Guild Wars 2

Hello, my name is Ravid aka ROovid the Quaggan…..amongst other names….and this is not the type of post you thought you were going to read on a saturday morning after a great big PAX announcement. I am a roleplayer and I realize now….after much struggle, debate, and hoping against all hope that things would be different….that I am no longer the target demographic of arenanet.

I started playing back in beta….bounced around servers for a few days…before finding my long time home on Tarnished Coast, which at the time was the unofficial RP server and oh the fun we had. There were parties and RP weddings….there were heated political discussions about the Queen and the Pale Tree….and frantic random RP sessions that would happen out in the world or in Reach with the friendliest of people that would stretch on into the night….there was even the Quaggan News Network…QNN for short…where a wee little Quaggan named ROovid would wibble wobble about the lands of Tyria.

And all was good for a time….and then Mega Servers happened….and we in the RP community tried our hardest…with taxis to populated instances and focused guilds….but…it just took so much effort….folks drifted away….the element of surprise wasn’t there anymore….every time you would login…you were always somewhere new….no one was familiar anymore.

I lost friends…family….people I cared about…I played for a little longer…I did the living story stuff…but even the lore began to fall short of what I knew could be written…but wasn’t….finally I logged in a few weeks ago…told my usual holiday story “How Quaggan Saved CoOOoOristmas” in mapchat…got reported by mostly everyone…and saw that no one on my massive list of contacts was on….I went to Reach….I vented…I ranted…and raved to some ANET staff member….of the loss I felt and the hatred that burned within me for those that stripped my family away from me…I logged out…the next living story update came….suddenly I was only able download at 3 KB/s…instead of the 3 MB/s that my connection was capable of….took that as a sign…and now I sit here writing this post on a saturday morning…wondering if any of it even mattered at all, all that time….

So I’m saying goodbye, I’m not the type of person that ANET is building their game for and I don’t think that they ever considered that roleplayers would take to their game with such passion and joy….they didn’t know what to do….they had to make a game that made money…so what if a few people left…there would always be others to replace them.

So it goes.

That’s it from me, this is is ROovid the Quaggan of The Quaggan News Network wishing you all a very CoOoOOo day fillled with many fishies and coOOokies and hugs…mellaggan and melandru bless you all….safe paths, dream well…

Be good to each other

I’m a role-player and you’re just being over dramatic.
If the Megaserver made you “lose family and friends”, then maybe it wasn’t a strong bond anyways. Don’t blame Anet on that.

If you want to roleplay, you are REQUIRED to join a guild and stick with them. Megaservers have long since destroyed all sense of community in the game, and will continue to do so. Roleplay is just one of many victims of megaservers.

If you think it’s bad now, it’s going to get much worse. With the announced Guild Halls, you can expect the RP community to take another massive dive. Join a roleplay guild now, or risk never seeing a roleplayer on Guild Wars 2 again.

We are still waiting for ArenaNet to wake up. To realize the nearly absolute negative impact megaservers have on the game. That not being able to choose which map copy you play on is unacceptable. That the algorithm is absolutely broken. That new players are confused to no end, and that veterans are unable to explain what megaservers actually do because it’s purely random.

Just like everywhere else, if you’re going to be part of a minority, you’re going to suffer for it. Either give it all you’ve got, or give up.

OP, I think I had heard you on map chat before. In fact, people like you were what I enjoyed most. To me it was a world where I could wander anywhere, and there would be a little quaggan saving CoOOoOristmas. Now you folks are definitely vanishing.

I hope ANet can consider an RP Map-chat channel for global RPers who enjoy wandering around any zone and hear spontaneous humor from their RP Map-chat in the spirit of fun.

It can bring back the old Queensdale map chat back into hopefully more zones. If that happens, it’ll make my night to hear you on the RP map chat again.

To ANet:

we in the RP community tried our hardest…with taxis to populated instances and focused guilds….but…it just took so much effort….folks drifted away….the element of surprise wasn’t there anymore…

Please note the RP community did try. But the “element of surprise wasn’t there anymore”.

I just realized RP map chat is the dynamic event of RP community. Players can instantly join and split up.

Light humor makes a fun gaming night. Also, even if we are in guilds, it still will cut us off from the thousands of rp’ers. This is like hearing a bard singing in a wilderness. Just wandering in any zone..

People like OP were a contribution to the RP global community. Not just a guild. Please consider supporting RP map-chat channel.

Thank you.

I’m not an RPer although on every MMO I play, I usually reside on an (un)official RP server. Why? Because RPers help to build that immersion that it often missing in MMOs where your typical activity consists of go here, kill that. It’s fun being able to stumble across RPers in the wild and listen in on their conversations (much as you would walking into a pub and listening to the conversation at the bar) because it helps to create that sense of a dynamic living world.

The Megaservers, for me at least has all but killed off RP in Piken Square outside of the main cities. The hunter’s lodge in Queensdale is now deserted when I go by, no doubt because the RPers are on a different instance, and the Sunday night meets that used to take place in Shaemoor near the BLTC posts have all but vanished.

I would like to see an option where clicking on an RP option somewhere, places you in an instance with RPers but I doubt this is even possible to implement with the game as it is. It was telling that in yesterday’s HoT annoucement, all bases were covered (PvE, WvW, PvP, Guilds) except for RP.

What a shame.

Hate to break it to you, but the RP community was never the target demographic. Casual players have always been the main target demographic. The RP community was just a nice extra for some folks. Sure, they added a couple of outfits and what used to be town clothes. The fact that they got rid of town clothes all together should let you know that the RP community was not the target demographic. There are still ways for you guys to enjoy your RP, at least.

Far as Im concerned, this was never an MMORPG. Its an MMO Action Game. The game can provide the tools, but it cannot provide the RP, that has to come from the players.

Roleplaying has received a relentless assault from Anet, change after change seemingly aimed at breaking RP up. They succeeded and I quit trying a long time ago.

Do keep in mind that RP was something that the community created, not ArenaNet. It’s like saying that GvG received a relentless assault from ArenaNet just because they never actually condoned two guild zergs clashing in W3 to make pseudo GvG. The game was not really designed with these things in mind. There’s no need to take it personal.

The smartest devs—and imho ANet is in that league when it came up with dynamic events—know how to utilize the player population as part of its resource. Players began cooperation and entertain each other.

In the “RP player support” issue, I hope ANet will recognize that no matter how they spend funds developing dynamic events, the scripted events will always grow stale.

The RP players who do map chat are resource behind another tier of “dynamic events”. They not only contribute to GW2 revenue. By their creativity they are free, volunteer, gamemasters that create immersion for many other players.

To give up such a free resource is not really going to help GW2 in the long run.

But there will always be a rp community in new games, and often (very often) it is the most loyal one. I was a roleplayer, played beta with my brother and we continued to rp on Piken Square, it was.. okay, really. You could see Anet had tried to do some things for the rp community, but it was quickly broken down. I expect there to be no rp community if this continues. Sure, there might be rp guilds, but communities are much different than guilds.
I am generally sad that it turned out like it did and most sad about the lack of really careing for the rp community. (Sure we’re a minority, but that doesn’t mean we count less as a player than the other one.)

I expected much of Anet, like the town clothes that was shown in the first trailer, like the immersion that Anet was to give, but I really didn’t get any of that. I would wish that Anet would call a server rp server, and just label it, we wouldn’t need anything but the label to make it suffice. (Of course there would be more that could really help out, and labeling it, aka. writing 2 ekstra letters isn’t that much, but none of it really happend. I guess the signs were always there…

I still dont get what rp is….
i dont like megaservers and even tho i dont share the pains of those above, i hope anet after releasing the expansion will give another look into servers and fix them. I liked being able to see certain ppl, even ones i didnt know in LA knowing theyd be there because they were also on blackgate. And i was a big fan of seeing the sailor moon troop every once in a while lol.

Sorry but I disagree with most of the above threads. RP is alive and well in Piken Square. The thing that is stopping people RPing is not the megaservers, but the people themselves letting megaservers actually BE an obstacle in the first place.

I think there is a huge spectrum of RP players. I myself did not participate in the big mega server uproar at all because I’m pretty much on the fringe, and nearly a “non-RP” player to a casual observer’s eye. I don’t need a guild. I have my own RP guild where I rp all 80 or so characters across multiple accounts. Reason is: there is only fun “drama”. No bad drama.

Anyway, you never know who’s out there. One day I saw someone else on the map chat saying he’s in a big guild where every member was himself. He said, “Nice, and the way I liked it!” I almost wanted to ask him in tell, “Are you me?” Then I decided it was just too weird.

For me and every one of my alts I have the most fun listening to map chat from people like the OP. The one thing that I feel bored in now is:

Now I’m really roleplaying all by myself. Sigh. No more other crazy people to hear.

My favorite old RP chat hangout was Queensdale, Lion’s Arch. Remember when LA nice people gave free prizes for guessing their riddles? I thought it was a fun community there. If I needed to do a puzzle, there was a kind mezzer at LA that would always help. Now.. no idea where he is. Haven’t seen him either lately on my contact list.

Without this community, I won’t be making alts anymore. I’ll just stick to one main, and probably play less often, buy less gems, etc. In the long run GW2 may not even recognize how much revenue they are missing from people like me. It won’t bother me of course. I’ll find other creative fun to do.

It’s why this discussion I’m actually trying to look out for GW2. To me sometimes the lack of support for the big spectrum of RP players may cause a game to lose revenue insidiously.

It’s why I think about how older zones will be when all the dynamic event scripts are stale. How will it impact this game.. etc. Well, maybe it’s already all handled.

[Edit add: The question in my head is, if developing RP map channel carries X cost, what can NCSoft really gauge in terms of revenue lost by not supporting RP map chat?

What’s the cost to hire free-roaming RP gamemasters? Vs. loss in losing the open-community rp players, including the OP, who support a potentially huge, unseen RP community.]

I didn’t think my little bit would get this many views, but as folks can see, RP is mostly…nearly…dead in this game…my advice for any that are left, enjoy what you can, use what scraps ANET has left us…I don’t see anything changing, they’re targeting other folks now. The game has to stay profitable to keep them in business.

Also, one thing I would like to note, folks that RP now…that might be new to the game…new RPers…they think that you’ve just got to “try to make it work” and that RP is totally fine right now….things were vastly different, it’s like growing up in a city with light pollution blotting out most of the stars and thinking that the night sky is fine just as it is…but some folks remember when there weren’t so many city lights, when you could look up into that blackness and find hope burning bright in a billion billion points of light…compared to the few pale flames that shine through the blackness today. I’m not bitter, I’m moving on, grieving for my loss, and hoping that things in the future will change.

Besides, someone at ANET clearly likes RPers, or else I would’ve been banned a long long long time ago….

If your quitting then send me your gold pls

Can I have your stuff?

To Orpheus Animus and other roleplayers who feel isolated:

I felt the same way, and fixed it as best I could. If you feel as I did, I would encourage you to take the following step:

• Add every single roleplayer you see to your Friends list.
• (As in… right-click, Add to friends.)
• Yes, even characters you don’t know or associate with.
• ESPECIALLY characters you don’t know or associate with.
• Yes, I know, this is five bullets representing one step. You hush.

I do this habitually, and it has improved the number of roleplayers I run into in the world. Megaserver seems to give healthy consideration to Friends when making a balancing decision for an individual player. Megaserver has been the bane of my roleplaying existence since it came out, but once I sacrificed my Friends List to the Megaserver, this seemed to help. Begrudgingly, I have used it this way ever since.

Kate Soulguard.7132:

Add every single roleplayer you see to your Friends list.*

This is a pretty clever solution. It could also be aided by, perhaps, the use of a site where role players can submit their namesto a list, so that other players who want to can add them. Doing so might increase the chances of the community as a whole ending up in more instances together. I know there’s potential for abuse there, but it’s a thought.

And here’s another one: I wonder if a simple solution might be an RP flag you can set, that prioritizes other people with that flag set, in the same way that the friend list prioritizes friends. Set it, and while it’s on, matching you to a map with others using that flag becomes top priority, increasing the chance that you’ll happen upon random RP.

Of course, I’d never expect them to actually do anything like this, but I can dream.

Roleplayers haven’t been the target demographic for AAA MMOs for a long time. If you want good roleplaying in an MMO, you should look into smaller projects like Shards Online.

Ok… this is just not true. I see people RPing all the time in Rata Sum. I see tons of political discussions about in game stuff. Plus you can just friend people that you like playing and they’ll show up on the same megaserver. From my personal experience RPers are always a minority and so you have to do a little hunting to find em. But they’re still there.

Kate Soulguard.7132:

I felt the same way, and fixed it as best I could. If you feel as I did, I would encourage you to take the following step:

• Add every single roleplayer you see to your Friends list.

This is kind of brilliant. Let’s turn this post into something like that!
I am Photonman.6241 and I’m a RPer feel free to add me!

I can haz your stuff?

As others have said, RP’ers were never the target demographic.

uknortherner.2670:

I’m not an RPer although on every MMO I play, I usually reside on an (un)official RP server. Why? Because RPers help to build that immersion that it often missing in MMOs where your typical activity consists of go here, kill that. It’s fun being able to stumble across RPers in the wild and listen in on their conversations (much as you would walking into a pub and listening to the conversation at the bar) because it helps to create that sense of a dynamic living world.

The Megaservers, for me at least has all but killed off RP in Piken Square outside of the main cities. The hunter’s lodge in Queensdale is now deserted when I go by, no doubt because the RPers are on a different instance, and the Sunday night meets that used to take place in Shaemoor near the BLTC posts have all but vanished.

I would like to see an option where clicking on an RP option somewhere, places you in an instance with RPers but I doubt this is even possible to implement with the game as it is. It was telling that in yesterday’s HoT annoucement, all bases were covered (PvE, WvW, PvP, Guilds) except for RP.

What a shame.

You summed up my thoughts completely. I cringe every time I see a blue-haired anything running around, let alone players with stupid names spamming mapchat with #yolo and crap like that.

It doesn’t matter how big the RP population is, what does matter is that the RP population were grouped together at one point and now they are scattered and there is no more immersive atmopshere.

RIP ROLEPLAYING

as a player who has only been here for a month now I can’t help but agree with the OP and other RPer’s posts here. Pretty much since I started playing I’ve been keeping my eyes out for both random RP and RP guild recruitments and the thing is, there really isn’t much of either. I even tried with a post here on the forums and while I’ve gotten quite a few offers to join guilds, not one has been an RP guild or even a guild that housed some roleplayers in their free time.

I did luck out once and get mapped with some people in an RP guild who were doing chest runs, and I introduced myself in character, and they immediately invited me to their group and told me to talk to their leaders/recruiters to join, but when I talked to the recruitment officer, I was given a ridiculous list on how to join that clearly told me that they really didn’t want new members. It was much beyond just an in character interview and would have required a lot more time in the day than I can play. And I get the feeling that’s how a lot of RP guilds are going to be the further things go, especially with the GvG coming(though I think GvG is a great feature, not knocking on it at all). Ultimately, RP tends to be clique-ish by nature, but now with the way servers work and how near impossible random RP is to find, it’ll only get worse. It should be organic, but the way things are you have to actively seek it, hunt it down, then hope to be accepted. Either that or try to meet the expectations of those who clearly don’t want you around, and the barrier for entry is going to be even more difficult for new players.

corrosivechains.5476:

as a player who has only been here for a month now I can’t help but agree with the OP and other RPer’s posts here. Pretty much since I started playing I’ve been keeping my eyes out for both random RP and RP guild recruitments and the thing is, there really isn’t much of either. I even tried with a post here on the forums and while I’ve gotten quite a few offers to join guilds, not one has been an RP guild or even a guild that housed some roleplayers in their free time.

I did luck out once and get mapped with some people in an RP guild who were doing chest runs, and I introduced myself in character, and they immediately invited me to their group and told me to talk to their leaders/recruiters to join, but when I talked to the recruitment officer, I was given a ridiculous list on how to join that clearly told me that they really didn’t want new members. It was much beyond just an in character interview and would have required a lot more time in the day than I can play. And I get the feeling that’s how a lot of RP guilds are going to be the further things go, especially with the GvG coming(though I think GvG is a great feature, not knocking on it at all). Ultimately, RP tends to be clique-ish by nature, but now with the way servers work and how near impossible random RP is to find, it’ll only get worse. It should be organic, but the way things are you have to actively seek it, hunt it down, then hope to be accepted. Either that or try to meet the expectations of those who clearly don’t want you around, and the barrier for entry is going to be even more difficult for new players.

Anyone looking for a Roleplaying guild, especially Piken Square or Tarnished Coast are advised to join http://www.guildwars2roleplayers.com there is a forum and a guild recruiting thread you can search through like a telephone directory

penelopehannibal.8947:

Anyone looking for a Roleplaying guild, especially Piken Square or Tarnished Coast are advised to join http://www.guildwars2roleplayers.com there is a forum and a guild recruiting thread you can search through like a telephone directory

Thank you, bookmarked to look through. That said though I’m on the Henge of Denravi shard, it’s the one the friend who got the game for me was on so that does make it a bit more difficult.

Im not an RP, but this post makes me incredibly sad.

A game dev with whom I’ve long been friends (no connection to Anet) once told me that as much as the studios he’d worked for generally appreciated the RP communities in their games, they couldn’t quantify their value and had a difficult time making strong cases for what features and QoL changes should be made when it came time to decide on things like throwing labor hours at making three types of interactive chair.

There were always more quantifiably compelling things to throw always-limited resources at, and at the end of it all, RPers were also often the least likely to drop sub/leave if neglected.

In short and sum, they tend to know what we RP-lovers want, but its hard to quantify the value of giving it to us when most of us are basically never going to leave even if we’re neglected anyway.

You can always count on RPers to be some of the most foolishly loyal and heavily invested-in-their-community-environments sorts in any of these games.

They appreciate our money and our loyalty, but sadly, its money in the bank irrespective, and they’ll always have squeakier wheels to grease.

corrosivechains.5476:

penelopehannibal.8947:

Anyone looking for a Roleplaying guild, especially Piken Square or Tarnished Coast are advised to join http://www.guildwars2roleplayers.com there is a forum and a guild recruiting thread you can search through like a telephone directory

Thank you, bookmarked to look through. That said though I’m on the Henge of Denravi shard, it’s the one the friend who got the game for me was on so that does make it a bit more difficult.

No worries, and don’t worry about not being Tarnished Coast, it’s basically NA guilds now anyway, they just label the guilds there as Tarnished Coast guilds due to the pre-megaserver days.

naiasonod.9265:

A game dev with whom I’ve long been friends (no connection to Anet) once told me that as much as the studios he’d worked for generally appreciated the RP communities in their games, they couldn’t quantify their value and had a difficult time making strong cases for what features and QoL changes should be made when it came time to decide on things like throwing labor hours at making three types of interactive chair.

There were always more quantifiably compelling things to throw always-limited resources at, and at the end of it all, RPers were also often the least likely to drop sub/leave if neglected.

In short and sum, they tend to know what we RP-lovers want, but its hard to quantify the value of giving it to us when most of us are basically never going to leave even if we’re neglected anyway.

You can always count on RPers to be some of the most foolishly loyal and heavily invested-in-their-community-environments sorts in any of these games.

They appreciate our money and our loyalty, but sadly, its money in the bank irrespective, and they’ll always have squeakier wheels to grease.

Naiasonod, thank you for an enlightening post. I re-read it a couple times. Learned a lot from it.

OP, I will always remember your quaggan world news. Even that brief time I saw you I sensed it was an exceptional RP player. One reason I rp by myself is that I can’t even think of what to say when faced with some good players. Haha. I remember vaguely that night struggling to try to say something to you, but couldn’t think of what to say.

In my times of playing mmorpgs I had seen some very powerful RPers that just put me in a stun-state. As in, speechless.

I almost feel like there should be a town perhaps in each of the racial zone so that RPers can run it, and I would love to visit those towns. I’ll just be sitting there in a tavern like a regular traveler. Mm, kind of like Frodo.

In a way our racial home cities seemed to be built for it. On the other hand, I quite often sit the Grove and see some good, and some bad RP. And usually I’m busy running my own tasks as I log into a city. So even the idea of a home city may not work out well for RPers of different interests.

I hope GW2 dev team will have/provide a bit more incentive for RPers, such as having RP contests so what many of us RP learners get to watch and vote. Haha, I think it may prove to be very popular. Gee I’d pay to watch some of the players.

It’ll be almost like an instance theater. I don’t know, just fantasizing. :P

Imagine if a group of RPers got a good story plot line and characters going, and a popular show, they may even earn gems, or real life money like SPvP do.

Anyway, some brainstorming may make the future mmorpgs have star players that can draw millions to the broadcast show on Twitch TV. Ok I can dream from a fan’s seat, right?

Take care, wherever we may meet or not meet again. Stars are everywhere ye know. :p

A couple people in this thread had mentioned it would be nice to set a flag for RP for server placement priority. That was my first thought too, just was not sure if it is possible in the current state. But the more I think, why not? We already have server priority placement in place, so the cost of development may not be as much.

Suggestion: Mega Server Preference Choice

Concept: A way for any player to play “the way he/she likes” via a new menu of choices by setting a flag the player will be placed on a type of server choice.

Potential menu of Mega-Server types:

General PvE
Light RP
Lore RP
WvW Home Front (where players may travel in PvE while waiting to enter WvW may be with people sharing WvW interest)
Black Trading Post Traders Route (where players may wish to meet others to discuss economy)

I like visiting the forums because there is vast knowledge here, but in game is fun too. Just wondering if something like this can replace our current “server placement priority” process. Sometimes I wish I can just play my normal wandering in PvE while listening to chats on the map. There are so many dedicated players in each of the GW2 major play styles. I can see myself learning a lot this way.

“General PvE” in the menu will still provide the opportunity for us to all be in every category.

Anyway, I’m hoping to learn… hopefully a lot of us Frodos out there can venture into some of these special servers and learn as we play.

In the future server names may be a thing of the past. To me it’s time we think about play styles when it comes to play style preference choice.

For example, In the server vs. server-based WvW, there have been time-zone problems, server population advantage problems. The future of WvW may be better served if instead of the problematic server vs. server, we have race wars. :p Imagine 5 races having fun a new WvW land playing castle seige. Cat army vs. human, vs Sylvani vs. Asura.

Players may want to make the same class for 5 races just to have fun helping one race or another. This can increase revenue for GW2 also in terms of character slot sales.

Anyway, the future is wide open. Sorry if this is a bit off topic, but I know some of the best PvP players are RPers too, so I figure I may as well bring the idea here for preliminary discussion, if any. I can see how, with this set up, all the different major play interests can mix and mingle. So players will have a very exciting menu of choices.

Imagine a large organized RP event where everyone is in WvW fighting over a cause.

Last week i came across my first random rp group in months. That was a daily occurence before Megaservers, on Piken Square…

There is still a lot of RP on Piken Square. Even with the Megaservers.

Craray.2603:

There is still a lot of RP on Piken Square. Even with the Megaservers.

I hate to tell you this, but there is no “Piken Square” unless you are part of its WvW community. It may well be that your former membership of that server is sending you towards other roleplayers, but that’s a relic of the past and something that will constantly degrade as time passes, especially with the influx of new players due to the expansion.

Craray.2603:

There is still a lot of RP on Piken Square. Even with the Megaservers.

In WvW? Because apart from wvw maps, there isn’t a Piken Square anymore.

cafard.8953:

Craray.2603:

There is still a lot of RP on Piken Square. Even with the Megaservers.

In WvW? Because apart from wvw maps, there isn’t a Piken Square anymore.

I disagree. Piken Square isn’t just a server. It’s the people too.

As a piken player I still see a fair share of role players, granted, their centralized in specific rp hubs as opposed to being everywhere like they used to be but its still a very viable rp community.

Back when the RP community strongly argued against mega server I was very happy, feeling confident it would be helped. So confident that I did not even bother to help. After all, I was just an average RPer, with medium skill in RP at best. But as time went on it is obvious the community is facing an ice wall coming ahead.

I see RP in the Grove, too, probably due to my server being TC. But over time in mid-level zones RP is beginning to be less, and less. As new players arrive I think old servers will eventually disappear to the point if I said to a new player, “I’m from TC.” he will ask, “What’s that?”

I hope ANet will brainstorm and come up with a structure to shape the future of Mega Servers.

One thing I’d like to add: In the case I mentioned above on “race wars”, in case there is a large inequity among race population, it can be solved in an RP lore by having one of the deities of each race granting its race a small MF to encourage players to bring in their “minority race”. It is an indirect way to reward the players for facing more challenge. That bonus can shift based on new population balance so as to prevent abuse. (On that note: I forgot to mention my vision is to have much shorter WvW duration for each round. At most 2 hours, so no power-shifting abuse by players either.)

And, achievements can be granted for winning WvW as an Asura underdog, etc. (Sorry I’m major scatter brain when it comes to brainstorming.)

Another idea to promote RP community: Have bulletin board in side each major city where RP guilds can post their activities so a player can go to check the board and read an announcement on “Activity, time, place, by guild name” format to prevent abuse. I’d love to read and plan on joining some of the activities.

[Just want to thank OP for titling this thread: State of Roleplaying. Hope I’m still on topic on how to help this state.]

Oops, re: Bulletin board suggestion of mine. Just dawnd on me…. How are people going to be taxied to the RP event on the correct mega server? Taxiing again? Nah. So OOC! Time wasting and breaking immersion.

Maybe we’d need to invent a name for an airship that will ship people to the mega server where the guild is on, for event “Xxxx”, matching the guild name.

The airship will have a menu of stops for events active at any moment.

I sincerely hope ANet will consider giving us a play style choice menu for mega server. By doing so, it can usher in a new age where:

New players that enter GW2 will be welcomed by all players as they click their preference. I can see a “Newbie welcome” on the menu where experienced players who feel like guiding a newbie for the session can choose to go to help all newbies.

I myself would love to visit a “Combat Academy” server to learn more about combat mechanics from some of the real pro players. Queensdale had that combat instructor that told me to “hold”, “hold”.. ok I had fun RPing a newbie, but when it came to reality, despite my years of learning mmorpg combat, the GW2 intricacies are still beyond me. Part of my fear in even trying SPvP is that I’ll go in and get dead in 0.5 seconds.

I would love to go to such a server type for an hour at a time and maybe will have a chance to talk to some pro players live, to learn. If there is such a server, I think some of the kind players would not mind gong there to be the real tutor of the day. It can be a good newbie recruiting ground where they will at least find newbies who thirst to learn.

I was interested in WvW but the first night I went it was midnight and my server had 3 of us guarding our home when enemies came 10 or 12 at a time. I was a total noob and died gallantly trying to rez another noob. lol that was the end. I felt very inept. Later all I read was how imbalanced WvW. When I did visit it WvW again it was with a EoTM train. It felt rather pointless to me, just a zerg. My fun in the very occasional train is just the thrill of being with a large crowd. But I am still hoping one day I’ll be able to be a soldier following commanders and actually understand what is going on. That to me is a high learning curve because I’ve never done it before.

I’m hoping on a server type named "WvW Home Front I can hear, live, on map chat about WvW stories, whatever. Or be drafted into an on-going WvW session to aid one of the factions. (taxi anyone?)

SPvP? Friendly contest can be a great concept in my dream. Yet a dream beyond me as I watch the pro tournament. My head spinning in excitement for 15 minutes because “Yay NA is winning!” But all I see is people dashing madly. I can’t even read the combat icons flashing to figure out what is going on. “Oh I wish I know what is going on” went on in my head.

Sorry, and this is when I was in EQ it took me 3 days of reading forums to understand even the basics of combat of my class, then 6 months of playing, reading hardcore to figure out my own combat plans. Eventually I got compliments, yet when I joined a top raiding guild 2 of the officers gave me more tips. I’m sorry to say, some of us just need a lot of tutoring. :P I keep hoping to learn builds, etc. GW2 has a very different system that has a lot of interesting concept to it.

I think if as a newbie, many players will get the choice to go to a Newbie Combat Tutor server type where some seasoned players may just feel like be there and guide newbies for a session, we cadets would be grateful, and may eventually be able to contribute to the play style in GW2.

GW2 will develop a whole auto tutoring session this way. With volunteer tutors that don’t cost NCSoft revenue a dime. On top of it, this will facilitate community relationships among newbies and seasoned players who may wish to recruit for their guilds.

Hey, some guilds can host events and name a time, place to tutor “How to play a guardian” on the bulletin board. When time comes, airship will take all players who are interested to the spot.

Anyway, I hope we will all become friends on a true mega server, and will be able to choose our play style of the hour. One day we can look back at the current state as “in the old days.. we walked to school both ways up the hill in snow…”.

Then, we will all become one. One server in the spirit of GW2. Brothers and sisters in a universe that is full of friends.

I’m somewhat dyslexic btw. Excuse me for many mistyping.

More on “Combat Academy”. I had zero concept of “pulling” in EQ until one night a kind player took time to show me where to stand to pull in a tight spot, and why. Till this day I remember gazing at his slim dark elf in a dark robe. He was my hero! Man it still tears me up now to think of what happened to him later. (He left the game, a brilliant player who could not play the raid schedule. He grinded for months for a few augs then finally told me, “This is nothing but grind.” I miss him till this day.

Now, I can read all about the combat builds, etc. But being a visual person, somewhat dyslexic and scatterbrained, I have a hard time remembering words. Just now I got a vision of a kind guardian standing on a hill telling me, “This is how you use AE effect skill. Look, I’ll pull mobs here. Then cast staff skill #x.”

I’ll remember him forever. I am not a learner that function well by reading. It’s all a wall of text to me.

I know one of the new thing in GW2 is AE effect circles. The many newbies, including me, out there, still don’t know all the combos. Imagine if a small tutoring group where one to three vets get together and show a small group of newbies on how to do it. They may end up friends for life.

You actually see the real people, the real friends, demonstrating to you. That friendship is far deeper then reading on a forum.

To OP:

I love your idea of Quaggan news. If a bulletin board system is implemented, I hope I’ll be able to search the keyword “Quaggan News Network”, and attend a daily, or weekly meeting you may host, just so your followers can sit around and listen and comment on your news.

You will not need to endure the rude comments from non-believers. You will be surrounded by a bunch of us. Some of us will come in Quaggan form. We’ll have a party and legends to build.

Seems various areas were affected differently. Heavily populated areas had their RP populations diluted across instances, while low population areas had everyone in the same instances.

From what I can tell, it feels like the Black Citadel has only 3-4 instances at peak hours, and drops to maybe 1-2 at low hours. Similar story for other nearby Ascalon maps, so I frequently encounter Charr RPs (And others too who stop by).

Great atmosphere, wish my original server had more RP going on, but it was such a low population one (at least during hours I was awake and playing) that a year into the game seeing anyone on some of the mid-level Ascalon maps outside dungeons or shatterer (Even did the shatterer solo on more than several occasions, thats how empty it was.. Same for claw of jormag) was amazing.

Today I was looking at the LFG tool to see if it was true that people were trying to sell precursors on it. Some of the party ads were so silly, I was sorely tempted to “LF Charr RP” to both poke fun at the other parties and.. to actually have someone to chat with IC. Maybe one day. After some events a couple years back, Im still shy doing what I love most, asking new players in Ashford and Diessa if they need help. Asking people to casually chat in-character together is still… beyond me right now. Let alone approaching hardcore RPers for a chat.

To be completely honest, the posts I’ve written in this topic so far is when I wear my optimistic hat. I understand if OP chooses not to return. I myself am just trying to give this game a chance atm. There are signs I do not like in the newest direction of this game. Mostly it’s a whole lot of QA issues. When changes are made, it is pretty obvious the changes were driven by shallow management vision, likely from NCSoft. I feel sad for ANet at this point. Hoping they can salvage the negative turns. Enough said.

With the hub bub about the whole HoT thing going on and the few posts I’ve seen from new people talking about mega servers….I thought this post was still relevant.

Mega servers did some damage to the player base; players left and have stopped throwing money at ANET. Which is what I did, speak with my wallet and my logins. This game was about playing with others and Mega Servers removed that. Tarnished Coast used to be bustling and packed in the main cities, in hindsight…the overflow servers were a good sign of how populated the place was…but the last time I logged in…it was sparse. That was sad.

Mega servers aren’t going away; it was too big of a change to ever revert.

ANET is a business; so while the prices did kind of surprise me a bit…I wasn’t all that upset…I played back in beta and was one of those folks that pre-ordered the game with the super huge massive legendary whatever the heck it was package…literally ran to Gamestop and picked up my extra large box from UPS with about five other nutjobs, and boy did we lavishly decorate our Rytlock statues….so the price for pre-order for HoT…is fairly reasonable to me, a veteran player. They have to make money and they have to compete with other game companies out there that have a much larger budget than they do, who can appeal and advertise to a far larger player base.

It’s a pretty game, the combat was always fun, the story lines were ok…at times…sometimes a bit ridiculous…but not as kittenome empty “kill 10 rats” stuff out there…there are mechanics that make GW2 a great game.

But MMORPGS are about playing with other people, and Mega Servers took that away from me. I lost friends…people I loved…I still stand by that…I won’t be coming back any time soon, I won’t be logging in, I’ll wait and watch…and if at some point in the future ANET changes their mind about Mega Servers…yeah, then I’ll come back.

I think at one point I said I hated ANET with every fiber of my being, probably chewed out a GM or two…I’m not sorry for what I said…just how I said it, so my apologies for that. In time, maybe I can rejoin you all and make new friends and we can once again flood Tarnished Coast with silly RPs and other hilarious Quaggany things.

So be nice folks, ANET is trying….be patient…they’re human-ish….and be smart with how you address issues you have with the game, because they will literally just shut you out if you start going off like a stack of firecrackers.

Mellaggan and Melandru be with you all, safe paths, dream well wibble wobbles off

I’m done…I’m gone…I’ve poured three years of my life into this game, lost countless hours of sleep, and spent way too much money on it….I’m done…I’ve deleted all of my characters and I wish I could return my Rytlock Statue…but it broke a while back and I couldn’t put it back together….like so many other things…I’m done, I’m sorry for any troubles I’ve caused, ROovid the Quaggan is gone for good…I’m done…goodbye Tarnished Coast.