Role Playing in Azeroth

I've been a WC3 world-editor enthusiast for awhile, making and playing mainly single player games.

I started on battlenet only about a year ago, and then a couple of months ago I started playing WoW.

I enjoy role play, and liked the role play in WoW between player characters. Also the way they can cooperate to solve quests and other problems.

But I don't like the way Non Player Characters (NPCs) are so dumb, just mindless bots giving out the same quests over and over.

I don't like the way creeps are also so mindless, most often failing to help each other while some Player Character (PC) laboriously wipes out a whole camp one at a time. I don't like the endless respawning either. Once one lot of enemies are defeated they should stay defeated, at least from a story point of view. For that matter I don't think PCs should be able to just come back to life time after time. Better start a new character if you're careless enough to get yourself killed. That makes players a lot more cautious and adds real tension.

There is too much fighting, I think, and too little plot development through interaction between PCs and NPCs.

What any good Role Playing Game (RPG) needs, I think, is a Dungeon Master (DM) to operate the NPCs and react intelligently to choices made by the characters. Imagine how much more fun WoW would be if NPCs responded intelligently to PC ideas, joined the occasional quest or gave useful advice when needed, if creeps also had personalities, and could be persuaded or coerced into doing things the PCs suggested.

A lot less mindless slaughter, and a lot more life in the story, I think.

I tried using Mikititan's 'DM MOD', but found it hard having to add all the units and effects after the game got started. It did give me some ideas though. DM chat with players and a game where the DM player controls all the creeps yet can also be an ally of the PC players.

I am now working on a ROC map called Auberdine, based on the Darkshore map in WoW. It is intended for Battlenet and involves one DM (me, at this stage, since I have planned the quests) and up to 3 PCs.

Anyone want to help me test it?

Wow. This sounds really promising! My suggestion is to put it in the Map Testing Forum, and advertise it like the B&B final testing.