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I learned to RP first on Neopets [circa 2001] and then moved on to Avidgamers. Avidgamers had roleplays of immense complexity available in any genre you could think of. Yes, you got a few one liners and asterix users in some sites [this was a site where you created a forum website, intended more or less for roleplaying, so each roleplay had boards, with threads. Very nice system still in place in ag2, I think.] but as each roleplay was run by admins who wrote the plot, and had moderators, both of whom were players as well, things were active and standards were kept.

A post that was less than three lines was rare if not in the OOC boards, and posts that reached five or six paragraphs were common, especially when beginning a thread. A person would labour over a post for ten, twenty minutes at a time, and then hungrily await a reply that might be a few hours or a few days in coming. One never had to interact with all participants at once, so characters could have one on one battles, double dates could occur, random meetings take place when someone was shopping, all without confusing others. The system was wonderful. Lack of money destroyed AG, and I've never found any singular roleplaying site or site host to equal it.

Gaia roleplaying suffers from being confined to a forum with a few vaguely defined subfourms. It really deserves the size of a category the way that Entertainment is, with forums for ooc/recruitment, General, Series Based with subforums separated by media, and Genre Based with subforums by genre. This is the type of organization that would allow people to find the roleplays they prefer without wading through muck, while also highlighting one of the themes Gaia once considered central to its aim. The way things are now, I will not roleplay on Gaia outside of guilds, and rarely if that. The fact is, massive forums lack the close knit storytelling abilities that make text based play by post roleplaying a fun exercise in creative writing collaborations. It's a real pity, because Avidgamers linked me to Gaia in the early days, and while I've come to adore the site in general, I have always been of the opinion that the roleplaying quality of is... ok, to steal from a famous a review of a movie: This roleplaying doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This roleplaying isn't the bottom of the barrel. This roleplaying isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This roleplaying doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels...

To have an RP like AG ones, it seems nearly impossible.....

In a guild devoted only to [a singular] plot it could be done, if a sticky is established with settings and their descriptions, and each thread is titled in a manner such as [Location Name] Thread Title. That way all players could be roleplaying, perhaps in simultaneous threads, without conflicts, as they would be individual locations with time-lines. Say in a fae type RP, there could be a thread titled [Seeliegh Court] The Petty Court, where a minor lordling or prince/ess type hears grievances and passes judgement; while at the same time a thread could be going on titled [Unseeliegh Wildlands] The Wilde Hunt, where a prisoner is hunted down for sport by an Unseeliegh Nobleman, and shortly after the Petty court is set, there could be a thread called [Seeliegh Palace] A bath for the Queen, where servants gossip and chatter as they get things ready for their mistress.

It just takes WORK.