Guild Wars 2

I know Tarnished Coast is our RP server. Love it and it has a great community.

However, new commers usually feel lost not knowing where to go and on the long run TC will just end up being another server.

Please, pick a server, make it RP and let us all flock in there under it’s banner.
Naming policy isnt that impossible to enforce!

Or create a new server and let us all transfer to it.

Better question: How much work is it to keep the RP server as an RP server ?

Especially when a lot of TCers are snobby elitist RPers which consists of Asuras who dont know what a Bookah is :|

Meh, they can be snobby, as long we dont have to deal with names “IpwnYou” or “I will kill you”.

For god’s sake… please let somewhere flagged where like minded community can gather. Many people not even know about Tarnished Coast.

Tarnished Coast is just another server. It’s an unofficial RP server because RP’ers needed somewhere to designate as home and nowhere was marked that way for them, but it is just a regular server; there’s a lot of non-RP people there, too. There would need to be a new server made to make it RP designated and still be fair to the people who went to TC with no idea that it was home to RP’ers…they couldn’t just change that now.

I don’t like that they didn’t designate an RP server for launch, but it’s too late now.

I honestly think designating Tarnished Coast as an official RP server will accomplish very little positive, but lead to justifiable accusations of favoritism on ANet’s part, as well as alienate players who aren’t roleplayers.

Tarnished Coast does not belong to us. Everyone who plays there has a home there. Attaching an [RP] tag in order to designate the home of a relatively niche, relatively small subculture of roleplay enthusiasts is unfair to everyone, especially if that [RP] tag comes with special rules and regulations like WoW’s RP servers (purportedly) did.

I encourage roleplayers to be more proactive about spreading the news of Tarnished Coast by word of mouth. That’s the best way to build a community—invite someone over.

Full disclosure: I’m a roleplayer; I’ve been a roleplayer for over a decade; I roleplay in the field and avoid taverns like the plague.

To be fair, though, if you didn’t know that TC was the U.S. Roleplaying server and Piken Square was the E.U. server, and would love to rp – but jumped on another server with all your friends, that’t you’d picked out of a hat because none of them said “rp” server – you’d feel pretty irritated when you found out a week later that the RP community had settled itself somewhere else. Not only would you have to move servers if you wanted to join in with the majority of the rp community, but then you’d need to get your friends to do it as well … what a drag.

We don’t need extra rules, per se, (though I wouldn’t argue against them) but tagging a couple servers as RP servers would give new players an immediate sign where they might want to go.

I actually don’t want a roleplaying server. The complaints are fair, but I would rather RPers be spread out. I don’t see Anet putting a lot of resources into policing a server like that and it would make it really easy for those RPers to be picked or ridiculed because they do what they like to do.

There are a lot of them on the Tarnished Coast I’m sure, but they are still spread out over other servers, so all the hate isn’t directed towards that particular server.

If Anet was willing to put the resources into it and there was a strict enforcement it would be a completely different story though.

I don’t see the need for any server to be tagged as RP. If you want to RP then do it. Dosen’t matter the server. Especially since server transfers are free at the moment. I see no issue. And I do RP

Kailthir.6384:

I don’t see the need for any server to be tagged as RP. If you want to RP then do it. Dosen’t matter the server. Especially since server transfers are free at the moment. I see no issue. And I do RP

But how long are they going to stay free? There’s nothing stoppin you from RPing on any server you want … but a designated rp server will have more roleplayers on it, which increases your chance of running into other people who have fun rping, and are willing to rp with you.

It would be nice, but this is kind of the reason they don’t want an RP world.

They don’t want the responsibility of policing one. RP servers in general come with a lot of rules that regular servers don’t. They don’t want to do the effort of enforcing those rules for just one or two servers.

That is what was said in an interview about RP worlds from Anet. As much as I would love an official RP world, sadly it won’t happen cause Anet doesn’t want the hassle of dealing with it.

I’m not knocking the explanation because it’s a good and valid one, but it kind of sucks for the roleplayers to hear the NA community team lead tell them they’re not worth the effort.

The game provides for a lot of roleplaying flexibility, so here’s hoping more things will be done for them in the future, even if it’s on a smaller scale than providing a roleplaying ruleset.

I don’t think it is necessary. Roleplayers do fine in TC.

I love the amount of rp I witnessed yesterday on TC…really makes the world come to life when you’re secOnd guessing who’s an npc and who’s just a chatty group of humans!

Sometimes I wish there was a little bit of roleplaying just cause of the names.

Look, there goes my friends Jack the Snake and Telwar Hindlar! And trailing behind them is….Ilikebigbutts.

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

There are no plans to flag a World as an official role-play Word. The amount of customer support overhead involved in enforcing RP names, in-character chat, etc., not to mention creating policies and rules governing RP, is a massive undertaking. We would prefer that community members self-organize.

A great way to ‘cop out’ of taking any responsibility ! But hey fair enough, if thats the case give RPers a server of their own, at least then they can all play together and it will be easier for them to police the actions of people spoiling the RP theme !

First and foremost I know we won’t be getting RP servers. It will stay as it is as the unofficial RP server.

Having said that I haven’t seen an enforced RP server in years… I can’t even recall the last MMO title that had an RP server that enforced anything outside of naming rules. So sadly, this sounds a little bit like a copout to me. -shrug-

What is the unofficial-official European RP server?

The problem with official RP servers is that they are tagged as such.

So that trolls, children and generally just griefers flock to them to disrupt otherwise genuine roleplayers just trying to enjoy their server. This is exacerbated in this game by the presence of (currently) free world transfers and (in the future) Guesting, which would allow unlimited shenanigans without trolls needing to so much as roll an alt.

To mitigate this and provide a conducive environment for RP, Anet would then need to include additional moderating efforts on the server to report and discipline disruptive players. This would be along the same lines as trying to fight gold farmers; e.g. very ineffective, time consuming and at least in this case generally not worth their time.

So… what they mean when they say that such RP communities should be managed by the players is just this:

You pick a spot, one server is as good as any other
Only the most dedicated trollz will know to try and follow you there
When they do, you are just as good at dealing with it as we are

Have fun and Welcome to Tyria!

FYI: For non-trolls who don’t already know, there is a large RP community on the “unofficial RP Server” Tarnished Coast.

Oh, and RPing can be helped just by adding some emotes. I can wave, but I can’t wave AT someone. That’d be nice. And I don’t think /kiss is in there at all. I figure these aren’t priorities though.

I had a guy bow after reviving me the other day. That was cool. I like RPing, but probably not enough to change servers since I’ve got RL friends on Yak’s Bend.

There’s no need to segregate RPers and non-RPers. RPers are part of the same community as everybody here. Officially tagging RP worlds because it’s where some communities chose to aggregate based on their play style would serve little purpose beyond help keeping stigmas alive and discourage social interactions between different parts of the community.

As for the argument about warning RP haters or helping RPers find or avoid these worlds: If a player feel that strongly about wanting to play/not play on worlds where RPs are common, it’s very likely that they already visited different fan sites to find the information they need.

I don’t think ANet truly had us RPer’s in mind when making the game, we can’t even sit in chairs kitten .

Thank you very much, Regina, for the sensible response.

Phantax.1369:

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

There are no plans to flag a World as an official role-play Word. The amount of customer support overhead involved in enforcing RP names, in-character chat, etc., not to mention creating policies and rules governing RP, is a massive undertaking. We would prefer that community members self-organize.

A great way to ‘cop out’ of taking any responsibility ! But hey fair enough, if thats the case give RPers a server of their own, at least then they can all play together and it will be easier for them to police the actions of people spoiling the RP theme !

RPers have a server of their own… It’s community decided, and community “managed.” Slapping an RP tag in the title wouldn’t make it any more or less THE quintessential GW2 RP server.

I think the RP community is better off on their own. I played on an “RP server” in WoW for several years – Feathermoon. The only thing that made it an RP server was the community of RP players. After classic, there was only very limited enforcement of RP naming conventions and that was purely player-driven reporting efforts. The RP community was still only a very small percentage of the overall server population. Most people who encountered role-play at random in towns would stop and stare at the oddity of it, or ask the role player if something was wrong. Most talk, in all game channels, was not in-character. A handful of guilds had in-character guild chat, of course enforced only by the community.

The RP community shouldn’t expect non-RP players to play according to their conventions. The RP community shouldn’t expect that GW2 will enforce their preferences on others. It is not practical, not in this game and not in any other that’s open to anyone who wants to buy the game. RP communities can only exist when they are community-organized and community-policed, and every member of that community is a willing member.

I’m happy that the RP communities exist. I’m happy that they enjoy what they do. But they really must stop expecting that someone in authority will force others to play in their style. It will never work as a business model. Please let other people enjoy the game their way, too. It’d be just as foolish to create a “Trader Only” world where all TP prices had to be sensible from a purely economical point of view, or a “PVE only” world that didn’t participate at all in WvWvW rankings or allow sPVP participation.

If we can not have Rp designed servers, could we at least get a Roleplayer subforum for custom story-telling and forum roleplays?

@Sparkie
The RP comnunity does not expect exclusive worlds. Most people are okay with how things are.

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

We absolutely welcome the creative efforts of role-players, but we feel that these efforts should be managed by the players.

Sanya Weathers, a veteran industry community manager, laid out very well and pretty clearly just how huge an undertaking it is for a company to provide role-playing servers and more importantly what is involved in doing it right in this article.

I’m sorry, but even considering that article as part of the decision making process is horrible. It’s hyperbole and disgusting over-generalization, combined with exaggeration and deliberately inaccurate memes. You guys probably all know the author, but that doesn’t make her right. The article would probably be considered hate speech if it was directed at a group other than role-players. It would also be considered a trolling post if it had been posted by a fan. It also fits right in with the nature of the most disgusting of political smear ads.

Roleplayers are smeared in that piece in a way that would be unacceptable of any other group, but I guess we fall into a category of people that it’s ok to hate?

The vast majority of roleplayers I have ever known would scoff at almost the entire list of things “needed to do RP servers right”. The entire piece would get a pass as grossly overstated satire, if it weren’t for the fact that you guys have based your decisions on RP servers largely on this article.

You guys are very bright, socially and politically sensitive people, which makes you buying this article as valid foundation all the more confusing.

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

There are no plans to flag a World as an official role-play Word. The amount of customer support overhead involved in enforcing RP names, in-character chat, etc., not to mention creating policies and rules governing RP, is a massive undertaking. We would prefer that community members self-organize.

I feel like you guys dropped the ball here. In my opinion, more than a few players who enjoy seeing their servers enhanced by role-play would have been happy enough with just having a server designated with an RP tag, simply so like-minded played had an official place to gather. Role-players can’t always count on word-of-mouth to get the news of an unofficial server out to everyone.

From there, you could have just added the caveat that RP server would receive no special support, naming rules, or moderation beyond what all the other servers share. Other MMOs have gone this route in the past. Sure, the lack of specially enforced rules and naming conventions would have disappointed a few people, but nowhere near as many people that are currently disappointed with the decision not to designate any server as the official role-playing server.

Heck, you could have just added the tag “(Unoffiicial Role-Play Server)” to Tarnished Coast prior to launch and that would have been enough to satisfy most. Role-players mostly just want other role-players to know where to go (because they want to be surrounded by them), including the ones that select a server without having any idea of what some RP fan-forum designated as their home. You could have really lent a helping hand here.

My two cents.

RP in and of itself does not enhance a server. What enhances the community of those servers is the participants of the RP community. RP’ers tend to be cheerful, polite, thoughful and generally more mature. Most, not all mind you…are welcoming of new people trying RP or wanting to join their guilds.

And, un-official RP designated server or not…RP’ers are still small % of any server compared to the entire server population. That said..you can always count on them to make your server interesting with (once it really gets going ) with RP festivals, fairs, ect..

I’m not a RP’er…but I like what they bring to any server. TC is no exception.

I don’t mind not having a label, but the roleplaying forums should be split into in-game roleplaying and forum roleplays.

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

There are no plans to flag a World as an official role-play Word. The amount of customer support overhead involved in enforcing RP names, in-character chat, etc., not to mention creating policies and rules governing RP, is a massive undertaking. We would prefer that community members self-organize.

in other words, grow a pair, creat a rp only guild and BAM

Rp server tags would add nothing but make the server an official target by kittens everywhere who are looking for a good place to troll and grief. Rp servers are not supported by sub based game companies why would ANYONE think that a free game would be able to afford the overhead at this pint in a games life?

Police the server? We are probably talking a minimum of at least 12 additional staff per server just for basic chat moderation and name violations plus whatever other infrastructure they need to handle appeals and complaints.

The one thing i wish that Anet would do is once a name is deemed inappropriate either due copyright or it being to kittenish is add it to the character name filter.

Salacious.7358:

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

There are no plans to flag a World as an official role-play Word. The amount of customer support overhead involved in enforcing RP names, in-character chat, etc., not to mention creating policies and rules governing RP, is a massive undertaking. We would prefer that community members self-organize.

in other words, grow a pair, creat a rp only guild and BAM

I suppose it is up to the RP community to help themselves. Get the word out there that TC is the RP server. I think the same happened for City of Heroes (even though it is being axed by NCSOFT) Virtue was the unofficial RP server for god knows how long.

And people who want to RP would gravitate towards this server. Although they are also a sizeable amount of non-RP players in Virtue, who partly came here because Virtue has sizable population that still plays and an awesome community.

This is kind of off topic, but since this thread has a bunch of RP server players in it…

How is the RP server? I’d like to give it a try (I would have gone there first, but I didn’t know there was an RP-centered server…), but I’m not sure how serious people get about it. I like to role-play casually, but I’m not looking for somewhere where people refuse to break character or get upset if non-RP chat happens. Basically, is the server filled with people who just RP as a courtesy and create a fun experience, or is it like that episode of South Park where the entire Western village is held hostage and the performers feign ignorance and still won’t break character? I’ve seen a lot of role-players who get blisteringly mad if people talk out of character or refuse to leave character to discuss something (like, say, a party is failing a dungeon) and, if that’s the level of RP the server is like, I’ll just avoid it.

Wanting an RP server is a form of elitism . You are basically saying RPers are more important than others when you’re not. I create a profile for every character I make and I’ll RP it every now and then but i dont feel so self important to need an exclusive server to do it on

Adine.2184:

Wanting an RP server is a form of elitism . You are basically saying RPers are more important than others when you’re not. I create a profile for every character I make and I’ll RP it every now and then but i dont feel so self important to need an exclusive server to do it on

Sorry, but this is the worst straw man I’ve ever seen.

And what should you call wanting to not be around non RPers

darcdante.2753:

Sometimes I wish there was a little bit of roleplaying just cause of the names.

Look, there goes my friends Jack the Snake and Telwar Hindlar! And trailing behind them is….Ilikebigbutts.

You just made my night with this post. I still can’t stop laughing.

Adine.2184:

And what should you call wanting to not be around non RPers

Well hold on a second… I picked TC because it was an RP server (designated by players) because I find the RP community tends to be more mature and friendly/helpful. I, myself, don’t RP but I don’t pick outlandish names and I’m respectful to other players. I’m not alone in my reason for picking TC either.

Drawing lines in the sand and saying you want exclusivity isn’t right either because it pushes out players like me who can add a great deal to the community.

darcdante.2753:

Sometimes I wish there was a little bit of roleplaying just cause of the names.

Look, there goes my friends Jack the Snake and Telwar Hindlar! And trailing behind them is….Ilikebigbutts.

Maybe he’s just roleplaying that he likes big butts.

“L.A face with a Hoelbrak booty”.

Then he’d be a sad panda because of all the child-models walking around in the game.

It is NOT possible for the community to role play on non roleplaying servers. Too many people hate it and will have nothing to do with it, or even insult and make fun of people for doing it which will completely take you out of character. I find it quite odd to have a massively mulitplayer ROLEPLAYING game without roleplaying servers.. I personally don’t use them, but support and understand the concerns of people that do.

Edge.4180:

Role-players can’t always count on word-of-mouth to get the news of an unofficial server out to everyone.

And this is the entirety of my argument. We don’t need special rules, regulations and thought police, but it would be nice for new players to see tagged servers telling them where the majority of Roleplayers are hanging out without the need to rush off and do an internet search. That’s all.

Darmikau.9413:

This is kind of off topic, but since this thread has a bunch of RP server players in it…

How is the RP server? I’d like to give it a try (I would have gone there first, but I didn’t know there was an RP-centered server…), but I’m not sure how serious people get about it.

Tarnished Coast, which is the U.S. RP server, and the only one I can speak for, is friendly and inviting. No one has been overly serious or elitist that I’ve seen; people are usually up for casual and spontaneous rp, if they’re rpers at all. (there are many, but not everyone, of course) I haven’t seen any trolling by non roleplayers while I’ve been on, and the /Map chat is usually OOC, so no worries about getting shouted down for talking out of character there. (or anywhere else that I’ve seen, though common courtesy would say, if you know you’re in an rp server, try to keep your OOC chat off the /say window just so you don’t clutter it up … but I don’t think anyone’s going to chop your hands off if you forget)

If you’re thinking about it, come on over. I’m almost always open for a little spontaneous rp, so if you see me don’t be afraid to approach.

Tarnished Coast, which is the U.S. RP server, and the only one I can speak for, is friendly and inviting. No one has been overly serious or elitist that I’ve seen; people are usually up for casual and spontaneous rp, if they’re rpers at all. (there are many, but not everyone, of course) I haven’t seen any trolling by non roleplayers while I’ve been on, and the /Map chat is usually OOC, so no worries about getting shouted down for talking out of character there. (or anywhere else that I’ve seen, though common courtesy would say, if you know you’re in an rp server, try to keep your OOC chat off the /say window just so you don’t clutter it up … but I don’t think anyone’s going to chop your hands off if you forget)

If you’re thinking about it, come on over. I’m almost always open for a little spontaneous rp, so if you see me don’t be afraid to approach.

MMhm! Tarnished Coast is an amazing server when it comes to Roleplay. I haven’t really jumped in much, but I do like wandering about, watching others do so.

I can confirm there isn’t much trolling going on, as people seem pretty mature and respectful. I think i’ve seen one incident.. some young kid was being made fun of by someone else about ’grammar’ and ’schooling’, but such incidents are very few and far between. Nicest community I’ve been glad to be a part of.

Darmikau.9413, we welcome you to TC! It’ll be nice to see more fresh faces rping, and it’ll be even greater to see new blood get involved in the activity.

I also thought that RP-servers should be handled by the community and not the developer but then i played on piken square, seriously the tickets you get from non-rp’ers and rp’ers complaining and flaming each other can’t be more then an official rp-server would create.
There is a lot of frustation for non-rp’ers who roll on unofficial rp-servers, build up their guilds there and then discover that rp’ers have completly different objectives in the game and don’t care that much about “progress” and “winning”, forcing those people who care to switch servers and loose their guildprogress in the process, leads to frustation which is the most dangerous thing for a mmo.