Voice Chat Can Really Kill the Mood 539
Raver32 writes with Wired article about the strange juxtaposition of real life identities intruding on virtual world bliss. Voice chat is becoming a very common component of online games, from MMOGs to FPS titles. Many even bundle a voice chat service into the game client now. That's useful, tactically, but socially it can be downright frustrating, confusing, or awkward. "Recently I logged into World of Warcraft and I wound up questing alongside a mage and two dwarf warriors. I was the lowest-level newbie in the group, and the mage was the de-facto leader. He coached me on the details of each new quest, took the point position in dangerous fights and suggested tactics. He seemed like your classic virtual-world group leader: Confident, bold and streetsmart. But after a few hours he said he was getting tired of using text chat — and asked me to switch over to Ventrilo, an app that lets gamers chat using microphones and voice. I downloaded Ventrilo, logged in, dialed him up and ... realized he was an 11-year-old boy."
Pedophilia jokes in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pedophilia jokes in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Maybe he mistook role playing for role playing
So...was he hoping for someone younger?
Re:Pedophilia jokes in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pedophilia jokes in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Pedophilia jokes in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Kills the mood (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Kills the mood (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Kills the mood (Score:5, Insightful)
On the main topic, though - why does it matter if it's an 11-year-old kid, a 42-year-old mother of three, a college drop out, or an IT worker on the other end of that mage? If he or she is courteous, skilled, and knowledgeable then s/he deserves respect regardless of any other factor. That's where online games, and indeed the internet in general, are great - they let you meet the person without prejudice based on appearance, age, gender, or any other factor (except literacy, I guess...
Re:Kills the mood (Score:5, Insightful)
On the main topic, though - why does it matter if it's an 11-year-old kid, a 42-year-old mother of three, a college drop out, or an IT worker on the other end of that mage? If he or she is courteous, skilled, and knowledgeable then s/he deserves respect regardless of any other factor. That's where online games, and indeed the internet in general, are great - they let you meet the person without prejudice based on appearance, age, gender, or any other factor (except literacy, I guess...
Maybe he just needs to work on his uber micro [purepwnage.com].
In contrast to the submitter's perspective, I found voice chat to be a godsend in WoW when I still played it. Without it you lose the human element of the game, and you forget the noob on the other end (this was other people sometimes, but also myself many times over) is still human. This is only a bad thing. Text conversations fall to hissy fits much faster than they do when you're talking with someone.
Re:Kills the mood (Score:5, Insightful)
I was in a similar situation years ago - playing online in a clan for 5+ years before we started using voice comms together. Turns out our clan leader had a really high squeaky voice. Funny for all of about 5 minutes, but then we all got over it and got on with gaming, and he continued to lead the clan for years after. In no way did it diminish his leadership, our collective pwnage or my enjoyment of the game.
Learn to respect diversity and life gets a whole lot better.
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Exactly. Voice chat is not responsible for killing the mood, his own prejudice is.
Prejudices do come into play, but it's not the only factor. To expand on the article's point, with voice chat you can open up and be yourself and say whatever comes to your mind. So with voice chat you really get a much better impression of what the other person is like. That might result in you deciding that you don't like them. Not because of thier age or the sound of thier voice but because you know more about them and you just dont like them.
BTW, the 11-year old was just as uncomfortable playing
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On the main topic, though - why does it matter if it's an 11-year-old kid, a 42-year-old mother of three, a college drop out, or an IT worker on the other end of that mage?
The point is "suspension of disbelief". With text filtering out all the nuances, you can imagine the voice of the on-screen character, and see the chat as coming from Ragnar Wormtoter. Voice chat however comes from Jimmy, the kid behind the character, and can be incongruous with the visual of the hulking big bloke with a big hammer.
This has nothing to do with respect, but with maintaining the atmosphere. Not all of us are good enough voice actors to play the role.
Re:Stereotypes, meritocracy (Score:5, Interesting)
Age enters into it somewhat, admittedly. But we happily play alongside a 16 year old friend of ours (although the clans have an 18-years rule) and he is respected because he is friendly. At the same time, I've made friends with a mass of people who I would otherwise never have been able to - not in the way that I have. I now know a Scot from Dundee who's married with two children, I know tens of Germans, several of whom are twice my age or more. In real life, I, as an 18-year-old, would perhaps know and talk with a married 36 year old, I might even be friends with him. But I would never, I would say, have the kind of frank, uninhibited conversation that we all do - it's more like a bunch of blokes at a bar, and if you go to a bar you don't go with people twice your age, usually.
Without voice chat, I would perhaps "know" some of these people - I remember before I used to log on to TeamSpeak I would recognise a few of the regulars on the servers. But one can never hold a conversation of the same type purely through the in-game text chat feature. The conversations we have online range widely in topic - we see little glimpses of each other's home lives, mundane things like the Scot having to leave temporarily because one of his daughters is holding a tin of paint (a new variation on the "it's past the 13-year-old's bedtime) or discussions of Marmite which proceed from my becoming peckish. We discuss television, politics, language, photography, share jokes and behave altogether more like... blokes at a bar than gamers at their PCs.
Ogre image vs reality (Score:2)
roleplaying is tough when the voice is totally wrong.
I smell a new market (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, that 11 year old is getting valuable leadership and teaching experience. If he is competent to lead the party, and a simple software tweak would let you suspend disbelief, it's a good thing.
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That being said, I'd definitely like to see some filter technology. It'd add a lot to the ambiance. I think actually a lot of issues with that are currently relating to the voice actors guild, and their (understandable, though buggy-whippish) desire not
Re:I smell a new market (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously though, I've been thinking about a MMORPG collective for serious gamers. A few thousand true role players could easily afford to go in on an adequate server and you could give people memberships for content contribution. It could work, but it would be a lot of effort and there would be no profit in it, so I don't see it happening. I would join something like that. It's hard coming from a pencil and paper RPG world where everyone really gets into the role playing aspect, to an MMORPG world where paladins have names like hotchixxor69. Ugh.
Re:I smell a new market (Score:4, Funny)
Pure role playing would be nice; lot of companies have role playing servers, but it's never really given serious support, so you still end up with the annoying l33t sp33kers showing up every now and then breaking up the mood.
Re:I smell a new market (Score:4, Interesting)
You could have at least 3 or more levels or 'realms' of access, with the higher levels being available to those players who show spirit, interest and stay in character. 'Experience points' or whatever should be lower on the list. If you want good role-players, then award experience/merit for good role-playing and advance them to higher realms (if not levels) based on that.
The highest 'realm' might have lots of lowly 2nd level fighters/mages/whatever and 20th level wizards and so on, but they would all have proven themselves capable of playing by the rules and staying in character. That could afford some really interesting roleplay encounters, rather than a wide-open field with 'L33ts', high-score-hounds, spammers, gender-benders and genuine role-players all in one space. You could develop much more sophisticated storylines and such rather than just having strong characters prey on the week to go for the next level. Weak (low-level) players who are good role-players in a higher-realm setting could be given (in context) information or objects or abilities which make them valuable to the higher-level players in the context of one storyline/adventure or another.
Exclusive access to the higher (more refined) realms would be a good carrot to encourage roleplay. People who don't like that would quickly go elsewhere to 'greener' (?) pastures. That would be a very interesting sort of server, and while I wouldn't be a player myself, I'd love to see some other group put it together and make it work.
Re:I smell a new market (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Ogre image vs reality (Score:5, Insightful)
Not trying to be too flippant; I'm genuinely curious. Anyone I know who talks about WoW goes on almost exclusively about either gaming the system or inter-player drama, and I'm wondering if there's more than a handful of exceptions in the game.
Re:Ogre image vs reality (Score:5, Interesting)
Nevertheless, people play with very distinct and consistant personalities that are often quite different from their "real life" personality. They're roleplaying an online persona, just not an "in-character" one. And, truthfully, if you just look at a game like WOW without bringing any background to it from other books and games, there's not much there to get in-character about.
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If you're looking for roleplay, stay the hell away from WoW.
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Cue Ender's Game comments! (Score:2)
You will be chatting with another engineer, then take a call and realize they are 10 years younger than you.
Re:Cue Ender's Game comments! (Score:5, Insightful)
You speak as if this is something new. I'm actually getting uh, older now, but for the first part of my adult life working in and around the 'Net since the early 90s there was very rarely a situation where the other engineers or technicians were not significantly older than me. Many a lunch was spent listening to DEC guys talk about the work they did before I was born. Earning their trust and respect was a pretty hard thing to do.
In virtual worlds, when you remove the things we base our common 1st opinions on, you tend to take a person at their acts and words more quickly. This lack of information which you would normally use in judgement forces you to focus on what is actually more important. In work situations wherever possible my preference is for text communication because it is easier for *me* to focus on the task at hand by removing the personal element from the people I am working with.
Re:Cue Ender's Game comments! (Score:4, Funny)
something is not right in the world......
If you think thats bad... (Score:3)
Re:If you think thats bad... (Score:5, Funny)
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Oh well. Serves me right for not hitting preview.
So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is true. But it's really hard to take them seriously anyway. I knew an 11 year old in college who was better at math than I was and knew more of it. It was still really hard to take him seriously. In took a serious act of willpower, even though I knew, intellectually, that he really did know more than I did.
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Silly question here, and I'm not telling you to take all 11-year-olds seriously...
If someone has important information, why does their age/gender/religion/culture matter?
Re:So? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Im with you here. I'm still young enough to remember how much it would piss me off when adults wouldn't listen to me even when I knew something they didn't.
I used to watch Nova back in early elementary school and my brain would hold onto all sorts of shit from than and from time to time I would spout some of this information back. My parents never took me seriously, they always assumed I was making it up (yea, I'm just making up shit about astrophysics... sure).
Its important not to disregard someone just because of their age.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because he was so much an 11 year old in all other respects. He had an 11 year old's social skills, and everything else that came with being 11.
If a woman walked into my workplace and started acting like an air-headed bimbo I'd have a hard time taking her seriously too, even if turns out that she developed a public key encryption method that isn't defeated by quantum computing. Especially if she was always asking the men around to 'help' her.
When certain aspects of a personality don't come over, like in text chat, it doesn't matter. But when you hear them a whole bunch of things you didn't notice before suddenly pop out and it's really hard to ignore them and just pay attention to the important thing.
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Translation: Everything that's actually important is pushed aside and made more difficult to acknowledge once I find this person isn't what/who I thought he/she was.
You're always going to find something to nit-pick about anybody, it's very rare to find someone who never gets on your nerves for anything. It's pretty ridiculous that even in this day and age teens and younger kids (and women who don't make the cut) have to go above and beyond for most "adults" to take them seriously.
In the context of this
Re:So? (Score:5, Informative)
Text is a very slow medium, so only the most information is conveyed. Little overhead. If you use text, you don't have time for chatter and socializing. The game is in focus. If someone knows how to play, he can be 5 or 50, it does not matter.
Speech is much faster, and allows for a great deal of nuances. Subtle jokes, puns and references. A different social context between the person will be extremely obvious. The way you normally talk to your friends doesn't connect with the other person. It doesn't really matter for the game, but your instincs will tell you that you're interacting with people ouside your "group".
In closing: Have anyone here ever met a group of roleplay'ers that coordinate internally using voice chat? everything you see will match their character, and be wonderfully synchronized. Voice chat improve the mood, too.
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I hope you don't plan on being in the upper echelons of whatever social order you are engaged in, at least not in the U.S., and most of Europe.
From my experience, people at or near the top use whatever skills,
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Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)
It comes down to trying to determine if you believe somebody has important information. We have to internally decide whether the person is believalbe or not based on whatever cues we given. Typically this is done based on our previous experiences and over time we build up a database and naturally use them to fill in gaps of knowledge and make assumptions.
This is why social engineering works so well, it plays upon widely accepted expectations of human interaction.
Re:So? (Score:5, Interesting)
You have just nailed one of the greatest flaws in typical human reasoning. Humans attempt to judge the source rather than information. Hitler could have written the most profound poetry, work that gives the reader a beneficial life altering insight into their soul. Only a few historians would ever read it and even they may not read it with an open mind.
A better example is Eugenics. Eugenics has never been seriously considered in the modern day because of the unscientific manner in which the Nazi's used the concept to justify genocide. People can't seem to separate the two. It's actually fairly sad because ranchers and farmers have assumed the validity of Eugenics (probably without even knowing what it was and the stigma attached to it) for decades if not centuries and their successful results make it very difficult to dispute the core concept.
One should never consider the source when determining the validity and importance of information except as a last resort. Instead, one should consider the information itself and let it stand or fall on its own merit.
Re:So? (Score:4, Interesting)
There is too much information to give everything equal consideration. We apply a higher level filter to determine which sources of information we should spend our time on. The filter is not perfect, but without it you can not focus on anything specific. We miss some gems because of this, we think within a box, we value people who can think outside the box - but consider that if you are so far outside the box that you can't find the box you are no longer "clever" you are just "crazy".
It's an issue of self preservation (Score:5, Insightful)
It matters because bias is a psychological mechanism of self-preservation. People like to chalk up biases to "ignorance, anger, and hatred" but we all have them because they are typically correct for the situations in which we formed them. Our mind processes the information different based on the source.
If a stately man his 60s wearing a suit and an 18 year old with a Green Day shirt start talking about global economic policy, who do you tend to believe? Chances are fairly good that you believe the old fart, irrespective of the fact that he may be a janitor and the teenager could be some kind of economic prodigy. We have those biases because probabilistically, they are usually correct for a familiar situation.
As such, an 11 year old may be a VERY capable gamer, but we don't mentally endow them with the required wisdom and experience needed to be an effective leader. In "virtual reality" he is portrayed as an old mage with leadership ability. On some level, you anticipate the person to posses the attributes of the character they are playing, and when you perceive that they don't, you feel lied to.
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Same thing here, if your leader is a beefy Ahnold-esque barbarian you expect a deep manly voice. He may be a great leader, but it hurts your role playing ability.
Swi
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Re:So? (Score:4, Funny)
Although you can figure out a way to dispense disbelief, I can think of a whole bunch of fun ways to cause all sorts of trouble.
Re:So? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So? (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in the day I used to do larping. I was the leader of my group and for the most part they were just friends of mine. I was one of the natural leaders of the social group anyway so it wasn't that hard to deal with, but one of my friends fathers came to game with us. I was a high school/college student at the time but he was a very intelligent engineer with fantastic reasoning and logic skills and I really looked up to him personally.
His character, however, was that of a basic support healer, not a lot of initiative and very risk adverse. My tendency would have been to go to this guy for advice but instead he would come to me asking if he should use his healing now or save it for later (staying in character). This totally threw me, how could I be in charge of someone like that? how could I be the one making the decisions in the face of someone I would normally deffer to.
So I sucked it up and made the decisions and became a better role player for it.
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Having a special icon when you are under the age of consent (A lovely debate on what *that* should be) is not just to protect the juvenile, but also everyone who interacts with them.
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've played WoW for some time now, and I have been in raids where we use voice chat to coordinate the raids (and crack jokes at each other, of course), and one lesson learned is : Listen to what people say, not who's saying it. A 12 year old have saved our raid's collective asses a few times when on raiding, and is class leader in our guild (He coordinate that class, distribute loot for that class, and generally keep control over them). The fact that he's 12 is of no consequence to us. He knows what he's doing, he's smart enough, and that's all that matters.
Now, of course, if you actually read the article (which I did just now.. shame on me), the text goes on like this
Re:So? (Score:4, Interesting)
Lucky you (Score:5, Funny)
Voices not what you expect (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Voices not what you expect (Score:4, Insightful)
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http://karacry.ytmnd.com/ [ytmnd.com]
In the guild I play on in WoW (we're a rather casual guild) we're actually preparing to do our first raid test soon, and thinking about getting ventrilo... but right after it was mentioned, most of the people said they won't be doing any talking, and most of us have known each other for years on IRC before getting into WoW.
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Re:Voices not what you expect (Score:5, Funny)
Text chat's easier to follow (Score:4, Insightful)
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A small utility that overlays the name of whoever is talking on your screen.
It works great with America's Army and Battlefield 2.
I have no idea if there is a similar utility for Ventrillo.
Re:Text chat's easier to follow (Score:4, Insightful)
Difficulty of roleplaying: Strike 1
Squeeky immature jerks (sometimes): Strike 2
Loss of multi-chatting functionality and scrollback: Strike 3... I'll stick with text.
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The problem is, with text chat that's all you can do. You have to stop controlling your character to relay anything but the simplest and fastest of 1-letter instructions.
As long as you don't need to carry on multiple lines of conversation, but you can't afford to have everybody stop and stand still while you communicate complex strategy, voice chat is the way to go. That's why it's de facto for raids; it's a necessity
Voice Chat Sucks, Precious (Score:5, Funny)
Voice Changing Technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Voice Changing Technology (Score:5, Funny)
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Actually you just did. I gave you a John Cleesian accent in my head. That made it funny... to me.
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After some googling, it looks like something like that already exists:
http://www.screamingbee.com/product/MorphVOX.aspx [screamingbee.com]
I haven't had a chance to try it mys
identity (Score:5, Funny)
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hotness (Score:5, Funny)
Re:hotness (Score:4, Interesting)
I have this theory that almost all the female characters in WoW are men. Most women I know that play usually pick guys so they don't get hit on all the time.
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Yeah, the women don't want to be bothered, and the men would rather look at a female avatar's behind for endless hours than a male one.
At least, the normal self-confident men. The ones who get all wrapped up in their character's sexual identity really crack me up. Like the guy you talked about freaking out that a man was playing a female character, ob
Yeah Like... (Score:5, Funny)
Moral of this story: Watch out for the hostess, she may have a twinkie...
Menacing?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Menacing?? (Score:4, Funny)
Im totaly hearing that whinny pimply guy from the simpsons.
Voice alteration? (Score:2)
I don't use voice chat. (Score:3)
ah yes (Score:5, Interesting)
The usefull information and orders are intermixed with information about some guys hernia operation or fluffy kitty. Not to mention the pre pubescent people SCREAMING into the mic for attention, girls flirting with everyone, etc. Nothing makes me cringe more than hearing nasily wow players flirting with girls over vent. I especially hated that when I played wow. It completely ruins the fantasy mood but was required for endgame raiding. I dont want to be slaying dragons with the pimple faced kid from the simpsons. Id much rather picture peoples characters than the "character" that their voice reminds me of.
Same problem happening in Second Life (Score:4, Informative)
This came to a head recently in Second Life, when they introduced voice chat functionality (actually still in beta). One of the most cogent discussions about it was made by a well-known SL commentator in her essay The End of Anonymity, Part II [gwynethllewelyn.net], which focussed mainly on the end of immersion in SL. Her conclusion, that it will force non-politically-correct roleplayers into "ghettos" and destroy mainstream immersion, does seem reasonable.
Avatars in SL can be anything you like, no limit, so not surprisingly roleplay is extremely popular. The main grid is expressly for adults only, and so of course there is much interest in gender roleplay, in both directions (the gender spread is almost exactly 50/50). Needless to say, the loss of immersion through voice immediately gave rise to a lot of concern among roleplayers. This still has to be played out on the main grid, but it's certain that the impact will be large.
Not The Usual Case (Score:3, Interesting)
The upsides: Chocolate Milk! (Score:5, Funny)
And:
http://www.break.com/index/mom-tells-kid-no-more-
Where would the internet be without gems such as those?
Roleplaying may suffer, but it can be a lot of fun (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in my WoW days I enjoyed jumping on Teamspeak and chatting with people during our raids. Our guild was good enough that when we were clearing trash mobs (unless someone screwed up) we could freely chat and tell jokes and stuff. It also made hours of grinding for items much more fun when you could just chat with people. The range of real people behind the players also made for some interesting times. We had people that ranged from early teens to grandmothers/grandfathers, all across the world in a variety of different occupations. It made the game a lot more fun because you developed a certain bond with the other players that you couldn't do only over text chat.
Plus it was really fun listening to the guys/girls with the Australian accents!
Worst case is wrose than Best Case is best (Score:4, Insightful)
But I've also been in other games, where the voice was used to discuss movies, or worse yet by a weird whining 11 year old who kept asking why people were so stupid they had to type instead of just using voice.
The thing is, the information passed along by voice is often just as well delivered by keyboard, and can be almost as fast to deliver if you set up macros or just type quick. But when people are yakking, it's really distracting and it usually means you are on a losing team.
So I'd say that voice chat when it's bad can be horrible, but as its best is only marginally more useful - therefore I can leave it more than take it.
Unreal Tournament (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course you do get the odd annoying whiney little moron, but its pretty rare. From other reports it sounds like UT generally attracts a better class of player comapred to games like Wow. Maybe because its 3 or 4 years old now and doesn't need a monthly subscription, it keeps the more braindead/annoying/younger players away.
My Experience with Clancy games and PS2 (Score:3, Interesting)
Wrong. All it seems people use them for is just talking crap about each other. I maybe only get to play a couple hours a month anymore and really only want to play co-op missions for fun. It's entertainment. I always run into a few folks there for the same reason, but even more kids that are frankly punks out to diss everyone else and prove to the universe how cool they are.
That and clans. Everyone seems to be talking about this clan or that clan or do you want to join a clan...crap, I want to charge up the hill with people that know a thing or two about fire/movement tactics, and have some fun! I don't care about the inner politics of the gaming community.
Don't Get The Point (Score:3, Insightful)
My Son Plays WOW and He's 6 (Score:5, Interesting)
Chicks/Kids/Random Household Pets in Online RPG (Score:3, Funny)
1.) Is Better than you.
2.) Has already beaten you to all the unique items and has proceeded to sell them for real money on Ebay.
3.) Is not in your Age group, Tax bracket, Generation Gap, Location or Species.
But I think the thing that the original poster has not realized is that he is the *odd man out*
An "*ageing hipster* who participates in Online RPG" translates into "weird OG" to most of the kids online which, for the uninitiated masses of my generation does not stand for "original gangster" but "*Old Guy*". We aren't in charge anymore. These kids grew using computers, and didn't learn how to role play with those weird dice you had to colour in with the crayons that came in the box with the first books.
The mean age of online gamers is 13. some may even be cats. you can never trust cats. They sneak online when their owners aren't home and download huge videos of tuna fishing. Thats where all the bandwidth they can't understand they have used is coming from.. their cats. Some cats even post to
Then they sit smugly on top of their monitors and laugh at them.
anyway, I digress.
-m
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So what's stopping you now? Just because a lot of old D&D players were really "roll" players instead of role-players, did that mean that you couldn't enjoy the game the way you wanted to?
My addiction of choice is City of Heroes, and my characters and I are pretty much totally separate. Just because there are people in the games that don't roleplay does not mean that you can't. In fact, there's quite a large contingent of role-players around
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