Nowadays role players in online games are starting to become more and more rare. The virtual worlds are thriving in people hungry to level up and acquire power than from players who are actually enjoying the game content. It is for example like the cell phone industry, now teenagers care more about how much luxury their cell phone provides than what important things are they going to talk about when using it.
But don't I care about new ground breaking in-game options? Of course I do, I just care if they have a real meaningful purpose. Some games that I have played or that I have talked about with my friends have a recurring trend. They have the game story as their weak point, either it is meaningless to the game, or it just doesn’t make sense at all.
Some History
Some of the first role playing games were pen and paper based, and for the horror of graphic lovers even computer text based. Then what happened? at what point in time we stopped caring about role playing and became obsessed with leveling?. I believe some of this questions are age based. At first older generations like generation X and previous generations were the pioneers of role playing. They played Dungeons and Dragons and Ultima Online.
Before writing this I had never seen what Dungeons and Dragons was about, hey don't give me that look!! I wasn't born when it came out. It was a board game like Monopoly with an elaborate set of rules where you had some random events and other gaming tools.
For more in depth history visit Role Playing Games History Lessons and Memories by Toubano
RPG Language 
The language is a difficult obstacle for me when I try to interact when role playing. Some players talk in old English ("Thee, thy, etc etc..") and I have major trouble understanding what they mean, I think it would be as troublesome for them to take a Spanish summer class and then trying to understand what I am saying in old Spanish ("Vos, sabeis, teneis, vuestros").
So, why can't we be friends? Why not just use plain English and stick to the game story, I think that would really help overcome the language obstacle. Because I don't want to be a Night Elf that speaks archaic English, I want to be a Night Elf that lives in etc etc etc… that speaks plain English. Why? because I want my Irish friend that is 14 years old to understand me, and my other friends that are non-native speakers to get what I'm saying.
RPG Pit Falls
In some games I just don't feel like role playing. There are several reasons for this, some are: lame back story, childish looking characters, and a hostile environment.
I was talking to my friend Igriss about his favorite game EverQuest 2, he was telling me that he has been playing for about a year and a half and he has almost no idea what the story is about. He added that the expansions brought some new elements to the map with not much explanation, and that NPC's rarely talk about the game story. "The moon is broken" he said, he asked in the game out loud if anybody knew why, and nobody knew anything.
Moving along, I try to avoid games that have child-like characters, I tried Fiesta Online, but I was just embarrassed to use my avatar. When I started the game I was just thrown in the middle of town and TADA!! the world is in danger! please go kill 20 slimes so we can all be saved. ZZZZzzz…. I think I have heard that about 10 times from 4 other games. There was quite a bunch of people playing, but I think it was more of a "OMG a new game lets try IT!!" than they did actually care about what the game offered.
After Fiesta I tried 2Moons it has very decent graphics and I gave it the best landscaping for my 2007 Blender post. Nevertheless, 2Moons is a unlikely game to role play, it has to somehow be forced if you want to do it. Either you have to talk like a sailor to make it work out or type like crazy when you are under attack in an unsafe area. And for my taste I would like to salute a female character with a "Good evening Miss [IGN here] how are you today?" it is hard to do such gesture when the character is 98% naked.
Are you a role player?
I am, well… I try 
Let's face it, more people every day join MMORPG's and not even 50% of them are roleplayers. Game that I login, game that has trading, bragging, newbie bullying , and cursing on the public chat. And don't you tell me that that is role playing.
Bad To The Bone 
My father has an interesting saying, every time I repeat it someone gives me a shocked stare:
"If you are going to be bad, be bad all the way"
or
"If you are going to do bad things, do them right"
What do I mean? I mean I don't mind bad guys in games, heck I like being a bad guy myself, but well it is not my true nature. My issue here is with mediocre bad guys, and I mean evil players, not game monsters. If I were to be evil I would lie, betray my own friends, kill for pleasure, and other unspeakable acts. All of course within game rules, evil players I've bumped into are just.. well .. lame. They usually have some inferiority complex they are reflecting in their online play, and they do it poorly. It is hard to find a good antagonist, or at least one that meets my standards. Because it is more fun to fight online with somebody, than just kill grunting orcs over and over again.
And NO you are not a good evil guy if you just go around killing other players and shouting "PWNED N00Bz!!" or "I aM MaSTEr NooB OwnaGe!!!", that shows how simple minded and pitiful you are.
To Think
The MMORPG industry is fairly new, there are no written laws for it, and I think we are still on time to save the role playing part portion of our games. Even if you are not a hardcore role player I think role playing should remain the core of online games. And not the "Login and become obsessed with leveling player" that players are turning into. Perhaps role playing can make them less zombies and more human. Welcome to Role Playing 2.0 .
Jargon:
IGN - In game name
N00b - Rude name to call new players or annoying players
RPG - Role Playing Games
Sources:
http://www.muscetta.com/2007/11/10/role-playing-technology/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mmorpg
