Guild Wars 2

Sorthvania.9351:

As to being a minority: I know people who have spent anywhere from $2000 – $8000 on this game who are roleplayers over the past few years. Multiple people from Tarnished Coast. I know I’ve definitely spent more money in GW2 than I did in seven years of WoW.

It’s an MMO*RPG* and RPers tend to blow more money into the game than most other groups, because they’re crazypants about the kind of things that we can get for gems. Characters need NPCs for a story? Buy another 10 slots, buy all the XP, buy the skins, buy dye packs.

It’s the same over on The Old Republic. I can almost guarantee that the people buying the item packs in bulk over on that game are by and large the role-players because most of us can and WILL go hog wild if we see a specific set of armor or weapon that suits our characters just so. I had friends over there that would drop $50 dollars a month easily on packs just to ensure they can get the full set of the items they want, then put down another $50 to unlock it all so that each outfit is available to every character they create. Tack on the subscription fee, extra character slots, name changes and appearance changes, and you’ll find that many role-players drop an immense amount of money simply to feed their fix.

Even if the role-playing community was truly niche both there and here, the sheer amount of coin each spends to ensure they have the best experiences with the game should not be understated or ignored. Of course, that doesn’t mean we should be placed above the rest of the community, and I don’t know a single role-player who would argue as such. But rather that our opinions should at least be considered, because if the role-players start to leave, A-Net probably will eventually feel the loss in their wallets.

spritefire.5234:

If you were a true RP you would adapt to a changing universe.

As other’s have pointed out, game mechanics =/= story changes in most cases. I’ll give you instances like The Elder Scroll’s universe with Oblivion, where they changed Cyrodil from a tropical forest to a traditional medieval setting for the sake of being easier to work with, but in this case the mega server is going to have no impact on the lore. Ergo it will not, as you say contribute to a ‘changing universe’.

I’m going to add my consensus to the idea that RPers be given an optional check button that will allow them to be grouped with others who are like minded. In fact, I think a check system would be ideal overall, not just for RPing, because sometimes you might just want to get away from the crowd the mega server has assigned you too. So you can check for PVE, PVP, Dungeons, etc, and hopefully find a shard that will suit your needs.
Personally my greatest worry is that as someone who wishes to get into the RP community, but who can only guest on TC and whose spent months as a PVE’er, the sharding will automatically label me into a PVE specific shard. I, for one, don’t want this. It’s hard enough to break in to some RP groups already, and if I’m shafted into a shard without a good amount of RPers then honestly what’s the point? I also don’t wish to join a guild simply to circumvent this issue and think it’s a poor man’s solution to the overlying problem.
I sincerely hope A-NET takes all their players into account with this new system, because as I’m reading it now it honestly sounds like it’s going to cause far more problems than it will solve.