Cross-Faction RP: Yay or Nay?

Argent Dawn
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Hi everyone!

I’ve been perusing the forums and Argent Archives over the last few weeks, and it looks like the state of RP is a bit chaotic at the moment. It looks like both the Horde and the Alliance have found themselves increasingly keeping to more Guild/Group-oriented events and encounters. While this is great, I’d like to bring up a point from the past which seemed to work well.

Cross Faction RP. During the various lockdowns and other shenanigans of the years 2020-2021, there was obviously an increased online presence on both factions for various reasons. While this allowed for a blooming period of campaigns, events, and guilds working to create content, it also ended up creating new hubs such as Dalaran, where I worked with the previously cross-faction Unbound Brotherhood. With these efforts, guilds seemed to be working together more (both within the same faction and cross-faction) which lead to more exposure for all sides and greater opportunities to set up RP content.

With the current state of the Horde and Alliance leading up to and including the new expansion, I feel like the atmosphere is right for this sort of thinking to make a return to the foreground. Although we don’t all know the upcoming lore, we can assume it won’t be a Horde vs Alliance scenario.

Keeping this in mind, I’m thinking that we could try and normalize cross-faction RP once again. On a large scale. Horde side is currently extremely closed off to guild-based events, with little interaction between the guilds. This approach, by contrast, could try and reinvigorate the scene for guilds to work together, and even allow more guilds to form as a result.

Should this type of co-operation and stage be set for both sides, we could encourage new players or returning players to find a place where their ideas and characters could be comfortable - complete with the idea that RP won’t be limited explicitly to which faction they choose.

For example, major Horde events such as the Kosh’Arg and so on would continue to take place as a Horde exclusive. But, in the weeks/months between such exclusive events, there would be opportunities for inter-guild and cross-faction roleplay to take place. This could maximize all the DMing capabilities and creative tendencies that we see and bring them to a greater audience, allowing for more RP opportunities across the board for both seasoned and new players, of all varieties and levels of experience. DMing/Large events/campaigns etc aren’t always the best fit for everyone, so allowing everyone to be more open to inter-guild and cross-faction content can allow players to decide which would suit them best without necessarily having to rely on random RP as a hopeful developmental arc into a larger story. All within a network which allows them to choose their best fit.

Many times, people have wonderful ideas for guild concepts and campaigns, but either lack the confidence or perceived time needed to run these things. By working together, I think we can help each other in this regard.

Discord proved incredibly useful for this sort of thing. By advertising guild-specific events which would be open to collaborating either inter-faction or intra-faction, people could freely choose where they’d like their characters to fit in, under which banner, and to what extent. Those who enjoy creating content or DMing can do so, and those who prefer to casually follow or join in on a smaller scale would be given the platform to express their characters as well.

This could ultimately fix the RP drought which has seemingly hit parts of Azeroth as a result of previous IC and real world events. Although the damage has been ‘substantial’ in some cases, I believe a constructive way forward would be to reset the stage and allow everyone to find their place again.

If anyone would be interested in something like this, I’d love to know about it and would be endlessly happy to help organize it. I foresee a sort of environment where either faction has their own (guilded or non-guilded) faction-specific events, random rp for recruitment or advertising, as well as larger-scale cross-faction events and campaigns. It wouldn’t require too much real life effort to set up if people are collaborating and working together to accommodate as much as possible.

Feel free to contact me through Battle.net (NeCedeMalis#2716) or Discord (Prisaela#1190) if you don’t necessarily want to post on the forums.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

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Any facility that’s made available for more roleplayers to interact with one another without wacky add-ons and/or convoluted approaches is welcome anytime and all the time.

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Whilst cross-faction RP still happens as of the current day in neutral hubs like Hearthglen and Dalaran - reason for its absence is not disinterest or willingness to do closed bubbled guild RP.

Reason is because people just don’t RP all-together. Right now is a final patch of the game until pre-patch for Dragonflight, therefore these couple of weeks are going to be absolutely boredom-induced since there is no content and Shadowlands, as an RP expansion, is simply not fun.

And whilst it is a grand idea, to promote and do more cross-RP stuff (hostile or not) - I just think you won’t have much success.

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Good points - it’s generally the same at the end of every expansion.

It would be great to know if people would be interested in time for launch and afterwards, though

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Campaigns, cross-guild events and storylines still happen. There were 20 guilds roleplaying in Ashenvale not long ago on a campaign. Only thing you have to let go of is the “my friends’ cousin’s former GM told me that guy is a bad person so I won’t RP with the guilds that interact with them” attitude which plagues the community. And of course, the rampant looking for excuses to /not/ have RP.

Specifically with Ashenvale it came up, as some complained about the “truce” and “peace”. You can quote Argus patch to say no more demons abound, you can quote SL’s end saying scourge is gone, you can quote most Cataclysm quests saying X zone had been cleaned up and there’s no more enemies around.

Tends to irk me, because I’d rather a world with a million foes in every corner waiting for an adventurer to defeat them than some utopia where lightforged innkeepers discuss with [former illidari] bakers about the weather.

The only real change I think people should adapt in the form of a mindset is being more open to walk-up RP and random encounters, whether they happen by chance or through TRP scan. In a way, the guy who TRP-scanned you and intruded on your event might have been a fellow having searched for RP an hour, and finally glad to see people active in a zone.

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I don’t see that the Cross Faction RP is gone. People seem only to go somewhere when there is something set up, be it a market or an event, but the casual day-to-day RP disappeared. I wouldn’t say that is due to a lack of possibilities, but due to a lack of interest. I can imagine that it will just normalize with the return of players for the new expac and after the first content hype is gone, I assume there will be more interest in general RP again.

Dalaran as a hub still exists, with a busy Trade Night on Tuesdays, apparently an opportunity people take when it is given as well as an active discord community.
And there are plenty of events, both faction aligned and cross faction.
I can’t say a thing for campaigns, but alone this year there had been at least two bigger ones that were cross faction and open to everyone, guilds and individuals.

I guess the problem usually is that someone needs to start the effort, so I’d say: Make up a discord, start advertising and inviting and see how it goes! Maybe even think of a small kick off event to get things going!

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To me, and the kind of interaction I have, I say ‘Yay’.

Cross-faction activities as a community, RP or not, can assist and strengthen it all. There is room for development, and we see it happen slowly. I welcome better tools in the future, but for now, we have what they gave us - and one step closer to cross-faction leveling as well.

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big YAY Ara’s always had a lot of Horde buddies.

I still remember the days where you had to RP a BE as a human or just RPed on skype

Then that hack with warlocks and demon form came…ohh when tounge potions were in dalaran I was soooo happy.

sadly most of my horde friends are gone

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Yes, where viable.

Seeing how Shadowlands has been the most limiting thing for the RP scene (unless you’re an Ebon Whatever, some Troll death priest juju thingamajig, or just RPing as the PC(lol) ), it doesn’t seem like a terrible idea at all to sort of “TRY” and roll with this armistice deal.

Unless you’re a Night Elf. Pretty sure the recent genocide sends them back to formula. The relevant ones anyway. Never much cared for the city elves so no idea what their deal is.

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I say yay.

Any interaction that could expand the opinion, knowledge or outlook of a character’s point of view is a good thing and character building is what we’re all here for after all.

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I hope the Night Elves won’t make peace with the Horde anytime soon. As far as I’m concerned, they’re owed a long period of completely justified mistrust and anger for what was done to them by the Horde.

Shadowlands gave me the impression that Blizzard really wants to move away from that unpleasant “genocide and its fallout” business. At this point, I say they’re in way too deep to just dismiss it due to Tyrande giving up her immediate thirst for vengeance.

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“ok it’s been 5 years we fine now. peace and love! xxxx -tyrande”

-Dragonflight probably

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I have a feeling the pall cast over the company by their “old guard” (now former) devs with their cube crawling, breast milk stealing, incel chatroom opinion style manner of conducting themselves has probably but the PR side of the company on extra high alert for anything in the game that could be construed as “offensive” or “problematic.” Hence the recent purge in game of anything mildly considered risqué.

Which is fine and all if the direction they want to take is less Warcrimescraft and more co-operation between the factions but they still refuse to go all in. You an group up with players cross faction but you still have absurd restrictions. You can talk to other players on other factions (and have since 2010 with bnet chat) but you need a potion.

Just dispense with the pretence of trying to make it seem like there’s meaningful differences between the factions and make is a cosmetic thing purely.

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