Honestly I blame Blizzard more on this one than the people trying Darkfallen Rp in Alliance/Stormwind.
Not sure about horde but if you are alliance the Dark Ranger sees through your disguise but says it does not matter since you are helping and then goes on to say any Darkfallen wishing to go back to the Alliance will be allowed to. And that is it. So I wouldnt blame someone that interpreted that as “Oh so Darkfallen are ok in alliance then, cool”.
As many people said they should have followed that up with Calia writting to Turalyon or something.
To me it makes no sense either especially because they even have a Darkfallen , Sira Moonwarden , locked up in the stockades being questioned. So why would other Dark fallen roam freely ? I dont know.
Still try not to be rude to the people trying it out . Some might have just honestly interpreted it wrong .
I think my characters who have endured way too many atrocities of the Horde, the Undead or the mixture of the two are more than entitled to being rude or violent towards Dark Rangers.
Having played through the quest on my alliance we are effectively told the following.
most of the dark rangers feel at home with the forsaken BUT a small group have voiced their desire to return to the alliance, the forsaken and by extension the horde, will permit these rangers to leave and re-join the alliance, this is a sign of good will for your help in restoring undercity.
Dark rangers coming to the alliance are individuals as opposed to a collective group.
If Blizzard explicitly added the customisation options to Alliance, that confirms that the character you’d be playing is an Alliance-aligned one; whether they be a night elf or a void elf.
Yes, there’s a clear gap in the lore concerning void elf dark rangers (high elf dark rangers?), but until there’s any official word on the matter, the only safe and canon assumption would be that they are indeed Alliance characters. It’s haughty to say “all guards will kill them on sight” because they are clearly intended to be playable by Alliance, whether that be on the battlefield or in Stormwind.
I’m not someone who defends Blizzards shortcoming with lore and exposition, but at no point has there been any suggestion that Alliance getting the dark ranger options is “non-canon” - if it’s in-game, it’s in-game. It could take one patch or half a dozen expansions to see an actual Alliance dark ranger NPC; but, until then, the option being allowed on Alliance elves is enough to show that this is a canon development. Anything otherwise is headcanon.
Desire is just an intention. It’s doesn’t mean that it will actually happen.
Horde and Forsaken - sure. It explains then, as those two will permit. But to allow rangers to leave and re-join the alliance is the same as I’ll tell you to leave your home and join MIT. Which means that it’s undecided at this point if this may or may not happen.
As someone who’s RP’d a Kaldorei Dark Ranger for just over a year before this patch dropped, personally I’m going to continue doing as I’ve always done:
Keeping out of Alliance Hotspots but occasionally passing through smaller places like Duskwood or some parts of Ashenvale, since I expect the Alliance to be hostile.
Keeping out of Horde towns altogether because gameplay-wise it is nigh-impossible to RP in them.
RPing as a part of neither faction, sympathetic to parts of both (Kaldorei/Forsaken) but hating the rest. Effectively a neutral character, hanging primarily in Neutral towns like Ratchet or Booty Bay.
I would hope any new Nelf DRs (or velf, still don’t know why they have the skin colour but whatever) would take more into account than just “I would like to RP in Stormwind because that’s where the most people are” and commit more to the role the Darkfallen Kaldorei play in the world currently, to just have a more authentic and fun time.
At least until we have a little more to go off than a brief line from 1 or 2 characters that is honestly up for interpretation.
I know that won’t happen in more than a few cases, because it’s Stormwind City and people love to think that they can walk around as like… Doom Lord Kazzak without consequences, but that’s just my two cents.
Point is, they have at least from the horde side of things they have their blessings and permission to switch sides.
there is no further word on the matter, but it can be assumed the rangers going to the alliance did so in a similar style to how the death knights did.
this from a realistic stand point, doesn’t mean they can sit in pig and whistle and drink, but at the very least we can assume they are either directly or indirectly helping the alliance now.
which opens up for merc rp, disguises and mysteries characters helping out in the border regions.
Voiced. That keeps being brought up and I keep saying the same thing. Intent and action are not the same thing. The same also question also says exactly that they wonder whether they will be accepted or not. So no, it’s not set in stone. I agree that since we got them on the Alliance side it may be highly likely that at some point there will be pieces of lore that show individual dark rangers joining the Alliance, but right now that’s not the case. Right now we are still in the intent phase, waiting to see how and when that will happen.
We need an actual questline showing dark rangers coming to join the Alliance, an actual justification for the Alliance accepting them. Undead abominations for most Humans. Risen traitors for most Kaldorei. We need examples of dark ranger characters on the Alliance side. All of this is lacking. Blizzard hinted towards it, but as of yet they are still to implement it making the overall skepticism towards dark ranger roleplayers in SW justifiable.
Yes. But that’s not the subject of this discussion. Scrolling up you can see we’ve already mentioned. Dark Ranger mercs, perhaps anti-heroes, vigilantes, staying to the shadows, keeping a low profile work. Obvious dark ranger walking through SW doesn’t.
The Horde’s blessing is quite irrelevant in the matter. From an Alliance perspective they could be spies. From a local guard’s perspective, unaware of what’s happening in various quests around the globe since they lack a crystal ball, they’re still Horde or just undead. Comparisson with Ebons doesn’t work either. Ebons had a whole quest about receiving a letter from Tirion and a royal pardon from Varian. The only things that stopped them from being hanged in Stormwind/Orgrimmar. Dark rangers lack that. Draw your own conclusions.
Skepticism, yes
outright kill on sight polices, This I am against for a number of reasons most of which are related to how RP is a cooperative hobby and similar to how killing a fellow player in DnD is a pretty move, killing random PCs in RP because they may or may not adhere to the most sensible cause of action is a big no.
Be hostile and aggrassive, but never take it further without consent.
See, this I wouldn’t mind the slightest. I’m in favor of people choosing to harken back to the Warcraft 3 TFT era where Dark Rangers were a neutral mercenary hero who could be hired (along with Pitlords, Naga, Beastmaster Mok’nathal and Firelords but whatever) and when they are frolicking around wearing the surcoat of some Alliance free company they also hide their undead features.
I also don’t mind that canonically they can try to rejoin the Alliance and you can make a Dark Ranger/Darkfallen Void Elf/Night Elf. What I do mind is people using this as a crutch to demand acceptance, peace and trust from my characters, usually OOCly, when there’s absolutely no lore stating this should be the case, but there are several decades worth of reasons why they wouldn’t like, trust or tolerate them.
To me this is the same scenario as the guard NPCs not folding my warlock like a garden chair when I have my Wrathguard pet out in the middle of Stormwind City. If you don’t want to be treated as a character that is completely warranted to be ashed in the memorial garden of the High King your cohort allowed to die, then either don’t do it or make an effort to avoid these interactions by not being a ghoul vampyr creature flaunting an armistice passport.
I don’t think anyone wants to do that in terms of RP though. It might be the logical thing to do, but we all know it’s not how RP works. The issue is that the DR player would also have a responsibility not to go to places where they’d be killed, not even by the player, but by some simple npc’s guarding the gate. And then you see them walking through a city where they’d have no access in. Awkward.
This isn’t your local session at battlefield game. It’s RP. In RP our characters are different up to the point of wanting to kill each other while OOCly we can be best buds, having a laugh.
ICly yes. But, as RP etiquette states, forcing a death upon someone without their consent is a bad move and shouldn’t be a thing, yes. But walking around as a Dark Ranger and deny permissions form being harmed or killed ICly is also an avoidance of consequences. So it’s 50/50.
Literally a lot of people seem to ignore the fact there’d be GUARDS in Stormwind who’d come rushing to cut them down.
I will again point to the San’layn RPers having casual conversation in the Stormwind park
I’m not adverse to Kaldorei Dark Ranger roleplay. I’m not against it because “it’s the new thing and new things are scary” (Drac’thyr are amazing btw).
I’m sceptical because of the inevitable flood of Darkfallen who will demand, on an OOC level, that my staunchly pro-Kaldorei/Remember Teldrassil character would accept them without first trying to stick a sword in their face.
San’Layn are… a special kind of fish. I’ve been seeing them around in places ever since BfA, acting like their presence is something perfectly normal and everyone’s meant to be fine with a blood drinking predator in the neighborhood. People still need to understand that if one type of undead RE Death Knights are tolerated, it doesn’t mean all are. On the contrary, San’Layn are all treated as hostile Scourge. And the only opposite example were trying to join the Horde, only to end up not joining the Horde anyway. I’d say those are even worse than dark rangers.
That said, the few San’Layn roleplayers who stick to contested or unruled areas and who’ve tried to kill my paladin on a number of occasions have my deepest appreciation. Good villains, really.