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[Jace]

If it's canon it's canon. That's my stance for RPing. I have a huge dislike for people who pick and choose what they like and don't like in lore. I may not like something but if it's canon then I respect it and try to find a way to use it. I even acknowledge Tony G stuff... the horror!

A couple thousand times this. I find myself constantly getting in conflict with the players that try to ignore TonyG. Canon is frackin' canon. Unless you can demonstrate a direct, explicit, and literal contradiction in other PF that has not been handled - it is canon.

Empress Jamyl Sarum's age is given as being X in the books, and Y on the evelopedia. She is an only child in the books, and has a nephew in the evelopedia AND ingame news.

The Scorpion is stated as being new Ingame, while in short stories, it is described as decades old.

Right, so that specific piece of information has to be dealt with. But it does not throw out the entirety of the novels. Trying to do so is just ego-hurt people wanting to ignore changes they didn't like because they were so dead set on their own previous interpretations as the "way it should be" they can't handle the way it actually is.

Explicit contradictions like the one you mentioned have to be dealt with - if not by CCP (which they never are), then by the players using the lore. But the rest of the canon is still canon.

[Jace]

No, lore I would consider deep would be something like Shadows of Asia.  Now that is a ton of useful lore, as it should be, it's packed into a book.  I might be spoiled slightly by having a collection of source material like that around for book games and reading it on the toilet instead of magazines (yeah...).  But I wouldn't consider what we have in EVE to be top notch compared to what I usually have to deal with.  I actually got a listing of stuff I read when I started here, some kind of Amarr character lore care package, and read through it.  There wasn't much I felt like I could use to make Constantin more interesting as a person.

You can't jump genres when comparing lore. Of course tabletops like Shadowrun and WoD will have an unbelievable amount of lore compared to an MMO. We are arguing that relative to other MMOs, Eve has a significant amount of meaningful lore. Something that originated as an MMO is going to be nature have less material than franchises like Shadowrun or WoD that have been releasing amazing source material for so long.

[Lyn Farel]

What I'm pointing out is that the metric used isn't what I'd call correct.  The list was actually one of the weirder things I've ever seen.  Reason I brought up WoW is because we're using it as the metric for MMOs, if you want I can switch to a different game to use as that metric.

Having said all that, the point is that the possibilities aren't really endless, a lot of those things are blended together, you can't do one without the other, it's the same thing in a different part of space, et cetera.

I still don't understand, it's the exact same metric.

In Eve you have PVE and PVP, both separated into various branches, interconnected or not. PvE can be missions, incursions, exploration, etc, and all of those have sub categories as well, like missions having epic arcs, classic mission, FW missions, cosmos, etc. PvP can be FW, low sec, nullsec warfare, wormhole pvp, duelling, etc. Or seen otherwise, it can be solo roaming, small gang warfare, standard fleet warfare, nullsec fleet warfare, gate camping, suicide ganking, empire war dec, etc. Believe me, they are all different, even if sharing the core mechanics between each other. And then you have countless other mediums like trading, industry, or metagaming activities like transport companies (red frog, etc), API programmers and websites, online poker with isk, scamming (seriously, Ponzi schemes...) and all social stuff going along. I have seen so many innovative things on eve done by the players that i'm still amazed when a new one completely silly (an intelligent) comes out.

In WoW it's the same. PvE will give you quests, raids, etc. PvP will bring you open pvp on pvp servers, griefing, arenas, battlegrounds, etc. Well, it's the same for each, it's either pve or pvp, but each with a different flavour. And then, the social activities you probably know a lot better than myself since I never played to that game.

-Mission running, to a point, is very entertaining.  One of my current problems is having to maintain my faction standing for the four empires when I run them, which is grating on my nerves because a large majority of the missions I take to raise one standing are running against another.  That's severely limited what I can do as far as empire missions go.  However, EVE seems to be able to do the "go here, do this, come back" thing on a small scale while keeping it relatively interesting, which is unfortunately not something I can say for most of the newer games coming out now.  I know I'm starting to run out of missions to run and I end up re-running old ones, but the enemies within those are at least keeping me somewhat on my toes.  I may not feel like it's the hardest game out there, but EVE PVE isn't a total cakewalk, especially on your own.

For standings it's not that hard tbh. I only have negative standings with Minmatar and that's due to 3 years of FW. And yet, even with that, i'm not that far from zero. Just don't accept missions against other empire factions, don't run storyline missions if you really have not to (I still do), or just run missions for neutral factions like SOE like I do now (has been 3 years) with very little losses for other empire factions. And then, run epic arcs. They give flat huge standing bonuses to the faction without removing anything from the others. Run Cosmos if you have too, I heard it's the most potent stuff in terms of standing ever, but that shit is so out of date ingame that you will have to go deep into early eve stuff (dates back to what ? 2005 ?).

-Sansha incursions.  When I can get to them, these can be pretty awesome, and are sort of what I wish there was more of.  In a way, I wish the incursions really did spawn enemies to attack the station and do lasting damage in highsec we would have to repair on contract to the governments.  That'd be fun.  Or if the Sansha started actively hunting capsuleers in the area (at least I don't think they are, I've never had them warp in on me and I don't know much about them).  But being able to enter an area that actually acts like its under random attack is probably the most fun I've had in EVE.

For incursions sansha NPCs (which are rather brutal) are only located in incursions sites in high sec. Which is a shame really, but understandable to my annoyance. I too would have like them to have devastating, durable effects.

In lowsec/nullsec though, they camp the gates and the asteroid belts, and that can get nasty very quickly.

-Skill system.  I don't have any complaints, really.  I don't get much time to play, it's nice to be progressing even when I'm playing something else.  This one speaks for itself and I don't think it's unpopular with anyone.  The certification system could be made a LOT easier to comprehend and access even now, but I think it's a good idea that makes the complexity of the skill system bearable.

-Enemy variety.  One thing I hate about WoW, once you've killed the same monsters, even raid bosses, a few hundred times, you need something new or you get bored.  EVE doesn't have that problem as much because the enemies have adaptable equipment.  Even if you've run something before, there's no guarantee you aren't going to get tracking disrupted this time through or suddenly have to deal with a shield tanker who suddenly pops up an armor repairer.  Though the overview is a fairly terrible way to track combat, I think that's just a UI problem.  A new UI later, and this would be pretty much perfect as far as keeping entertained through stock enemies.  I may gripe that I always know if I'm flying into something in EVE's PVE world, but I won't complain about always knowing what I'm flying into.  You don't always know what you're getting.

-Music and graphical style.  I'm not sure how everyone else feels about this, but the music in EVE is amazing.  It really captures the emptiness, the loneliness, and yet somehow doesn't feel cold and bleepy.  Really, all the things I don't like about EVE are mechanical and social, I can't say I think EVE should look or sound different.  I kind of wish my cruiser lasers sounded a bit more like lasers, but I can't say I hate the sound they have.  I don't have a gripe with how the game looks on my screen and sounds in my speakers

I really like their music, but to be perfectly honest, it's not a game music. It's the kind of music I like to listen when I want to chill or quietly doing something else. It becomes especially bland when you start doing actual stuff ingame, and when you enter into combat, it's just ludicrous. It doesn't properly accompany the game, and like most things in eve, it's anti immersive to me.


 

I do keep getting the feeling that, if I want to get harder or more distant targets, I have an eyeroll reaction because I'm going to be dealing more with capsuleer jackassery instead of the stuff I actually like in the game.  There is stuff I like in the game and would like to see more of, though.  If I had more of a stomach for asshattery in my spare time, like I had when I was younger, or a way of not getting pressed through the PVP mold to provide my game challenge, I'd probably renew for another year, at least, when the year I bought to try the game out is up.  I just can't see paying to play another game like that when there are a bunch of games out there that will give you a PVP challenge essentially for free.

As it is, though, my patience for people being dicks on accident, nevermind on purpose, is pretty much gone by 5 pm EST (after a few phone calls with my contractors/clients/engineers/especially engineers/my God I wish we'd just become an AE firm), and to get deeper into the game, EVE doesn't give me a choice about whether or not I feel like involving myself in it.  I'm either going to be allied with them or devoting time and space to keeping them from annoying me, probably both at the same time and neither of which I'm particularly thrilled about.  It's part of why I wish EVE was more of a threat to us than each other.  At least then my first instinct on seeing another ship in my space wouldn't be that the fun is over, it's time to deal with whatever this asshole is going to do.  I could assume he has his own shit to deal with.

I definitely understand. I don't like it either.

[Vic Van Meter]

Hm, do you play on both US and EU servers? Or does US also have a Steamwheedle Cartel and Emerald Dream?

Wow does not restrict us players from going on EU or other servers. It is an option we can choose (I don't think serve names are duplicated).  That being said, if you care about time zones people go to the one that's in their region.

Err, no. This speaking as a US player that played on EU servers for 6 years. You need an EU account to access EU servers, which requires buying an EU copy of the game. A US account can only access US servers. The server names are not duplicated, which is why I was asking if Cons played on both, since SWC and ED are EU servers while MG and WC are US ones.

Though this is veering off topic.

We might use the same acronyms?  SWC in US parlance is the Steamwheedle Cartel server and ED is the Emerald Dream server.  Granted, I'm not on either of those anymore, but those should both be US servers, the former RPPVE and the latter RPPVP.  I don't think there are EU version of those, but I don't play on EU servers, so you'd probably know more than I would on that subject.  I'm definitely in the U.S. and play on U.S. server.

No, lore I would consider deep would be something like Shadows of Asia.  Now that is a ton of useful lore, as it should be, it's packed into a book.  I might be spoiled slightly by having a collection of source material like that around for book games and reading it on the toilet instead of magazines (yeah...).  But I wouldn't consider what we have in EVE to be top notch compared to what I usually have to deal with.  I actually got a listing of stuff I read when I started here, some kind of Amarr character lore care package, and read through it.  There wasn't much I felt like I could use to make Constantin more interesting as a person.

You can't jump genres when comparing lore. Of course tabletops like Shadowrun and WoD will have an unbelievable amount of lore compared to an MMO. We are arguing that relative to other MMOs, Eve has a significant amount of meaningful lore. Something that originated as an MMO is going to be nature have less material than franchises like Shadowrun or WoD that have been releasing amazing source material for so long.

Well, that's why I'm saying my background gives me a much different perspective.  RP to me is RP, whether I'm in a game or not.  Comparing WoW and EVE lore might be useful in terms of games; I think WoW has a bit more because the Warcraft franchise has been around longer as an RTS than when it became an MMO.  But I think that's why I can't call EVE lore very deep or abiding.  I mean, if all you RP in is video games, that's an understandable perspective.  That's not even the case for me today, though.

And Lyn... hope you don't mind if I respond without quoting you.  You and I can make these pretty long.

The thing I'm pointing out is actually a WoW criticism that I try not to apply to EVE, but that list seems to.  It's like saying, "You have so many things to do in WoW, if you get bored of healing as a priest, try shaman!"  Or my favorite, "If you don't want to do 10-man, try 25."  But do the objectives change, or are you doing the same thing with a different set of amounts and numbers?  I've always thought that was a bit of a cop out.  If you've heroic tanked the SoO series on a Death Knight, yes it's very different to do it on a Bear Druid.  All the keystrokes, gearing, what you're looking for, how you maintain threat and generate resource, it's all nominally different.

I wouldn't tell you it's a different.  It's PVE.  Whatever scale, class, role, whatever you're doing, it's the same raid.  If you want to get into different things to do in WoW, you're getting into stuff like the Brawler's Guild, pet battling, PVP (PVP in arenas, BGs, and world are slightly different and can require vastly different keystrokes and such, but are essentially the same).  I looked at the list you gave me and the list boils down to, "Shoot players, shoot NPCs and then later players, do exploration and then later players, do crafting, do trading, do exploration."  I mean, I guess flying around on a WoW PVP server and randomly ganking level 20s is technically a thing to do, but I wouldn't consider it any different than PVP for the weaksauce.  And yes, you can scam people in WoW, it's just illegal and there were people actually employed in other countries breaking into your account.  Scammers in WoW weren't people trying to con your gold in local, there were people seriously DDOSing Curse.com and putting up false websites for the addons people needed, then using them to install keyloggers.  They're tame in EVE.  I wouldn't call it something to do.

My reaction is generally because people have told me there's a lot to do in WoW.  There is, but trust me, you can get bored of it and I can't blame people who do.  What I wouldn't want to do is then say, "Well, if you're bored, an interesting thing you can do is go grief other people.  That's technically a thing to do."  I could do that on YouTube if I wanted.

*shudder*

Thanks for the incursion info, though.  I've been trying to figure out how to get into them more often and be more effective in them.  I don't know why NPCs can't camp the gates and such in highsec, though.  I can understand people just not wanting to deal with the lulz of PVP in their everyday lives, but NPCs are a little easier to tune the annoyance level on.  On the same level that low and null kind of feels like more work than it's worth because of the FFA, it seems like highsec is too easy and the vastness of space between you and where you're going sort of feels like an empty timesink instead of living and dangerous.

That wouldn't be hard to change, though.

[Jace]

Well, that's why I'm saying my background gives me a much different perspective.  RP to me is RP, whether I'm in a game or not.  Comparing WoW and EVE lore might be useful in terms of games; I think WoW has a bit more because the Warcraft franchise has been around longer as an RTS than when it became an MMO.  But I think that's why I can't call EVE lore very deep or abiding.  I mean, if all you RP in is video games, that's an understandable perspective.  That's not even the case for me today, though.

Many of us have those backgrounds, don't assume we all just stumbled upon MMOs and discovered RP. But you have to have parameters for a discussion about lore.

And I would have to unbelievably disagree with the WoW vs. Eve lore for the reasons I already mentioned: beyond arguing about sheer amount, most WoW lore is not useful for character purposes because of the linearity and coherency issues I mentioned. It simply makes absolutely no sense to thrust your character deep into the WoW storyline climaxes. Either A) your character is somehow uniquely doing the same unique things that every other character does and so their stories can't coexist, and/or B) it is unbelievable MarySue territory.

Thus, the amount of lore that is actually useful for RP is negligible - it feels like more simply because you see your character running around in the world.

Edit: Messed up quote.

[Lyn Farel]

Regarding the length of text, it's something I am very conflicted about. On forum RP, which includes the IGS somehow I guess, it is fine, and can even be awesome. I think where it is the most appropriated is on forum RP cooperative stories, which I have had a lot and absolutely loved for that it mostly consists into a cooperative writing efforts still involving roleplaying and characters. It's totally free of anything and so, we can do what we want in the frame of what is defined by the GM. So yes, I love writing something engaging, and I often overdid it myself with fucking long walls of texts. But that's what is expected in that kind of RPs.

On the IGS, well, there is a bit of that, but it's more an IC forum for characters than a true forum RP story done between players. So it's often good to be more concise at times. I remember that another RPer was often annoying a lot of people by posting litteral walls of texts (often 2 or 3 messages together because it didn't fit into a single one). Well, Jade did awesome essays, but when you read a forum and stumble on a new essay at every of his answers, you start to just skip them. It just takes too much time to read, and often it's not even necessary as it can be summed up in a few paragraphs at best. So you eventually feel like you are reading an argument/essay full of interesting stuff maybe, but not concise at all, so like reading mostly air with the important info spread here and there. And it seriously feels counterproductive and I have to admit that even reading some of Constantin answers on the IGS, I just barely read the important bits or just skip them altogether because I just don't have the damn time. Especially as it is not even my native language, but that's another issue. I just feel like I am wasting my time. It's not about the content, it's just a problem with the form. A thread titled "essay on X", I will read it if I find the time and will appreciate it, and expect that it is actually filled with essays and walls of text. But an essay poping every page on a mundane topic, or a in a debate, no... I just can't.

Same ingame with RP emotes. Emotes are fine, emotes are even mandatory to flesh out a bit what's happening and they give life to characters. But like everything, there is moderation to have. Reading every answer made by a player that takes several paragraphs is just horrible. It takes time and most importantly, completely disrupt the flow, because it's not written asynchronous RP, but synchronous real time RP. And waiting 10 min for the next answer is... erm. Rather brutal. Then typing your own... for 10 more minutes ? It can work if you just open a convo and use it like a forum thread yes, but that's not how it works most of the time. Now imagine if everyone did that in RP parties where you have like 40 RPers all speaking at the same time. Which is already a nightmare to keep track...

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.

I don't remember well. Was Harzad Hamri actually declared heretical by the TC or the Emperor, or was it just Ardishapur ?

However, since Constantin's liege is Ardishapur, well... yeah.

Which makes me think now that the Mandate is under Ardishapur overseeing, it makes me a very sad progressive Ammatar. Buggers.

[Lyn Farel]

And Lyn... hope you don't mind if I respond without quoting you.  You and I can make these pretty long.

The thing I'm pointing out is actually a WoW criticism that I try not to apply to EVE, but that list seems to.  It's like saying, "You have so many things to do in WoW, if you get bored of healing as a priest, try shaman!"  Or my favorite, "If you don't want to do 10-man, try 25."  But do the objectives change, or are you doing the same thing with a different set of amounts and numbers?  I've always thought that was a bit of a cop out.  If you've heroic tanked the SoO series on a Death Knight, yes it's very different to do it on a Bear Druid.  All the keystrokes, gearing, what you're looking for, how you maintain threat and generate resource, it's all nominally different.

I wouldn't tell you it's a different.  It's PVE.  Whatever scale, class, role, whatever you're doing, it's the same raid.  If you want to get into different things to do in WoW, you're getting into stuff like the Brawler's Guild, pet battling, PVP (PVP in arenas, BGs, and world are slightly different and can require vastly different keystrokes and such, but are essentially the same).  I looked at the list you gave me and the list boils down to, "Shoot players, shoot NPCs and then later players, do exploration and then later players, do crafting, do trading, do exploration."  I mean, I guess flying around on a WoW PVP server and randomly ganking level 20s is technically a thing to do, but I wouldn't consider it any different than PVP for the weaksauce.  And yes, you can scam people in WoW, it's just illegal and there were people actually employed in other countries breaking into your account.  Scammers in WoW weren't people trying to con your gold in local, there were people seriously DDOSing Curse.com and putting up false websites for the addons people needed, then using them to install keyloggers.  They're tame in EVE.  I wouldn't call it something to do.

My reaction is generally because people have told me there's a lot to do in WoW.  There is, but trust me, you can get bored of it and I can't blame people who do.  What I wouldn't want to do is then say, "Well, if you're bored, an interesting thing you can do is go grief other people.  That's technically a thing to do."  I could do that on YouTube if I wanted.

*shudder*

Thanks for the incursion info, though.  I've been trying to figure out how to get into them more often and be more effective in them.  I don't know why NPCs can't camp the gates and such in highsec, though.  I can understand people just not wanting to deal with the lulz of PVP in their everyday lives, but NPCs are a little easier to tune the annoyance level on.  On the same level that low and null kind of feels like more work than it's worth because of the FFA, it seems like highsec is too easy and the vastness of space between you and where you're going sort of feels like an empty timesink instead of living and dangerous.

That wouldn't be hard to change, though.

Ah yes, seen like that, sure. I can agree to that, it's more or less the same.

For incursions I think they didn't want to disrupt the life in high sec. I don't think the change with NPC attacking people everywhere in incursion systems warranted to be completely avoided as a game mechanic, since people can perfectly well ignore the incursion constellations (they could even add warnings and feedbacks to make it easier... but CCP and the UI, lol... a full story or hate and bitterness). But they probably played it safe. Which is unfortunate.

But otherwise I understand it because I do think that completely changing a game aspect played by various people for the sake of changing the game is very bad game design. It will just piss off people and destroy the specific game bits they love and that had been made for them in the first place. But here in the case of incursions in high sec, I just don't think it could have been so far no...

[Samira Kernher]

Hm, do you play on both US and EU servers? Or does US also have a Steamwheedle Cartel and Emerald Dream?

Wow does not restrict us players from going on EU or other servers. It is an option we can choose (I don't think serve names are duplicated).  That being said, if you care about time zones people go to the one that's in their region.

Err, no. This speaking as a US player that played on EU servers for 6 years. You need an EU account to access EU servers, which requires buying an EU copy of the game. A US account can only access US servers. The server names are not duplicated, which is why I was asking if Cons played on both, since SWC and ED are EU servers while MG and WC are US ones.

Though this is veering off topic.

We might use the same acronyms?  SWC in US parlance is the Steamwheedle Cartel server and ED is the Emerald Dream server.  Granted, I'm not on either of those anymore, but those should both be US servers, the former RPPVE and the latter RPPVP.  I don't think there are EU version of those, but I don't play on EU servers, so you'd probably know more than I would on that subject.  I'm definitely in the U.S. and play on U.S. server.

Looks like some names are shared, I just checked. Both US and EU have Argent Dawns, Emerald Dreams, and Steamwheedle Cartels. US however doesn't have a Defias Brotherhood (which is where I played).

So some names are duplicated, some are unique.

it seems like highsec is too easy and the vastness of space between you and where you're going sort of feels like an empty timesink instead of living and dangerous.

Agreed with this. I would love to see incursion constellations in high sec actually be threatening for everyone in the constellation, not just the incursion runners. If CCP are worried about how this affects newbies, then they can prevent incursions from targeting newbie school constellations (assuming they don't already).

Many of us have those backgrounds, don't assume we all just stumbled upon MMOs and discovered RP. But you have to have parameters for a discussion about lore.

And I would have to unbelievably disagree with the WoW vs. Eve lore for the reasons I already mentioned: beyond arguing about sheer amount, most WoW lore is not useful for character purposes because of the linearity and coherency issues I mentioned. It simply makes absolutely no sense to thrust your character deep into the WoW storyline climaxes. Either A) your character is somehow uniquely doing the same unique things that every other character does and so their stories can't coexist, and/or B) it is unbelievable MarySue territory.

Thus, the amount of lore that is actually useful for RP is negligible - it feels like more simply because you see your character running around in the world.

What defines a Mary Sue is dependent on universe, any Mary Sue litmus test will tell you this (specifically they say not answer yes to something if it is common for the universe in which the character is in). Player characters can and should be involved in the major WoW storyline climaxes in some capacity (even if not the direct end raid), as they are supposed to be heroes in the WarCraft story. Failing to uphold that would be no better than player characters in EVE trying to RP non-capsuleers and bridge captains. I spent the last year dragging the Alliance community on my server out of their bars in Stormwind and forcing them take advantage of the evolving storyline regarding Garrosh's fall, working together with Horde RPers to RP a joint campaign pushing up to the gates of Orgrimmar over the course of many months and several patches, fighting armies and monsters and magic, because that kind of heroic undertaking is what the player characters are supposed to be doing. That's the kind of universe WoW is. It's a high fantasy, high magic universe. I'd contend that Mary Sue characters in that universe are the ones trying to play mundane folk and ignoring the story.

EVE is different. EVE is a grim and dirty sci-fi universe, though it still has its fantastical elements in the capsuleer 'class'. Again, if you'd fail to uphold that it'd be failing to acknowledge the universe in which you are playing. The games offer different things, but what is true in both is that you have to tailor yourself to that game's style and lore. If you don't then you're not going to be enjoying yourself.

It is still important to note that the case of Arzad Hamri was mostly an internal family affair of the Ardishapur. Which are, well... ardishapurites. So, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's heretical. It just means that it's to the eyes of Ardishapur members.

Actually it's the opposite. It was the Theology Council that brought down the charges, not local Ardishapur courts. And while Idonis Ardishapur wanted a lighter sentence, it was special prosecutors from the Theology Council that forced a harsher sentence and had him struck from the Book of Records, making it outright heresy.

[Lyn Farel]

It would seem that you quoted me precisely before I edited my post, in the minute interval before I did. I suddenly felt a big doubt on the matter and was right to do so it seems.

[Jace]

What defines a Mary Sue is dependent on universe, any Mary Sue litmus test will tell you this (specifically they say not answer yes to something if it is common for the universe in which the character is in). Player characters can and should be involved in the major WoW storyline climaxes in some capacity (even if not the direct end raid), as they are supposed to be heroes in the WarCraft story. Failing to uphold that would be no better than player characters in EVE trying to RP non-capsuleers and bridge captains. I spent the last year dragging the Alliance community on my server out of their bars in Stormwind and forcing them take advantage of the evolving storyline regarding Garrosh's fall, working together with Horde RPers to RP a joint campaign pushing up to the gates of Orgrimmar over the course of many months and several patches, because that kind of heroic undertaking is what the player characters are supposed to be doing.

That's the kind of universe WoW is. It's a high fantasy, high magic universe. I'd contend that Mary Sue characters in that universe are the ones trying to play mundane folk and ignoring the story. EVE is different. EVE is a grim and dirty sci-fi universe, though it still has its fantastical elements in the capsuleer 'class'. Again, if you'd fail to uphold that it'd be failing to acknowledge the universe in which you are playing. The games offer different things, but what is true in both is that if you have to tailor yourself to that game's style and lore. If you don't then you're not going to be enjoying yourself.

But this still doesn't address the congruency issue I brought up. WoW public RP never could discuss the actions of your characters because they couldn't coexist with the actions of the character you ran into. I ran into this problem all of the time when I played - you couldn't discuss your run through a dungeon to kill a named boss, because the other character had done that same thing and you obviously weren't there together.

The only way that problem could be avoided is to avoid any public discussion of your character's actions whatsoever, thus limiting all of your action-referencing RP storylines to within your guild and not allowing any public interaction.

That style of MMO severely limits the public RP available for the players. And my MarySue comment was for those that walked around in public RP but refused to stop talking about how their character killed the Lich King.

Edit: For a contrasting example, an Eve character can publicly reference their involvement in a specific Sansha incursion that occurred at a specific time and specific place - other people were either there, or they weren't. There's no coherence problem with other characters.

[Samira Kernher]

What defines a Mary Sue is dependent on universe, any Mary Sue litmus test will tell you this (specifically they say not answer yes to something if it is common for the universe in which the character is in). Player characters can and should be involved in the major WoW storyline climaxes in some capacity (even if not the direct end raid), as they are supposed to be heroes in the WarCraft story. Failing to uphold that would be no better than player characters in EVE trying to RP non-capsuleers and bridge captains. I spent the last year dragging the Alliance community on my server out of their bars in Stormwind and forcing them take advantage of the evolving storyline regarding Garrosh's fall, working together with Horde RPers to RP a joint campaign pushing up to the gates of Orgrimmar over the course of many months and several patches, because that kind of heroic undertaking is what the player characters are supposed to be doing.

That's the kind of universe WoW is. It's a high fantasy, high magic universe. I'd contend that Mary Sue characters in that universe are the ones trying to play mundane folk and ignoring the story. EVE is different. EVE is a grim and dirty sci-fi universe, though it still has its fantastical elements in the capsuleer 'class'. Again, if you'd fail to uphold that it'd be failing to acknowledge the universe in which you are playing. The games offer different things, but what is true in both is that if you have to tailor yourself to that game's style and lore. If you don't then you're not going to be enjoying yourself.

But this still doesn't address the congruency issue I brought up. WoW public RP never could discuss the actions of your characters because they couldn't coexist with the actions of the character you ran into. I ran into this problem all of the time when I played - you couldn't discuss your run through a dungeon to kill a named boss, because the other character had done that same thing and you obviously weren't there together.

The only way that problem could be avoided is to avoid any public discussion of your character's actions whatsoever, thus limiting all of your action-referencing RP storylines to within your guild and not allowing any public interaction.

That style of MMO severely limits the public RP available for the players. And my MarySue comment was for those that walked around in public RP but refused to stop talking about how their character killed the Lich King.

Correct, and that's the limit of WoW RP that doesn't exist in EVE. As I was saying earlier, it's EVE's benefit that your in-game actions are always IC, that everything you do matters. In WoW, your in-game actions are frequently OOC, and so you are forced to create storylines, with the players around you, to get your RP content. I basically never did instances, raids, battlegrounds, or arenas IC, I did them solely to experience the content OOCly and get RP gear/PvP gear for RP. For RP, the community had to go about creating its own RP. We did this by, again, using the world as a prop on which to host our stories, inventing characters and storylines and monsters and whatnot to tell the story. Those of us in community leadership roles were quite literally DMs, charged with taking the resources we had available to us and crafting plots and stories for other players to participate in. RP in the game would fall flat without that kind of management, because 90% of the actual game itself was not taken IC.

In EVE, you can't do that. What's there is there, and what you do in that universe is IC no matter what. Even when you're not RPing, you're still RPing. This is why, even if the current state and direction of the EVE IP isn't going in the direction that people might like, it still offers a niche that is not really available in any other MMO out there--that of the full-time IC sandbox. Just logging on is an IC action--your character plugging into their capsule. Undocking is an IC action. Warping is an IC action. Jumping to a new system is an IC action. And dying and being podded is an IC action. You can never say any of these things were OOC.

Part-time IC vs full-time IC.

Edit: For a contrasting example, an Eve character can publicly reference their involvement in a specific Sansha incursion that occurred at a specific time and specific place - other people were either there, or they weren't. There's no coherence problem with other characters.

You can do that in WoW, but it typically only applies with actual RP'ed events rather than dungeons and raids you've done. Someone can say they were at Council on Tuesday, or at the Battle for Northwatch Hold on Friday, but not your guild's weekly SoO raid. Which of course would make an OOCer scratch their head wondering wtf you're talking about (unless they happen to be a ganking guild that tried to grief your RP event). It required RP communities (not just guilds, but communities of guilds) to be fairly tight to ensure widespread coherence among the server's roleplayers.

I did try getting a community-wide IC run of SoO when it came out, as we had been building towards the Siege for months, but even then it was a social faux pas to claim to have killed any of the actual bosses. Instead it was pretended that we were killing miscellaneous other generals, in one of many battles for control of the city.

[Vic Van Meter]

Well, that's why I'm saying my background gives me a much different perspective.  RP to me is RP, whether I'm in a game or not.  Comparing WoW and EVE lore might be useful in terms of games; I think WoW has a bit more because the Warcraft franchise has been around longer as an RTS than when it became an MMO.  But I think that's why I can't call EVE lore very deep or abiding.  I mean, if all you RP in is video games, that's an understandable perspective.  That's not even the case for me today, though.

Many of us have those backgrounds, don't assume we all just stumbled upon MMOs and discovered RP. But you have to have parameters for a discussion about lore.

And I would have to unbelievably disagree with the WoW vs. Eve lore for the reasons I already mentioned: beyond arguing about sheer amount, most WoW lore is not useful for character purposes because of the linearity and coherency issues I mentioned. It simply makes absolutely no sense to thrust your character deep into the WoW storyline climaxes. Either A) your character is somehow uniquely doing the same unique things that every other character does and so their stories can't coexist, and/or B) it is unbelievable MarySue territory.

Thus, the amount of lore that is actually useful for RP is negligible - it feels like more simply because you see your character running around in the world.

Edit: Messed up quote.

I don't think that's necessarily true, not because I don't think you've read it, but because I know nobody's read it all.  There is a ton of material out there, a ridiculous amount, and you can usually figure out anything you want to find out by asking and it's been in some comic or book over the years.  Warcraft has a habit of fleshing out things that were originally jokes or random ridiculousness.  Hell, the entirety of the MoP expansion is the lore spiral off an April Fool's Joke from Warcraft III.  The problem is that WoWwiki is a sledgehammer of lore.  It's not that it's hard to find certain things because they're buried, there are a lot of people that work on WoWwiki and Wowpedia, so the lore is actually pretty easy to find if you want to look something up.

But that also means the lorenazis are especially brutal on some servers.  I'll grant you, not all lore they have is useful in the same way a lot of EVE's isn't useful, so having more of it is probably a bad way to compare it.  It can also be used to really crush anything fun in WoW.  A lot of people will point to some tidbit somewhere saying "Orcs are this way!" and therefore if you aren't that way, you're doing it wrong.  It's harder to do that with EVE's lore since it doesn't try to be as helpful, but it can seize up random RP action if someone keeps using it to hit the brakes.  Wyrmrest Accord, though a little better now, used to have a REALLY bad reputation on the Horde side for having more discussions about minute elements of Horde lore than RPing actual characters.

Lore should be more useful as a tool than a weapon.  Luckily, it's also a game with flying aircraft carriers, Goblin mechasuits, and a weeklong monthly carnival on an island.  It's generally easy to find stuff to make life interesting.

Regardless, I don't think people haven't necessarily done all the stuff I've done, but I'm not sure people still do them.  Comparing EVE and WoW lore is like comparing the Camry and Focus in a comparative test.  They're just functional, economy-size versions of more powerful lore, limited by the fact that video games don't have the resources or need for something that powerful for all their clientele.  Even knowing that, it's a little disappointing sometimes, trying to look up something cool and finding out it's not there.

Regarding the length of text, it's something I am very conflicted about. On forum RP, which includes the IGS somehow I guess, it is fine, and can even be awesome. I think where it is the most appropriated is on forum RP cooperative stories, which I have had a lot and absolutely loved for that it mostly consists into a cooperative writing efforts still involving roleplaying and characters. It's totally free of anything and so, we can do what we want in the frame of what is defined by the GM. So yes, I love writing something engaging, and I often overdid it myself with fucking long walls of texts. But that's what is expected in that kind of RPs.

On the IGS, well, there is a bit of that, but it's more an IC forum for characters than a true forum RP story done between players. So it's often good to be more concise at times. I remember that another RPer was often annoying a lot of people by posting litteral walls of texts (often 2 or 3 messages together because it didn't fit into a single one). Well, Jade did awesome essays, but when you read a forum and stumble on a new essay at every of his answers, you start to just skip them. It just takes too much time to read, and often it's not even necessary as it can be summed up in a few paragraphs at best. So you eventually feel like you are reading an argument/essay full of interesting stuff maybe, but not concise at all, so like reading mostly air with the important info spread here and there. And it seriously feels counterproductive and I have to admit that even reading some of Constantin answers on the IGS, I just barely read the important bits or just skip them altogether because I just don't have the damn time. Especially as it is not even my native language, but that's another issue. I just feel like I am wasting my time. It's not about the content, it's just a problem with the form. A thread titled "essay on X", I will read it if I find the time and will appreciate it, and expect that it is actually filled with essays and walls of text. But an essay poping every page on a mundane topic, or a in a debate, no... I just can't.

Same ingame with RP emotes. Emotes are fine, emotes are even mandatory to flesh out a bit what's happening and they give life to characters. But like everything, there is moderation to have. Reading every answer made by a player that takes several paragraphs is just horrible. It takes time and most importantly, completely disrupt the flow, because it's not written asynchronous RP, but synchronous real time RP. And waiting 10 min for the next answer is... erm. Rather brutal. Then typing your own... for 10 more minutes ? It can work if you just open a convo and use it like a forum thread yes, but that's not how it works most of the time. Now imagine if everyone did that in RP parties where you have like 40 RPers all speaking at the same time. Which is already a nightmare to keep track...

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.

I don't remember well. Was Harzad Hamri actually declared heretical by the TC or the Emperor, or was it just Ardishapur ?

However, since Constantin's liege is Ardishapur, well... yeah.

Which makes me think now that the Mandate is under Ardishapur overseeing, it makes me a very sad progressive Ammatar. Buggers.

From what I remember, Hamri was declared heretical by the TC and then ordered Ardishapur to handle it.  At the same time, they've been pretty decent in the Mandate.  I think Yonis appointed an Ammatar to run it.  They also had something called Khaedra's Law which didn't let the Ardishapur kill the rest of the Matari on Starkman Prime.  So I think the family is conservative, but not officially racist from what I've read.

[Author's Note]  Holy crap, 5 posts?  I might need a minute to finish this floor....

[Jace]

I don't think that's necessarily true, not because I don't think you've read it, but because I know nobody's read it all.  There is a ton of material out there, a ridiculous amount, and you can usually figure out anything you want to find out by asking and it's been in some comic or book over the years.  Warcraft has a habit of fleshing out things that were originally jokes or random ridiculousness.  Hell, the entirety of the MoP expansion is the lore spiral off an April Fool's Joke from Warcraft III.  The problem is that WoWwiki is a sledgehammer of lore.  It's not that it's hard to find certain things because they're buried, there are a lot of people that work on WoWwiki and Wowpedia, so the lore is actually pretty easy to find if you want to look something up.

But that also means the lorenazis are especially brutal on some servers.  I'll grant you, not all lore they have is useful in the same way a lot of EVE's isn't useful, so having more of it is probably a bad way to compare it.  It can also be used to really crush anything fun in WoW.  A lot of people will point to some tidbit somewhere saying "Orcs are this way!" and therefore if you aren't that way, you're doing it wrong.  It's harder to do that with EVE's lore since it doesn't try to be as helpful, but it can seize up random RP action if someone keeps using it to hit the brakes.  Wyrmrest Accord, though a little better now, used to have a REALLY bad reputation on the Horde side for having more discussions about minute elements of Horde lore than RPing actual characters.

Lore should be more useful as a tool than a weapon.  Luckily, it's also a game with flying aircraft carriers, Goblin mechasuits, and a weeklong monthly carnival on an island.  It's generally easy to find stuff to make life interesting.

Regardless, I don't think people haven't necessarily done all the stuff I've done, but I'm not sure people still do them.  Comparing EVE and WoW lore is like comparing the Camry and Focus in a comparative test.  They're just functional, economy-size versions of more powerful lore, limited by the fact that video games don't have the resources or need for something that powerful for all their clientele.  Even knowing that, it's a little disappointing sometimes, trying to look up something cool and finding out it's not there.

I'm not sure how we started talking past each other here, but if you scroll up one post to where Sami and I ended up on the discussion, that is what I've been trying to communicate to you as the primary difference between the usefulness of Eve RP versus WoW RP. It is a specific type of usefulness regarding IC action versus OOC action, and for me it is the pinnacle of what makes a game enjoyable to RP in or not.

[Samira Kernher]

From what I remember, Hamri was declared heretical by the TC and then ordered Ardishapur to handle it.  At the same time, they've been pretty decent in the Mandate.  I think Yonis appointed an Ammatar to run it.  They also had something called Khaedra's Law which didn't let the Ardishapur kill the rest of the Matari on Starkman Prime.  So I think the family is conservative, but not officially racist from what I've read.

Negative.

"[Idonis Ardishapur's] family and friends would be appalled if they knew of his dark-skinned Starkmanir girl, with her almond eyes and her smile that was coy and bold at the same time." - Khumaak (Chronicle)

Idonis is also described as being "extremely conservative and xenophobic". And that's the guy who both committed genocide on the Starkmanir and passed Khaderia's Law (the same guy did both). You can say many things about the Ardishapur Family, but them not being racist isn't one of them. It's one of the hallmarks of the conservative bloc, which the Ardishapurs are at the head of. There's even very vague hints that they're sexist, at least in the sense of being patriarchal (firstborn sons inherit the family line, something which isn't seen in the other Royal Houses)--though that could have just been poor choice of wording on CCP's part in Yonis' article.

Yonis' moves in the Mandate were out of political savvy more than anything else. Everyone expected him to go the hardliner route. It's what he and the Ardishapur Family are known for, and it's precisely why Jamyl appointed him there. That Yonis didn't shows his intelligence more than his character--he knows a trap when he sees one, and he knows how to exploit it to his benefit. Whether he's actually racist or not isn't known, but it's is certainly not why he was so progressive with the Mandate.

[Vic Van Meter]

From what I remember, Hamri was declared heretical by the TC and then ordered Ardishapur to handle it.  At the same time, they've been pretty decent in the Mandate.  I think Yonis appointed an Ammatar to run it.  They also had something called Khaedra's Law which didn't let the Ardishapur kill the rest of the Matari on Starkman Prime.  So I think the family is conservative, but not officially racist from what I've read.

Negative.

"[Idonis Ardishapur's] family and friends would be appalled if they knew of his dark-skinned Starkmanir girl, with her almond eyes and her smile that was coy and bold at the same time." - Khumaak (Chronicle)

Idonis is also described as being "extremely conservative and xenophobic". And that's the guy who both committed genocide on the Starkmanir and passed Khaderia's Law (the same guy did both). You can say many things about the Ardishapur Family, but them not being racist isn't one of them. It's one of the hallmarks of the conservative bloc, which the Ardishapurs are at the head of. There's even very vague hints that they're sexist, at least in the sense of being patriarchal (firstborn sons inherit the family line, something which isn't seen in the other Royal Houses)--though that could have just been poor choice of wording on CCP's part in Yonis' article.

Yonis' moves in the Mandate were out of political savvy more than anything else. Everyone expected him to go the hardliner route. It's what he and the Ardishapur Family are known for, and it's precisely why Jamyl appointed him there. That Yonis didn't shows his intelligence more than his character--he knows a trap when he sees one, and he knows how to exploit it to his benefit. Whether he's actually racist or not isn't known, but it's is certainly not why he was so progressive with the Mandate.

Real quick (tenth floor!)

That chronicle is why I figured they weren't so racist anymore.  Idonis obviously wasn't, himself, racist; he was fucking a Starkminar.  I got vibes of Tiberius in I, Claudius there, in particular.  Which is why I'm really pointing at the lore and saying, "Really?  Are they racist?  They seem to be doing what's politically expedient most of the time."  They're just more tied into the church than to the military.

I mean, that in and of itself was almost a century and a half ago.  That was before he issued the Khaedra Law that called for them to be left alone.  That was even before Heideran and the Pax Amarr.  Way before Jamyl Sarum and the emancipation.

This is what I'm talking about with the lore.  This piece of story happened in an Amarr Empire that the lore itself tells us, in the first pages of Amarr lore, came before a massive event that reshaped Amarrian political thinking.  All the modern signs point to the fact that things are changing at an impressive rate.  Is this lore still useful or relevant?  Or is it really a good idea to apply a glimpse into what Yonis's predecessor was thinking before the Minmatar Rebellion had even begun?

That's a lot of assumptions we're making that we don't necessarily have much evidence for.  It looks like he has more political reason, at the very least, to not stick to that racist stance than his father had to do the opposite.