Stories like that annoy me, Draco. (I'm not annoyed at you, I'm annoyed at your assailant) I mean, lets start at the basis. What is roleplay, and what exactly does it mean? To me, roleplay is about creating a story, and a setting to fit that story. The staff creates the world, and we, the players and roleplayers(this also includes the staff) make the world alive. Massivecraft is something more than just a minecraft server, it is a world. A fantasy. When I log into Massive, I'm not Stephen (my real name), I'm not even Stephen playing minecraft, pretending to be a character. I'm Tallon Greenheart, a Yanar of Silmavora, a small maiar/yanar settlement near the coast of Ceardia. And while killing someone doesn't make me, Stephen, sad, it fills Tallon with sorrow, and as it rightly should. That's the true problem with roleplay. The problem isn't wars, although wars can be a result of the problem. The problem isn't lack of effort during RP, or hackers. The problem is that people aren't their characters. They are people, playing their characters. When you roleplay, you aren't just pretending to be someone. You are temporarily adopting their personality, and you must think like they do. Evaluate every situation. If you were living in a medieval world, you don't just randomly kill someone, even if they are stranger. Now, you as a person might think, "oh, it doesn't matter, if he beats me I'll just respawn and come back". While that's true, I roleplay every battle as if I don't respawn. If I die, Tallon is done. Now, when I actually do die, I'll roleplay it as a severe injury, as it doesn't make sense for someone to die and be fine, but nobody battles random people like Draco's assailant did, if they are actually thinking for themselves.
So I've kind of switched between off-topic and on-topic during that. And I kind of rambled a bit, so some of that may not even make sense. But I found this has helped me go more in-depth with Tallon's feelings on regular events. Get into that mental mindset. It's not enough to just think about what your character would think, or how he would feel. Try to think as your character, however his personality is. Don't roleplay. BE the role, simply playing it isn't enough.
And thus my strange speech is over.
