Filed under: All the World's a Stage (Roleplaying)

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. In World of Warcraft, that player is you! Each week, Anne Stickney brings you All the World's a Stage with helpful hints, tips and tricks on the art of roleplay in WoW.

Maybe you're in the beta, or maybe you aren't -- either way, it's hard to avoid information coming from the beta servers. If you're a roleplayer, spoiler information is one of those double-edged swords. Sure, it's nice to know what's coming ... but at the same time, you don't want advance information leaching into your roleplay, especially if your friends and fellow roleplayers are avoiding spoilers themselves.

Thankfully, today is spoiler-free -- well, unless you count some truly gorgeous screenshots of Pandaria's scenery as spoilers, that is. While Pandaria doesn't really appear to have a neutral capital hub at this point in the beta, most of Pandaria's towns and villages are decidedly neutral. This makes them ideal roleplay hubs for both Alliance and Horde and offers something we haven't seen since the days of Dalaran: locations where both factions can roleplay out in the open and interact. Given the rising tensions between Alliance and Horde, it's an excellent chance to grab some compelling roleplay.

Plus, did I mention Pandaria is gorgeous? Seriously, you guys, once you visit, you'll never want to leave. Let's look at just a few of the locations Pandaria has to offer that are ripe for roleplay.

Sure, the expansion's not quite out yet, but that doesn't mean you can't start planning for it as a roleplayer if you want to. The pandaren race features some really amazing, beautifully animated characters with an intriguing story ripe for roleplay purposes. While some roleplayers may already be happily roaming around the beta servers, others have only bits of information to work with. The process of coming up with a roleplaying character can take a little time, so if you're wanting to create a pandaren when the expansion is released, why not start pondering possibilities now?

Though pandaren can be played by both Alliance and Horde, they cannot speak to each other once they've made that decision -- a decision steeped in the storyline of the Wandering Isle. However, this does mean that you can play a pandaren character no matter which side of the faction fence you happen to be on. And with the kind of history and story the pandaren have behind them, it'd be well worth looking into if you're looking for a different kind of character to roleplay with.

This is a primer of pandaren lore, and as such, it'll contain a little spoiler content. However, because of the unique nature of playable pandaren characters, we won't be divulging any major story events that take place in Pandaria. This information will mainly be starting zone info. If you're looking to avoid all Mists spoilers, however, you may want to pass on what's after the break.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. In World of Warcraft, that player is you! Each week, Anne Stickney brings you All the World's a Stage with helpful hints, tips and tricks on the art of roleplay in WoW.

Although MyRoleplay, which we covered last week, is a pretty popular addon with the bonus of being fairly simple to use, it can still be a little tricky for a beginner. MyRoleplay offers a lot of options to fill out, and trying to decide what all those options are can be confusing for someone just starting out with roleplay. Another option for beginner roleplayers as far as descriptive addons go is FlagRSP2 -- or its alternate version, FlagRSP Cataclysm.

Both versions have fewer options than MyRoleplay in terms of what you can plug in about your character, but that very bare-bones simplicity can be a blessing for new roleplayers. If you'd like to just give and get the basics of those roleplaying around you, FlagRSP in either version may be right up your alley. But before you turn your nose up at simplicity, you may want to read on; FlagRSP has some interesting features that MyRoleplay doesn't cover.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. In World of Warcraft, that player is you! Each week, Anne Stickney brings you All the World's a Stage with helpful hints, tips and tricks on the art of roleplay in WoW.

For a beginner roleplayer, reading all the articles we've covered on character development, descriptions, history, time lines and everything else can be pretty intimidating. Of course, I happily talk about writing character descriptions and history, but if you're just starting out with roleplay, you may not know where these things fit in to the roleplaying experience. The answer to that, of course, is addons!

There are a ton of different addons crafted specifically for roleplayers, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. We'll be going over several over the course of the next few weeks and showing you how to use these addons to full advantage. Today, we're going to start with one of the simplest to use: MyRoleplay.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. In World of Warcraft, that player is you! Each week, Anne Stickney brings you All the World's a Stage with helpful hints, tips and tricks on the art of roleplay in WoW.

Who are you? It's the single most important question you can ask about the character you're roleplaying. When making a character, all too often roleplayers tend to focus on one element over any other, whether it's appearance or an accent or that one thing that their character is after. But presenting a character with nothing behind them other than that one focus usually results in a character that's a little boring, a little stale, one-dimensional.

This is where questionnaires come in. You've likely seen variants of these types of questionnaires on roleplaying forums, and they seemed like a fun game. But they aren't just for fun -- these questionnaires are also incredibly useful character development tools. And if you take time to think about your answers, they can provide a lot of helpful insights that will help you answer that all-important question -- who are you?

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. In World of Warcraft, that player is you! Each week, Anne Stickney brings you All the World's a Stage with helpful hints, tips and tricks on the art of roleplay in WoW.

Sure, some people want to roleplay serious characters and serious situations. Maybe you like roleplaying the fight against Deathwing, or maybe your character has some major issues in their life to work out, or maybe they've got some dire task they need to accomplish. Everyone would like their character to be important and significant within their circle of friends, whether they're playing the hero or playing the villain.

But there's a different class of roleplayer out there who looks at the Warcraft world in a decidedly different way. You know who I'm talking about -- the class clowns, the cut-ups, the jokers. The roleplayers who can't seem to take anything seriously, nor do they want to. After all, we're playing a game! It's a game with giant talking cows, squid-faced spacemen, tragic werewolves and greedy little green guys who would do anything for a buck. Of course these characters are really fun to play ... but what happens when they go too far? How funny is just funny enough without being irritating beyond all reason? How do you roleplay a comic relief character without going overboard?