Sunday, March 09, 2008

Warcraft Roleplaying

The Earthen Ring server is technically a role-playing, or RP server. In reality, very few of us stay in character while out questing. On a whole, role playing is gladly accepted, though rarely perpetuated.

In my own head, however, my characters have strong personalities and histories. This comes from playing the Bioware games of the last decade, specifically Baldur's Gate and Knights of the Old Republic. Both of those games allow for vastly different interactions based on decisions made by you on behalf of your character. Since those games are strictly single player, there is no chat interface, and conversations occur using a 'choose your adventure' format.

It is easy enough to translate that into WoW, primarily through the design of your character, and through the choice of quest lines. For example, Shadrachgrey is somewhat of a barbarian and feels out of place in Silvermoon City. His rep there is low, and he generally avoids Blood Elves. He'll take their money, mind you. Shadrach is all too happy to do mercenary quests, and to let the blood flow. Politics are not his concern. Keeping his bellly full is his concern. He has great affinity for Thrall, and orcs in general, and he has a sweet fondness for tauren.

On the other hand, my druid Sasquatch has a more gentle soul. He is fascinated by the Blood Elves (reflected by my journey there to do the starter quests in Silvermoon), and wishes to help the Forsaken find some sort of peace. He is, however, deeply disturbed by their insistence on creating a new plague to kill humans (Shadrach didn't mind so much, even though the undead make his skin crawl).

Now that Shadrach has spent some time in the Outlands, he has returned to Azeroth for deeper training to help him sustain his long term maneuvers. Like any good special forces type soldier (or warrior) he must be self sufficient. I had let his cooking, fishing and first aid skills slip, and it was becoming difficult to heal quickly between battle.

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