Is it just me being really unlucky with the layering, or has anyone else noticed a “decline” in casual RP due to layering?
I’ve recently come properly back to wow, thanks to Dragonflight, and wanted to get into RP, but… I could not find really find any, anywhere, and started wondering if it was because I ended up on a different layer.
Found plenty of interesting roleplay, even outside of events.
You have to be more specific. Where were you trying to find RP, and at what time?
It is around, I’m assuming your on horde at the moment. The crossroads seem to be active at times but it is no where near like stormwind unfortunately. But yes you just have to look for it, joining horde communities for rp helps like the crossroads rp hub one helps to know when stuff is going down events and casual.
Yeah, you really do have to actively look for it on Horde side. As Aevorn said, the Crossroads has something going on from time to time, other than that, Horde RP is really rather guild-oriented.
Dalaran has a pretty active community, too, though of course not every character would frequent the City of Magic.
No, it’s there. You just have to be there at the right time, and in the right place. Where are those places, and what is the right time? I don’t know.
Now I cannot speak for the Horde side, but on alliance I’ve been surprised how much RP there is all over the world, not just in the bigger cities. So far I’ve only managed to RP in a few zones in Southern Eastern Kingdoms, namely Redridge, Duskwood and Westfall, but found random RP in all of these! Even found some in the Dragon Isles, when I was questing there.
I’ll also mention that thanks to the language potion, cross faction RP is easier now and most people I’ve encountered seem open to that, so that’s also an option worth considering.
Good luck in your search!
I don’t think so,- I rp weekly.
That being said I do spend way more time playing the actual game than just rping haha. DF has been such a good expansion so far, I am loving it.
Only if you’re on horde.
Alliance side is lively in both stormwind and darkshire, sometimes events and other gatherings in places like redridge as well. Casual rp is plentiful there.
Neutral rp hubs wise dalaran had some casual rp on offer but not as numerous and booty bay isnt as active as it was a while ago from the looks of it.
Horde wise?.. A few in org here and there, sometimes crossroads but compared to alliance the numbers are -low-.
It was always a little smaller but I recall when multiple guilds gathered in the valley and beyond and made use of the big firepit near the tauren part of town in orgrimmar and more.
I personally miss the days of more open socializing and even recruiting in the valley because it gave both newer and older players that were looking for rp a direct ingame way to interact, get to know some people and tag along for an event or two if not longer.
Heck I was part of VTM (Vulperan Trademark) back then and we used to stand in the valley next to our banner, banter and chat with all the people that passed by.
Im not sure what it is but to me it seems like there’s 2 factors.
For one, I don’t see guilds being as active in horde hubs anymore when prior they used to bring in a good few people. Even if there were some disagreements here and there, it still had people swinging by.
Now on the other hand, I feel a lot of it is a loop in terms in psychology.
People want rp, mapscan via trp, see 2-3 people, and thus dont even try and just log or do something else.
The next person will then do the same because it isnt active enough for their liking.
Not many people are putting their foot forward trying to bump up the numbers in the hopes others join but I appreciate the people that do immensely.
Perhaps a little more effort could help bringing people in more regularly I feel.
Back in my day… /jokes
Looking around the world, I do see pockets of RP and RPing guilds/groups. It will be dumb luck just running into them. It isn’t as crazy busy as it used to be (whenever your ‘used to be’ is) but it comes in swings and roundabouts.
Cities always have some level of RP. Busy quest hubs have it on occasion. You won’t necessarily trip over it in the world like “it used to be”; but it just comes down to throwing yourself out there when you see someone else with a ‘flag’
Being open to a quick IC conversation is where it lies during those times. As opposed to suddenly /walk and /emote emote emote.
I also think a lot of people on the Horde are moving towards Alliance. At this point it just offers way more random RP than the Horde does, and people love that.
As you said: they mapscan, see more people, and go where there are more people.
Pretty much… In a way I cant blame anyone who does because in the end you want the interaction and if you see that on one side/in one area you’re not as likely to get it, you move on over. You’ll only have so much time and you don’t wanna spend it on a eventuality.
Or perhaps because of the shortage of potential rp participants, there’s also a lack of interest because there isn’t as much variety of characters at a time or interesting groups in a location
But on the other hand, it doesn’t help and only furthers the problem we currently have, which if you couple that with a reluctancy to actually engage with one another as mentioned by Obtala is kinda the crux of the problem.
I wish that there was a way to merge more roleplayers in considering that there are probably some realms that suffer all the same, perhaps with flipped faction ratios and lower overall playercount to begin with.
Having more people overall would encourage use of more locations that aren’t just hubs and encourage ‘on the road’ rp because more settlements would actually have people rping in them.
Duskwood has a lot of people traveling along the road and it would be nice if some areas would have a back and forth in terms of people traveling inbetween and bumping into each other.
If there is interest, maybe we can set up a horde camp nearby/use one of the existing settlements (with some explanation and reasoning as to why) to encourage more crossfaction rp.
One of my initial ideas was to use moonbrook but I found it fairly unusable due to being populated by hostile npc’s.
The plot would’ve been that perhaps the nobility of stormwind , having had prior trouble with the deadmines would have allowed some horde workers to settle there for a time to mine ore for them in exchange for some form of suitable reward, this way they wouldnt endanger their own people. Which could have then led to players forming a supply chain and ic moving ore shipments to nearby towns which opens it up for casual rp as well as conflict rp if people wanted to try ambushing it, the repercussions of that, etc.
If anyone else has any ideas feel free to share em, because if something like this catches on and perhaps a few rp guilds would back such an idea, it could really give a big boost to overall abundance of rp.
It’s a great idea! I find over time, the RP - on both sides - has turned very insular. It always was to a degree; but walk-up RP was more acceptable just because of the frequency of it. Over time, as RP circles have grown smaller (or frequent certain areas; f.ex. Stormwind; Valley of Honor) the reasons people flocked to these areas become the reason it has become so limited.
Those within the circles will always tell you that there is RP around. Those who are outside of these circles; will tell you it is hard to find. Casual RP doesn’t really exist anymore outside of these circles. Which is fair enough, it is the natural progression of the server over almost 2 decades. Yikes. That’s a timeline!
So I think in order to have more opportunities for "casual RP’ situations, we need to be open to doing a lot more OOC to encourage it.
Glad you think so, and I fully agree with the fact some ooc encouragement is needed to hopefully get some people interested in trying something new and to give diversity in terms of open rp another try.
Also advertising if something new pops up so people are aware there’s some locations to gather in.
But aye, I’m trying to come up with something else fitting ´at the moment so long as it ticks all the boxes for prerequisites.
If there’s to be a new hub that connects zones and encourages on the road rp and perhaps some more crossfaction then its gotta be within reasonable distance.
As far as options go:
Grom’gol (northern stranglethorn), Stonard (swamp of sorrows) and Okrilon hold (blasted lands, old time) come to mind which could encourage travel from and to duskwood while all offering their own unique vibe in terms of surroundings.
Booty bay and bogpaddle are neutral towns in different directions from duskwood and stormwind, all in walkable distance.
Personally I’d love to use westfall or redridge, as both are a bit closer and redridge especially used to enjoy somewhat frequent roleplay on alliance side.
Now while westfall doesn’t offer many open buildings, redridge however does have stonewatch keep including its outer guard tower intact and free of any hostile mobs that could interfere with rp. I don’t recall if it has any phasing issues between horde and alliance BUT it’s a very nice location in case there aren’t any unforseen problems.
Perhaps a joint restorative effort to repair the keep and for it to serve once more as a easily defendable location for the people that inhabit the surrounding area. It’s not much , but it would be a start for something fresh based on the current (already 3 year long) truce.
What could also be a good “prologue” to any area that will foster a new hub; is the initial journey to the place.
Some of my fondest RP was with another person as we traveled through (old) 1000 Needles. Yes, we walked the entire way as it was IC to the reason they were traveling together. We split the journey across a couple weekends to suit our schedules; and made IC stops along the way. The before and after involved a few other people; but the journey part was theirs.
In your suggestions of the “for reasons” of how a new hub, it would be an excellent avenue for casual RP opportunities; and people having the opportunity to create their own threads/etc in some time spent in the starter journey from A to B. And as you say, on the road RP opportunities once the hub has been ‘established’ or started.
I shall have a look around at some areas; especially the ones you have suggested in SoS, Redridge and STV. If anything, it could be fun to have an explorative group visit these areas IC; whilst we think about the details OOC.
Afterall, sometimes our characters may lead us in a direction we didn’t think of 
This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.