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[Vic Van Meter]

Sorry, I did.  I kind of got lost when Gaven got here.  I honestly sometimes feel like he's my boss or something.  I, in fact, did use an in-game boss as part of my orc character's development, but that's not normally used.  I've mostly said that, even if I didn't specifically kill X or Y, my character was there for the fight (or more often, wasn't, since my characters didn't normally care).

I can kind of see what you're getting at, but then again I'm not sure it's better to have no story moving whatsoever.  EVE's elements are almost meant to be divorced from each other, which is why I think faction warfare lore is such a pisser for most people.  In the end, though, what can you do?  If you're between player factions, you essentially have to set up a neverending war, or you're going to lose a gameplay element and piss off whomever was in that losing faction.  I guess I never ran into the problem because it's rarely been important that I've killed so-and-so in any game I've played unless it's a personal NPC integral to some story I'm running.  Oddly, I ran a lot less linear stories in the game that actually had linear stories.  We would randomly throw parties that turned into drunken IC raiding and I did a lot of introspective RP with my characters.

Unfortunately, that kind of fun's a lot harder to have in EVE just because of the text limitations and that being the only way we can describe actions.  I average something like two paragraphs of text in WoW per post and people have every right to criticize me for writing a LOT at a time.  I learned to be very descriptive in pure-text RP freeform.  EVE's text limit is nice for reducing spam, but man does it suck when you're trying to describe something in-depth.

I'd really like if suddenly there was an implosion in the supplies or CONCORD decided to get militant about us.  I might think about going criminal if it meant being less like Genghis Khan and more like Dillinger or Gotti on some character or another.  I'd certainly love it if those Sansha incursions could destroy stations and, if they did, they would destroy all goods on market or in hangars in those stations until it could be repaired.  People would take those incursions more seriously.

But even that drunken raid you mention - there's no way that can be coherent with the world ICly for the reasons I mentioned. I guess for me, I want my character to be able to be completely coherent with the world in which it resides, otherwise it is no longer open-world for me. I hate linearity, because it reduces all RP to either sitting around talking about the main story, or RPing in such a way that it has absolutely nothing to do with the world at all.

Whereas with Eve, yes, many things have little in-game consequence as far as lore goes - but it feels like it has more consequence than with a game in WoW where you have to constantly be saying "this obviously didn't happen ICly, guys". In Eve, what you do in-game can always be IC. A certain level of character immersion is possible, and that is why some of us love it - that kind of continual RP-Zen can't happen in other MMOs.

I guess I don't share that, because I've actually killed and had characters killed in the game in combat.  Being a capsuleer, just by the lore of it, precludes you from things like bravery because you literally cannot die for your country.  I've had a couple go for less than that.  At least lore-wise, I've dealt with the consequences of death fairly regularly.  You kind of have to RP it because even the crew deaths are essentially something that doesn't happen in-game, all you're technically losing is your ship.  I guess I'll take the IC threat of death, even if it has to be RPed out in text, over the in-game consequence of ship loss, though it doesn't.  It's probably a personal thing, though.  I didn't always have a game to RP in, so I don't mind handling entire dramas in nothing but an IMer.  Skipping the hassle of in-game doesn't necessarily bother me.

Group functions, getting to do that largely in-game, is a bit more fun, so here's hoping station walking eventually makes an appearance and has some kind of purpose.  I really don't get in-game immersion in the actual moment.  When the game is going on and I'm worried about keeping my ship intact or my raid from pulling threat, I'm not entirely concerned with my character's frame of mind and how he'd react mentally to this duress.  It's part of the pain in the ass of having a game around your RP.  Sometimes it's nice to have graphic representation, but when the game is on, the game is on.  People, sometimes not RPers, are very often counting on you to not have your head up your own ass when you've got a job to do.

[Jace]

Sorry, I did.  I kind of got lost when Gaven got here.  I honestly sometimes feel like he's my boss or something.  I, in fact, did use an in-game boss as part of my orc character's development, but that's not normally used.  I've mostly said that, even if I didn't specifically kill X or Y, my character was there for the fight (or more often, wasn't, since my characters didn't normally care).

I can kind of see what you're getting at, but then again I'm not sure it's better to have no story moving whatsoever.  EVE's elements are almost meant to be divorced from each other, which is why I think faction warfare lore is such a pisser for most people.  In the end, though, what can you do?  If you're between player factions, you essentially have to set up a neverending war, or you're going to lose a gameplay element and piss off whomever was in that losing faction.  I guess I never ran into the problem because it's rarely been important that I've killed so-and-so in any game I've played unless it's a personal NPC integral to some story I'm running.  Oddly, I ran a lot less linear stories in the game that actually had linear stories.  We would randomly throw parties that turned into drunken IC raiding and I did a lot of introspective RP with my characters.

Unfortunately, that kind of fun's a lot harder to have in EVE just because of the text limitations and that being the only way we can describe actions.  I average something like two paragraphs of text in WoW per post and people have every right to criticize me for writing a LOT at a time.  I learned to be very descriptive in pure-text RP freeform.  EVE's text limit is nice for reducing spam, but man does it suck when you're trying to describe something in-depth.

I'd really like if suddenly there was an implosion in the supplies or CONCORD decided to get militant about us.  I might think about going criminal if it meant being less like Genghis Khan and more like Dillinger or Gotti on some character or another.  I'd certainly love it if those Sansha incursions could destroy stations and, if they did, they would destroy all goods on market or in hangars in those stations until it could be repaired.  People would take those incursions more seriously.

But even that drunken raid you mention - there's no way that can be coherent with the world ICly for the reasons I mentioned. I guess for me, I want my character to be able to be completely coherent with the world in which it resides, otherwise it is no longer open-world for me. I hate linearity, because it reduces all RP to either sitting around talking about the main story, or RPing in such a way that it has absolutely nothing to do with the world at all.

Whereas with Eve, yes, many things have little in-game consequence as far as lore goes - but it feels like it has more consequence than with a game in WoW where you have to constantly be saying "this obviously didn't happen ICly, guys". In Eve, what you do in-game can always be IC. A certain level of character immersion is possible, and that is why some of us love it - that kind of continual RP-Zen can't happen in other MMOs.

I guess I don't share that, because I've actually killed and had characters killed in the game in combat.  Being a capsuleer, just by the lore of it, precludes you from things like bravery because you literally cannot die for your country.  I've had a couple go for less than that.  At least lore-wise, I've dealt with the consequences of death fairly regularly.  You kind of have to RP it because even the crew deaths are essentially something that doesn't happen in-game, all you're technically losing is your ship.  I guess I'll take the IC threat of death, even if it has to be RPed out in text, over the in-game consequence of ship loss, though it doesn't.  It's probably a personal thing, though.  I didn't always have a game to RP in, so I don't mind handling entire dramas in nothing but an IMer.  Skipping the hassle of in-game doesn't necessarily bother me.

Group functions, getting to do that largely in-game, is a bit more fun, so here's hoping station walking eventually makes an appearance and has some kind of purpose.  I really don't get in-game immersion in the actual moment.  When the game is going on and I'm worried about keeping my ship intact or my raid from pulling threat, I'm not entirely concerned with my character's frame of mind and how he'd react mentally to this duress.  It's part of the pain in the ass of having a game around your RP.  Sometimes it's nice to have graphic representation, but when the game is on, the game is on.  People, sometimes not RPers, are very often counting on you to not have your head up your own ass when you've got a job to do.

I'm mostly talking about coherent IC-ness at this point, not being super IC at all times. I just want actions to be coherent. Respawning famous NPCs that your hero somehow kills alongside everyone else just isn't coherent as far as any character storyline is concerned. And even if you try to handwavium it away (which I can't do, because that's everything your character does in that kind of MMO), it is still MarySueage that your character was somehow the hero that killed this supervillian and saved the game world.

So for IC actions, you are left with bars and world mobs.

[Samira Kernher]

So, no, he's really not supposed to sound or act like any other Amarrian that doesn't share his unique history.  He's Amarrian enough; I don't think anything he says is heretical enough to get him tossed before the Theology Council.

Not yet. But he does have a very 'Arzad Hamri' style to him, which I pointed out on Samira on the IGS. That is heretical. He talks a lot about using a soft hand and incorporating foreign culture into Amarr, which are things that Arzad Hamri was looked down on and eventually trialed for.

If that's how you want your character to be, then that's fine. But it is going to result in a lot of traditional Amarr characters viewing Constantin as heretical. Samira liked him at first, but she's been growing more and more concerned with what he says.

However, for the most part, I think the lore's a bit thin and what we could really use isn't more stuff telling us what people are and are not, but giving us real source material that we can use to give characters context rather than limitations.  More about the planetary settlements and their environments, the practice of the religion (especially more Scripture that's maybe tied to procedure or practices and rituals), what jobs are allocated to what classes of society, that sort of thing.

More of this would be nice. There's some of it about, but a lot of it is buried really deep in isolated sentences in chronicles. For example, Amarr view physical punishment as a standard punishment for crimes, not just something used on slaves, as mentioned in a chronicle. That same chronicle mentions that priests at least work beside the slaves, not just as overseers. Another chronicle mentions that execution and killing are actually rare, because the culture prefers to make the criminal/enemy to come to see their point of view, through methods like slavery. There is a lot of lore to be found in those chronicles (and in in-game missions).

This is the case for lore in most universes, though, not just EVE. To go to WoW as you keep using it as an example, there is even LESS lore there. WoW's lore is extremely vague on cultural backround and practices with a handful of exceptions (one of the reasons I really liked the Pandaren was because it was one of the few times Blizzard actually went into depth on the culture of the race). As someone who plays a draenei as her main, the only way you could get any kind of lore was to infer for yourself based on what little you could find in quest dialogue (for example, I wrote a big essay on the Auchenai purely from conjecture and inference of an extremely limited selection of quotes. None of that is actually canon, it has to be assumption because there's so little to work with. That entire thread I linked to is actually full of stuff like that--essays and assumptions made from very scant pieces of lore because draenei have nothing to work with).

Where WoW lore did get expanded was in the WoWRPG books. Unfortunately those were declared non-canonical, which lobotomized the universe (the entire Forsaken religion of divine humanism for example was a product of those books and is now non-canon). It otherwise has as much, if not far less, actual lore available for players as EVE does. While the case of draenei as mentioned above is one of the more extreme cases, even well-developed races like humans and orcs have very little of actual substance. In WoW, as in EVE, you have to make a lot of inferences from obscure references.

One of the major differences? In EVE, unlike WoW, the player's actions can actually affect change on the actual lore. Much of current Amarr lore has been inspired by or even outright taken from things that Amarr roleplayers did years past. Amarr Victor for example came from players, and I believe that the concept of Amarr slavery being a path to salvation came from Archbishop's old sermons on the IGS. The systems of Bagodan and Hama were originally low-sec systems but were raised to high-sec after consistent anti-pirate operations by PIE and others in the area. The same thing happens with the other factions. Hak'lan tea was player-made and canonized, Ava tells me that Modern Standard Matari was created by players and eventually canonized, as well as the voluval ritual, and so on.

That's really the thing that EVE does and WoW doesn't. In WoW, the lore comes from the developers, and nothing the player does in the realization of that lore in-game means anything. You are just there as a member of the audience, watching Blizzard's story. It is a railroaded game in content and story. Even the official characters are tools of the plot, there not to be characters but to drive the story in the direction Blizzard wants it to go (evidenced most clearly in Jaina's recent 180 change in character, done purely in order to give the Alliance faction a driving incident (Theramore) and to make Jaina the devil on Varian's shoulder in pair with Anduin the angel). In EVE on the otherhand, you the player are expected to be the one who does something with that lore.

I guess I don't share that, because I've actually killed and had characters killed in the game in combat.  Being a capsuleer, just by the lore of it, precludes you from things like bravery because you literally cannot die for your country.  I've had a couple go for less than that.  At least lore-wise, I've dealt with the consequences of death fairly regularly.  You kind of have to RP it because even the crew deaths are essentially something that doesn't happen in-game, all you're technically losing is your ship.  I guess I'll take the IC threat of death, even if it has to be RPed out in text, over the in-game consequence of ship loss, though it doesn't.  It's probably a personal thing, though.  I didn't always have a game to RP in, so I don't mind handling entire dramas in nothing but an IMer.  Skipping the hassle of in-game doesn't necessarily bother me.

To be blunt, but that's bullshit. While EVE might have an IC mechanic to get around death (something that WoW also had, by the way, in the form of resurrections, even though a lot of RPers liked to forget it existed because "herp derp I'll only acknowledge the mechanics, lore, and IC actions that I personally agree with"), it has OOC consequences to death that WoW did not have. And even more importantly, as a full-time RP game in which everything you do in-game is IC (compared to WoW where only the things you want to be IC are IC), you actually can and do die on a regular basis.

In WoW RP, bravery was never a thing to worry about because RPers lived in a world of RP-by-Consent. The PC is never at risk of death unless the player behind the character wants to be at risk. And as none do, it results in characters being brave as a rule because they will ignore any seriously threatening injury and only die when the player wishes the character to die. Even in actual IC PvP, any death the character suffers in combat will be ignored because the player does not wish to acknowledge it.

In EVE, bravery is enforced by OOC consequences and because the game spits on your consent. Sure, you may have an IC out to use, but you will actually die regardless of whether you want to or not, and you will actually lose assets in that death. Ergo, you will have to actually tone down your bravery to acceptable levels because the game doesn't let you pick and choose when and how you want to die. Characters in EVE actually do retreat from lopsided fights, something that actually rarely happens in WoW RP.

Also, cloning does not immediately render bravery moot, because it is strongly dependant on how your character views cloning. Amarr characters in particular have actual lore reasons to not view cloning as something that invalidates death.

Group functions, getting to do that largely in-game, is a bit more fun, so here's hoping station walking eventually makes an appearance and has some kind of purpose.  I really don't get in-game immersion in the actual moment.  When the game is going on and I'm worried about keeping my ship intact or my raid from pulling threat, I'm not entirely concerned with my character's frame of mind and how he'd react mentally to this duress.  It's part of the pain in the ass of having a game around your RP.  Sometimes it's nice to have graphic representation, but when the game is on, the game is on.  People, sometimes not RPers, are very often counting on you to not have your head up your own ass when you've got a job to do.

And the key difference here, is that in EVE it's other characters that are counting on you, not just other RPers. The vast majority of raids in WoW are not IC, even when it's a full group of RPers. In EVE, everything you do in-game is IC, and those people are therefore counting on you both OOCly and ICly. When I do well in a fight in EVE, I get IC praise. When I've done poorly or run away from a lopsided fight (without being ordered to retreat), I've been reprimanded IC. The fight actually has more meaning in EVE because it's IC.

That's why I personally find EVE more immersive as a universe than WoW. In WoW, the only things that are IC are the things that you and other players are willing to take IC. In EVE, everything you do is IC. Everything the OOCers do is IC. Everything that happens in EVE is IC. That is far, far more immersive. WoW is part-time IC, EVE is full-time IC.

And that's kind of the thing. In WoW, the world is a toybox that you use to stage creative stories on. Nothing about the world actually matters, rather what you can create with what is available. When you use an in-game dungeon, you are not typically RPing the ACTUAL dungeon, you are using the dungeon's art and environment assets to pretend it's somewhere else for a story you are running. When you are running an event out in the world, you are inventing a plotline and creatures that are typically not actually there, and using raid markers and emotes or dice rolls as a way of staging that story--the environment itself is once again an environmental prop piece, much like the underlying environment board for a PnP or miniatures game.

In EVE, the actual world is an actual world. It is not a toybox that you take stuff out of and put back in when you are done, it is a living breathing world in which your characters are actually living and interacting on a daily basis. What happens in that world actually happens IC, whether it is interesting and exciting or dull and mundane.

Do note, that unlike a lot of EVE players I won't go and say that WoW or the WoW method or RP is actually bad. I was RPing in WoW for the better part of 6 years and was the main IC leader for my server's Alliance RP community last year. The WoW method does actually let you create very fun larger than life stories. But the key word in that sentence is 'stories'. EVE is 'life'. In WoW, like in a PnP game, you have a lot of resources that you can use to create amazing stories, incredibly fun for all the players involved, but those stories won't ultimately change or mean anything to the overall universe. In EVE, however, your character is in a living, breathing universe. You may not be able to tell the same kind of grand stories (except in exceptional cases by exceptional people), but you can live out an alternate reality with actual persistent impact for everyone in that universe. In WoW, the big problem I found in the RP community was the people trying to live out normal, mundane character lives when the world is built for powerful, engaging, creative storylines (IE the typical boring guard/citizen/criminal dynamic that spends all its time jacking off in Stormwind instead of participating in the ever-evolving WarCraft story). In EVE, the problem is the opposite, in people trying to be create big made-up storylines in text instead of actually living out their character's day-to-day lives in the game world. Both types of story have their merits and both are fun. But each story type fits better to a different game. I could not RP out a character like Samira in WoW (and I've tried). At the same time, I could not RP out a character like I've played in WoW in EVE. The game worlds support two different types of story. That doesn't mean that either of them is bad, they just cater to different things.

[Vic Van Meter]

Sorry, I did.  I kind of got lost when Gaven got here.  I honestly sometimes feel like he's my boss or something.  I, in fact, did use an in-game boss as part of my orc character's development, but that's not normally used.  I've mostly said that, even if I didn't specifically kill X or Y, my character was there for the fight (or more often, wasn't, since my characters didn't normally care).

I can kind of see what you're getting at, but then again I'm not sure it's better to have no story moving whatsoever.  EVE's elements are almost meant to be divorced from each other, which is why I think faction warfare lore is such a pisser for most people.  In the end, though, what can you do?  If you're between player factions, you essentially have to set up a neverending war, or you're going to lose a gameplay element and piss off whomever was in that losing faction.  I guess I never ran into the problem because it's rarely been important that I've killed so-and-so in any game I've played unless it's a personal NPC integral to some story I'm running.  Oddly, I ran a lot less linear stories in the game that actually had linear stories.  We would randomly throw parties that turned into drunken IC raiding and I did a lot of introspective RP with my characters.

Unfortunately, that kind of fun's a lot harder to have in EVE just because of the text limitations and that being the only way we can describe actions.  I average something like two paragraphs of text in WoW per post and people have every right to criticize me for writing a LOT at a time.  I learned to be very descriptive in pure-text RP freeform.  EVE's text limit is nice for reducing spam, but man does it suck when you're trying to describe something in-depth.

I'd really like if suddenly there was an implosion in the supplies or CONCORD decided to get militant about us.  I might think about going criminal if it meant being less like Genghis Khan and more like Dillinger or Gotti on some character or another.  I'd certainly love it if those Sansha incursions could destroy stations and, if they did, they would destroy all goods on market or in hangars in those stations until it could be repaired.  People would take those incursions more seriously.

But even that drunken raid you mention - there's no way that can be coherent with the world ICly for the reasons I mentioned. I guess for me, I want my character to be able to be completely coherent with the world in which it resides, otherwise it is no longer open-world for me. I hate linearity, because it reduces all RP to either sitting around talking about the main story, or RPing in such a way that it has absolutely nothing to do with the world at all.

Whereas with Eve, yes, many things have little in-game consequence as far as lore goes - but it feels like it has more consequence than with a game in WoW where you have to constantly be saying "this obviously didn't happen ICly, guys". In Eve, what you do in-game can always be IC. A certain level of character immersion is possible, and that is why some of us love it - that kind of continual RP-Zen can't happen in other MMOs.

I guess I don't share that, because I've actually killed and had characters killed in the game in combat.  Being a capsuleer, just by the lore of it, precludes you from things like bravery because you literally cannot die for your country.  I've had a couple go for less than that.  At least lore-wise, I've dealt with the consequences of death fairly regularly.  You kind of have to RP it because even the crew deaths are essentially something that doesn't happen in-game, all you're technically losing is your ship.  I guess I'll take the IC threat of death, even if it has to be RPed out in text, over the in-game consequence of ship loss, though it doesn't.  It's probably a personal thing, though.  I didn't always have a game to RP in, so I don't mind handling entire dramas in nothing but an IMer.  Skipping the hassle of in-game doesn't necessarily bother me.

Group functions, getting to do that largely in-game, is a bit more fun, so here's hoping station walking eventually makes an appearance and has some kind of purpose.  I really don't get in-game immersion in the actual moment.  When the game is going on and I'm worried about keeping my ship intact or my raid from pulling threat, I'm not entirely concerned with my character's frame of mind and how he'd react mentally to this duress.  It's part of the pain in the ass of having a game around your RP.  Sometimes it's nice to have graphic representation, but when the game is on, the game is on.  People, sometimes not RPers, are very often counting on you to not have your head up your own ass when you've got a job to do.

I'm mostly talking about coherent IC-ness at this point, not being super IC at all times. I just want actions to be coherent. Respawning famous NPCs that your hero somehow kills alongside everyone else just isn't coherent as far as any character storyline is concerned. And even if you try to handwavium it away (which I can't do, because that's everything your character does in that kind of MMO), it is still MarySueage that your character was somehow the hero that killed this supervillian and saved the game world.

So for IC actions, you are left with bars and world mobs.

I'm not sure that doesn't happen in the EVE universe any less.  How often have I had to destroy that random-name generated anti-slavery terrorist while trying to build up faction lore?  Honestly, I can't remember if it's the same name or a different one every time, but I don't think missions or epic arcs do.  I can't imagine we've all killed Harkan after a long investigation exposing him.

Not yet. But he does have a very 'Arzad Hamri' style to him, which I pointed out on Samira on the IGS. That is heretical. He talks a lot about using a soft hand and incorporating foreign culture into Amarr, which are things that Arzad Hamri was looked down on and eventually trialed for.

If that's how you want your character to be, then that's fine. But it is going to result in a lot of traditional Amarr characters viewing Constantin as heretical. Samira liked him at first, but she's been growing more and more concerned with what he says.

Difference there being that Constantin isn't a Holder himself and, though his family is certified to own slaves, obviously Constantin doesn't.  That might make his missionary work somewhat awkward.  Also, it's a different time when the Empress herself is releasing slaves en masse.  In the end, he's sort of supposed to make conservatives worried on pretty much all sides, not just Amarrians.  Matari warhawks don't like him either.

More of this would be nice. There's some of it about, but a lot of it is buried really deep in isolated sentences in chronicles. For example, Amarr view physical punishment as a standard punishment for crimes, not just something used on slaves, as mentioned in a chronicle. That same chronicle mentions that priests at least work beside the slaves, not just as overseers. Another chronicle mentions that execution and killing are actually rare, because the culture prefers to make the criminal/enemy to come to see their point of view, through methods like slavery. There is a lot of lore to be found in those chronicles (and in in-game missions).

This is the case for lore in most universes, though, not just EVE. To go to WoW as you keep using it as an example, there is even LESS lore there. WoW's lore is extremely vague on cultural backround and practices with a handful of exceptions (one of the reasons I really liked the Pandaren was because it was one of the few times Blizzard actually went into depth on the culture of the race). As someone who plays a draenei as her main, the only way you could get any kind of lore was to infer for yourself based on what little you could find in quest dialogue (for example, I wrote a big essay on the Auchenai purely from conjecture and inference of an extremely limited selection of quotes. None of that is actually canon, it has to be assumption because there's so little to work with. That entire thread I linked to is actually full of stuff like that--essays and assumptions made from very scant pieces of lore because draenei have nothing to work with).

Where WoW lore did get expanded was in the WoWRPG books. Unfortunately those were declared non-canonical, which lobotomized the universe (the entire Forsaken religion of divine humanism for example was a product of those books and is now non-canon). It otherwise has as much, if not far less, actual lore available for players as EVE does. While the case of draenei as mentioned above is one of the more extreme cases, even well-developed races like humans and orcs have very little of actual substance. In WoW, as in EVE, you have to make a lot of inferences from obscure references.

One of the major differences? In EVE, unlike WoW, the player's actions can actually affect change on the actual lore. Much of current Amarr lore has been inspired by or even outright taken from things that Amarr roleplayers did years past. Amarr Victor for example came from players, and I believe that the concept of Amarr slavery being a path to salvation came from Archbishop's old sermons on the IGS. The systems of Bagodan and Hama were originally low-sec systems but were raised to high-sec after consistent anti-pirate operations by PIE and others in the area. The same thing happens with the other factions. Hak'lan tea was player-made and canonized, Ava tells me that Modern Standard Matari was created by players and eventually canonized, as well as the voluval ritual, and so on.

That's really the thing that EVE does and WoW doesn't. In WoW, the lore comes from the developers, and nothing the player does in the realization of that lore in-game means anything. You are just there as a member of the audience, watching Blizzard's story. It is a railroaded game in content and story. Even the official characters are tools of the plot, there not to be characters but to drive the story in the direction Blizzard wants it to go (evidenced most clearly in Jaina's recent 180 change in character, done purely in order to give the Alliance faction a driving incident (Theramore) and to make Jaina the devil on Varian's shoulder in pair with Anduin the angel). In EVE on the otherhand, you the player are expected to be the one who does something with that lore.

I really just intended to use it as an example, not derail us onto a WoW discussion, it's just that everyone knows a lot about it.  Being that, I should disclose that I've been pretty knee-deep in Warcraft since OaH and I edited on WoWwiki for a while.  There's a LOT of it out there, and not just blurbs in buried sentences, but fairly useful lore.  A lot of it, to be fair, EVE can't replicate because you can see it happening in-game.  For example, we know the Church of Light's ranking system because those characters are present and order each other around in the game.  We know how the church relates to the rest of the Alliance, what they worship, what their rituals are, we know where its purview ends, what they believe, where they draw their power from, what they draw their power from, und so weider.  It's not too many articles you'd need to read to go through the meat and potatoes.

The Amarr religion, despite being more intimately tied to Amarrian culture, we don't have nearly as much information on.  Unfortunately we, desperately need it, as per the last thing I was talking about.  Is Constantin doing something heretical?  That's a pretty hard question to answer because we don't know, presently, what constitutes heresy.  We know being a member of a terrorist/blood drinking organization can get you on the list, but that's probably going to get you in trouble anywhere.  Would the events that got Hamzi killed get him killed today?  That's the problem.  You get a decent story, and they write a lot of stories, but not much actual lore so you can understand modern life and what it's supposed to be about.  Most of it is conjecture.

I'm not sure us having a hand in lore is that much of a good thing, then.  Imagine if CCP decided to roll with Constantin's interpretation of Scriptures because it fits better with their universe.  That would justly piss a lot of you off OOCly for good reason.

To be blunt, but that's bullshit. While EVE might have an IC mechanic to get around death (something that WoW also had, by the way, in the form of resurrections, even though a lot of RPers liked to forget it existed because "herp derp I'll only acknowledge the mechanics, lore, and IC actions that I personally agree with"), it has OOC consequences to death that WoW did not have. And even more importantly, as a full-time RP game in which everything you do in-game is IC (compared to WoW where only the things you want to be IC are IC), you actually can and do die on a regular basis.

In WoW RP, bravery was never a thing to worry about because RPers lived in a world of RP-by-Consent. The PC is never at risk of death unless the player behind the character wants to be at risk. And as none do, it results in characters being brave as a rule because they will ignore any seriously threatening injury and only die when the player wishes the character to die. Even in actual IC PvP, any death the character suffers in combat will be ignored because the player does not wish to acknowledge it.

In EVE, bravery is enforced by OOC consequences and because the game spits on your consent. Sure, you may have an IC out to use, but you will actually die regardless of whether you want to or not, and you will actually lose assets in that death. Ergo, you will have to actually tone down your bravery to acceptable levels because the game doesn't let you pick and choose when and how you want to die. Characters in EVE actually do retreat from lopsided fights, something that actually rarely happens in WoW RP.

Also, cloning does not immediately render bravery moot, because it is strongly dependant on how your character views cloning. Amarr characters in particular have actual lore reasons to not view cloning as something that invalidates death.

They went over when resurrection was possible and impossible a few times in WoW.  The most recent one I can think of was during the new Troll starter quests when Vol'jin asks his shaman healer to res a fallen novice, and she says his soul has been blasted out of his body and cannot be recovered.  It's not as reliable as EVE cloning.  Now the spirit healers, that's probably a better example of IC WTF-is-this from WoW?  But that's just one of those things you have to accept is a game mechanic.  EVE has them, too, as well as any game you want to RP in.  Take CONCORD.  How strong is CONCORD?  If they can obliterate you in seconds in 1.0 space, but become farmable in groups outside highsec, why don't they move their 1.0 killing machines to lowsec and secure space?  And how did a third of the Elder Fleet smote their headquarters and destroy their fleet?

Just one of those things you kind of have to deal with so they can get game functions to work.

One of the reasons you don't see WoW characters running from fights, even though there are better lore examples of the consequences of death in them, is partially because you know OOCly there aren't many lopsided fights.  Aside from world PVP (which, for the record, if you're severely outnumbered, you do run from if you're smart, I can't remember ever having defended Southshore on my 25s leveling back in the guard-grinding days), you are either evenly matched to your opponents in numbers or, in the case of PVE, they've taken your gear into account.  Blobbing is of limited effectiveness, it's just not something that translates well because you're generally matched to your opponents in whatever you're doing; you can't just go get more people if your team sucks at WSG.

Again, how do we view cloning in the era of Jamyl Sarum?  They say things are changing, but how much?  Is the Doctrine of Sacred Flesh even a thing anymore?  Does a capsuleer death even count, thus be applicable to that idea that death is irrelevant?  It'd be nice to have the lore on that instead of the sort of vague idea that the Sacred Flesh is a thing, especially when they violated it so loudly in their own lore.

And the key difference here, is that in EVE it's other characters that are counting on you, not just other RPers. The vast majority of raids in WoW are not IC, even when it's a full group of RPers. In EVE, everything you do in-game is IC, and those people are therefore counting on you both OOCly and ICly. When I do well in a fight in EVE, I get IC praise. When I've done poorly or run away from a lopsided fight (without being ordered to retreat), I've been reprimanded IC. The fight actually has more meaning in EVE because it's IC.

That's why I personally find EVE more immersive as a universe than WoW. In WoW, the only things that are IC are the things that you and other players are willing to take IC. In EVE, everything you do is IC. Everything the OOCers do is IC. Everything that happens in EVE is IC. That is far, far more immersive. WoW is part-time IC, EVE is full-time IC.

And that's kind of the thing. In WoW, the world is a toybox that you use to stage creative stories on. Nothing about the world actually matters, rather what you can create with what is available. When you use an in-game dungeon, you are not typically RPing the ACTUAL dungeon, you are using the dungeon's art and environment assets to pretend it's somewhere else for a story you are running. When you are running an event out in the world, you are inventing a plotline and creatures that are typically not actually there, and using raid markers and emotes or dice rolls as a way of staging that story--the environment itself is once again an environmental prop piece, much like the underlying environment board for a PnP or miniatures game.

In EVE, the actual world is an actual world. It is not a toybox that you take stuff out of and put back in when you are done, it is a living breathing world in which your characters are actually living and interacting on a daily basis. What happens in that world actually happens IC, whether it is interesting and exciting or dull and mundane.

Do note, that unlike a lot of EVE players I won't go and say that WoW or the WoW method or RP is actually bad. I was RPing in WoW for the better part of 6 years and was the main IC leader for my server's Alliance RP community last year. The WoW method does actually let you create very fun larger than life stories. But the key word in that sentence is 'stories'. EVE is 'life'. In WoW, like in a PnP game, you have a lot of resources that you can use to create amazing stories, incredibly fun for all the players involved, but those stories won't ultimately change or mean anything to the overall universe. In EVE, however, your character is in a living, breathing universe. You may not be able to tell the same kind of grand stories (except in exceptional cases by exceptional people), but you can live out an alternate reality with actual persistent impact for everyone in that universe. In WoW, the big problem I found in the RP community was the people trying to live out normal, mundane character lives when the world is built for powerful, engaging, creative storylines (IE the typical boring guard/citizen/criminal dynamic that spends all its time jacking off in Stormwind instead of participating in the ever-evolving WarCraft story). In EVE, the problem is the opposite, in people trying to be create big made-up storylines in text instead of actually living out their character's day-to-day lives in the game world. Both types of story have their merits and both are fun. But each story type fits better to a different game. I could not RP out a character like Samira in WoW (and I've tried). At the same time, I could not RP out a character like I've played in WoW in EVE. The game worlds support two different types of story. That doesn't mean that either of them is bad, they just cater to different things.

See, here's where I can see what you're getting at, but I kind of don't think EITHER is accomplishing what you're saying.  I think you're right that they're trying.  Unfortunately, WoW tries so damn hard to get you involved in heroic thrashing that you get stuck in mundacity.  Daily quests are horrible for that; necessary game mechanics, but the death knell of that idea ICly that WoW is an over-the-top Tolkein-ish world.  It essentially makes going out to combat a daily, boring task.  "Oh alright, I'll go kill another ten people.  Sheesh... work."  Which just isn't what they're going for.  I think Pandaria made that a bit better by first of all adding a lot of daily quests that DID seem like boring work, but also by making things feel more suitably epic.  Cataclysm raiding was so horribly underwhelming.

EVE has another problem, and I agree that they're trying to make spacetravel and space combat seem less about heroism and more about the daily intrigue and grind of nations.  The problem is, they don't make daily living that hard.  Players do (finally getting back to the original subject matter), but the game doesn't.  So... is the daily life of a capsuleer boring without other capsuleers?  By definition, it gets you involved in exciting fighting that's supposed to have an edge of danger.

To me, the games meet in the middle, which isn't a good thing because I don't think either is trying to be.  EVE's biggest problem is that I don't feel like it's a challenge to do anything in space except for other capsuleers (not technically all RPers doing things for IC reasons, of course).  Which, oddly, doesn't make me feel like a member of the herd, it makes me part of the only group of people that matter.  I can blitz 20-30 NPC ships in a single sitting on my own in matched ships and fly from station to station without a care in the world until I hit another capsuleer.  I don't think that's what they were going for, but we have all the baggage of the special-chicken concept with none of the benefits (as opposed to having the benefits and pitfalls of special-chicken syndrome).

I think that's not a terribly difficult idea to manage, my simple suggestion would be to make the universe more hostile and hard to survive in.  With the movement towards nullsec corps as a driver for the game, it seems they're going in the opposite direction and saying we few, genetically predisposed, superior-piloting capsuleers are now growing more powerful than the actual empires themselves that govern the large center of the cluster.

If we're going that way, I want my shining gold armor and acknowledgement of my minuscule contribution from the space-goat pope.

[V. Gesakaarin]

Eve at core in regards to its design and the majority of the player-base that drives it isn't a PvE driven lore based MMO where it's you versus the environment and PvP is an afterthought. It's essentially a PvP driven MMO where it's you versus everyone else either directly or indirectly and the PvE content like mission running is just there really to grind ISK for whatever reason it's required for.

Just look at the player culture of Eve and the negative reaction to Incarna or the sentiments of "Go back to WoW" to see that from the CCP developer perspective they're not trying to build a co-operative, PvE, lore-driven product because the majority of players seem to want a confrontational, PvP, mechanics driven product. The background fiction then becomes just that: background, that can be used or not used as desired either by players or the content team.

[Jace]

Eve at core in regards to its design and the majority of the player-base that drives it isn't a PvE driven lore based MMO where it's you versus the environment and PvP is an afterthought. It's essentially a PvP driven MMO where it's you versus everyone else either directly or indirectly and the PvE content like mission running is just there really to grind ISK for whatever reason it's required for.

Just look at the player culture of Eve and the negative reaction to Incarna or the sentiments of "Go back to WoW" to see that from the CCP developer perspective they're not trying to build a co-operative, PvE, lore-driven product because the majority of players seem to want a confrontational, PvP, mechanics driven product. The background fiction then becomes just that: background, that can be used or not used as desired either by players or the content team.

I find the claim that "the majority of palyers seem to want a confrontational, PvP, mechanics driven product" to be hard to believe. I would easily wager that the majority of Eve players are hisec non-PvP players in some fashion or another. It's just that Eve's marketing and fame is all PvP-based.

Edit: Because I can't type or use teh grammarz

[Jace]

I'm not sure that doesn't happen in the EVE universe any less.  How often have I had to destroy that random-name generated anti-slavery terrorist while trying to build up faction lore?  Honestly, I can't remember if it's the same name or a different one every time, but I don't think missions or epic arcs do.  I can't imagine we've all killed Harkan after a long investigation exposing him.

While that is true for specific well-known missions, the fast majority of them have nameless enemies that can be easily used ICly. And that holds for virtually the whole game, whereas with other MMOs (it isn't just WoW here) the entire game focuses around PvE against famous NPCs in specifically-named dungeons.

And the NPCs that even give you the missions have their own little silly story arcs that make no sense ICly once they are completed - and that goes for virtually every non-dungeon mission as well. Not everyone has helped Farmer Bob with the Willy Warlock slinging fireballs at his pumpkin patch. Eve? Agents are built into the lore to make sense ICly.

Then add-in distribution missions, mining missions, etc., all of which can be used ICly very easily. Then add on top of that player trading, hauling, world-PvP, nullsec, whatever, and it can all coherently and consistently be used ICly for my character's story and existence.

Other MMOs like WoW and TSW break all of that constantly.

Edit: My overarching point here is that RP in WoW and TSW requires either a constant OOC existence out in the world, or an unbelievable level of handwavium at all times that breaks any immersion or coherency for my character.

[Vic Van Meter]

I'm not sure that doesn't happen in the EVE universe any less.  How often have I had to destroy that random-name generated anti-slavery terrorist while trying to build up faction lore?  Honestly, I can't remember if it's the same name or a different one every time, but I don't think missions or epic arcs do.  I can't imagine we've all killed Harkan after a long investigation exposing him.

While that is true for specific well-known missions, the fast majority of them have nameless enemies that can be easily used ICly. And that holds for virtually the whole game, whereas with other MMOs (it isn't just WoW here) the entire game focuses around PvE against famous NPCs in specifically-named dungeons.

And the NPCs that even give you the missions have their own little silly story arcs that make no sense ICly once they are completed - and that goes for virtually every non-dungeon mission as well. Not everyone has helped Farmer Bob with the Willy Warlock slinging fireballs at his pumpkin patch. Eve? Agents are built into the lore to make sense ICly.

Then add-in distribution missions, mining missions, etc., all of which can be used ICly very easily. Then add on top of that player trading, hauling, world-PvP, nullsec, whatever, and it can all coherently and consistently be used ICly for my character's story and existence.

Other MMOs like WoW and TSW break all of that constantly.

Edit: My overarching point here is that RP in WoW and TSW requires either a constant OOC existence out in the world, or an unbelievable level of handwavium at all times that breaks any immersion or coherency for my character.

Like I said, I think I understand what you're getting at, it just hasn't ever been a problem for me because of the breadth of my RP experience.  I was keeping people immersed in Yahoo IM and Final Fantasy XI, so I've had a LOT of practice in that particular area.  I don't often notice the difference, personally, I threadweave on instinct.

[Jace]

I'm not sure that doesn't happen in the EVE universe any less.  How often have I had to destroy that random-name generated anti-slavery terrorist while trying to build up faction lore?  Honestly, I can't remember if it's the same name or a different one every time, but I don't think missions or epic arcs do.  I can't imagine we've all killed Harkan after a long investigation exposing him.

While that is true for specific well-known missions, the fast majority of them have nameless enemies that can be easily used ICly. And that holds for virtually the whole game, whereas with other MMOs (it isn't just WoW here) the entire game focuses around PvE against famous NPCs in specifically-named dungeons.

And the NPCs that even give you the missions have their own little silly story arcs that make no sense ICly once they are completed - and that goes for virtually every non-dungeon mission as well. Not everyone has helped Farmer Bob with the Willy Warlock slinging fireballs at his pumpkin patch. Eve? Agents are built into the lore to make sense ICly.

Then add-in distribution missions, mining missions, etc., all of which can be used ICly very easily. Then add on top of that player trading, hauling, world-PvP, nullsec, whatever, and it can all coherently and consistently be used ICly for my character's story and existence.

Other MMOs like WoW and TSW break all of that constantly.

Edit: My overarching point here is that RP in WoW and TSW requires either a constant OOC existence out in the world, or an unbelievable level of handwavium at all times that breaks any immersion or coherency for my character.

Like I said, I think I understand what you're getting at, it just hasn't ever been a problem for me because of the breadth of my RP experience.  I was keeping people immersed in Yahoo IM and Final Fantasy XI, so I've had a LOT of practice in that particular area.  I don't often notice the difference, personally, I threadweave on instinct.

I also had a wide RP experience, then when I tried Eve I couldn't RP much anywhere else - I was spoiled by the fact that I had all of these game mechanics that were congruent with RP. Some people don't mind continual handwavium (I mean, if you have ever gone into a dungeon ICly you are used to handwavium on extreme levels), but after I realized what it was like to not have to do it much anymore, I just couldn't go back to anything else.

I haven't played WoW in years because I don't actually like the game itself, but the rare times I hop on TSW it is purely OOC. I just don't have the patience for trying to RP in a world that makes me go OOC so much.

I think another part of why this is all so important to me is not having any tabletop groups available for so many years. Eve has replaced that for me in creating my characters, writing their backstories, RPing with specific people in the RP community here, etc. If I was a regular tabletop player anymore, I would probably have a much easier time running around TSW lolrping with handwavium left and right.

[V. Gesakaarin]

I find the claim that "the majority of palyers seem to want a confrontational, PvP, mechanics driven product" to be hard to believe. I would easily wager that the majority of Eve players are hisec non-PvP players in some fashion or another. It's just that Eve's marketing and fame is all PvP-based.

Edit: Because I can't type or use teh grammarz

The dynamics of trade, industry, and exploration all involve competition with other players. The only real activity in high-sec that doesn't is mission running. You can also get rather glorious hatemails through market speculation that can cause others to lose billions of ISK.

[Jace]

I find the claim that "the majority of palyers seem to want a confrontational, PvP, mechanics driven product" to be hard to believe. I would easily wager that the majority of Eve players are hisec non-PvP players in some fashion or another. It's just that Eve's marketing and fame is all PvP-based.

Edit: Because I can't type or use teh grammarz

The dynamics of trade, industry, and exploration all involve competition with other players. The only real activity in high-sec that doesn't is mission running. You can also get rather glorious hatemails through market speculation that can cause others to lose billions of ISK.

Oh, sure. I obviously wouldn't argue with that. I thought you were saying that the majority of people play for FW, null PvP, and random open-world pewpew.

[V. Gesakaarin]

I find the claim that "the majority of palyers seem to want a confrontational, PvP, mechanics driven product" to be hard to believe. I would easily wager that the majority of Eve players are hisec non-PvP players in some fashion or another. It's just that Eve's marketing and fame is all PvP-based.

Edit: Because I can't type or use teh grammarz

The dynamics of trade, industry, and exploration all involve competition with other players. The only real activity in high-sec that doesn't is mission running. You can also get rather glorious hatemails through market speculation that can cause others to lose billions of ISK.

Oh, sure. I obviously wouldn't argue with that. I thought you were saying that the majority of people play for FW, null PvP, and random open-world pewpew.

Depends on how many of the "players" in high sec are alts for ISK generation and logistics so people can do FW, nullsec sov wars and open world PvP.

[Vic Van Meter]

I'm not sure that doesn't happen in the EVE universe any less.  How often have I had to destroy that random-name generated anti-slavery terrorist while trying to build up faction lore?  Honestly, I can't remember if it's the same name or a different one every time, but I don't think missions or epic arcs do.  I can't imagine we've all killed Harkan after a long investigation exposing him.

While that is true for specific well-known missions, the fast majority of them have nameless enemies that can be easily used ICly. And that holds for virtually the whole game, whereas with other MMOs (it isn't just WoW here) the entire game focuses around PvE against famous NPCs in specifically-named dungeons.

And the NPCs that even give you the missions have their own little silly story arcs that make no sense ICly once they are completed - and that goes for virtually every non-dungeon mission as well. Not everyone has helped Farmer Bob with the Willy Warlock slinging fireballs at his pumpkin patch. Eve? Agents are built into the lore to make sense ICly.

Then add-in distribution missions, mining missions, etc., all of which can be used ICly very easily. Then add on top of that player trading, hauling, world-PvP, nullsec, whatever, and it can all coherently and consistently be used ICly for my character's story and existence.

Other MMOs like WoW and TSW break all of that constantly.

Edit: My overarching point here is that RP in WoW and TSW requires either a constant OOC existence out in the world, or an unbelievable level of handwavium at all times that breaks any immersion or coherency for my character.

Like I said, I think I understand what you're getting at, it just hasn't ever been a problem for me because of the breadth of my RP experience.  I was keeping people immersed in Yahoo IM and Final Fantasy XI, so I've had a LOT of practice in that particular area.  I don't often notice the difference, personally, I threadweave on instinct.

I also had a wide RP experience, then when I tried Eve I couldn't RP much anywhere else - I was spoiled by the fact that I had all of these game mechanics that were congruent with RP. Some people don't mind continual handwavium (I mean, if you have ever gone into a dungeon ICly you are used to handwavium on extreme levels), but after I realized what it was like to not have to do it much anymore, I just couldn't go back to anything else.

I haven't played WoW in years because I don't actually like the game itself, but the rare times I hop on TSW it is purely OOC. I just don't have the patience for trying to RP in a world that makes me go OOC so much.

I think another part of why this is all so important to me is not having any tabletop groups available for so many years. Eve has replaced that for me in creating my characters, writing their backstories, RPing with specific people in the RP community here, etc. If I was a regular tabletop player anymore, I would probably have a much easier time running around TSW lolrping with handwavium left and right.

It's more than just hand-waving, I've literally had to threadweave entire settings for most of my RP life.  For me, it gets VERY annoying that it's so hard to do.  Not too long ago, I was RPing with someone in Constantin's Glasshouse apartment on Amarr.  I began going into a description, then literally stopped myself and gave up.  The text limitation is extremely annoying to deal with when you're trying to go into detail and, considering my very Burroughs way of longform writing, I was literally running out of space within a SINGLE SENTENCE to describe some of what was going on.

Is there a way to change that limit in your own personal channel?  At least then I could invite people in and set the setting and describe events without having to hardset so often.  I usually end up having people install Gtalk so we can RP there.  Normally, when I'm actually playing the game, I'm a bit too wrapped up in what I'm doing to worry about IC issues.  And it's not like you can whip it out and piss on someone after you've killed them.

Obviously, my WoW characters can be very different than Constantin.

[Jace]

It's more than just hand-waving, I've literally had to threadweave entire settings for most of my RP life.  For me, it gets VERY annoying that it's so hard to do.  Not too long ago, I was RPing with someone in Constantin's Glasshouse apartment on Amarr.  I began going into a description, then literally stopped myself and gave up.  The text limitation is extremely annoying to deal with when you're trying to go into detail and, considering my very Burroughs way of longform writing, I was literally running out of space within a SINGLE SENTENCE to describe some of what was going on.

Is there a way to change that limit in your own personal channel?  At least then I could invite people in and set the setting and describe events without having to hardset so often.  I usually end up having people install Gtalk so we can RP there.  Normally, when I'm actually playing the game, I'm a bit too wrapped up in what I'm doing to worry about IC issues.  And it's not like you can whip it out and piss on someone after you've killed them.

Obviously, my WoW characters can be very different than Constantin.

You can talk to them in local. And if you pod them, grab their corpse - that's pretty damned close to pissing on them.

And with a personal channel, you can have large MOTD to do any describing you want. This is why many of us have our own personal channels for homes, offices, etc. We get the general description done in the MOTD and then when someone comes in, either do additional description to lay out current specifics - or just edit the MOTD before you invite them to make it more specific to the current situation.

The other option if you don't want your own channel with a MOTD (no idea why you wouldn't, honestly. Make it private, invite someone in when they are at your home, kick them when RP is done so they aren't lurking) is to have locale descriptions saved somewhere and copy-paste-mail them to the player in-game . This can work for homes or for really detailed descriptions of your character.

And depending on what RP clique you are in, you can also have a channel that has visuals you've designed. There are some RPers with high skill level in AutoCAD and SketchUp that literally just make their homes.

Edit: And by "have visuals" I mean design them graphically then link them with titles in the MOTD. Using text to describe the atmospheric elements you might not have been able to put into the graphic, or things that are situational.

[Vic Van Meter]

It's more than just hand-waving, I've literally had to threadweave entire settings for most of my RP life.  For me, it gets VERY annoying that it's so hard to do.  Not too long ago, I was RPing with someone in Constantin's Glasshouse apartment on Amarr.  I began going into a description, then literally stopped myself and gave up.  The text limitation is extremely annoying to deal with when you're trying to go into detail and, considering my very Burroughs way of longform writing, I was literally running out of space within a SINGLE SENTENCE to describe some of what was going on.

Is there a way to change that limit in your own personal channel?  At least then I could invite people in and set the setting and describe events without having to hardset so often.  I usually end up having people install Gtalk so we can RP there.  Normally, when I'm actually playing the game, I'm a bit too wrapped up in what I'm doing to worry about IC issues.  And it's not like you can whip it out and piss on someone after you've killed them.

Obviously, my WoW characters can be very different than Constantin.

You can talk to them in local. And if you pod them, grab their corpse - that's pretty damned close to pissing on them.

And with a personal channel, you can have large MOTD to do any describing you want. This is why many of us have our own personal channels for homes, offices, etc. We get the general description done in the MOTD and then when someone comes in, either do additional description to lay out current specifics - or just edit the MOTD before you invite them to make it more specific to the current situation.

The other option if you don't want your own channel with a MOTD (no idea why you wouldn't, honestly. Make it private, invite someone in when they are at your home, kick them when RP is done so they aren't lurking) is to have locale descriptions saved somewhere and copy-paste-mail them to the player in-game . This can work for homes or for really detailed descriptions of your character.

And depending on what RP clique you are in, you can also have a channel that has visuals you've designed. There are some RPers with high skill level in AutoCAD and SketchUp that literally just make their homes.

Edit: And by "have visuals" I mean design them graphically then link them with titles in the MOTD. Using text to describe the atmospheric elements you might not have been able to put into the graphic, or things that are situational.

No, I mean when I'm actually typing.  Seriously, I could throw down a whole paragraph describing Constantin's sword without breaking a sweat, with elements of it relating to his personality and reflecting the duality of his existence.

Remember, I used to have to show character dynamics through actions, sometimes, without saying anything.  If there's one thing that annoys me, it's that I don't have recourse to that while I'm RPing.  I have to abbreviate quite a bit, and I think there's something lost when you can't write a lot.  It probably comes from where I'm from; I've DMed a lot as well as freeform.  People get really bored if you don't draw them in with language.