rpanons | cowboy times in space

cowboy times in space

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i haven't played wow so tell me, did wow have a storyline (before the update you mention)? did your character have in game dialogue? or was it just characters running around fighting stuff? because if the game only has fights, then you just have an OC from a borrowed setting and you could've apped them as an OC just like ttrpgs players do. games with no storyline/characters that are just gameplay aren't appable because there's no canon to app from, regardless of you personally using the game to rp - see: the sims.

if the game does have a story like BD3 and FFXIV, then those are malleable protags. i've seen games banning malleable protags but when they do they ban *all* them, so pokemon and persona too, i've never seen this distinction

No, your character never had dialogue but the game always had a storyline in that events are happening in the world at large. You pick up quests and fight things and those quests tell you about the world and what's going on. The stuff that happens usually impacts the entire world, so anyone living in the world can get involved in some way. Even the newer storyline that has more of a campaign doesn't really give you any dialogue. Your character gets called the Champion, but your specific character doesn't have any say in anything so it could happen to anyone (which is why it's not a malleable protag).

There is a ton of lore to make a custom character from and plenty of history and events for your character to be a part of as a person living in the world. You make an OC and come up with a setting appropriate backstory just like a ttrpg character.

oooh ok i get it now, thank you very much

not gonna lie, i were to mod i'd put it under the malleable protag umbrella. the character is impacting the world and getting involved, therefore part of the story. i'd compare this more to pokemon than to ttrpgs. now, if the mods' issue is that the character has no personality, i can get behind that, but then all silent protags should be banned.

(i guess this is my unpopular opinion, because i don't care about the malleable part of videogame characters, just write your decisions on the app. see witcher, dragon age, etc. but i do think that protags with no personality shouldn't be appable, just like any other character from other canons. geralt, shephard, and tav are appable. protags from pokemon shouldn't be. and link, at least from the few zelda games i've played from, shouldn't be appable either.)

A WoW PC is definitely closer to Pokemon, they're battle sprites with zero personality unless you make your own RP happen through in-game messaging

So just like any other OC. It's up to the player to give an OC a personality and details. If you write an app and your character has nothing going on, it doesn't matter where it comes from.

The character affects the world in gameplay, but the OC itself could be anyone and do anything, which is the overall point. For example, one of my OCs is a blacksmith. They don't actually go on quests or fight bosses, they just make armor and weapons. The events going on impact them because when and where wars happen affects their trade. They have a personality, friends (other player OCs), and a backstory, but they aren't going out directly to save the world. They are just a random person who happens to live within the setting. This is exactly the same as a ttrpg character.

ok see, this isn't what you said before. what you describe NOW is indeed a canon oc, and they should be apped as a generic OC from a borrowed setting like ttrpgs people do

I think the difference is most WoW roleplayers don't roleplay as though the storylines of the games are canon in the way WoLs seem to do? Like, there is a storyline in that when you create your character, you're in an area and get given some of the history and a basic prompt (now you have to help rid Stormwind of the Defias Brotherhood!) and there are quests, and there's an overarching storyline you intersect with.

But most people are not RPing as the Highlord of the Silver Hand who singlehandedly murdered Onyxia and time-traveled to alternate Draenor and defeated death in the afterlife and stopped a giant demon from killing the soul of the planet and so on; most people are just playing an OC in the setting who's hanging out in the inn at Goldshire and talking about how weird it is that there are undead pandas hanging out there now.

So I guess you could make the argument that the game does tell a story that you're the malleable protag of, but I have never seen anyone play a WoW OC that way. And like, part of the argument with WoLs is that then anyone who plays the NPCs from the game is beholden to recognizing whatever relationships that version is in and it's kind of bad form to be like SURPRISE you're my husband you don't get a choice in the matter (I don't fully understand FFXIV, whether there's a formal romancing element?) but again because most WoW OCs are not staying close to the game's storyline, it's not as big a deal. Tyrande might recognize a night elf priestess but also if she doesn't, it's a big world. You'd expect her to know a lot about the hero of the game, but I wouldn't expect an OC to be that hero.

there's no formal romance mechanic in FFXIV. it's all genre typical baiting, like with haurchefant

which is why wols getting pissy npcs don't immediately fall head over heels for their catgirl is obnoxious af

it's also because WoW PCs also didn't used to be the Guy Who Personally Decapitated Onyxia and so forth. these events were always described as being done by some nameless group of heroes or adventurers or whatever. maybe you were there, maybe not, either way can you get some bear asses please. most longtime players don't RP the sole savior of azeroth because that simply wasn't an option, wasn't how you engaged with the story overall; there was no malleable protag to attempt playing

unfortunately shifting to try and replicate the WoL's importance in the story because of FFXIV's acclaim while giving even less to work with has only made WoW's horrendous writing worse and you do see people start trying to do that now, lol

yeah and as someone who was into WoW something like 15 years ago, it was a little frustrating because you, the player character didn't really get acknowledged by the game. when you took down the latest world ending threat, it'd always cut to a cutscenes that showed the NPCs being cool (usually Thrall) and there was no indication that your character was there. all credit was canonly given to them although sometimes you'd get a nod in the text that they had the help of a band of brave adventurers. there was also a lot of annoyance from people who had been playing for years and the npcs would always act like they were meeting you for the first time despite whatever you did before, so when ffxiv came out and people found out that if you did other questslines it could affect the dialogue or at least give a nod to it (ie if you did the ninja job class then in a random quest where you had to sneak around a npc could mention something that recognized that you had unlocked ninja and had the skills). i think that's one reason why FFXIV was able to get a toe in WoW's playerbase because they actually made the player feel like part of the story versus being an accessory for the devs to use to jerk off their pet favorite.

i haven't really played wow since then so i have no idea what's going on, but i'm not surprised to hear that the writing got worse because it was already pretty bad back then.

as someone who was never really interested in having my character acknowledged, it never bothered me personally. playing through quests to level and see the story was a gameplay conceit for me and totally separate from however i envisooned my actual character's story. in thinking about it, i can see why other people might prefer otherwise especially from a non-RP perspective, though.

buuuuut it's actually my least favorite part of the FFXIV story because i'm a weirdo who doesn't really like being the specialest guy in the room. i can't get into a lot of malleable protag ganes for the same reason, only ones with defined MCs.

yeah i used to raid in wow so it did wear on me on how i’d spend hours doing a raid and then we’d get a cutscene where the faction leaders went “WE DID IT, WE SAVED AZEROTH!” every week for years

so ffxiv actually treating the PC like they matter was nice, but i totally get why others might not enjoy being the most special boy. tbh i have the opposite problem where it can be harder for me to get into a game if there isn’t a malleable protagonist. i’ve passed up on games that are considered the best of their genre just because the defined MC did not appeal to me at all.

the writing has actually been pretty good lately tbh. i've been playing since vanilla and the way they write the quests these days makes the storyline more clear, but it still doesn't give credit to individual characters or even the "champion". if you read the lore books the bosses are still taken down by one faction or a joint effort (which has caused all kinds of nerd rage when they give credit to a different faction than people expected).

npcs referred to you as the "champion" as far back as wrath of the lich king because prior to that they didn't really know how they wanted to structure the story. it has never revolved around one guy and still doesn't, and anyone who claims that never gets taken seriously in rp. if anything, instead of only going to and from static quest hubs, the pc is there to support the npcs that you travel around and do things with a lot more than ever before. the story revolves around them a lot more than it revolves around the player character.

DA

I really enjoyed the quest writing in Dragonflight, but I do think TWW is back to you, personally, being integral to saving the world for the thousandth time with Xal'atath following you around whispering sweet nothings in your ear. Shadowlands too which is probably my least favorite expansion; the player character was the super special singular Maw Walker, I feel like it was implied that you and only you could do whatever it was we did with Sylvanas, I don't know, I quit for a while halfway through.

The Legion class hall stuff was a lot of fun to play through, but I do think it made for a big shift from previous expansions in that it practically makes you an official lore character. I liked playing it from a game perspective but I don't consider it as part of my characters' story, if that makes sense.

I don't RP in game as much as I used to but I'd be surprised to see anyone insisting they were the Earthen Ring head honcho or whatever.

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cowboy times in space

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