WOW: Trying the Waters: Role-Playing
Given the fact that you are perusing the pages of a website solely focused on the MMORPG genre, I will accept that you undoubtedly have a love of this addictive, opiate like, social life consuming, bone chillingly brilliant entertainment source. From World of Warcraft through to Eve Online, this is a genre that devours our free time with reckless abandon; its depth is our undoing, its many facets of game play- our mistress. My personal love affair with MMORPGs started with the game EverQuest at the turn of millennium; since then I have enjoyed the grind, the questing, the exploring, the player battling- I have joyously reveled at it all except for one element; an element in the very title of the genre; an element almost intrinsic to the experience: Role-playing.
Like many of my kin, I am a straight laced, stiff upper lipped, tea drinking and no nonsense English man. I scoff at the wonders of the Internet and sigh with resignation at those thespian sorts, I have no need for silly antics- it just doesn't wash with me. When it comes to approaching role-playing on the various MMORPGs I have frequented, I have shuffled away in embarrassment; when asked to discuss "the rumblings in the south" or the "dangers the Litch provides in Northrend" I simply spit on the metaphorical floor, mumble something about "not on my land" and wander away in an angry and anxious daze. I am an angst-filled, nervous and uncomfortable sort when I act normal; force me to take on the personality of an Elf and discuss my beginnings as a Druid and I would melt into the fabric of reality, screaming and proclaiming I am indeed the "Lizard Queen."