As mentioned by Scott Jennings this morning, it seems that Antonio Hernandez, a player of World of Warcraft, is suing IGE.  Moreover, he’s trying to have his suit certified as a class action lawsuit.

Oddly enough, IGE’s position is that the lawsuit has no merit because players “have no standing to sue because they have no ownership or property rights within World of Warcraft“.

So wait, if players have no ownership or property rights, what exactly was it that IGE was selling all this time?  More to the point, what exactly were they buying in the first place (the gold came from somewhere, right?).  If the players didn’t have rights to ownership or property, what exactly was IGE paying players for?

Many of the biggest MMO’s these days still set aside servers specifically tagged for “roleplaying”.  Very few of these roleplay servers are set up with a different rule set, and generally speaking these servers invariably end up being popular with non-roleplayers as well.

Even roleplayers can’t seem to agree on what exactly roleplaying actually…is.  For some, the idea of roleplaying is based around simply playing a game “in character” whereas others feel that there should be fairly strict rules on race/class selection and even group choices.

Studios themselves seem to stay out of the actual semantical muck and mire, and essentially wash their hands of the concept even while they set aside the servers themselves.  Let’s face it, if the developers starting getting involved in helping to define roleplay, wouldn’t they then be obligated to help enforce it?

It’s a daunting situation from any angle, and it’s certainly got our gears grinding just thinking about it.

So, our Clockwork Gamer Question of the Week for April 7th, 2008 is this:  Should MMO’s have separate Roleplay Servers?

Let us know what you think.