Kerra Pride...

What does your toon believe in?

No, I don't mean 'what do you believe in', I don't do religion or politics. I really DO mean "What does your toon believe in?"

The little RP story below this is a barely fictionalised account of an afternoons game session in EQ2 when I took my Kerran Ranger out to do "History of Kerra", a nice little quest sequence that has three linked phases, each involving visiting three areas and learning a little at each about the origin myth of the kerra, their heritage and culture and of their world view.

There is a whole series of these quests to do, one for each species at least, and I'm already looking forward to going back and building my research library up a bit more.

By introducing elements of a shared culture to the players thru their characters like this, EQ2 builds more depth into the game, encourages the players to invest time and emotion in their character and also gives something interesting to do as a change from hack and slashing our way through the local population.

Other MMO's I've played in tend to either ignore any sort of 'culture' for the characters, other than a token mention of 'race A have advanced technology and like pink socks, race B hate race A but like pink socks.' etc.

SWG drops players into the middle of the Civil War between the Alliance and the Empire. Sadly little is done to fill the players in on the background of the war or to give them a feeling of 'place' dependant on the role that they are choosing for themselves.

At one time you created a character and chose a starter town dependant on the sort of background you wanted to give your toon, but that was filtered out and now everyone begins life on a space station where, confusingly, the Imperial inclined players go through exactly the same route to planetside as do the rebel and neutral players.

Species, such as the wookiee and trandoshan should actively hate each other. Some choices, to follow the light or dark sde of the force, should MATTER and have an impact on the players characters choices as the game develops for them.

Each species should have a short series of quests that informs them of their heritage and shapes, from an RP PoV, their world view of other species. Likewise for faction and FS.