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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Set" data-source="post: 4367818" data-attributes="member: 41584">Reading Proust and listening to opera have the same inherent limitations as Warcraft.  They are passive experiences (far more so than Warcraft, actually!). Playing D&D requires a degree of active participation, and, particularly for the player who creates their own character, engages the players creativity.  Warcraft *can* also be played this way, and role-players often have detailed backstories and intricate social interactions, even creating entire storylines.  But ultimately, every play experience in any online game, including Warcraft, is going to be something that a hundred thousand other people have done (and quite possibly a dozen other of your own characters have done!). No one character can say, '*I* am the hero of Canton, who saved the village from the Ghobbler!' because *every* character who has gone through that quest line has done that exact same quest, and the villagers thanked him with the exact same dialogue, and then handed him the exact same heirloom sword that they've been saving for generations to hand to their champion.  It gets particularly un-inspiring when you are starting up your sixth character, and get to do the same quest line where you find the missing child and are muttering to the screen about how they should just throw this kid to the crocodiles, since he gets lost so much...  When the gamer is mocking the game for it's lack of creativity, in this case, a limitation of the genre, since they can't create different quests for each of their million subscribers, there is some validity to the notion that the game isn't the most creatively stimulating thing you could be doing with your afternoon.  (Not that it's a contest or anything.  Fun is fun, even if it isn't soul-enriching!) Tabletop gaming also has a stronger social component.  In most MMOs, one can 'solo' through a ton of content, and, depending on the game, the character archetype chosen and the amount of patience that player has, you can sometimes 'finish' the game at the highest levels all on your own. On the other hand, when social play does occur in an online game, you end up meeting new people, often in other states, quite commonly in other countries.  Unless you go to gaming conventions every weekend, tabletop gaming is usually with people who are already your friends.  Both sides have their advantages, depending on whether you assign more weight to face-to-face interaction or meeting new and varied people, socializing with people who aren't part of your 'safe' inner circle. Creativity in online games come in finding new ways to work within the limitations of the game and it's setting.  In a tabletop game, I can let a player roll up a Xixchil, and wave my hands and say he fell out of a Spelljammer or something.  I can let him play a Duskblade, even if they aren't established as being part of my setting.  In an online game, the races and classes and physical appearances are set in stone, and the 'game' becomes finding a way to play what you want to play, within the limited palette of options that have been programmed into the game. I can say that my Thorn Scrapper actually is made out of organic metal, and that the 'thorns' are metal spikes, and even color my character to look metallic, but she's really a Thorn Scrapper. In one respect, it could even be argued that online gaming requires a different sort of creativity, like the difference between writing free prose and trying to convey an impression in iambic pentameter.  The constraints of creating an actual role-playing character within the confines of the character creation limitations of an online game can help to spur a more focused creativity, as the player tries to make an individual in a game-world that has 10,000 other people playing the exact same character.</blockquote>

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