WoW: What's your character to you?

I'll let you in on a little secret: I RP. Not excessively, not every single day, but given the opportunity, I do take part in the occasional 'in character' experience. The other day, I bumped into a human paladin, who tried to recruit random passersby for his cause to retake Lordaeron - before the undead hordes gain in strength and numbers and all our loved ones get torn apart limb from limb or turned into horrible, horrible monsters. And since my character happens to be a Worgen, I had my part to say about this whole crazy nonsense. Proper RP isn't about being perfectly nice all the time and talking like you have a stick up your ass. It's about bringing your character to life. Within reason, sure, but if you imagine a bunch of thee-ing and thou-ing orcs having a tea party, you're doing it wrong.

I'm not one of those people, who use 'role-playing' as an excuse to stay at level 70 for all eternity, spend all my time doing BC raids and talk about how everything that came after the first expansion was crap. Yes, we do have whole guilds of them. I don't use RP as some kind of alternative to gearing up and progressing through the content. I love my endgame epix and kicking ass in the arena. I simply take part in RP activities for the sake of immersion.

Ever since the release day of WoW, I've been playing one main character. There were other characters and a few breaks, of course - we've all stopped hanging out in Azeroth at some point or another. But whenever I go there, it's usually as my good old warrior, who has been around for nearly seven years now. Alright, obviously I have not started out being a Worgen, but other than that, my main has always been the same. This character has never just been some guy I'm leveling up, but a virtual extension of myself.

Now, before I'll be laughed at for geeking out or end up provoking some scary news report on how computer games make people lose all sense of reality, let me explain what I mean: When I get into a role playing game, I want to be fully immersed. It's not like a sports game or a racing game, where I just want to kill some time, sit back for some quick, mindless fun before I go back to more serious business. RPGs are bigger, more time-consuming, something I want to get fully absorbed in. So when I create a character, I don't go to the official forums starting one of those insanely stupid 'What is the best class?' threads. Anyone else hate those? People no longer choose their characters by personal taste or what suits their personality - they go with what average Joe thinks is most overpowered.

I hate that kinda crap! See, when I want to create a fun, believable character, then I'll obviously go with something that feels like, well, me! I tend to act and talk before I think, I'm quick to anger and I think people wearing robes and dresses are pansies. So I went with the obvious choice and rolled a priest.
Just fucking with you. I'm a warrior.

Remember those days where everyone was playing a retribution paladin all of a sudden? Then everyone had a frost mage followed by a feral druid and then came the blood DKs. 'Flavor of the month' they call it. Whenever the general public decides that one particular class is overpowered using one particular skill tree, you will see a whole lot of mediocre players going for exactly that. And you can be sure as hell that the moment the community starts raging about yet another way too powerful class it's those same players, who will switch characters again. People don't play what they think suits them. They don't play their roles. They play what they think will let them 'pwnerize' those poor suckers, who are even bigger 'n00bs' than they are. And if all else fails, there's always ganking the level 20s in the lowbie areas and logging off when some guy at their own level shows up.

Well, everyone should play the way they want. But I do wonder. What's the point in playing an RPG, when you let the forums, guides, community websites and chatrooms dictate what you play all the time? If I just want to be a slave to public opinion, just want to feel that I'm in some way better than everybody else and kill some random people after doing a Google search on which class is 'best', I might as well go for a quick session on Call of Duty. But then again, we've reached a point where I have to level up characters in those kinda games, as well. Gain levels, unlock new weapons, ask about the most overpowered weapons, abilities and perks. Same thing.

But is it really? Azeroth is a huge living, breathing, ever-changing world. Alright, maybe they're a bit slow on the ever-changing, but that's a different story. My point is, that it should be about more than just kitting out any random character, doing whatever 'dailies' you've got to do on there and not give a crap about the actual game world.
I have lost count of all the idiots, whose names contain 'lol', even on the RP realms. And when I see some priest named Norezforulol telling me to ogog!1 in a random dungeon, then I'm starting to wonder if RPGs aren't just dying, but if they have died years ago and I've just been in denial for all this time.

I don't want to play my game like that. I don't wanna be some idiot named Loltankbob, already planning on rolling a blood DK for when the next patch goes live. I care about my character. And when I team up with people, I want them to think, 'Man, this guy really loves being a warrior!' Heck, let them think I'm a raving lunatic! But I sure as fuck don't want anyone to say that I'm one of those idiots, who get a kick out of being a complete asshole and ruin what little there is left of the atmosphere for everyone around me.

If you care so little about your alter ego that you deliberately give them a stupid name, if you cannot even be bothered to put five minutes of thought into who or what you want to be, stay the fuck away. I hate you. I hate you for completely fucking up the immersion in all my games. I hate you for not giving a fuck about how you ruin it for everyone, who actually care about the game and their characters. And I hate you for completely shitting all over what used to be my favourite genre. It's drooling, stupid, moronical, keyboard-turning, whining, spamming morons like you, who make this and most other games dumber, simpler and more primitive one update at a time. Remember when we just played our fucking games and didn't cry for nerfs, fixes, changes and simplifications all the fucking time? Of course you don't - because you haven't been a 'gamer' before it was cool.

Use your brains, people. Next time you're tempted to use global chat to ask which monster drops wolf meat, next time you start a forum thread to ask which character you're supposed to play... think! When I grew up, there was no google, no wikipedia and no guide or walkthrough for every god damn thing. We worked things out on our own. And believe it or not, it was actually quite rewarding. And choosing, finding, fleshing out and actually playing your very own character can be a great first step. Don't be idiots. There are plenty of other games if you enjoy being dumb. But in that case, do me a favour and stay the fuck out of my RPGs.

-Cat