most players want to get a sword or learn magic, adventure and kill stuff. Even though what you are suggesting is something they may include, at some point they have to neglect the game's primary development, in order to stop and make what you want. Not that it is good, bad, worthwhile, or worthless, but I didn't buy the game just to chat with other people. That is what chat rooms and real life are for. I assert that most people want to adventure and kill stuff, while socializing in an MMO is a big part of that, it is socializing WHILE adventuring, socializing WHILE killing stuff/raiding, not just talking.

I do not personally care for Roleplaying inside a video game because I am too busy adventuring and fighting stuff/crafting/questing, so to some extent all of the "RP" elements are worthless and would gain no attention from me. I do not speak for everyone else, but I think to some extent they are developing items most people would look at and say "that's cool, but I wish they would fix those bugs in the X district instead."

I think after a while if the game has been out and they are starting the "adding additional content" phases then it would maybe be cool, like social gear, but not at launch!

The main thing that might add something to RP for ESO is these skill synergies the devs keep talking about and to fully understand it you need to go and watch this interview with three of the ESO developers....it really will be the group that uses these synergies as tactics and strategy will be winning the day no doubt about that and anything that increases the need to group also increases the ability to find a group that will RP at the same time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayT_9USmIbg&list=PL7B176F7C51D0244B

The RP community in TESO may not be huge, but I think it will be a quality community. With the megaserver, you could make sure to be placed in RP pocket servers, and they'll most likely be full of RPers unless you are the odd man out and get placed in your own pocket server

Most of the guilds that have been advertising for TESO have at least moderate roleplay as a foundation, so it shouldn't be too hard to find like-minded players.

I just hope the RP doesn't lead to a full town being taken over by people looking for a cyber buddy... /shiver

I don't know if this is relevant to the topic but in GW2 it was the roleplaying community that created a roleplaying server simply by agreeing to move there. I see them all the time in inns, streets, parks etc, they're everywhere and no one seems to bother them. Maybe TESO players will be able to do something similar by making a guild or adding one another to their friends list so they get phased together.

We shall call it


Silvershire.

Personally, I think if the game is successful and as long as the RP community is pretty vocal and out there I wouldn't be surprised if we see a large amount of RP features added over time as I've always been of the opinion that RP stuff is more the "add in after the core game is decent" kind of stuff. While I can't speak for LOTRO since I didn't play at launch, they've had a long time to put in place some great RPing features.

Although I agree with you, and the guy that said a similar thing before, it is still important to have RP friendly features and content from the start, the RP community needs to start off from the beginning- if it's bad for RP in the start then a lot of dedicated RPers will lose interest. So I think it's important not to have it far too down in the priority list.

Would love RP features at launch- simple ones mind you. Don't want the developers too off course. They can patch in comprehensive things later

Just enough to tie people over.

If a dev team does not officially support RP then it can be a bit of a mess because you can stop non RP from playing how they want. The best RP in any MMO to date IMO is LOTRO Laurelin server, it's also the only official RP server of the game.

Now because TESO uses the megaserver system with dedicated play style options i'm at a lost how they could actually officially support and police a RP like Turbine do with the Laurelin server of LOTRO.

You need to have naming limitations and actual RP rules that are enforced.

As for RP features then you have to only look a LOTRO to see what a difference certain features can make to the overall RP experience.

1. Emotes-- lotro has the best emotes and longest list of emotes of any MMO to date, it's mind boggling. http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Category:Emotes

2. Walking-- being able to walk is a big plus for RP in any MMO.

3. Wardrobe-- appearance tabs plus a robust dying system, lotro is the leading MMO when it comes to these types of features.

4. Lore-- we know that TES has tons of lore and could be a RP dream just like Middle Earth.

5. Music-- lotro has a complete music making system with many instruments, nothing like taking in a concert at the Prancing Pony. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFKrcCq3czw

6. Social professions like SWG had http://forum.galaxiesreborn.com/pre-cu-swg-professions/

7. Housing-- we know that housing will not be in a release but i can see it being in a expansion at a later date.

These are the main features that can really enhance RP and of course the actual RP community can do the rest themselves http://forums.lotro.com/forumdisplay.php?539-Laurelin-EN-RP

Yeah. As far as RP "Features" goes, I can only think of cosmetic items and /emotes. So that's not really a huge thing. The main thing is really how the world is structured that plays a huge part for dedicated RP, so that isnt something they can necessarily "add in" later.

The aspects that can be used for roleplay are also the aspects that make the world seem deep.

Deep NPC interactions comes simply from deep AI programming; just a few extra behavioral outcomes here and there that change up the experience. Such is the same with PC actions.

I think the megaserver technology will only support RP. There is no reason for non-RPers clogging up RP phases because they don't want to pay for a transfer. Griefers could kicked out and ultimately banned from RP phases (if such a feature would be implemented) by the support staff.