I've been a roleplayer for years, long before I ever came to WoW. I've toyed with the idea of roleplaying in MMOs, tried it a few times, and found that it's just not my style. While the game itself provides visible characters, environments, and other characters to interact with, everything's very static. When my character just stands there when I /hug, or I run WC for the fiftieth time and down Serpentis (again), or I overhear Thrall having a conversation with a brave adventurer (hey... didn't he say that to me, too?) I tend lose touch with the in-character aspect and it just becomes a game. I get tired of trying to justify all the oddities that come about and so, in the end, if I'm going to roleplay I'll go back to the ways I used to do it (which generally involves you, and the people you're playing with, going on imagination alone).

That said, old habits die hard. My characters in WoW are, in fact, just that -- characters. I don't refer to them as "toons" or "avatars" because to me they're characters. And as such I tend to come up with personalities, quirks, background, etc., in addition to just their names. I rarely, if ever, make these things obvious (I play a PvP server, love it, and have no intention of ever changing that) to anyone. Though, amusingly enough, a lot of the people I play with have admitted to thinking up little stories having to do with their characters as well. But even with the characterization, we all seem more than happy to have our characters be "the average adventurer" who may not be physically shifting worlds, but have their own stories to tell.

While it may not involve the fate of Azeroth directly, each character has a story to tell. Just because they're not slaying dragons doesn 't make their story bad -- only different. And that, in my opinion, is far more flavorful than the epic tales we often come across. After all, we rarely get to hear about the ones doing the small things that make a difference, but just because those things are small, are they any less important? Or interesting, for that matter?

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