Speaking of World of Warcraft… prepare yourself for a rant that’ll have no impact on you if you’ve never played on a “Roleplaying / Player vs Player” (RPPVP) realm, heheh.

First, all Says, Yells, and Emotes are In-Character. Period. End of story. If you don’t like that, then why the heck did you pick a Roleplaying server? It’s a whole new ruleset, people. Learn to live with them. Don’t expect to get around them unnoticed… Someone always notices when you break the “In-Character Rule”.

Second, Whispers are only In-Character if your character is standing next to mine. I’m aware that Whispers are global capable, but whoever heard of someone Whispering at you when you’re in the United States and they’re in England? Common sense would be prudent here.

Third, Party chat is, once again, treated rather like Whispers. Though I tend to treat it like Say/Yell/Emote just to be safe… until that one moment where someone says they have to use the bathroom and they’ll “brb” or when they announce that the phone’s ringing and everyone needs to stop.

Which leads me to the fourth point… Talking Out of Character in In-Character communication channels is not forbidden. If there’s an emergency, such as straightening out people who can’t separate RP from real-life, please enclose your OOC speak in something like parenthesis. The most common and widespread method of doing this is saying something like: ((Whoops! I’ll brb… I’m needed for a minute!))

Fifth, General global chat channels, including Trade, Local Defense, Looking for Group, Guild Recruitment and World Defence are all Out of Character. Period. The little infant roleplayers LOVE arguing about this without end. But literally only in the starting zones. Once you venture out into higher level zones, that argument disappears, because now you’re surrounded with slightly more intelligent players who realize that there’s no way people could yell across the forest without actually using the Yell command. I ain’t joking… that arguement will stop dead and you’ll never hear about again. (Unless you pass through the starting zone again.) So my point is… there’s no point argueing. It’s already technically been decided in the WoW RP realm policies, and those who stick around and actually level up a character on those realms eventually realize there’s no use fighting.

Sixth, don’t use Trade to gab about random crap. It’s a global channel because it’s SUPPOSED to be useful. People actually read the Trade channel to see if there’s any loot to buy at decent prices. …when you go mucking it up by screaming about how some player stole that super special item off the corpse without asking, not only does nobody care, but you’re being extremely selfish by hogging the screen in 4 major cities with your spam. Don’t do it. You’ll get more of a bad reputation than the thief.

Which leads me to my seventh and final point. Learn these rules so you can separate Roleplaying from Real Life. You’ll make Roleplayers upset that you’re screwing up their play, and you’ll get angry at something that, after all is said and done, had absolutely no impact on YOU as a player until you went and made a fool of yourself.

I was in Goldshire with my kickbutt Level 30 Druid. I’d just logged in and was leaving the Inn when I heard a serious battle happening outside. I peeked out the door and my fears were confirmed… some Warlock had, once again, for some reason I can never understand, released a very powerful demon on the village and all the little level 10 and 20 players were trying to kill it… and everyone who COULD actually kill it were standing by and laughing at their brave but ultimately futile attempts to protect their town.

After it was all said and done (some high level druids finally took up the defense and destroyed the demon), still amidst the laughter of some lame Level 60 Warrior from the not so cool guild called High Impact. Anyway, before this all happened, I pubically said, IC, with my character, something like: “I see that the warlocks are showing off their flawless control of demons again.” (My elf is a Druid… Druids (should) be flat against demons and those who think they can control them… so my character is always dripping sarcasm and disdain when speaking to Warlocks.) I don’t think the offending Warlocks heard me, though, since I didn’t get a response… but after the Infernal (the name of the super demon) was destroyed, I actually used Yell so that the entire region could hear me and said something like: “You’ve gone and shown your perfect control over demons once again, stupid Warlocks… how arrogant.” (Technically, from a character’s standpoint, people died because a Warlock was playing.)

Anyway, this time the offending Warlock heard me, and starting using Yell, too, and he was actually Roleplaying… BUT! At the same time, I got like a tell from every other Warlock in the area, yelling at me that I just offended each and every Warlock in the zone, because they weren’t involved with the attack. Now… Tells are also Whispers. So I seriously looked around me for all these names that just verbally assaulted me… and I couldn’t find them. If someone whispers you from so far away that you can’t even see them… it’s OOC. I don’t care what you think.

So I replyed on General, “To all the warlocks who just whispered me, learn to RP, kthanks.” …and a couple responded and apologized, saying they thought I was serious. I’m sorry? You thought I was speaking my real feelings about Warlocks and their players? That’s…….. well, that’s dumb. I was using legitimate RP channels that should only be used for RP, and you thought I was talking OOC? Man, talk about a serious buzzkill. I was sooo upset that I just got flamed by a bunch of people who didn’t know what Roleplaying was…

ON A ROLEPLAYING SERVER!!!

Moral of the story: lern2play