(09-10-2013, 03:18 PM)J Wrote: My concern is that all too often 'romance' in role-play is simply sought after and used as an excuse for the player behind the character wanting to get their rocks off. It's usually easy to tell  when this is the case, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating. Another issue is guilds that exist purely for the sake of ERP. It's pretty creepy, no matter how many attempts are made to dress them up as something completely different. ---
 I'm just going to bring up multiple things in this post-
-In regards to 'romance' being an excuse to ERP, yanno, it's true in some cases. Many cases. I know this because I've had boyfriends irl who play MMOs and they have heard about ERPing... and suddenly they want to become roleplayers. It frustrates me too, to no end, to see such a blatant misconception of what roleplay is there for, and I know there are people who get in the game with that as their primary agenda. I don't think any of the people who bother to come to the RPC and join it are looking for that-- I think those types just lurk around in game, waiting to see RPers and pounce on them.
On the matter of ERP guilds or guilds 'existing purely for the sake of ERP'-- I have only ever heard of one. Maybe I don't understand what you're talking about but the guild in question was fairly famous back in the day in WoW; there were a lot of articles written about it. A girl, who was making gold off ERP, started a guild dedicated to that end. She had like-minded individuals 'working with her' and their sole purpose was to ERP for profit. There's no rules about it, it's allowed as far as Blizzard is concerned so long as they make it clear that anyone who does it should be 18 or older (which you need to be to subscribe -anyhow- but we know that rule is broken) but it does seem sort of depressing in a way if that incident happens to be the first time anyone's heard of anything regarding roleplay and they judge all of roleplay based on that. At the same time, it's like a guy I knew who claimed he didn't know anything about anime and he hated all of it because of a bad experience with an ex who was an otaku. Doesn't -seem- reasonable to -me- but then, I'm a bit biased.
Anyway, maybe there are guilds built under some pretense that actually exist to sort of support a relationship between two characters. I could see that. I just haven't really seen two or three, much less enough to consider even a percentage of RP guilds that exist for that reason. If anything, every single freaking guild or community I see has a looooooooooooooooong rule about ERPing and it not happening in relation to the guild. No idea. I'd think that would be common sense but if there are barely veiled ERP guilds out there that I haven't noticed, maybe not.
- Ignoring people when your ERP partner is around? Yes, it happens. I've had experiences with both men and women just in the throes of a blossoming romance (not past the blushy hand-holdy stage) where I start getting tells like 'Why aren't you here?!' as I said before. But yanno what else happens -a lot-? People getting into small cliques or LSs or FCs who never make time to RP walk ups. They're just leveling and running around, doing their thing until someone, and only someone in their group signs on. How is that any different? Those cliques that form that ignore anyone walking past that make new RPers shy or skittish about doing walk up for fear they'll be ignored aren't always, or even often, ERP partners who want to ignore everyone else. It's all about comfort. They find a comfortable place with people they're comfortable with and they just forego worrying about anyone else. If one kind person decides to bring someone new in, great, shiny, but chances are they won't really bother.
Not everyone is like this, nor is every group or guild, but many of them do their in-guild events and don't even worry about asking their members to go out and RP around and spread their good or nefarious name through RP with non-guildies.
- And on the last point... I'm personally of the mindset that I don't care if anyone grows a thicker skin. I just don't think they need to berate others based on their own preconceived notions or past experiences. I don't think being overly reactive and outspoken about what other people do in their own time can be excused by 'being thin-skinned' so much as being intolerant. If someone says they can't stand people who want to have romantic involvements or whatever comes of them, I'm going to say 'Well, there are people who can, so don't speak for all of us.' S'it.
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