Two frequent commenters and contributors–Rhoelyn and Kyraine–brought up to common hurdles to RP in an MMO: Scheduling and Burnout. While solutions for these common complaints have already been discussed, it’s worth discussing them here to figure out how to Problem Solve after one Identifies a hurdle.

Getting everyone together for an RP night isn’t easy. People have a number of obligations–family, friend, work, school, raiding–that take up a fair amount of time. But if people want to RP, they will find a way to make the RP happen. In regards to scheduling, two solutions come to mind: Find a day and stick with it or Add RP to a regular event in game. Before we can implement either solution, we have to determine which is feasible.

The first step is finding who is interested and when they are available. Both of these issues can be addressed with the following question, “Are you interested in RP and when are you free?” Once people announce their intent to RP and they share their schedule–either via email or a forum–than a day and time can be scheduled to conduct all the RP business you want.

Where this can become problematic is having two clusters of free time with little overlap between groups. If the interest is strong, one could have two groups of people running RP. This would allow for parallel stories and create some interesting dynamics when schedules (inevitably) change. One should not start working on the complicated parallel/multiple group story until the schedules are established and RP is occurring regularly.

Solving the schedule problem is relatively simple: Find a time and get people to stick with it. Burnout is more insidious, and it can take a bit of creativity to reignite RP once everyone feels crispy.

At this point in WoW’s history, we’ve been playing for around 7 years. Some people have played their characters to death. Other have just lost interest in the RP they have participated in. Some people may not even know why they’re burned out. In short, this particular hurdle needs to be examined further.

If you’re feeling “meh” about RP these days, you’re going to have to spend some time navel gazing and thinking why this isn’t working for you. Is it the expansion? Is it the people? Is it a lack of follow through from other stories? Is it just time to move on? Is it something else entirely? IF you can’t find the answer on your own, then bring it to the people in your circle. Talk to people about your feelings of burnout. They may have noticed the burnout long before you have.

A few methods to correct the burnout are as follows:

Once someone Identifies the hurdles, the next step is to figure out the possible solutions. Some of the solutions will work, others, upon review, will only serve to make our lives more difficult. But the pattern remains: Identify the issue, identify solutions to the issue. The next step? Implement.

Questions,comments, vague misgivings? Any specific methods you want to discuss in the comments?

In the next xpac, we’re headed towards not just towards Pandas, but an elevated level of conflict between the Alliance and the Horde. On a more depressing level, we also need to realize we are going to loose people as WoW hits 7 and other games launch. During these next few months, before we run out of Cata Steam,long for Mop or say goodbye, we should lay the ground work for the next chapter of our game.

Right now, we can begin to think of how our toons can fit into the Horde-Alliance conflict. Granted, some of us will avoid all the spoilers we can while MoP is building; however, it is not a huge stretch of the imagination to begin to think of how our toons will react as the war heats up. Now is the time to approach players about building rivalries and future Rp events. For instance, I may have talked to someone else about setting up future issues.

IF you are saying good bye, think about how you are leaving the game. Are you killing off your toon? Is your toon riding off into the sunset? Is your toon just going to retire? Keep in mind that as circumstances in real life change, your decisions to leave WoW may change. In short, keep the door open if there is the slightest possibility that you may want to return.

We have said it many times before. RPing is collaborative story telling. OVer the next few months, either a chapter–or a story–are going to end. Give this ending the same care as you did your “golden age” of RP.

Now let’s talk a little about kicking off the event itself. You have your ideas, you’ve got a list of NPCs and clues and all kinds of neat things for people to do.   All you need now is a group of willing players.   The last thing you want when you’re ready to roll out your story is to log in to see an empty friends list, or a friends list full of people in various dungeons and raids.  So what are some good ways to get the word out and lure the masses in?

Pick a night when people are usually available. Tuesday nights have turned into an unofficial RP night for us.  Patch days very often meant unstable servers, especially in places like Shattrath and Dalaran.  So, on nights when the Outland and Northrend servers were going splat, we were tucked away in Stormwind, hanging out and RPing.  Are there nights that a majority of your guild is around?

Pick a start time when people can be around. Feathermoon’s a west coast server with a healthy chunk of east coast players.  So if we start an event at 7:00 eastern time, chances are there will be west coast people who haven’t even left work yet.  However, starting an event at 9:00 server time means the event’s just getting going at midnight for the people on the Atlantic seaboard.

Try watching your friends list and guild list for a couple of weeks, and making note of when people are around and RP is happening.

This might mean rearranging your own schedule a bit as well.  For Bricu and I, Tuesday isn’t only RP night; it’s Lost night as well, at least for a few more weeks. The night Naiara was taken, we got the event started right at 7:00 server, minutes after Lost was over.  But that meant that the Panzercow couldn’t stick around too long on his surly dwarf, Beltar.  So while we were working out the details for the second night, we decided to start the event earlier.  Lost could be recorded.  (Funny thing is, we got lucky — it ended up being a rerun that week anyway, so we weren’t at risk for accidental spoilers after all!)

Pick a place everyone can get to, or have a way to get them there. For both nights of the Naiara and Maggie plots, we knew we had some characters attending that were below level 80.   We made sure to find places where there weren’t big angry mobs that would aggro on the level 20s — the grounds of Caer Darrow for the first night, and the mausoleum beneath Wintergarde for the second (where Thel’zan the Duskbringer spawns) — and had people available to summon them in.  That way, anyone who wanted to come out and participate, could.

Confirm with your co-conspirators. While you’re playing the scheduling game, make sure you coordinate with anyone whose presence is essential to your event.  If they can’t make it, you’ll need to figure out what you want to do — can you postpone?  If the role isn’t character-specific, can someone else do the job?  If the role is character specific, are there other ways they can make their presence felt (forum fic, follow-up RP, etc)?

Get the date out there! There are several ways you can do this:

• Write up a forum post — Put all the important information into an OOC post: who is hosting the event?  When will it be held?  Where will it take place?  The what and why parts might be a little tricky, if you’re trying to keep some surprises up your sleeve, but try to at least give your players a bit of information.  Sometimes if they know what the general theme of the night will be, it will affect which character they want to bring.  Hosting something that will require sneaking?  They might want to bring their rogue instead of their warrior who goes clanking about in his armor.

  Put links to pertinent background information in the post, if there is any.  Give your players some lead time so they can make plans to be available.  Bump the thread once or twice as the date gets closer, and encourage players to ask questions about it if they’re unclear on any aspects.

• Spread the info around. Are there several guilds that hang out together?  Ask if it’s okay to post about the event on friendly guilds’ forums in case there are any players who would like to come.  If it’s an event that’s really open to anyone who’d like to come, consider posting it on your official realm forum as well.
• Use the in-game calendar. Sending out invites via the calendar lets you get an idea of who can and can’t be around.
• Remind people with the Guild Message of the Day.  Ask your guild officers if they can set the message to reflect the date and time of the event.
• Call out in in-game channels. This, like bumping the forum thread, should be used wisely.  If you’re in a channel with RPers you’d like to invite, send out a couple of reminders via that channel, but be careful not to spam it.  Toss out a brief reminder a day or two before the event.  The day of, maybe give a couple hours’ notice (“Hey, guys, I’m running an RP event tonight at 6 server in the Park in Stormwind.  If you’d like to come or have any questions, /whisper me!”), and then a callout as the event’s starting.

Allow for fashionable lateness and RL pwnage. Even if everyone’s aware of the start time, chances are a few people will still be late.   That’s okay!  Build in 10-15 minutes or so for people to wrap up whatever they’re doing in-game, or for them to get out of traffic, get in the door, and kick off their shoes.

Be flexible. Sometimes things just don’t shake out the way you’ve planned:  a co-GM’s video card dies; the server won’t stay up for more than ten minutes at a stretch; a friend has a crisis and needs you there; everything’s in place, but you’ve got a case of the plague and feel miserable;  only two people show up. If any of these or similar reasons are making you think, “Y’know, it’s just not a good night for this,” it’s okay to postpone. Let people know you’re cancelling as early as possible.   If you have a new date in mind, get it out there as quickly as you can.  If you can’t be online at event-time, ask someone else to field the “Hey, what’s going on with Event X?” questions so no one’s left in the dark.

I’m sure I’ve missed some good ways to promote your event and get the word out to your players.  What other things have you done to let your RP group know that mischief is about to commence?