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So why aren't people pretending to be their characters in other kinds games? That's the one I don't get. RP'ing as an Ash Ketchum wannabe while going head to head on your gameboy with pokemon, or talking in character while going around the track in mario kart, or w/e. Talking in character as Master Chief, etc. Do non-fantasy mmo's have this issue of people pretending to be their imaginary avatar in game? I haven't noticed it that I recall.
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People do roleplay in non-fantasy games. It was a big deal in old SWG, for one. People don't tend to roleplay
other peoples' characters, which of course is exactly what Ash, Mario, and Master Chief are...
In a game that encourages you to create a character, like this one, and is as relatively open-ended as EQ, roleplay is not uncommon. A lot of that type of game seems to be fantasy based... but really any of the mmo(rpg)'s will have a similar number of people doing it in my experience.
It is interesting to note how far everquest has wandered from its roleplaying roots. In the beginning, there was an assumption that people would be roleplaying the game; hence the existence of an OOC channel vs /say and /shout, and the fact that /roleplay wasn't added until large numbers of people were playing who were antipathetic to this aspect of the "vision".
And I don't so much pretend to be my character as I pretend that my character is somebody who is not me. Even on P99, Iosefis is a Koada'Dal with a keen interest in exploration and a scholarly bent; not the avatar of a 30-something dude with nothing better to do than play a free 11-year-old mmorpg in his spare time.