Roleplayers are often ridiculed and the common thought is that they're treated that way just because they are nerds, but there's more to it than that.

In the videogame industry, I'd say that the amount of roleplayers amongst developers in the games industry is actually a majority, although many are smart to stay under the radar with it. Having visited in a variety of developer offices, I'll say it's very common to see a table setup for AD&D or other pen & paper or tabletop games. Some even have dedicated rooms for it, or in the case of Richard Garriott, an entire castle.

It's surprising to me that the general public impression towards RP is negative when it's involved at the core of game development.

Here's the real source for poor perceptions of Roleplayers. There is a tiny minority of bad seeds that cements the impression for the rest of the RP community:

• Non-Consensual Roleplayers. They insist on putting an RP spin on everything, forcing everyone to play within their own personal fantasy. If someone doesn't RP along, they will make up an RP reason for the person being present, rather than just simply ignore them. This naturally and justifiably creeps people out who didn't plan on being typecast into someone else's scripted play.
• Lore-police. These guys will troll the roleplay (or lack of) from others and critique them based upon their perception of what's correct. They're overzealous and worse than second-grade grammar teachers or forum spelling nazis.

These are the two nasty RP types that I can identify and have witnessed.

It's unfortunate, because on the whole most RP players I've met in online games have been extremely positive and great to play with. I get a thrill out of receiving extra immersion from a player that I didn't expect, to be given a hearty nod from an adventurer wandering through.

I'm trying to get into the groove of roleplay with Age of Conan, something I haven't done since Ultima Online. So far it's been going good, but occasionally some bystander will mock roleplay as they see it.

My guild has settled on a server choice for Age of Conan: Wiccana, a PvE server which has been given an 'unofficial' RP status by a host of other guilds and websites.

I understand Funcom's decision to create RP servers only as RP-PvP, it fit in well with their originally planned features to reduce ganking, but unfortunately those features never made it into the release of the game. No doubt they have other priorities, but it's a shame. We tried the sole RP-PvP server for a couple days, but the spawn-point and quest-opportunity ganking was a bit much for us.

So RP PvE it is, even if Wiccana is not officially endorsed by Funcom for RP.