All the World's a Stage: Raiding and RP don't mix, or do they? -- A question of continuity.
by David Bowers 
Nov 18th 2007 at 6:06PM
The Warcraft storyline is part of a great tradition of fantasy literature, and, as with any form of storytelling, the entire span of WoW lore involves a series of events and changes. Arthas wasn't always the Lich King, Illidan used to be able to wear shoes, and your character was once a little child, with no spells or epic weapons at all. All these things fit together in a single story universe, in which the progressive changes taking place in the story made the world what it is today.
But what is it today? Is Illidan now dead or alive? Is VanCleef dead or alive, for that matter? As a gaming environment, any boss you kill today has to be there for me to kill tomorrow. The WoW game world needs to remain basically unchangeable -- but over time this can stifle a roleplayer's sense of immersion in its narrative. To illustrate the impact this sort of immutability has on storytelling, let us take a page from a certain fantasy story you might have read, and see how it might work as a WoW raid instance.
Welcome to Mines of Moria! This raid instance will reset in 6 days, 10 hours and 41 minutes.
[Raidleader] [Gandalf]: Beware! There are older and fouler things than orcs in the deep places of the world. Follow my glowing staff!
[Raidleader] [Gandalf]: ... and um... get ready to pull that first group of orcs. Kill order is skull, x, circle... Gimli, can you offtank that cave troll?
<...a few hours pass killing trash mobs...>As you can see, even if some roleplayers make such a valiant effort, the necessities of the game mechanics can make roleplaying repeatable content such as instances difficult. The very fact that players can (and will) come back later and do the exact same thing can break their sense of linear story progression. Obviously terms like "pull" or "offtank" can help to break the roleplaying atmosphere too, but there are many ways of dealing with in-character and out-of-character communications separately.
[Raid] [Legolas]: A Balrog! A Balrog has come!
Gimli stares with wide eyes.
[Raid] [Gimli]: Durin's Bane!
[Raidleader] [Gandalf]: A Balrog! What an evil fortune. And I am already weary!... Over the bridge! Fly! This is a foe beyond any of you! I must hold the narrow way. Fly!
[Raid] [Frodo]: Gandalf!
Gandalf casts Mana Shield.
Gandalf casts Evocation.
[Raidleader] [Gandalf]: I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. Go back to the shadow. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udun!
Balrog attacks with Flaming Red Sword.
Balrog misses.
Gandalf casts Presence of Mind.
Gandalf casts Pyroblast.
Balrog is afflicted with Temporary Setback.
[Raid] [Aragorn]: Elendil! I am with you, Gandalf!
[Raid] [Boromir]: Gondor!
[Raidleader] [Gandalf]: You... shall not... pass!
Gandalf casts Arcane Explosion.
The bridge collapses. With a terrible cry, Balrog falls forward and its shadow plunges down into the depths.
Balrog casts Curl Whip Around Wizard's Knees.
Gandalf is dragged into the abyss.
[Raidleader] [Gandalf]: Fly, you fools!
Gandalf dies.
[Raidleader] [Aragorn]: Dammit. Okay everybody, let's come back next week. I will lead next time. Hopefully we'll all be able to kill the boss without collapsing the bridge. Man, I gotta have that [Flaming Red Sword]! Can somebody rez Gandalf please?
The fact is that there is no narrative continuity in WoW in any objective or absolute sense: nothing your character can do will actually change the game world in any significant way. Many roleplayers get disappointed when this becomes an inescapable reality, especially at the level cap. If they can't find any motivation for their characters to just kill the same bosses again and again without effect, they may quit roleplaying or quit the game altogether. They cannot claim to be saving the world anymore, because the next day they go back and those same evil monsters are still there. It would never happen in a story, so if it's happening for your character, then your character cannot be in a story -- it feels like "just a game."
With a little creativity and a little more flexibility, however, roleplayers needn't be stopped by this lack of objective continuity. In fact, we can get some inspiration from many stories in TV shows, pulp fiction and comic books, in which the villains never die either. These villains merely appear to die at one time, then later on reappear to fight the heroes again. The stories and spinoffs, subplots and retcons, all get so convoluted that all real continuity is lost -- and yet we enjoy them a great deal anyway! We care about the characters and their world more than the linear structure of their stories. If we view the WoW world in this more episodic, flexible manner, we can keep on raiding, getting phat loots, and enjoy every minute of it roleplaying as well.
In fact, even though there is no objective continuity, the game itself is based on a kind of "subjective continuity," which a roleplayer can leverage to his or her advantage. That's to say, the whole reason people play this game is to make their character and their friends' characters grow more powerful over time. As we do this, our relationships to the world change, and the enemies of old content effectively "die" as we leave them behind for newer and more challenging adversaries. You can't make VanCleef and his pirates disappear for good, for instance, but you can become so powerful that killing them again is utterly trivial and you have no real reason to do so anymore. Relative to you, he might as well be dead.
As you and your friends' characters advance in this way, you can act with one another as if the world itself has also changed. During the leveling process, you rarely return to old instances anyway, so it's easy to speak of them as if they're no longer filled with all the bloodthirsty monsters you killed there. You may encounter a low-level character asking you to run him through such a low-level instance, to which you may reply in the negative, "Son, are you delusional? I already killed VanCleef last year," or in the positive, "Gadzooks! VanCleef is alive? That rotten bastard must have feigned his death! Come, let us return to finish the job!"
As your character's relative power increases, and you no longer need to return to older content, you may feel that his or her long battles are beginning to have a real effect. By the time you reach Illidan, your character may act as though the rest of Azeroth and Outland is pretty safe -- or not! There are many different subjective approaches to your character's relationship with the unchanging world. As a roleplayer in WoW, you should not feel bound by many of the narrative limitations a book or movie might have, simply because you don't have the same narrative power they have. Feel free to explore and improvise, and when you find the right balance between subjective and objective continuity, you can feel happy roleplaying no matter what stage of the game you are in.
Filed under: All the World's a Stage (Roleplaying), Analysis / Opinion, Instances, Humor, Raiding, Lore, RP
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
rai Feb 12th 2009 3:43PM
Well personally, I look at events that happen in the game like questlines and raiding content, to have occurred in the year of the game (expansion is taking place). For example, Illidan was killed in year 26, this was also the year Kil’jaeden was beating back into the Twisting Nether thanks to the efforts of the Shattered Sun Offensive. My draenei lived though the times the questlines in the original game took place because those events were occurring in year 25, and she was on Azeroth at the time since she could join those adventures. When it comes to raiding, I wouldn’t have a character claim to have helped defeat Kil’jaeden in the battle that took place there, but at the same time in the wow storyline, some group of heroes did beat him back and saved the world and it happened one year ago (if your character is currently in the events of Wrath).
Based on this, when BC was released (or rather when my character progressed into BC content), characters like VanCleef became dead to her because those events took place the previous year. Someone killed the guy, even if she doesn’t know why (or know who VanCleef actually is for that matter, just an example).
We have an example of this mentality in the WoW comic. Onyxia was a villain players could kill, but in the actual story, Varian and his allies killed her and this plot is inserted into the pre-BC storyline. I know this is actually a retcon in disguise, but go with it, ok? Anyway, that is my view on it. Helps keep lore in place as far as timelines go.
Sean Riley Nov 18th 2007 8:08PM
This is also, far and away, the best reason to maintain a stable partying group when you're RPing. VanCleef /is/ dead... as far as you're concerned.
World of Warcraft isn't a story, but a platform for stories, and there are many stories going at once, all mutually incompatible.
Jess Nov 19th 2007 8:28AM
Yeah I remember talking to some RP raiders who would explain away Nefarian and his cronies continually coming back from the dead becuase the spirit healer would heal them too. Funny stuff.
cerement Nov 19th 2007 3:38AM
Unfortunately, it's not even a new issue. Eurogamer covered this back in 2002 in an article titled Mostly Pointless. WoW has prettier graphics and easier gameplay than most of its predecessors, but with 8+ million subscribers, each with the possibility of up to 50 characters, and each character to be given the chance of killing Hogger or Ragnaros or Cenarion Emissary Blackhoof or what have you ...
cerement Nov 19th 2007 3:40AM
Oh, and the article link:
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=2347
Someone Nov 19th 2007 6:38AM
"the next day they go back and those same evil monsters are still there."
- What about leveling? I tried a char on an RP realm but couldn't get it go too far! "Go kill (insert random named mob name here).", and when you get there, that named mob is already dead. Oh, no, wait! It's alive again, so you can kill it TOO!
WoW is a GREAT game, but one thing it isn't and will never be is a REAL RP game. It's awesome, addictive, fun, and can keep many players happy for many, many months, but it is NOT a Roleplaying game! (And yes, I know the meaning of MMORPG, but WoW falls much more on MMO than on the RPG part!)
ThorinII Nov 19th 2007 9:34AM
I was at one point thinking of making a toon on an RP server and had this exact concern. I enjoy doing the same instances more than once. The more you go the better you get at them (and the more loot you get). But, do you pretend it's your first visit, or did everyone get rez'd by their preist, or maybe you tried before and barely escaped with lives, etc...
I have to agree most multiplayer games aren't going to be great RP games. But, you have to know that before you start and be prepared for these situations.
Steve_S Nov 19th 2007 10:13AM
I never see RP on my server Cenarion Circle. Its hard to do even in an instance group let alone a raid. Most raids will be in Vent or TS and have the raid leader issuing instructions or speaking through an encounter. There is no way to RP a raid IMO. A good raid needs organization an speed as you are running against the clock (cover as much content as possible for the raid time and trash respawn).
Airii Nov 21st 2007 1:53AM
Some of us on Feathermoon use the Spirit Healer excuse - if corpserunning is IC, your soul is generally safe, and if you can return to your body, so can the people you just spent six hours clearing trash to get to. Just some of them - such as raids - take much longer to run back.
Repops are the fastest.
There are some game mechanics that can be carefully pulled IC. Corpseruns, ressurecting..
Greg C Dec 17th 2007 7:07PM
I've played on normal and pvp servers but felt I wanted more rp since I'm an old DnD geek. I just started playing a WoW toon on a rppvp server and haven't seen much rp yet, though haven't actively searched for a guild either. But, it's definitely interruptive to have Chuck Norris jokes in general chat and talk about favorite football teams in trade!
The best rp I've seen in gaming has been in hardore rp persistent servers for Neverwinter Nights. There I'd say over 95% of the game was IC. The dm's/developers would have world changing events on a frequent basis and major changes every few months as well. Since it was on a smaller scale, background and development of characters were excellent as well as the interchange between characters. The DM teams were quite aggressive about monitoring IC vs OOC as well. Something like that could help the WoW RP servers where GMs monitor and mute characters that continuously are ooc but of course that would probably be cost or volunteer labor management overload.