The debate over the actual place of role-playing in today's MMOs is a tired tune already. The debate's been raging since the days of isometric MMOs, and times when screams of "Por Ort Grav!" was all the rage.

The problem now, we guess, is that the masses have a very different definition of what a role-playing game is. Often it involves totally eschewing the role-playing aspect. Although that's just a very hasty generalization from us.

IGN's Wow Vault reports that a World of Warcraft player asked about this, and about the animosity that people who RP face while in the game. Below is Blizzard's Nethaera's response to said player, it provides us with great insight into this eternal struggle between the Role-Playing and Game aspects of MMORPGs.

People are often uninformed of what RP is all about or feel intimidated by it because they feel if they attempt it they will be teased. There is a lot of extremism on both ends of the spectrum. There are those that shun anyone that can't RP well and thus make it so the people that try and don't do well stop trying and never learn to enjoy it and there are those that shun anyone that RPs because they think it's stupid or feel intimidated by it. There are many that wrongly believe that RP = carebear when that isn't true either. PvP and RP can go together very well it's just not something you normally can do well while doing the other simultaneously. Of course there are always macros for that.

There IS a middle-ground however that people don't realize is there. The middle-ground consists of those that enjoy doing it and don't force others to do it too and there are those that respect RP that don't do it but don't harass those that do.

I will RP with people and see how they respond. If they play along, then great. If they don't, it's no skin off my back. I respect that. If they try to push my buttons, I'm more like to go a little toward the extreme for the fun of it to see if I can get a laugh out of them. ;)

The middle-ground seems very reasonable.

So, is it just WoW that is experiencing this problem? Is it perhaps easier to actually engage in some role-playing in other MMORPGs like say Tabula Rasa or EVE? What about Second-Life? Is SL a massively Multiplayer Role-Playing without the Game, or is it just a bunch of people playing doll house using real money? We'll let you folks discuss that one.