since 14 already did Fall Guys, WoW would have to do among us
probably with dreadlords
that sounds pretty sus
Exceedingly few roleplayers actually use zones during the expansion itself though. There was nothing stopping players using Shadowlands zones as -something else- as many have used Draenor’s zones for similar purposes.
Anakin(Vader) kills Obi-Wan in A New Hope.
Come on guys, I already feel old.
(no need to double post)
Undelete that you coward.
Literally read the post above.
NO >:(
But yeah i forgot that it happened in new hope.
WoD wasn’t used for RP because people treated as “Not our problem”, everyone skipped the whole timey-wimey plot and focus on making Azeroth, our homeworld the main stage. Shadowlands, I’m sure there were people RPing over there, but I’ve mostly memory-holed everything about it, same result as WoD but with a larger crowd leaving not only because gameplay and content sucked but “Jailer did it all” really was a pill hard to swallow. As controversial BfA was, people were engaged and present, it wasn’t great due to the highly polarizing nature of it, but people were there.
Though I am a member of the “warcraft has moved on from faction warfare after BfA and so should we” crowd, I will confess that the good old red-versus-blue conflict is a cheap and easy way to get a lot of Warcraft fans really invested in an expansion’s story.
The mechanics of BfA were awful, the story turned out to be trash, but a huge amount of people, myself included, were undeniably drawn to the premise of war between the Alliance and the Horde, which is something that Blizzard knew and was eager to exploit. Writing faction warfare out of the story is arguably even more of a mistake than writing dragons out of the story at the end of Cataclysm was, for similar reasons - they’re denying themselves a powerful storytelling device that basically markets itself.
The reason why I’m bringing this up is that Battle for Azeroth is the only expansion that I can recall where people regularly and actively roleplayed on the continents of the current expansion, almost as much as they roleplayed in the faction hubs. Though I wasn’t around much for Mists of Pandaria or Warlords of Draenor, I never saw any roleplay in current content zones in Shadowlands and none so far in the Dragon Isles - and rarely any back in the days of Cataclysm and its predecessors. BfA is the only outlier, just because its initial themes had such a strong appeal.
My guildmates and I are among the “exceedingly few”, we still use shadowland zones sometimes.
There were, mainly during the first months of the expansion. As it slowly progressed, Slands RP died out because people started disliking the story more and more, while the novelty of RPing in new zones disappeared.
It´s about the zones and how tied to them the concepts we can RP are.
Kul Tiras was the last human kingdom that hasn´t appeared in WoW, while Zandalar was the centre of troll civilization (what a weird oxymoron). And one of the raids was literally one faction invading the city of other, a stark difference from everything that followed, which has always been “group of adventurers goes to kill a god or something”. There were plenty opportunities for our characters to get invested in, even if we didn´t want to take part in the expansion story.
Shadowlands just weren´t interesting enough, and while Dragonflight is better, what is our connection to this land if we aren´t dracthyr or dragons?
Also, it doesn´t help that not even our factions went there, we sent bunch of explorers. Which also happens to be the style of RP that Dragon Isles support, exploring unknown land and fighting the evil Primalists. For many guilds, that kind of RP just isn´t interesting.
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Everyone out there wanting another faction war looking back at you with a smirk “Give war a chance!” .
I didn’t like the reasons why the war was started and one of the main ones, which was the super-powered blood of the world which could start some kind of mass revolution across many industries immediatly vanished.
I’m hoping people learned their lesson. If you want another faction war, you’ll need a solid full expansion’s worth of a classic level mood where small conflicts are seeded across Azeroth in revamped zones as I previously suggested. However my trust in Blizzard to pull this off is in the minus considering how fast-tracked the “peace” is… Like WTH, it’s an Armistice but people are seeing it as a peace treaty with established terms. Old hatreds are forgotten by the mouth-pieces available to us and all edge and wariness is gone.
If another faction war is to happen, I expect it to show itself in as gentle as a fist up in one’s ***.
I really have to ask if anyone remembers RP back in MoP. I wasn’t there yet, but it seems MoP to be nice middle ground between faction tensions and exploration of a new land if you’re really not much into it. The Dragon Isles intro literally has us being told by Alexstrasza through Wrathion “Don’t you two factions start creating a mess on our turf!” and they both surprisingly agree without a creepy whisper Grima Wormtongue like “Yes of course… Look for any relic or advantage we could use against the Horde/Alliance on the Dragon Isles.” Part of me almost expected Aethas to screw up again had he been joining the Kirin Tor expedition there.
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I remember random roleplay happening whole questing.
I 'member running into guilds and groups in nearly every town and villages across the continent while levelling!
They’ve already been seeded, however, even at the back end of BFA there’s dregs here and there (Magister Hathorel in the Underhold is a good example). Outside of the unwashed masses of MMO-Champion’s antediluvian knuckle-draggers, I think people are genuinely more in favour of the icy/underhanded nature of Vanilla’s conflicts; or at least the people I talk lore with.
Given the night elves and forsaken holding hands and skipping around a new world tree, I think Blizzard crashing into a hard peace is going to be just as cruddy as BFA’s conflict will be.
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I think people often don’t realise or think about the fact that Vanilla’s conflicts largely being by-zone and proxy in nature with little input from anyone other than the direct commanders of that area/zone played a large role in making the tension feel realistic as well. War really doesn’t work well in modern WoW because every time it happens there’s 15 marketable plushy versions of the main character cast who show up via anticlimatic portal to go;
“CHAMPION! WE MUST FIND A WAY TO MAKE PEACE (BUT ALSO KEEP ACTING LIKE WE’RE AT WAR!)”
Edit: Vanilla Barrens and Ashenvale come to mind as pretty good examples almost instantly, one has the orcish forces cut-off and just fighting a constant battle of attrition against similarly beleagured and cut-off alliance forces, so neither actually has any real way to do anything, they’re forced into a hostile situation between one another. It also has a bunch of very jumpy alliance and horde captains who actively want to kill one another controlling said cut-off forces.
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BFA’s botch with the faction war, aside from poorly planned/realized character motivations, was having the war be character driven to begin with, rather than the legitimate historical and geopolitical grievances between the races.
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the faction war was all fun and games until cata when the alliance pillaged and burned down camp taurajo and suddenly it wasn’t very poggers anymore
You’re a night elf now, you’re supposed to complain about Teldrassil, not Taurajo.
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He’s a tauren wearing a night elf halloween mask.
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I see your Taurajo and raise you Soutshore.
Thats exactly what the Forsaken intended to do with Southshore, yes 
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