Don’t waste your time on him. He’s deluded himself to firmly oppose anyone else’s stance.
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Perhaps because these ideas are not naive. People who become emotionally upset by reading stuff like this are the last people that should engage in this discussion.
With this opening, you’ve basically stated that even reading stuff like this causes you a great deal of discomfort. Perhaps the forums are the wrong place for you? It would explain why you’re hiding your account + altposting.
Strawman focusing on the low number of role-players in your example.
I’m quite sure that if you had to choose between a server with only 10 roleplayers vs. 10 role-players and 1000 non-roleplayers, those additional 1000 people would become quite appealing and you’d see them as a resource, as well as potential roleplayers. So, yes, between these two options I’d take the latter.
Or this is just projection: you are member of a group of people who speak vehemently against me/you have a common intent, therefore you feel the urge to speak vehemently against me. Also. Who are we talking about here? The idea that roleplayers do not belong to the server is much more widespread as a mentality than, say, a particular group of players. So why bring them here?
So far, I have been discussing arguments and tried to avoid attacking people. But you’re not making this easy. For someone as biased as you it might be hard to understand, but the reason I oppose this entitled crusade against non-RPers is because it is part of the same toxicity that is harming our community. Simple as that. It has the same root and this anti-nonRPers mentality feeds it. The reason I vehemently oppose this narcissistic, self-justifying vigilante attitude is exactly because of how unhealthy it is for the role-playing community.
Not because of your friends’ self-centered protagonism in the server. I am not here to fight the people, I fight the sin - unless I am forced to do otherwise.
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Yeah, it’s clear there’s no real point in doing so. Every argument has already been made on the matter and I think it’s evident which are worth listening to and which are worth ignoring.
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Zaphius & Boush writing vague, devil’s advocate-esque walls of text while the rest of us watch, 2022, colorized.
You do realise that you’re arguing against themed RP servers existing at all, then? A healthy RP community by this definition is the huddled bunch of isolated nerds trying to RP on a PvE server (much like other MMOs that did away with dedicated servers in favour of megablobs), functioning within their group but in a world given over to a different purpose?
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A lot of this stuff is definitely happening on Argent Dawn, but it’s not something I’ve encountered in other communities. Could be a size/scale thing. Other games without dedicated role-playing servers have thriving role-playing communities, a lot of which are entirely self-sustaining, constantly bringing in new people to get involved in the hobby.
Imo, there’s no easier place to get someone interested in RP than in an MMO space, and the majority of my friends and I arrived on WoW’s RP servers with either no interest (I literally thought RP just meant yelling or saying while doing content, lol), a vague interest or just simply not knowing how to role-play. From personal experience and my experience encouraging other’s to role-play, it’s not overly hard to change an ‘OOC’er’ as some would put it, to someone interested in trying RP. They’re already playing a role-playing game, so the next step isn’t overly hard.
I don’t really understand Zaph’s argumentation, but I do think the picture you’ve painted (Levey) is very relevant to the current state of Argent Dawn, and it’s something I’ve only really witnessed where WoW-EU is concerned. The idea that people find role-playing shameful (not cyber/erp) and would cease role-play based on what other’s think is entirely alien to me.
And on the housing front, outside of WoW, I’ve never seen player instances (like the garrison) be used as anything more than a temporary tool or accessory, where more freedom of customisation is possible providing greater character immersion. Convenient meeting place, place of business, domestic chit chat RP, etc. In my own little garden with a camp and fire pit, in another game I play, I often role-play with people who happen by or try to encourage or introduce people into RP. It has great results.
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Yeah, he’s a useless contrarian. Like Jito, he just argues for the sake of arguing.
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Only in the absolutist perspective in which you view the server. A role-play server doesn’t mean that you have to be a role-player, it is simply a hub where people are meant to gather to role-play.
It doesn’t say anything about what others, who do not role-play, should or shouldn’t do. They are welcome to be on this server too. Of course, they are also meant to respect fellow players in their activities and avoid harassment.
The world doesn’t lose purpose [being RP-friendly?], it’s just that it is not the only possible way and multiple approaches co-exist together. It is that simple.
Ironically, it is the people who spearhead this crusade who, in the end, contribute to create an image of role-players as hyper-sensitive escapists who refuse to come to terms with reality (the fact that this server is shared). The more the people act in a hostile way, the more they will be viewed with hostility. Most PvE players aren’t especially invested in the RP community (surprisingly) and, perhaps to your surprise, they often have a positive opinion of them.
I find the term a bit gross and also incorrect (even role-players do OOC activities and are therefore “OOCers”). Perhaps a more accurate term would be non-RPer, which I believe is also less antagonizing.
Not outright shameful but awkward and something to be done away from the disruptive public eye of the “normal” players rather than owning what you do and owning what the server was made for in the first place.
I have several times over and it’s a death knell of RPing as it is a
Which in the end becomes the only outlet for RPing as it’s the only safe place away from PvEers trolling your gathering. It becomes the ultimate and final destination as communities isolate and wither, to say nothing of the people using their homes as cyber dens which turns more dedicated people off RPing as you can never know if a chance encounter is an opportunity to engage a new group or someone wanting to pull your lekku or whatever the equivalent may be.
Good for you in this one instance but I’ve seen the above a handful of times and I see it happening again with AD and do not want it.
If only the server rules were stricter. Or enforced at all.
It does lose its purpose as not RPing is normalised into a default assumption on the The Last Server that offers RP. You must see this problem.
90% of the time that I see an OOC PvE player comment on RPers it’s “lol cybering nerds playing pretend, go play the game” and largely not caring about the lore at all. The default seems to me a hostile stance where people using AD for its stated purpose are awkward weirdos who should be ignored at best and bullied at worst, expressed tragically in the fall of RP-pvp Defias Brotherhood.
Well, I do think this is very much a personal thing as it’s not something I’ve ever really ever encountered outside of this specific space and there is a part of me that thinks this is going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy in a sense, because I’ve seen the exact same thing happen on other WoW EU servers.
But I do understand the concerns of wanting to protect one’s hobby.
It is not a server-rule, however.
But it is not. Non-RPers aren’t zombies who bite RPers and infect them, turning them into non-RPers. On the server, for years, roleplayers and non-roleplayers have been doing their thing and the community hasn’t suffered.
Also, all these statements such as (“we are the last server!”, “this is an urgent problem!”) are quintessentially an appeal to fear.
A lot of people do care about the lore and do not role-play, tbh.
Anectodal evidence which, I’m sure, has quite a lot of bias. For example - there are some non-RPers in this thread. How many have been friendly and how many have been outright disrespectful, to the point they would use the language you used?
My experience (trade chat excluded) has been the opposite. Perhaps it is the way you approach them, already thinking that their presence is a threat to your “purpose” on the server.
As the number of “normal” players chokes out the number of RPers, the less normal RPing becomes until it becomes a rare niche on the server for which it was created.
On this we disagree and I doubt I’ll move you on the matter.
Justified concern as AD is the last RP server after all others succumbed to what I’ve presented. Empiricism is cool.
Irrelevant as us arguing on the forum, friendly to RP or not, represent a very small part of the actual WoW community. The majority view among non RPers as a whole appears to be that we’re childish and stupid, incompetent at the real game (raiding) and need to be taken down a peg by being mocked.
Not really. I’m quite civil, knowing the default attitude toward me as a RPer is negative. I prefer to show them that we’re different to what they assume and it’s my stated preference to convert them rather than screech.
They don’t. You can’t change the word, keep the same meaning, offer no argument whatsoever and then expect me to agree with you. It’s still the same thing I disagreed with you in the last post.
Since this widespread fear of non-RPers has taken hold, how many guilds have actually left the server because of non-RPers? How many role-players left the server because they felt “choked out” by non-RPers? Nobody.
And this fear has been going on for years: four or more. Four years and still no empirical evidence of the claim. It is an irrational fear with zero backup.
It’s not. First of all. On retail other realms still have RP guilds and events, it’s just that they have a total of like 60-70 RPers. It doesn’t mean that they aren’t a roleplay server, so maybe this thing about “last bastion of RP” should be dropped. You can claim that it’s a very low number, one that doesn’t allow for a flourishing and diverse community like in AD, but at the same time they -do- exist and have done so for years. And they have existed despite the number of non-RPers on their server, which outnumbers the roleplayers by far. The fact that they can, in a server dominated by non-RPers, still roleplay, is an indicator that the two attitudes live together just fine.
Furthermore, far from being the last bastion of WoW RP, other servers have taken place and have become rather popular. Lesson: AD is not the last WoW RP community. We can see that in less conventional servers.
Third point. It’s still an appeal to fear fallacy, one that wants to erode people’s sense of rationality by highlighting a sense of urgency and crisis rather than tackle the issue in a fair and objective way.
There’s a fourth point to be made, which is how much does this bastion of WoW RP named AD truly matters to the eyes of its community. For all the great and splendid words about defending the “last bastion”, a lot were ready to jump the ship as the Shadowlands crisis struck.
The Horde RP community is suffering and that is thanks to the lack of popularity of the game, internal feuds and the fact that more and more begin to consider transferring to Alliance or playing in neutral communities. It’s not because non-RPers are telling everyone “duh, nerds” or normalizing non-RP. It is because the people who are part of this community don’t see enough value in it anymore to stay and spend their time here. This is exactly what happened in Cataclysm and beyond with the other servers over time. It’s not the non-RPers who kill it. It’s the roleplayers themselves.
But they haven’t. See above: if they did, then these people from less-populated RP servers wouldn’t be roleplaying as a huge minority.
How can it be irrelevant if you’re speaking from an anecdotal point of view and then cherry-pick the cases and count only those that you think are “representative”
???
This is basically the corruption of data of an highly imperfect source: your personal experience with these people. In other words: it’s bias. Your statement by definition would invalidate your own argument, as the experiences of an individual can’t and won’t ever be able to take into account all the cases of the larger “WoW community” (which is also kinda irrelevant since I thought we were speaking about the AD community - after all, the concern is what happens inside the server).
[source missing]
Tbh you are civil but still negative and antagonizing. Your language is obstructionist and borderline hostile (about nonRPers). It will be an inevitable turn off for anybody that has a different opinion.
Imagine reading on a public forum that your presence “chokes out” another category of players. Or that they will cause the downfall of another community just by proxy. Your reply sounds a bit like: “I think everybody is out to get me but I’m not paranoid” approach.
I know that you won’t no matter what I say but here we go again.
It’s a gradual process as RPing becomes a chore with players struggling to find it and getting disrupted when they do, faced with hostility and mockery. Tiring of trying, basically.
Your stance remains that 70 people huddled in a corner of a dead RP server constitutes a healthy community and I just have to keep disagreeing vehemently.
Therein lies the problem.
This is not a healthy dynamic.
It is the only RP server still dedicated to RP.
Some may overreact and be excessively hostile to non-RPers and I disagree with that approach as stated, rather preferring to encourage them to learn and join us.
Negative feelings toward those that don’t and respond with hostility at the notion is rational and recognises objective harm to to RP community of The Last Server.
Don’t blame RPers for Blizzard’s mishandling driving people away. I’ve personally struggled with my characters’ stories since Shadowlands was announced. It’s simply an unworkable premise for the setting and difficult to write around in the context of older lore.
Blizzard writing the Horde as a whole as being chronically stupid and licking tyrant boot no matter recent history makes it hard to RP Horde characters.
At what RPer population figure do you consider a RP server conquered and ended by the demographic that will never use the server for its intended purpose?
I’m giving examples of what I’ve seen as a reason for my bleak outlook.
I communicate with non-RPers too and see a consistent prevailing attitude outside our RP vs OOCer debate: stop playing with dolls and get to raiding. Sometimes some people will say nice things about community engagement for big events but it’s more a gut reaction to numbers as a positive than its purpose; see the praise of the Àbómîñätóń guild’s antics as so-called roleplayers.
I’m tired and despairing at the state of things. I don’t see a way to improve things beyond defending what we have and setting up more recruitment events for new characters, letting those RP adjacent people give it a go.
Imagine having to face an uncomfortable reality in that one’s insistence on not RPing may actually be harmful to a RP server. I cannot sympathise but I can try to explain to such a person why that is if they haven’t yet realised it.
Well that’s also true but largely irrelevant, dragging a lot of baggage.
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Personally I see it as being in a town or city centre and going to a restaurant or fast food place just to get some sort of soft drink. Yes, most restaurants will stock Coke™ and/or Pepsi™ but it’s fairly atypical to wait to be seated and served just to grab a drink and ask for the bill, especially when there’s plenty of shops up and down the high street that will offer the same drinks.
Maybe a bit of a weird analogy but we’ve already done the whole library and sports ones.
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Just without analogies, I still really don’t understand why though.
If a person has absolutely zero interest in roleplay, is fully aware of this themselves, and even in their opening post sates they have and never will(a few times even say they despise it). Why even pick a server focusing on roleplay?
The usual response to that question is also not really a response, since it is generally just “Shut up, I can do whatever I want -insert slur-”.
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I think it’s closer to going to a chinese restaurant and ordering a hamburger.
They might actually have it for the few that are dragged to such a restaurant kicking and screaming, so it’s a valid order to make but really out of place and if people swarm the restaurant to order burgers and nothing else in droves, the chinese restaurant may as well be a burger place.
De facto vs de jure.
And yet all of this would be easily explained without appealing to non-RPers.
You said “the last community”. That there are other communities that still exist and RP in the main city is proof that non-RPers don’t make life impossible for roleplayers AND that this isn’t the last bastion for WoW roleplay.
As I said, you can (as you’re doing now) argue that we are shinier and more healthy and all of that (maybe: they -do- have less drama for example), but nevertheless the idea that we’re the last bastion is just empty rhetoric.
denying the existence of other RP communities to defend this false idea of the last bastion is kinda unfair, imo.
Why? If it was impossible or demeaning to them to do RP in their server, they would move or quit or change game.
Much like the Dalaran community. They have picked the one with more nonRPers regardless of the other, empty option. And their community manages fine.
[source missing]
That’s just your bias.
I do blame them when they are responsible for instigating/popularizing witch hunts and harassment against players in the name of the “lAsT sErVeR” which demands attention, intolerance and dedication, and then take their leave pretty much afterwards because they’re bored.
This is what makes them guilty in my eyes. If the existence of the RP community justified such a hard approach and morally ambiguous stance, it sure is weird that suddenly they have taken their leave. Maybe, just maybe, its because for a lot of these people this stance wasn’t taken in defense of the server, that was just an excuse: they were just looking for a target.
And yet here we are, telling people they should not join “our” server to defend its RP community while struggling to find the motivation for roleplay. 
Imho, when it comes to a lack of motivation to RP, the problem lies elsewhere and it is not non-RPers. For you, as you stated right now, it’s the bad story writing.
Tbh I just ignore SL’s story as much as I can. Not all the time (ie. my death knight has been in Maldraxxus and the Maw) but the story? Eugh.
One more reason to think that non-RPers aren’t the harming presence on the server but other factors are. Story writing, population, and inner feuds (which I think are the second major factor). The feeling that RP is burdensome etc is pretty much what happens when you have a grudge with other people in the server and don’t want to interact with one another. Another bigger factor - the biggest one, imo - are more populated alternatives. Like the Alliance is for Horde: I know plenty of people don’t create new characters/concepts on Horde anymore because the random RP isn’t there. And stick more to their Alliance alts, because there at least you can weave stories.
All these factors are what causes RP to collapse. A dude in trade quarter without their TRP on will not destroy your motivation to RP. A guild that raids in the evening won’t. Heck, even casual griefers - who are blameworthy, are in the wrong and violate the rules - don’t destroy people’s motivation to RP.
Ambiguous wording: I wouldn’t consider it conquered because, as I said three times, RP and non-RP do co-exist just fine. I’d rather consider it dead. And I would consider it dead if there were no more regular role-players hosting activities, capable of running guilds or communities. Etc.
—>The numbers don’t matter: the RP does.
Selective examples and cherry-picking, as seen above.
This attitude does exist especially outside of AD but I haven’t found it to be extremely prevalent or serious. With the non-RPers I have been speaking with on AD Ive actually met a lot of friendly people, many who often praise the RP community.
You classifying comments of appreciation as “gut reactions” (as if they have to be further downgraded as something that can’t be genuine because they belong to the OTHER GUYS category) is also rather odd.
It’s a very important point though. How can you expect people you don’t know to like and trust you and get along with you, if you show no sign of trust/appreciation towards them?
Italian restaurants in London in a nutshell.
Not so. It’s the last server that functions as a RP server in practice rather than 70 quirky people doing something outlandish.
And that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
Please do answer my question as to what kind of population constitutes a healthy RP community. I could scrounge up 10 people with whom to play for years every day but it does not make a functioning RP server.
Classic role reversal and victim blaming suggesting it’s the big bad RPers going around picking fights. This isn’t the argument you want to make.
We need more roleplayers, not more people who refuse to engage with the server’s intended purpose. Struggling with motivation is, like I said, a product of Blizzard’s writing as well as a shrinking community making RP harder to find for reasons already established; the non-RPer outnumbering the RPer and RP becoming a rarity.
A good example of this is the classic issue of Horde being guild reliant to organise anything. That is a product of a community shrinking and demanding stronger organization to sustain itself.
Accurate, and we need to work on that internally but it’s a very deep rooted issue rooted in a lack of communication so I don’t see that happening at all. People will leave the game before they’ll settle any grudges. In fact, they’ll take the grudge with them to the next game as there’s solidarity in having shared enemies.
Because the population of RPers is much smaller than that of non-RPers, making it a scarce thing. This is the problem.
Circles. I’m going in circles.
Together in bulk, growing over the course of years actually does and the RPers being driven off are not to blame for this development.
Close enough. So one guild of five people makes a RP community. It might even be regular and healthy but if it’s the last guild on a RP server, has the server maintained its purpose or could this guild move to a pve realm with no discernable difference?
It’s a gut reaction in its positivity of seeing so many people engaging in a community. Absent of critical analysis, that could be said of any group and the griefer guild being treated as a merry buch of average RPers by the normal crowd shows the problem plain as day.
I’ll engage people in good faith and help them understand RP if they want to. If they’re just going to dismiss me as a basement dwelling nerd who plays with dolls, I’m not going to be charitable either. Tit for tat. If that destroys healthy debate over the fate of AD, call me toxic all day long.
The fate of AD is out of all of our hands right now and indeed most of the world given the lunacy being played outside our four walls. Right now, I’d rather see something less ‘toxic’ than the continual rehash of old arguments/drama/circle jerks being played out on these forums.