Welcome to 2015.
Where MMORPGs are less and less about role play what it once used to be.
Sure some people still force the role play but the game itself does not encourage it.
Most MMOs today are quasi-single player games with a set story and course of events.
Once you are through with this there is instanced PvP and grinding score points of some sort.
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I’ve been MMOing since UO beta, and RPers have ALWAYS been a tiny, tiny minority. What is this golden era you speak of?
If you want to properly RP it isn’t going to happen in a video game anyway. Find a DM near you and start collecting dice.
Vayne already answered that for me but I want to add something to shed some light on what I mean.
I’ve play UO and Lineage a little bit back then (I prolly was to young) then eventually LineageII was my next/first big MMO (played it a total of 6 years by now), So my experience is based on those games.
Lineage, LineageII especially had it different than most MMOs and still consider it to be the best example on how to create a game of that genre.
Of course I might be biased a little bit because of nostalgia etc, anyway.
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1. The game encouraged Roleplay on its own. Essentially it took so long to level up characters that you probably only ever played one during the first years or atleast heavily focused on one character.
This is important imo. Because you somehow grew onto your role. For example me being a Tank. If you would talk about me, you were talking about the tank of clan XY. Everyone had a very specific rule, and there were many jobs to do considering there are a total of 26(?) classes back then. Today the game has a total of 30 classes.
Today in Guildwars everyone plays all those characters with largely different names and you hop around between them everyday. There is no real connection to your toon anymore. Not to forget individual classes have no importance at all, but thats just a GW issue because of the riddance of the holy trinity.
2. Lets dive into it a bit more. Lets talk PvP. Look at all those games even WoW today. PvP is meaningless. You just slaugther or get slaugthered and thats it.
I remember when Clans split up because they actually had conflicts in Real life! Then they would go on and PK each other. And this is not only some “yea lets kill each other now.” I remember my first clan splitting up because the leaders, a married couple, had a horrible divorce. Of course its a sad story! But the impact it had on us ingame was impressive!
Suddenly you had to fight for your leveling spots, and many more clans were into it. Who wants to get the low exp mobs? Pk to claim the good spots. Even raids.
Not to forget that you could even drop your own gear that you farmed weeks for when you got caught with karma.
Heart-racing was a common issue when Pking someone. an “Oh kitten” moment when suddenly someone was after you.
This is no more in current MMOs.
Lastly, there was no way to escape all of this. The entire server was open world, no instances, no channels(!). All one world with the same players every day.
Today every game has multiple instances and channels were you can just avoid troulbe if you want. Its boring and socializing happens less. Wether its aggresive or friendly socializing.
Sad.
Look at guildwars, do you know anyone besides your guild?
Are there people you stumble upon regularily that are not within your clan?
But wait there is more considering Role play Pvp. You play as an elf? You see a dark-elf around your favourite spot? Noone would Invite a dark elf to his party as an elf. This is an open invitation to Pk him.
What happened with all of that?
You touched the shiny, didn’t you?
The marked asked for a product with specific set of parameters and WoW managed to deliver what market wanted. This is how it works, if ppl stop buying cheap 3rd world products and start buying local products, stores will sell local products.
