Let's take a breath from all those huge MMORPGs on the market for awhile and focus on their roots. One factor that seem to disappear from today's MMORPG is the "Roleplaying" part, specially the local games in the Philippines. It seems to be a long time since I have experienced a game with genuine "Roleplay" element in them, of course, this always depends on the people who play the game, not the game itself. The main source of this loss in "Roleplay" is the fact that recent games today are too competitive, no one will care that their playing an Elf or any fictional creature, all they care about is how strong their character is. But I'm not gonna rant about how MMORPGs are changing over the years, instead, I'm going to introduce to you a game that grew itself into a "Roleplaying" community, something that most MMORPGs missed over the years.

Before you continue, I must remind you that all the experience with this game that I had was 3-4 years ago, since it is heavily based on a roleplaying community, it is subjected to change.

Planeshift is constant changing MMORPG that is on a (last I heard) pre-alpha development stage. But I'm not going to talk about it's features, because at first look, it really doesn't have much to offer considering the competition between MMORPGs these days. What Planeshift offers is a unique community that did not forget the "Roleplay" in RPG. Never have I experienced a community wherein if you see a dwarf in-game, he/she literally acts/talks like a dwarf, saying something like "looks up at you and greets". Surprisingly, these kinds of simple "Roleplay" doesn't seem to be as corny as you would think, it's because the community accepts it and embraces it unlike recent MMORPGs wherein, even if you try to roleplay, players will just laugh at you. To give you a better perspective on the roleplaying, imagine the chat system has a separate section of roleplay and OOC (out of character). Aside from roleplaying in the game, it can also be done at their forums, this helps people perceive your character in-game. An example of this is when you create a guild, you are expected to introduce your guild in the forum, as well as it's purpose and alignment. If you roleplay as a villain then the community will perceive your character as that, but not the person. Perhaps if you want to join a conversation in game they might welcome you with something like this: "Reema senses a dark presence approaching her from behind thus looking over her shoulder and sees Xephan drawing near". But all these roleplaying around the world of Planeshift doesn't spark any genuine "hate" from players because as much as possible, all the roleplay starts and ends with your character. You log in and talk to other people is a reward itself. In my opinion the other features like crafting and killing monsters are just bonuses for you to do alone or with some in-game friends.

To end things off, I just hope that more MMORPGs adapt to the community of Planeshift, not only the roleplaying, but the fact that what you do in game stays in game. If you are a true gamer you would know that there are times players confuse the boundaries of game and real life thus breaking it on some occasions. This kind of community brings out the best in games and their players thus heightening the game experience even further.