World of Warcraft killed our gaming group!

[Hussar]

I hate to say this, but, Flexor's point did flit through my head as I read this as well. If your game gets dropped through lack of interest, perhaps its a good idea to step back, take a breather and brush up on some DM'ing tips.

Not that that's the reason here. It doesn't have to be. I lost a player to Age of Empires II some time ago. The guy was a jerk, so, no great loss. It does happen that people find other things more enjoyable than DnD. Unbelievable but true.

My advice, try online gaming like OpenRPG. You can be pretty sure of keeping a group together. Anyone who goes through the bother of going to OpenRPG or Fantasy Grounds is likely not a casual gamer in the first place.

 

[Felon]

What is there to roleplay about in D&D, which boils down in the RAW to the same thing? People can and do roleplay in both places.

Really weak analogy. There's no comparison. You're trying to hedge your bets by saying "in the RAW", but even that's inaccurate. D&D does provide an open-ended engine where characters can have all kinds of RP situations. At the table, you can do more with an NPC than get him to regurgitate one or two lines of text. In a tabletop campaign, your RP decisions can actually have a significant impact on the world. Being in-character at the table amounts to more than just awkwardly dancing around the use of modern words or game-related terminology.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Really weak analogy. There's no comparison. You're trying to hedge your bets by saying "in the RAW", but even that's inaccurate. D&D does provide an open-ended engine where characters can have all kinds of RP situations. At the table, you can do more with an NPC than get him to regurgitate one or two lines of text. In a tabletop campaign, your RP decisions can actually have a significant impact on the world. Being in-character at the table amounts to more than just awkwardly dancing around the use of modern words or game-related terminology.

It's not in the least a weak analogy, since in an MMORPG, you're roleplaying with other player characters, most of whom regurgitate more than one or two lines of text.

And the old "your decisions can affect the world" canard is fun to trot out, but the truth is, most of the time, roleplaying decisions don't affect the game world, until players have been going for a while and are significantly higher level.

But honestly, it was a rhetorical question on your part, and you're not interested in believing that people can and do have very satisfying roleplaying in an MMORPG.

 

[Bobitron]

I would recommend against this. Then you need someone who is a WoW player to DM the game , you would get all the jokes that would come with WoW (ie. the party comes to a village and the players start looking for people with a golden ! over their heads.). Also there is the table talk issue, I see this as making it worse

DM: As the party arrives in Ironforge...
Player 1: Hey I got 30 gold for this blue dagger I sold in the auction house the other day.
Player 2: Oh wow... I bought that dagger for 15 gold on my server.
DM: :\ :\ :\ :\

no...bad idea IMHO

Well, so long as the players are D&D players, I don't see it being a problem. I guess it depends on how willing the players are to put aside certain aspects of the computer game and focus on the world instead of the mechanics of how things work.

I hear you, though. I met this guy online who was having similar trouble with his LOTR game. It was impossible to get the players to stop referencing the films.

 

[Felon]

It's not in the least a weak analogy, since in an MMORPG, you're roleplaying with other player characters, most of whom regurgitate more than one or two lines of text.

And the old "your decisions can affect the world" canard is fun to trot out, but the truth is, most of the time, roleplaying decisions don't affect the game world, until players have been going for a while and are significantly higher level.

But honestly, it was a rhetorical question on your part, and you're not interested in believing that people can and do have very satisfying roleplaying in an MMORPG.

It's not a canard just because it undermines your assertion. I've taken plenty of adventures off the rails (and don't take "affect the world" too literally; localized changes to the world is more what I meant). However, if in your opinion RP just consists of speaking in-character, and RP can't affect a tabletop campaign world, then I guess I can see where you're coming from.

 

[Nalfeshnee]

Wow... i honestly think that Wow saved my game. My groups campaigns all suffer the same fate - the end because the players begin thinking about other campaigns and loose intersest until the rest of us are coerced into abandoning the current campaign to begin a new one.

Since Wow came out im the only person (currently DM) in my group who does not play it. the amount of time my players spend playing the damn game means they have little time to think about new campaigns at home, leaving me with claim to the DM throne!

Funny how one man's garbage is anothers treasure!

 

[Joker]

Our group is slowly getting killed by work, school, girlfriends, family and GODDAMN BIRTHDAY PARTIES. This one guy, whom I love immensily, has like 278 family members that make it a point to hold their parties on Game-Day Friday. Punkass.

Man, I hope no-one in my group has kids for the time-being.

BTW, I've been playing WoW for a month now. And I gotta tell you: it's awesome. You wouldn't believe the amount of ideas I plundered from the game for my campaign or character. To me it's a wonderful game and very good tool.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Everyone in my group plays WoW, and a couple of us are even into the high end raid stuff. It's safe to say that we all prefer D&D over WoW though. WoW is really fun, but we have been doing D&D for years, and you just can't beat the options and creativity it allows.

It's kinda funny, because even though we all play WoW, whenever I have to cancel a session because of illness or vacation or w/e, people are always really sad. The usual line is "No D&D this week? Man that sucks. Well, I guess I'll go play WoW or something."

P.S. - OOC off topic talk makes up a large percentage of the session, even if it's not WoW talk.

Substitute WoW for City of Heroes, and this perfectly describes my gaming group as well.

 

[Kristivas]

I play WoW at the high end. That means, for those of you who know, I'm working on full Tier 2 armor.. wiped in Naxxramus.. and spend almost every night raiding.

Why? Because I live in an area where there's no DnD to be found. That's right... Missouri.

When I had a DnD group, I threw WoW and raiding to the wind. If they couldn't go on without me, too bad. I loved playing DnD more than MMOs any day of the week. During my teen years, I spent weekends and summers immersed in DnD glory. It didn't all end because of WoW, though. It ended because of real life.

I have kids, and they're all young. Playing DnD with them in the same house is like trying to milk a bull. Then, there's finding another place to play at. Some of my friends still lived with their parents and playing there wasn't an option. Others quit the game entirely. And they all had things to do like work and school and whatnot.

So, there was finding the right time to play, place to play, making arrangements to play, having the money to play (buy books, pizza, gas to get there, ect). Then I moved, so even worrying about it is a thing of the past.

So, since I'm going to have internet connection anyway and can't play DnD, I'm stuck on WoW. It's the best MMO out there, and I enjoy playing it, but it's nothing to me compared to a good DnD game. It's just that WoW offers a lot more convenience when it comes to playing. $15 a month and I can play any time of the day, in my underwear if I choose.

....I'd love to go back to playing DnD, but I don't think that'll happen unless they make it an online thing... (and DDO does NOT count! ew!)

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I hate to say this, but, Flexor's point did flit through my head as I read this as well. If your game gets dropped through lack of interest, perhaps its a good idea to step back, take a breather and brush up on some DM'ing tips.

Great advice. People get mad at a game for giving their players something that is apparently more fun than what they are getting at the RPG table. Maybe people would be better off examining what is lacking in their game than being mad at lines of code?