Not sure this is the right place for this thread... but its kind of related.
I have a kind of psycholgical/social question about safety nets in online rpg... it'll take me a little to explain apologies...
Basically... roleplays other forms all have safety nets...
table toppers tend to be groups of friends and they share pizza and munchie attacks where they can chill out of character even though they have been fighting all day
Live Roleplay times out either at the end of a night or at the end of a weekend... and gives people that have been immersed in high emotion the chance to chill and slap each other on the back... I can't count the times I have been screaming and feuding all day with someone and been sooo relieved to be able to find their camp at the end of the night congratulate them on amazing roleplay and allow the cloud of hatred to evaporate over a beer... likewise after 4 hours solid of crying in character while another character ran round an event site accusing me of murdering his wife just after I had written a poem of love for their wedding... If I hadn't know the player well and been able to shout you b*stard lots at him in a jokey way afterwards the aftermath would have been difficult...
Work/training scenarios have facilitators and real life discussions
Now none of the above are failsafe...But... in AO and other MMORPG's I'm not sure if this safety net exists at all... everyone logs on and off at different times... and I find that at the end of a strenuos bout of Rp its frequently to late at night to do anything but log...
Obviously the argument "get a life" carries some weight here... but I and I think many others love roleplay because its immersive... and I like/need help getting back to the real world...
So what I'd like to know is does anybody have a succesful mechanism, are OOC tells enough... can IRC or ICQ help... or can getting the avatars together at reets and dropping character do it?
Please don't respond to this thread by citing instances where you've encountered huge problems... that won't help anyone... but if anyone has constructive suggestions I'd love to hear them
I'd like to know for two reasons... one cos this character is getting more and more involved in RP and is losing her journalistic detachment which prevented any such issues occuring...
and two because I think it is a VERY interesting point for the development of MMORPG's in future... particularly as RP gets more popular... and as the online gaming community grows... Its already clear that friendship groups transfer as guilds between games... if the reverse occurs - Ie friendship groups are destroyed because the RP has no let up... the RPG part of the games may well deteriorate...
Any thoughts?
thanks for listening
Kat
(firmly grounded in reality - honest!)