Probably the best built-in-game items to facilitate WoW RP are the macro system and emotes. According to Blizzard, ” Macros allow you to create personal and cool special commands that you can do at the touch of a button.” “Emotes are pre-generated macro sayings and actions that just require the proper code (text/name) to activate.” When combined, emotes and macros make it very easy to quickly and precisely do and/or say some action or speech, and are especially useful for RP.
(Click the following links to see the official Blizzard pages on Emotes and Macros.)
However, as great a tool as they each are, they do still have their drawbacks. One, they are rather limited, in a couple different ways, and two, they are not very individualistic. And that’s where the second WoW addon belonging to my ‘core group’ for RP comes in: Roleplaying Helper.
Introduction
Roleplaying Helper (RPH) is an addon that greatly enhances and extends the use of macros and emotes for RP’ers. To download the latest version, check out RPH @ ui.worldofwar.net . There are a few other websites to get RPH from, but this is the best place I have found. There, RPH is kept most current, and the addon creators have been very actively engaged with RPH users in squishing out any bugs and errors that arise. (As usual, download and place RPH into your World of Warcraft > Interface > Addons folder, and make sure the boxed next to it is checked in the Character / Realm selection screen!)
The emote and macro system incorporated into WoW at start will work for RP, but only up to a certain point. For one thing, the macro system only allows for the creation of 18 General Macros and 18 “Character” Specific Macros. Macros made in the General section will be shared by your characters game-wide. For example, make a macro in this section for your character(s) on the Blackwood Raiders server, and not only will it be accessible to all your characters on that server, but also to all your characters on any other server. This can be both a good and bad thing. Some macros can fit in very well here, as long as they are generic, like asking a banker for your bank box, or the Innkeeper for a room. But, hopefully, if you RP more than one character as I do, they don’t all have the same personality. In this case, creating a macro in the “Character” Specific section is in order. These macros hold talk and actions specific to the character currently in play only. Either way, these two section will only hold 18 macros in each, and for the prolific RP’er, that’s just not enough.
Once RPH is installed, typing /rp should bring up the movable main window in game. This is the first of two places where you may tweak the addon to perform according to each of your character’s personalities. This window shows the four main parts that make up RPH: Events, Spells, Phrase Lists, and Language. The second place where you may manipulate RPH is down inside the World of Warcraft > Interface > Addons >RoleplayingHelper folder itself. It’s here where those serious about creating specific personalities for their characters will be spending most of their time with RPH, because this is where the true strength of the addon is found and used.
One of the great things about RPH is the fact that it comes with very handy instructions, which can be found in the RoleplayingHelper folder primarily by way of the ‘How to Customize’ text document. Read it, learn it, and put it to practice. And don’t forget the comma’s! This document will answer probably all of your questions about how RPH works, and how you may go into the heart of RPH (the .lua files) to input your own emotes and slash commands fitting for the personality of your characters’ race and class. Let it be known, you probably will not get it all how you want on the first try, so be prepared to make regular trips to here.
By the way, I’d recommend you taking a look at all the other files here. Just use Notepad to open the .lua files. Many of them also help with understanding how RPH works and how you may make it work for you. If I can figure it out, I bet you will, too!
RPH is a wonderful addon indeed. I am using it for several weeks now and there are three little points I can add to this really good article out of my own experience:
Before you use it with a german client you should clear all “RESTR”-restrictions in the lua-files. (Some sayings and emotes are restricted on human, ork, troll etc.) and for some reason this restrictions don’t work in German, in spite of the translation. (In English there is no problem. I don’t know about other languages.) You get something like “Du bist der abscheulichste Tote, den ich je gesehen habe. RESTR.UNDEAD”. Looks a bit funny. Only delete the restrictions and leave the phrases (or change them, if they really won’t fit for some targets), then it works.
And in case you choose to play a bloodelf-Paladin, you really, really should delete the “For the alliance!”-shout in the paladin.lua
!
Last thing is (for people who, like me, switch between servers with different languages): You can not tell RPH to produce German Phrases while playing with an English Client ant vice versa. The “Language”-Button in the options-interface only changes between Common, Orkish and so on. Because of that make sure you use the matching client for the Server you play on, if RPH is activated.
Fantastic! Thanks very much for those tips, leseratte! I only use the English version, and I did fail to mention that RPH also supports German, French, and Spanish.