Despite many a threat, mostly against fellow party members and inanimate objects, my dwarven yellow mage in the friday game has actually only ever used his hammer in combat once. And that happened yesterday, for a whole two rounds. Despite his many years away from regular hammer use, it turned out rather well on the second of two swings: "I will kneecap him!" Roll. Hit. Critical. 3d8+3. 8, 8 and 8. "You hit the first knee, then the second, then continue through. He is now legless, and quite dead."
Now his threats will have real oomph behind them.
The other weekend two things happened in WoW, at about the same time. My main character, Ajathka, found himself in the Alrathi Highlands, looking for Crystal Motes. This marked a return for me (the player) to the area where I experienced the most amazing RP experience ever within WoW. It also marked the point where Ajathka depassed Khyborr's max level from Beta. It has been about four months since the game went retail and I've been playing on the Silver Hand RP server. How has the RP been?
For the most part, I would say "Meh". On the whole, the RP on the server is a notch or two above the RP that was on the Beta server. I've seen some in towns here and there, and the people in the Nightsabre Vanguard and associates have generally also been excellent RPers in the midst of the game environment. But the majority of my interactions with others and in pick-up groups, the RP has been minimal, if present at all. The RP tag has scared away 1337s well enough, but there are still continually jumping elves, people standing in the fire, OMG WTF LOLs, people emoting to make their character do rude-ish things, riding mounts through the middle of town and much game vs char speak. Balancing that has been more people sitting in taverns speaking, some characters actually walking while in town, drive-by generosity. So it is more RP than the straight Beta server, but not as much as I thought it might be.
The reasons for this may be explained by the fact that Silver Hand was one of the first RP servers (ie, available at game launch), the only RP server on the west coast, and thus may have had people join on without being fully aware what an RP server tries to espouse. I've heard rumours from some friends who have played alts on some of the other RP servers that the RP there seems to be a bit thicker ( and the populations lower) so perhaps that serves the theory.
At any rate, given that it is 'better' than in Beta, I am certainly not enjoying the game any less than from that time. Just fun to take stock of it all. And reflect on both Khyborr's days and Ajathka's development, and await the next content patch to fix a few quest goofs.
AW NUTS, I just broke RP with that...
Posted by kannik at March 19, 2005 11:51 PM in Gaming