WoW is an MMORPG. Like every other part of the game, roleplaying is best done with a group of other people. Even the blandest content can become engaging, provided that you’re doing it with a group of people that you enjoy being around.
So, find a guild. Look for a group of people that you think you will enjoy roleplaying with, based off of your existing friendship with some of its members or based off of how its concept appeals to you. Put a little effort into involving yourself in the guild and playing your part, rather than waiting to be spoon-fed. Invest a little bit of yourself in the group and suddenly, you will find that no amount of bad lore matters, unless it completely rewrites the concept of your guild.
So long as you enjoy roleplaying with that group of people, you won’t need to pay attention to anything outside of it, Shadowlands lore included.
Here’s the flip-side though. Doing things with a guild in WoW can make WoW fun, but it can make almost anything fun. You can have just as much fun (if not more) by joining a group in any other MMORPG, video game or general activity and investing a little time and energy into that group.
It’s up to you to decide if you really want to motivate yourself to roleplay by finding a group of like-minded people that you enjoy roleplaying with.
Are you still so attached to the game and the character you have that you don’t want to move on? If so, there’s nothing wrong with staying, provided that you find a way to enjoy yourself.
If you find that you no longer have any attachment to WoW though, maybe it’s time to move on rather than find a way to motivate yourself to keep on playing.
Its had a huge boost in numbers recently due to a combination of WoW not providing good content (to some) as well as getting more mainstream streamer coverage due to a certain bald nosferatu
Memes are the more efficient way to get people’s attention these days, especially positive memes like the one you responded to.
The kind of Meme Blizzard would like to have about their MMO.
I find memes annoying in general, but I find this meme particularly annoying because it looks like a paid advertisement. That it’s posted on a WoW server forum in a thread about WoW RP doesn’t help matters.
Leaving aside the annoying FFXIV advertisement (the amount of people that aren’t playing the game and still use these forums are a lot!) I love how a bald streamer has created a massive, massive switch in the playerbase of the MMOs. It’s a revolution that, so-to-speak, started from the bottom; that is, the players.
I’m not enthusiastic about roleplaying in the Shadowlands, and to participate in a friend’s upcoming roleplay campaign there, I chose to make an alt for it rather than take my main character there, to keep afterlife more of a mystery for her.
In general though, I deal with the situation much like some people have already commented on; by choosing to focus on themes and lore in the WoW setting that still appeal to me. Currently that’s a naga themed personal storyline for Acrona that I’ll probably slowly progress until the next expansion is announced, and alongside that a friend is DMing a duo storyline for us involving good old demons.
If I didn’t have a handful of people to play with who still have a spark left in them to have narrative driven roleplay, I’d probably pause my sub for a while because just casual roleplay doesn’t keep me interested enough. Sometimes I feel like I should go out there more often in pursuit of it though, to discover new people or to stay in touch with others.
Outland has to be one of the most underrated places to lead campaigns and events, did a chain back there a couple of months ago and it was a blast, lots of fond memories.
yeah i think the butt of the joke is that people are relentlessly, at any and all times, providing constant marketing for a massive corporation entirely for free in their own spare time
lol
yes streamer man is fidel castro but for my hecking MMOerino!!
I literally on-and-off play like 3 or 4 MMOs, WoW mainly, SWTOR for story, FF14 for housing, ESO because sometimes I like games with really bad combat.
For me this isn’t the first expansion I do not feel invested in when it comes to RP. There was WoD and during that expansion I just simply roleplayed in an Amani guild as an Amani Troll, never coming into contact with the expansion’s narrative IC.
The same applies to Shadowlands for me. I can easily make due with an expansion that doesn’t necessarily involve all of my characters because I never focused my RP on one expansion. The only time where that applied was during BfA, but that was obvious since said war involved all of my characters in one way or another.
However, even if RPers generally do not focus too much on the PvE/PvP content, a lack of content STILL affects the number of active players. If there’s nothing to do in the game, people will become bored and quit. Which is what is happening now, even in RP circles on AD.
Having fewer players comes with a low attendance in events, which in turn results in low motivation to plan said events and campaigns. The result: RP feels ‘dead’.
People are dissatisfied with the game and the company and I cannot blame them. I went on a 6+ months hiatus myself and only just now returned. The only focus I have rn for WoW is RP and I am not expecting much from SL onwards, as sad as that may sound.
I blame the lame design of Blizz’s expansion on the declining player base and interest, not necessarily the subpar storyline which can easily be ignored for RP purposes. It’s not like the story of WoW has been great for a long time anyway.
RP has it’s peaks and valleys when it comes to interest. And when you start to fall of your RP peak it will be hard to get that mega interest into this hobby again. I think always having been part of a guild (and now even being the GM of one) has always helped me keep my interest in RP. The constant interaction, whether IC or OOC, helps with keeping interest in the hobby. But more importantly, “down periods” are a lot more tolerable as unconciously you realise if you had a day with little to no memorable moments you know another day will come when you can try to forge any memorable moments.
Personally, organising weekly events and working on campaigns from time to time has kept my own interest up for 2 years now. The only times I took a break were those moments of mental burnout, thankfully those were not often at all. I’ve met great roleplayers and together we made very memorable moments with our characters, moments that are brought up weekly, if not more often. Probably thanks to the stories we go through aren’t always in line with the content that is presented, since the launch of Shadowlands only +/- 30% of the projects I’ve been part of it’s organising team have been about the Undead.
Azeroth doesn’t stop breathing when the story takes place in another world, so why should we? I suggest all roleplayers that are burned out on the Undead foe concept to focus on something else. Simple things like Gnolls coming back together again in the lands of Stormwind and Quilboar trying to force their way into Mulgore, or perhaps something more grand like picking up the narrative threads from the 8.3 Qiraji after the fall of N’Zoth or heck what about creating a whole narrative around the Scarlet Pamphlets?
Interest can come and go for content, but when it comes to Roleplay I’ll side with Taxania’s statement:
Or any form of a community you can join and be part of individuals that all want the same goal: Enjoying Roleplay.
