Roleplaying, Heroes, and Spirit

[kiztent]

Originally posted by Moraganth
/sigh we can rebuild your vision of heros.... (/hopes someone eventually gets it..)

Steve Austin, a man barely alive...

[Moraganth]

heheh thanks Kiz.. i forget sometimes that not everyone shares the things i find "common" in life... the best way to grow old, is to not... appearantly.

[Teedyo]

Originally posted by kiztent
Steve Austin, a man barely alive...

Thinking.... hmmm... Nope, don't see it. A man scraped back from the brink of death with science and spare parts who does what he does because he's owned by the government and it's easy for him. That's not heroism.. That's Action, that's Adventure, that's...... ratings. ;-)

I think more of a David(vs. Goliath)

Now if you were saying that the toons in EQ are like Steve; I can agree.

Now as far as Moraganth's statement "EQ grandizes being a hero"; I disagree. All of the heros of Norrath died a long time ago and are only read about in bits of lore. There are no opportunities to be a hero in modern Norrath as the game, EQ, is not dynamic enough.

What I'm really bummed about is that noone caught my vague references to IT and 38 special.

[Nhin Impious]

You get treated based upon how you act more than the gender of your character. Quit acting so female when playing and you'll have no problems

1. I wasn't trying to say that I had problems with Nhinx being female, because I don't.

2. "quit acting so female"...*chuckle* I'm torn between "Have we met...at all?" and "I do not think that word means what you think it means"

Nhinx Aphsion

[Moraganth]

I could go the exact opposite way...

A hero is some poor, sorry [colorful euphamisn] that died for his country. Patton's point was not to be a hero, but to make the other guy the hero.

Slaying the dragon is heroic..... Thorin and Co. didn't do it because it was heroic, they were there for the loot... and to reclaim a mountain (presumably, because it was there..).

The reason EQ pc's don't seem like heros is, we only really interact with pc's. With everyone a "hero" (in the classical literary sense), slaying the dragon becomes rather mundane... there are no peasants to save from the maw of death, no damsels in distress... but in literature, a small group of 6 people slicing and dicing their way through untold hordes of undead, human sized frogs.. facing death at every turn... that'd be the stuff of a hero.

[Cinaed]

Rping and EQ

It's the Six Million Dollar Toon!
Man, I remember that show from growin up, my mom got me a Steve Majors action figure for Christmas one year..how's that for odd thins that stick in your mind from childhood?

The whole gender issue bears more discussion too. I'm a guy, who *gasps* has female pcs...I have for years. It's not a question of trying to exploit all those over-hormoned teenaged boys who go nuts over a dark elf or barbarian chick in skimpy clothes and gives them all kinds of free stuff..for me, it's all a question of character concept.

I have a dark elf shadowknight who's female, and she's a cold, violent bitch most of the time. I have a female wood elf rogue who worships Bristlebane, who's bright, energetic, friendly, and rather daffy. The fact that they are female is an intergral part of their character, but not the main one. My main is a male druid who is rather irreverent at times, but devoted to his Goddess and his way of life.

Some characters are just better suited as one gender or another, and I play both fairly easily. I have had a lot of practice. Been doin online RP for years.

Of course, I would love to see EQ more RP-friendly. I send /tells to people my SK encounters to make sure they don't take her actions personally and most of the time they're pretty cool with it. I too fall into the constant ooc chatter trap, it's hard not to some times, especially when no one else rps.

-"I mean..I mean..I'm sittin here on the bench, I'm sittin here on the "Group W" bench, cause you wanna know if I'm moral enough to join the army, burn women, children, houses, and villages after bein a litterbug?"

[Axterix EnObelix]

Originally posted by Nhin Impious
1. I wasn't trying to say that I had problems with Nhinx being female, because I don't.

2. "quit acting so female"...*chuckle* I'm torn between "Have we met...at all?" and "I do not think that word means what you think it means"

Nhinx Aphsion

Nah, it means what I think it means...don't be misquoting me by leaving off the

[Eumerin]

I've got characters of both genders, and my female characters have been given gifts, been proposed to once (by a passing character I buffed mere seconds earlier), and have slapped other characters for inappropriate comments/actions. Fortunately, it tends to be kept to a minimum, but then again, I spend most of my time with guildmates, and I imagine that cuts down on it a lot.

My main is an Erudite, and no one forgets it. He won't let you forget it. Sure, he'll bail you out of a jam (he is a paladin, after all), but you're likely to get a snide remark about a member of one of the lesser races being bailed out once again, or about the fact that what my main just did was child's play for an Erudite, or about the fact that you're a heretic, etc... (and possibly an admonition to change your ways if you're the latter). Other Erudites tend to get rude remarks about how 'those who mistake silk for a form of armor' need to be bailed yet again by one of their more physically inclined brethren.

Couple that with the fact that I really do know everything (or at least an awful lot of in-game information ranging from quests to factions to mobs to lore) and general in character comments in guild chat, and my guild finds me a source of great amusement.





Unfortunately, that means its not quite as much fun playing non-erudite alts. I can have fun from time to time (like the time that my gnome alt made a crack about dating problems with the tall races because any time I looked at eye level the ladies thought I was staring at their crotch), but a lot of my 'RP' chatter is over guild chat, and half the time they address me by my main's name even when I'm on an alt, which takes a little of the fun out of RPing another race.

Its harder to slam the Erudites when those you're with keep thinking of you as one.

[Moraganth]

Cinaed....

"Kid... we don't like your kind here. We're going to send your fingerprints off ta Washinton..."

i vaugely remember something i had with Stevies picture on it... l can't remember what though...

Ahhh yes.. the good old days..

[Lilosh]

One of the nicestpeople I recall, in game was a dwarf.

his name, was Aktuld. Aktuld spoke , in character, CONSTANTLY.

He never dropped it. And he typed out the accent.

'Now, ye get yer carpse off this step, and the finger wagglers MIGHT let ye warsh their robes."

He was a Kind, wonderful man, and a **** good tank. I don't know what happened to him. I miss him.


-Lilosh

[Quesci]

And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into the shrink wherever you are ,just walk in say "Shrink, You can get anything you want, at Alice's restaurant."

[Sylphan]

I have some similar background. I too keep my wedding ring on all the time, and my wife keeps hers. My engagement ring was silver-rose or something like that... and when the game was new I had to run all around the world to find someone who could make me one (no way could I afford to get my own jewelcraft skill up to 50!). But for the wedding I wanted THE best ring in the game, since it needed to last forever: I got platinum fire rings.

Today it gets about the same reaction as your ring. I actually am one of the best equipped people around now (best from quests and the bazaar that is, I'm not in a real raiding guild), so it really stands out as subpar... but I am proud of that ring.

We actually scheduled our wedding on a Saturday afternoon on an island in OOT, to be on the in-game date of February 14th. It's hard to plan that exactly, since patches skew the in-game dates, but we did it. And now we can have interesting anniverseries (40th, 50th, etc.)... but hardly anyone watches the in-game dates any more.

The spirit of my game is diving in and experiencing all the color, flavor, variety, roleplay, immersion, etc. it has to offer. That includes tradeskills, message boards, roleplaying, bazaar trading, questing, even min-maxing and hacking the game to figure out how things work. There are certain things I want to avoid however: cheat programs, twinking, powerleveling, exploiting, harassment, ebay, and violating the Play Nice Policy. I'm just not interested in those aspects of the game... and downright offended by some of them.

I can do much of that without any special help from fellow players. Message boards and the bazaar require other people, but don't require any special effort from them. However... I need other players to stay in character. Preferrably they roleplay, but at a minumum they need to stop talking about the Superbowl and which popular musician they have the biggest crush on. I admire anyone who can manage to do that. Those who actually roleplay consistently are my heroes. Those who actually use their class' strengths to help people rather than their high level, or take time to explain things to newbies, or stay open minded and talk (or even group) with people outside their own guild, are heroes too. All of them are the people working to make Everquest into a community, not just a game or a pasttime... a community is something more (and better).

It can be something of a dilemma trying to help people if you're trying not to powerlevel or twink them... even buffs are essentially powerleveling, and if they have a long duration they can be quite unfair to the other buffers who are LFG. Seems like that's the only help that people usually want... or help with CR. But there are exceptions (like the rare find of the 'true newbie') and they can really make your day.