I agree with you Catarin, there is such thing as over usage.

It's the same when people use no emotes at all and just use the say command for everything. That's even worse. I could tell someone that their Mother was just raped and killed and I see this:

Bob says 'that's terrible.'

Nothing worse then that.

Hey now!

Bob is a great roleplayer..

Custom emotes frequently feel like overacting even when you're not doing them all the time. When everyone else is talking and using the regular emotes, you look like the one LARPer at a D&D game where everyone else is just sitting around the table describing things. It takes some amount of intuition to do it at all in a way and at times that don't make it look out of place. And you can easily roleplay properly without it. I'd much rather have too little than even slightly too much, here.

I think part of it is consistency. Whenever Ev returns from hunting, the first thing he does is remove his helm and hook it to his belt because he hates wearing the thing. I use pretty much the same custom emote each time I do it too. Eventually, a few custom emotes become part of the character. And keep it simple. The ones that overdo it are the ones with 5-line emotes that basically say "She's happy".

I've never played D&D before. I seen a friend play it once when I went to his house but it wasn't for me. You can most certainly RP without emote, but the others who do it well enjoy the little extra effort your putting into your character. I know I do at least.

Repetition might help - at the very least it might help it feel less like a "custom emote" (i.e what people do when they're going out of their way to "act") and more like a regular emote (i.e what people do to interact and maybe help indicate traits of a character.)

Of course, depending on the content it might actually go the other way...I remember those logs where Jo-something would mess with his "bangs" (apparently it's a dialect word for "fringe", for people who aren't clear on that) every little while and it would get really grating. The helm thing is probably unobtrusive enough and a nice touch, but it's not necessarily true across the board.

EDIT: To clarify, I tried to edit my post to clarify but Everiine ninja'd me
Grigoloth, it isn't actually a matter of effort. Some people actually avoid custom emoting conscientiously because as mentioned it usually looks like overacting. The D&D thing was just an example. There are less obtrusive ways of putting effort into your character, so unless you're somehow managing not to disrupt the flow of things with custom emotes I actually prefer the effort to be put into something else.

I just don't use custom emotes very often because I'm a slow typist and by the time I've come up with one, typed it out, and brought it to my insane level of perfection, the time has long since passed.

Ha, yes, that's probably another good reason it doesn't seem to fit as well when a lot of people do it. At least you don't take so long to type that you're still arguing 10 minutes after everyone else has stopped.

Why? I can think of a lot of things worse than that. Like "Lolz! Whatevah. There's no perma death".

If it was a character that was prone to showing emotion in public, well it would be odd if there were no outward sign. If they weren't though or you had no familiarity with that character, why would you expect them to share their emotion with you?

Your ratings of the different RP in the orgs seems to lean heavily on how much emoting you saw in the time you spent there. That seems to automatically be saying that you expect good RP to be RP that involves a great deal of public expression. Just seems an odd method of rating when emoting is a pretty tiny part of solid roleplay.

If the person in question is RP'ing a character that shows no emotion, then yes I agree.

But, if you read my note to start this thread, you would see that I gathered this information from other sources. In fact, I haven't had an alt since I started playing Lusternia so it's impossible for me to conduct an opinion on the other organizations. Where did you get that I saw other organizations emoting in public area's? Public expression? How can you accuse me of applying my conclusions based on public expressions in this thread when I stated in prior posts that I have not encountered RP with other organizations?

Please go up and read my notes in full if you want to contribute positively to this thread. Otherwise I'm really confused on what your trying to prove.

I'm not trying to "prove" anything. I just find it odd (and annoying) when people post statements regarding the whole RP environment of an org based on limited experience or in your case, limited sources apparently. My comments were based on your statements in your posted assessments regarding the extent emotes were used in an org. I'm challenging that as a valid assessment of RP period. And now, since apparently the emoting wasn't in regards to public emoting, I suppose I'm challenging how the heck any few sources would be able to determine how much private emoting was happening unless they interact in close friendships with a good portion of the org in question.

You will find good RP in any org in Lusternia. You are unlikely to find it at the nexus. Preconceived notions won't get you or anyone else very far if they are truly just looking for a new experience.

I still remember Malicia's parade, that was awesome...

I've actually always wanted to have a Serenguard character. Out of all the Celest/Serenwilde guilds, that one's always looked to have the most potential for the kind of RP I enjoy. I absolutely adore the images I get in my head when I think about lodges and treehouses and rolling hills, and all the that other Seren scenery.

But the atrocious number of snugglers/rompers/lickers keeps holding me back. I really feel for all the people who attempt to seriously RP in Serenwilde, only to have those kinds scare away other possible RPers.

HOWEVER. If I were to just avoid the nexus at all costs...

As for emoting: If I am around more than a couple of people who I regularly RP with (family RP, basically), I pretty much never use the emote command. Instead, if there is a particularly important emotion or movement I need to get across, I'll stick a sweet and short emote into my says. Most people forget that they can do that, actually. It's very effective at getting the general feel of what you're doing/feeling/the tone of your voice across without having to resort to something lengthy.

With a hint of sarcasm in her voice, Frog Girl says, "Well, isn't that a stretch?" will usually look much better among all the rest of the text than an elaborate emote mixed with an additional say will.

come2serenguard. We don't snuggle, and rarely do we romp (unless you're Raeri, but he gets away with it because he's a silly Tae'dae who is hysterical when he's drunk).

How I determine someone who is a good Roleplayer is their flexibility and their ability to adapt to the Roleplaying atmosphere at hand. In my personal opinion, a person can RP without emotes. I prefer emotes when I RP with someone because it gives me more to play off of instead of just reading words and acting accordingly to the limited information they are displaying. There is such thing as too many emotes which was mentioned earlier, which I agree with. Remember this is just a personal preference.

As for challenging my sources, you have every right too. It would be extremely bias for me to make a decision based on what a few Magnagorian and Glomdoring players had told me. That's why I started this thread in the first place, was to get some information regarding the different communes, the extent of their Roleplaying so I could evaluate and make a final choice where I would enjoy creating an Alt the most.

I think my desired choice is Serenwilde though. I'll do a little research on the guilds. I was thinking of a monk. From what I've seen on the boards they appear to be able to level pretty quick. Are they decent for PK as well?

Read rants sometimes.

I'm too tired to look it up now, but I think it was something like up to level 50 or 60 in a day or two? Monk bashing is ridiculous. And they are pretty much the dominant PK force right now next to the Spiritsingers.

Anyone can get to 50 or so in a day if they know what they're doing, that's not unique to monks. Monk bashing is the 2nd best, comparable to bards, but the main difference is at higher levels.

Yes they can PK well, but don't expect that to last, a destabilising nerf report is en route which could leave them untouched or cripple them back to where they were before.

That said, most of the monk guilds are kind of useless in terms of integration into the setting to the same degree as other guilds, so if that's what you're looking for I wouldn't be so sure you're going to find it there. Spiritsingers are good at combat and bashing (as with all bards), have a quality basis in the game, and a bunch of good (and dignified!) players. Try those.

Monk bashing is not comparable to bard bashing at higher levels. Monk is leaps and bounds above it. I'm saying this as a Cacophone human, which is pretty good bashing. I couldn't touch someone like Lanfayr without divine intervention.

The good thing about SS (besides being the best bard spec) is that they seem to be the only bard guild with strong, unique RP within their org. They aren't backup singers to another guild like Cantors/Cacophony seem to be.

@shiri: When have monks been crippled?

And for the record, I don't know about other nexii, but there's plenty of good RP (and a lot of bad) at the Megalith.