Experience Idea

[Boadicea]

Tough sell but good feed back non the less

Never really seen the big deal over XP to be honest. I don't RP 'cos I expect a reward for it but because I enjoy it. To dip into sickly sweetness for a moment, the RP is the reward in itself. The best times I have had so far on Sundren is when I haven't earned any XP for whatever reason (ie partied with a too higher level char or just because all I have done is wander around talking to people).

In short we come here to RP and any reward is a bonus.

As I said some RP for it and in itself, but they are usually vets who have a decent amount of PnP or online RP under their belts.

I knew I would hear this comment.

I do find it interesting that those who consider themselves true RPers see gaining xp as a bad thing. Or LvLing as something that just happens to be part of the game but not something to think about. If that is really the case then no xp should be given for RPing at all.(yuk to that)

I just thought this was a decent idea to hook new starting blood and help migrate players into points of interest on the server. I will tell you that starting out on a RP server is daunting sometimes, and many who would develop into good RPers and additions to the server lose interest.

I actually think this server rewards high xp for adventuring, and perhaps this could balance that out allowing it to be lowered and this form of reward make up for it.

Again I close with the points, most who even answer these posts are the more truest RPers and I have plenty of respect for their playing skills. The ones who will never see it won't comment, but would benefit well from it.

And mainly, I know the team works their butts off for the environment they have provided because they enjoy it, and have done a stellar job and have many things on their plate, I don't expect any radical suggestions or time consuming ones to jump to the front or even be considered quickly.

[Blue_Wyrm]

I will tell you that starting out on a RP server is daunting sometimes, and many who would develop into good RPers and additions to the server lose interest.

There is much truth in this. RPing is really something that develops with time, I have rarely seen someone step into the whole thing and be brilliant at it from the start, it takes a while to take a hang of it and truely enjoy it. Interest rises when situations make you laugh, that's when you realize that much fun can be derived from acting a character on an online game, and from then on you progressively dive into it. I

I know I've been through that personally, and I came here with another friend who had very little experience with roleplay in any game, but he had his doses of fun at times on Sundren and he's really making a lot of efforts to improve his english and participate in various situations.

This game isn't perfect. The DMs just can't know that this person is doing exceptionnal efforts, even if I know it, and my friend might take a long while before receiving his first RP-cookie from any DM simply because he can't "shine" and be noticed amongst the crowd. The DMs have no way to know what goes on into each player's head, that you have such a brilliant plan ahead for your character, that you play a silent, scheming shady guy, or a stupid brute with a deep background to it. They just see someone who rarely speaks, or that just says very basic sentences. Where I'm going to is that this stuff is all so subjective that focusing the XP system on RP is, even with the best intents, going to cause disappointement amongst the playerbase.

I'm just alright with the simple-stupid ways of RP cookies and event RP XP. It's really a gratifying thing to receive, even if it's just 10 xp, it's a token of appreciation, a DM took 10 seconds of his time to clicky you and say "Cool, keep it up!". In an ideal world, each player would have an assigned DM that took deep care of his character's story and followed him every step of the way (haha yeah right I know). That would be the ultimate video game, with a thinking, feeling person leading your adventures with everything centered around yourself. But... well... even the mad skillz of the Sundren Team can't achieve that.

[sparkeh]

I do find it interesting that those who consider themselves true RPers see gaining xp as a bad thing. Or LvLing as something that just happens to be part of the game but not something to think about. If that is really the case then no xp should be given for RPing at all.(yuk to that)

After reading that passage I reread the thread have to say I don't think that anyone has said that gaining xp is a bad thing. After all RPing is about character development and without xp you would stand still.

The thrust of my post was that I feel xp for RPing should be a bonus and not expected or artificially doled out.

[Rhifox]

Personally I don't mind nor expect exp for RPing. The DnD leveling system is very anti-RP (despite how much they try to claim it's an RP system), and so I treat it as such---that character development is something that I get from RPing which cannot be estimated by level or experience points at all but is instead purely the relationships, confidence, personality, and so on of a character. That is what you are leveling when RPing, and it's all based on how often you RP, how you RP, and so on. When you RP, you gain experience in character relationships, political allies and enemies, and so on. You don't need to get a boost towards your next power level (which only allows you to kill higher level monsters, and doesn't have any real boost in how you can RP). DnD built the original level grinding system and that is ALL it is, a pointless waste of time killing monsters and getting loot so you can get to higher levels and better loot in order to be able to kill better monsters so you can get even more higher levels and better loot. The endless, completely OOC gaming loop that has become such an integrated part of RPGs that people don't even stop to consider how crappy of a system it is for roleplaying. You don't need experience points for RP.

If I want DnD levels, then I treat it as the grind it is and go out there, solo whenever I can, and just grind it out. I don't treat gaining those levels via grinding as a big part of my IC development, as my character would be learning her trade from studying and practice, not monster-slaying (as, in all actuality, my character going out to dungeons is something she'd never realistically do if I could play her how I want to. But that's the big flaw with the DnD system... it's a class-based leveling system only based around combat, not RP. Compared to the level-less system from Vampire the Masquerade which is very, very RP oriented and does not require monster-killing at all to get experience).

*rants*

[GodBeastX]

We already know people leave because they don't start as fast as they want to. Being honest? Who cares? If people need 200 exp a kill to stay on the server or exp flooding them all the time, that just trivializes their levels and if that's their sole drive then they can play on another server.

Quest system (God Bless it) is going to already add the the rewards gained. Players in groups can gain a level in no time with experience up to 130 a kill (Yes, you have to kill things 5 levels above you but some people can manage this) and DMs drop experience all over the place. So, in truth, I don't find experience lacking at all. If people want to be level 8 on day 1, then yes, it's lacking for them.

I wish I could give 0 experience for a kill and people only level through RP, but that's too much to ask with our low number of DMs and wouldn't be fair for those around when DMs are not. The quest system is the alternative.

[Aux]

Surely your playing a game thats not suited to you? I thought Dungeons and Dragons was about... well dungeons and dragons.. fantasy adventuring. If you want to seperate it into its base make up then fine- role playing and level grinding- but shouldnt you just go play something else if one or the other annoys you and you dont want to go 'adventuring' or dungeoneering or whatever. Maybe im just old school (old skool fool?), i like my Realms lore, my adventuring in its many forms, and all that cobblers. Getting xp for typing stuff seems, well.. daft.. what about the strong silent types who play wonderful characters, but dont blab their flowery speech so much, what about the old schoolers that dont want their online DnD to be a sad parody of the soaps on tv?
Derailing the topic a bit.... personaly i wouldnt want auto generated xp for rp/typing, prefer it from DM quests (which i tend to lose out on as im GMT- oh boo hoo) and running with a party on some insane dungeon crawl, mixing the adventure and rp. Goes back to that same old "the rp doesnt have to stop once you leave the camp/tavern".




Remember, remember, the 5th of November

[Rhifox]

(oh boy, another long RP essay from me xP)

Surely your playing a game thats not suited to you? I thought Dungeons and Dragons was about... well dungeons and dragons.. fantasy adventuring.

And fantasy adventuring is inherently cliche and boring. Adventuring (which is a term I've never actually liked, either) is only worthwhile if there is good character development involved, in my opinion. The big problem is that, adventuring, by its definition, is a bunch of curious or money-seeking buffoons risking their necks going through an apparently endless supply of caves and old ruins that so happen to still be filled with countless dumb monsters and treasure. That bores me. I prefer intrigue, politics, character development, conflicts between two opposing sentient parties with their own motives and strong points for support, complete with the middle ground of characters getting thrown into said intrigue without ever wanting to end up there at all.

If you want to seperate it into its base make up then fine- role playing and level grinding- but shouldnt you just go play something else if one or the other annoys you and you dont want to go 'adventuring' or dungeoneering or whatever.

If something else existed, sure would. But that's something people never seem to take into account... other things DON'T exist. Even if it isn't Dungeons and Dragons, it is always some other carbon copy of it. I've been RPing for 8-10 years now, and the only thing close to an RP-centric, non-combat-required RP system I've found is Vampire the Masquerade, an amazing PnP system that no one plays because a bunch of sex-starved goth vampire LARPers tarnished its reputation, and blocked out by DnD's much wider audience. But then you look at video games like Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, a game that you actually have the option to avoid or talk your way out of most combat situations and still get the exp for completing the mission because, for once, you get rewarded for taking the smart way out (biggest reason that DnD rogues fail: because avoiding combat doesn't get you experience. It is impossible to play a smart rogue and a high level rogue. You have to either play a smart rogue that avoids combat that never levels (who is thus limited in what he can accomplish because all of his avoiding-combat skills require him to gain combat levels to increase) or a dumb rogue that is a high level). The funnest areas of that game were innovative ones that didn't have any combat whatsoever (Oceanside Mansion, for instance)

Maybe im just old school (old skool fool?), i like my Realms lore, my adventuring in its many forms, and all that cobblers.

Lore yes, adventuring no. This is not me saying that I don't like combat. This is purely the 'adventuring' idea of a party of people finding yet another random ruin or dragon and plundering it for its treasure for no damn reason that gets to me. It prevents those of us who actually want to play smart or non-risk-taking characters to either sit out or be forced to go combat to join in, yet have no reason for joining in. This is something that annoyed me directly last night. Saulus ran an event in the Necropolis. Necromancers popping up, undead attacking etc. All the other characters decided to move forwards and go save the day. Realistically, my character would run, there was nothing blocking the exit. The necromancers even sat there with the gate locked giving the players a chance to run, telling them to. Yet everyone just stood there, being all resolute and pointlessly heroic. And it wasn't just the paladins. Yet if I had run, then I would have no RP, because everyone was either here or off grinding places. So I am forced to partake in something my character would not do.

I'm fine with forced combat situations and dungeon crawling, that is fine. But it's when you have the choice of continuing or not that gets to me. Because any smart character would not continue to risk their lives pointlessly. Yet are forced to because you can't get RP otherwise.

Getting xp for typing stuff seems, well.. daft.. what about the strong silent types who play wonderful characters, but dont blab their flowery speech so much, what about the old schoolers that dont want their online DnD to be a sad parody of the soaps on tv?

Neither of those situations require adventuring. They require reason. That is the biggest issue. Adventuring as it stands is a pointless, risky treasure hunt. Strong silent types are actually the ones who are HARMED by adventuring systems because they tend to usually be the smart ones that WON'T go running off to throw away their lives to crawl through a dungeon just for fun. They are usually direct towards a specific mission, they wouldn't go do something that isn't involved directly with their personal goal.

That's the problem. REASON for adventuring. That's what DnD always fails to do. They try and lure people with gold and experience, instead of giving characters actual, real reasons for doing what they do. Beyond horribly cliched saving the world from a new yet old risen evil of an ancient forgotten empire thus forcing the characters to go through the same dungeon plots, of course, which aren't actually a proper reason because they never provide good reasons for evil, indifferent, or casual characters for going on it. Throughout the NWN2 OC for instance, from the first Githyanki attack to the end of the game, all I wanted to do was have my character be able to say "You want the shard? HERE, TAKE IT!"

[Boadicea]

Hmmmm...well

Surely your playing a game thats not suited to you? I thought Dungeons and Dragons was about... well dungeons and dragons.. fantasy adventuring. If you want to seperate it into its base make up then fine- role playing and level grinding- but shouldnt you just go play something else if one or the other annoys you and you dont want to go 'adventuring' or dungeoneering or whatever. Maybe im just old school (old skool fool?), i like my Realms lore, my adventuring in its many forms, and all that cobblers. Getting xp for typing stuff seems, well.. daft.. what about the strong silent types who play wonderful characters, but dont blab their flowery speech so much, what about the old schoolers that dont want their online DnD to be a sad parody of the soaps on tv?
Derailing the topic a bit.... personaly i wouldnt want auto generated xp for rp/typing, prefer it from DM quests (which i tend to lose out on as im GMT- oh boo hoo) and running with a party on some insane dungeon crawl, mixing the adventure and rp. Goes back to that same old "the rp doesnt have to stop once you leave the camp/tavern".

Remember, remember, the 5th of November

Not sure which post this was directed at, but I love adventuring, its RPing as far as I am concerned. Fighters fight...and they can't get better sitting in a tavern jaw jacking.

I actually think this server is high on xp for adventuring, and lvls rather fast; my specific point was to agument this with xp rewards, when non adventuring RP occurs, or along with it what ever the builders deem the best balance.

The dark, strong quite type... still uses the keypad to interact...*You see a dark clad figure sitting in the far right booth, his face half covered in shadow...*

And old school? I started with the thin blue basic book, so I have a bit of background, and feel this game is all RP no matter what the enviroment is, bar room, fireside, afeild, or down in a hole.

I am enjoying reading the points of view, each has their own opinion and are intitled to it.

But as I stated in my original post, I am leary of this suggestion thread, because as I have seen two post to this one already, some get to personal about their opinions. So please state yours, don't act like others opions are low brow. See it as a chance to get to know others on the server.

*looks for all the xp from all this typing*

[Blue_Wyrm]

I just want to mention that I enjoy it every time Rhifox hatches one of these posts where she makes fun parralels to expose her serious points. ^_^ I understand how you feel about this, and I can't say I don't share some of your views, but it's kind of a dead-end in this situation.

I made my second character a pirate partly because I realized my gnome would -never- have the courage and bad-assness required to even enter the goblin cave or turn a camp of gnolls into living torches, Drado would just piss his pants. I did it because it was all OOC, because I wanted to have a look around the server, dungeon crawl with my friends, progress my character, etc...

Am I suggesting to only make foolhardy characters? Well... to some measure, yes. Adventurers are those who are outgoing enough to take some risks and ripe the rewards. Those that don't, apart from wizards, simply do not make it to Level 1. Duchesse Whatchamacalit, Lord of Waterdeep and shrewd politician who keeps to her audiences and directs a sprawling city, is still Level 0 according to the system. Duke MiumMcburger, also Lord of Waterdeep but who has ties to the Waterdeep underworld and once was part of it, probably has some rogue levels, because he lived in the rough for a while. Well to me it all makes sense, anyway.

EDIT: I slipped a bit, but anyways, what I meant was that in D&D, "Level" refers semantically to "Adventurer Level" more than "Character Level", which is much broader in sense. It seems to be the flaw you see in it all, but well, yeah, as I said it's a dead-end.

[Fajitaduke]

I wish I could give 0 experience for a kill and people only level through RP, but that's too much to ask with our low number of DMs and wouldn't be fair for those around when DMs are not. The quest system is the alternative.

Oh, wow. A server without a per-kill XP system would be a dream for me. Quests and DMs as the sole source, no grinding... but yes, I suppose it would require a massive staff.

Oh, and I'm relatively new, with only a couple of low level characters in the vault, and even I tend to think the available XP is a bit excessive for an RP server. Though I do really enjoy playing here.

[Vekin]

To me its all about having fun. I fall more into the Aux camp of DnD but I know others will have different views, and express them as well

The xp given out at the moment to me is fine as it is. If you want to RP all night and not head off into danger then do it and have fun with it! If you want to clean out evil/good by might of arms then do that and have fun at it

[Poor_Otis]

Surely your playing a game thats not suited to you? I thought Dungeons and Dragons was about... well dungeons and dragons.. fantasy adventuring. If you want to seperate it into its base make up then fine- role playing and level grinding- but shouldnt you just go play something else if one or the other annoys you and you dont want to go 'adventuring' or dungeoneering or whatever. Maybe im just old school (old skool fool?), i like my Realms lore, my adventuring in its many forms, and all that cobblers. Getting xp for typing stuff seems, well.. daft.. what about the strong silent types who play wonderful characters, but dont blab their flowery speech so much, what about the old schoolers that dont want their online DnD to be a sad parody of the soaps on tv?
Derailing the topic a bit.... personaly i wouldnt want auto generated xp for rp/typing, prefer it from DM quests (which i tend to lose out on as im GMT- oh boo hoo) and running with a party on some insane dungeon crawl, mixing the adventure and rp. Goes back to that same old "the rp doesnt have to stop once you leave the camp/tavern".




Remember, remember, the 5th of November

Agree. I like a good balance between combat and roleplaying and this is as close to what my old NWN I server had. Mus not take this stuff too seriously folks. It is a game, and if you're not having fun, it's time to unplug for a while maybe or find another server/game.

I also agree with the person who said the exp awards and leveling pace is high for PWs. Compared to my old server, leveling here is about 3x as fast. It didn't encourage grinding, as some might say, but it was simply geared towards the middle levels, 5-15. Leveling to 5 was fast and then it slowed down to a crawl at about 15. Only DM exp was granted over level 20 also. Worked nicely, as trying to balance combat for characters over level 15 gets very difficult.

Anyway, looking forward to quests, as I know many others are.

[Aux]

Rhifox, damn you and your well put and well thought out reasonable posts

Boadicea.. not it wasnt aimed at you, more Rhifox, but really just anyone willing to read it

When i say 'adventuring' i dont really just mean dungeon crawling and killing any monster in sight, i mean the whole kit and kaboodle- political 'quests', rogues shennanigans and thievery, nefarious goings on, thwarting plots etc etc.

[Machiavelli]

Roleplaying vs Rollplaying

Aha! The dispute in this thread is truly a classic, it's the old Roleplaying vs Rollplaying discussion... always bound to bring out militancy on all sides However, I fear the context (playing an online d&d game) actually warps the discussion into something without much meaning (or at least something where hardline positions become problematic). I reckon responding to Rhifox (with whom I'd usually be in agreement) might highlight some of the problems with trying to have this debate.

In response to Rhifox's various posts.

Were I running a P&P game, whatever the system (and there are more than just the white wolf games like vampire which aren't heavy on the sorts of mechanics which seem to bother you), I would come down entirely on your side (I typically used to run games like CoC, where combat was largely a non-starter, or C-Punk where it was usually just a case of whoever happened to have a gun in their hand was obviously going to win therefore dice-rols could be happily omitted). In that sort of scenario, character and plot development can take first place, and worrying about game mechanics can be largely forgotten. Realistically, any "system" can be made effectively diceless, level-less etc by a GM who can be bothered to do so. Three points about this in the current scenario though...

1) It's a video game; even moreso it's a d&d video game. You pointed out yourself that you don't like the way these sort of things work in d&d, but ironically it's exactly how heavily based in dice rolls the system is, and how thoroughly that mechanic has been developed, that makes it such a suitable system to produce a videogame like this from. Also... it's d&d after all, consider what character development is likely to mean for many of the available "classes", to some extent it's bound up with levels, and also it's going to be linked to exactly the sort of 'adventuring' activities you mention (Bob the barbarian boasts about his prowess at slaying goblins whilst drinking in the tavern, you get the idea). To some extent, that's the game, and part of the attraction for many people. I think it speaks well of this server (and is one of the reasons it's so popular), that there is alot going on that takes place outside of the mechanics of adventure and level that you speak of; that's what makes it an RP server, and personally that's why I like it. You can have all that, but the leveling mechanics aren't going to go away as long as it's d&d.

2) The sort of interactions that you talked about (intrigue, politics etc...) are of course the bestest and most fun of things, and as you rightly pointed out they require multiple sentient parties (other players, maybe DMs depending on the circumstance), the problem with this as opposed to a P&P game is that the right people simply may not be on. No matter how much of this sort of thing you get involved in, there are going to be times when it's just not an option, no matter how active you are. Going 'adventuring' gives something else to do, can still lead to some fun RP with the right party (particularly if there's a good/fun reason for doing it).

3) Player preferences vary, and for many people a good dungeon run is exactly what they like with their RP. For many people, including many good RPers with interesting charcters, this is the very essence of the game (once again, it's d&d). Consider that having a good RP while slaying monsters may in fact be what alot of people who are actually good players want to spend a chunk of their time doing. Some people want more story/intrigue/politics (such as yourself), whereas others want more of the tradtitional d&d fare (different mixes for different people).


Hmmm, I hope all that made some sort of sense (bit braindead today). Anyway, always interesting to see this debate crop up. I just don't think it really applies in this context!

Peace y'all!

[Rhifox]

a sprawling city, is still Level 0 according to the system. Duke MiumMcburger, also Lord of Waterdeep but who has ties to the Waterdeep underworld and once was part of it, probably has some rogue levels, because he lived in the rough for a while. Well to me it all makes sense, anyway.[/quote]

Yeah, that's the point of wizardry, and is why I have it. Most other classes are combat-oriented classes where it is appropriate that they gain experience through combat. Fighter for instance, is something that you really can't advance without being thrown into combat time and again and bu

I made my second character a pirate partly because I realized my gnome would -never- have the courage and bad-assness required to even enter the goblin cave or turn a camp of gnolls into living torches, Drado would just piss his pants. I did it because it was all OOC, because I wanted to have a look around the server, dungeon crawl with my friends, progress my character, etc...

Exactly. Yet these characters, when they ARE thrust into those situations, are wonderful to RP. Courage-less characters are wonderful to play so long as they get a sufficient reason to get thrown into dungeons and so on. My biggest problem in most RP situations is that I want to be able to RP fear, but that if I do so, I would have no reason for being in the fearful situation and should rightfully run away from it.

[quote]Am I suggesting to only make foolhardy characters? Well... to some measure, yes. Adventurers are those who are outgoing enough to take some risks and ripe the rewards. Those that don't, apart from wizards, simply do not make it to Level 1. Duchesse Whatchamacalit, Lord of Waterdeep and shrewd politician who keeps to her audiences and directsilding on that combat instinct and intuition. Wizards on the other hand are characters who are trying to learn how to be powerful without any risk to themselves. Personally I don't even consider my character to have a hitpoint bar. I consider her to have a constant magical shield over her that protects her from hits, a weaker but persistent Mage Armor-ish thing. The shield dropping is her willpower and ability to maintain the shield dropping, and when I take potions or get healed, it is her forcing more willpower into the shield to keep it up. When I get knocked down to 0 or less HP, that's when someone managed to finally break through the shield. This is because my character would break down and surrender at even the smallest scratch from a sword or whatnot.

Unfortunately, we're forced into going into dungeons grinding over and over again to gain levels. This is why I try to grind solo whenever possible (though it's impossible for wizards at low levels), as that way I can say that my character gaining increased ability was simply from research and practice rather than running around blowing shit up in a dungeon over and over without having anyone to say otherwise.

EDIT: I slipped a bit, but anyways, what I meant was that in D&D, "Level" refers semantically to "Adventurer Level" more than "Character Level", which is much broader in sense. It seems to be the flaw you see in it all, but well, yeah, as I said it's a dead-end.

The flaw is that the system is only designed for characters like that. While some powerful characters might not have character levels, those characters are NPCs only because most RP situations revolve around combat oriented adventures, and most non-combat-oriented skills require either a commoner-class (Expert, etc) which are never implemented in games like this, or gaining character levels, just to be able to increase them. As I said, the smart rogue with low level vs the dumb rogue with high level thing. The smart rogue can't be a smart rogue because it needs to be a dumb rogue in order to get levels in order to be able to increase its smart-rogueish abilities.

Rhifox, damn you and your well put and well thought out reasonable posts

Boadicea.. not it wasnt aimed at you, more Rhifox, but really just anyone willing to read it

When i say 'adventuring' i dont really just mean dungeon crawling and killing any monster in sight, i mean the whole kit and kaboodle- political 'quests', rogues shennanigans and thievery, nefarious goings on, thwarting plots etc etc.

The problem is that dungeon crawling tends to take up the majority of it. As I said, the inability to level off of the 'whole kit and kaboodle' and the forcing of grinding the same dungeon over and over again in order to gain levels in order to be able to participate in the better 'kit and kaboodle' things.

2) The sort of interactions that you talked about (intrigue, politics etc...) are of course the bestest and most fun of things, and as you rightly pointed out they require multiple sentient parties (other players, maybe DMs depending on the circumstance), the problem with this as opposed to a P&P game is that the right people simply may not be on.

By sentient, I didn't necessarily mean players or DMs. I meant smart opponents. Not monsters. Monsters I hate. It's demonizing the enemy to the point of beast status and turns character development into making everyone hunters. Or mass-retard-slaughtering psychopaths killing the endless supplies of poor-intelligence races. The Dark Advent makes a much better opponent than the Spittlefists, because the Dark Advent is sentient and has the ability to know what it wants, why it wants it, logical and moral reasons for wanting it, and so on. While goblins and ogres and so on are given the blunt 'evil' label, and are never anything but. One of the DMs that did the goblin rebellion thing awhile back ago had a fresh take on that, and I wish we could see something like that expanded, giving the non-sentient organizations at least some duality. Having tons of pointlessly evil creatures out there to kill is a form of demonizing and thus diluting the moral consequences of killing. If we go out there and kill people, there should be a clear moral issue with doing so. Sentient organizations can have defendable reasons which makes it possible to force characters to ask themselves 'why are we fighting? Is the other side right?'.

Look to WoW for an example of this. The best enemy factions in the game were the ones that had real reasoning behind their actions. The Defias Brotherhood was a band of former architects that were not given their payment when they rebuilt Stormwind and cast out of the city for requesting it, thus were opposing the city out of revenge for an obviously immoral action. It was something that, if you thought about it, your character could in fact find sympathy for. Same thing with the Scarlet Crusade, which was a zealous crusader faction against the undead, obviously doing the work of the good guys, yet their hard stance about having non-Crusaders in the Plaguelands (killing them in case they might be undead spies etc) made them out to be an enemy faction. Yet your character had every ability to step back and realize that the Scarlet Crusade was actually a good faction, and was actually doing more successful work against the Scourge than the Argent Dawn, the 'good guy' undead hunting faction.

They also provide for a much better dungeon experience. Sentient dungeons don't need a DM to be there, you have the ability to tailor the dungeon to be its own self-contained story. Again, WoW was amazing in their ability to take dungeon crawling and give it life by the way they built the encounters. Bossfights against intelligent mobs in the game were some of the funnest I've seen so far.

In DnD terms, the best factions are the humanoid ones. Luskan, the Zhentarim, Thay, etc. Though even then DnD is big on demonizing all of them with the typical 'arrogant and dumb outwardly evil' traits, though they have started changing this which is good (Thay for instance becoming mysterious and powerful merchants instantly turned them from yet another boring evil tyrant nation into a unique and original "antivillain" nation (antivillain meaning they're still villains, but they have a quality that allows them to be allies with the heroes). Thay was completely demonized and boring in the original 'Dreams of the Red Wizards' handbook from 1988, but nowadays they've become a very unique and intriguing power in DnD lore)



Okay, my post is getting too long, so I'll just cut it off here.