Losing entire districts of the main hub of a faction to OOC’ers is something Rp’ers have a right to mald about, this is a rp realm, I dont get the confusion?
Personally Ive never questioned anyones right to choose a server, because that isnt a thing we can decide.
What I tend to question is why. I dont mean that passive aggressive, but geniuenly why because I dont understand.
If I want to go sunbathing in the summer, I can pick an empty grass field or park. I dont need to do it on the football field. Especially when there is already people playing.
Its not about right, its just why would you do that?
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Genuinely think, drawing on my own experiences, that keeping a hobby alive entails being welcoming to people and encouraging them to role-play. If someone is in a library and they’re not using it for its intended purpose or being disruptive, I’m more likely to try to get them to pick up a book as opposed to just throwing rocks at them. If that persists, then obviously they need to be removed.
I feel as if there’s a certain level of elitism prevalent depending on what someone determines ‘role-play’ to consist of as well. When I started out, I wouldn’t call ‘now’ what I did back then ‘RP’ and I definitely didn’t care about role-play when I started out. Not in the slightest.
We do encourage people to roleplay, come here to AD and roleplay, just no real desire to welcome people who have zero intention of ever roleplaying, by all means…if people wish to roleplay come to AD, come in droves come by the thousands if you wish…to -role play- it is a rp realm after all, the last true rp realm in WoW, as opposed to every other single realm being perfectly suited to OOC’ers, why should we dilute this realm when they have soooooooo many to pick from?
The issue with that is that intent is sometimes something that has to be encouraged or fed into. I picked a ‘role-playing’ server because it sounded cool and I thought I’d see a bunch of lotr-ish poop. I had no idea what it entailed and I definitely trolled or griefed a few times until someone set me straight and got me interested in the hobby, but that didn’t factor into my choice of realm.
Imagine if you could get more ‘ooc’ers’ interested in RP. That’d do wonders for the community, and it happens all of the time, so long as people aren’t hostile. (not saying anyone in-particular is hostile, mind)
People aint got time to coarce/convince people to roleplay lol, this is a hobby we dont get paid for this, join a rp realm and rp, its pretty simple really, if your not ready to rp…go elsewhere? I really struggle to understand why OOC’ers cant grasp this.
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To be a bit frank, that isn’t roleplayers job to do though. Most already have a limited time to play and want to spend it roleplaying, not to try and get people potentially interested in doing it since they can’t do that themselves.
Also to touch a bit on it, despite that, this is still the general approach. I usually follow all of the new PvE/OOC threads, and the normal response is to ask if they roleplay or are interested in giving a try.
The only time they are bluntly told to not be here is when they straight up say that they don’t like roleplay, never will, and in many cases, openly talk about how much they despise it.
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It’s mostly an experience thing. If you’re all sharing a space - WoW is already a role-playing game, it’s really not rocket science to invite someone in that space over to try a different way to appreciate a game. It’s not about dedicating time to it so much as it is making it a part of your experience and tbh it’s definitely more productive than a lot of the stuff that goes on on these forums. A big part of my joy as a former guild leader invovled taking ‘newbs’ or people with minimal interest in RP and getting them engaged in various roles in the community to dip their toes in.
People can be extremely receptive. It’s not about it being a job or duty. Getting other people invovled and encouraging them to take part is just a part of the fun for people who like growing out their hobbies. They are already playing a role-playing game, so it’s really not a huge leap to get to a point where they’ll role-play.
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Couldnt agree more, I legit turned an OOC’er into a rp’er on Swtor about 2 weeks ago, now he engages in our events over there, its not like we arent encouraging people to rp or arent welcoming, they dont need to have the first clue what to do, just be willing to learn, you can teach someone the basics of roleplay in one paragraph, but if your not interested, you dont really have any business being here (not you specifically ofc Vix)
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Should also be noted that the library analogies is not a good one. Note how PvE and PvP content are also meant to be done on AD. They’re part of the offer of the server and as highlighted by others, RPers do PvP and PvE aswell on AD. It’s not like doing an activity that shouldn’t take place (and that is against the rules of the library too), but something that is meant to happen too.
Tbh this:
is so welcoming!
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I agree with this, fundementally. I mentioned it somewhere earlier in one of my posts, but the analogies imo should be more akin to sharing a space where we all have common ground. i;e: every server fundementally offers people a venue to do the same thing. A role-playing server should be role-play friendly, but ultimately if players on that server either don’t RP or quit RP, they shouldn’t be expected to move just because they’re not role-playing, especially if they’re not being disruptive.
That being said, I don’t think anyone actually thinks that ‘OOC’ers are destroying the server’ is primary causation for the state of Argent Dawn. Most of the red flags I’ve seen on other EU WoW servers are what I’m seeing here, and it has very little to do with the presence of players who don’t RP.
And regardless of intent or ‘we don’t actively poop on people who don’t RP’, I would say if I was new to these forums, I’d get the impression as an outsider that the RP community isn’t particularly friendly - but it’s like I’ve said before, the forums are not a good indicator of the general community.
I also don’t really buy the whole ‘if the majority of people don’t RP, RP dies’ because ultimately, I’m not a sheep. If I enjoy RP, I’ll continue RP’ing. I’m always one of the last % to leave a dying RP realm because ultimately people like those greener pastures and never want to put the effort into replanting, which I get, because it’s not a job, it’s a hobby. To elaborate further, what I mean is, I don’t really buy this whole ‘it becomes normal to not RP because a large number of people don’t RP’ mentality.
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Yes, welcome people who wish to actually give it a go, not linger around for months/years semi trolling/griefing with the hope someone takes hours out of their day to convince/coerce them into roleplay, if you want to learn come, if you have no intention, go elsewhere? that isnt unreasonable, AD is a ROLEPLAY realm, its not unreasonable to expect EVERY SINGLE person coming here to have the intention of giving it a go.
Tbh, I don’t think welcoming oocer because of the off and very rare chance they in the future (that no one can predict) is not that productive to the rp community as some are making it seem.
Edit: Not something I would risk betting on at least.
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Agreed, theres that many roleplayers across various games, that would likely flock to AD if it was entirely cleaned of OOC’ers this idea that we need to convince more OOC’ers into roleplay and invite them here with the tiny tiny tiny chance of convincing a small percentage of them to rp is ridiculous, infact tbh, if we lost all the OOC’ers and still kept the same population of pure rp’ers? it would still be an improvement for the realm, as we could roleplay anywhere without half as much griefing.
I mean, if you could guarantee that every single player on the realm was here with the intent of role-play, it would essentially be more akin to a fully moderated private role-playing server, and people would DEFINITELY jump on that because the idea of a moderated public role-playing server is literally anyone’s idea of heaven.
It has some caveats but ultimately it’s an attractive option because you can not only deal with immersion but you can also get rid of undesirables entirely at that point. (no ERP’ers/jade witches, or dramalamas, stalkers, etc)
But as an open public server, there is a certain level of survival that is dependant on new player traffic. If new blood does not enter the scene, the scene will die. People are already moving to greener pastures in droves and resorting to WoW RP in private servers, forums, discord, etc, because either, in many cases, the game isn’t appealing to them anymore or they don’t like ADs community.
Will say as well that without the ‘moderation’ aspect, if all that was left on the realm was the role-playing community, it would just eventually deplete and die, like many other servers. The moderated private server-esque ‘RP only’ incentive would be amazing, but that’s never going to happen on retail.
A lot of the friends I’ve met on AD don’t even role-play, but they’ve been very pleasant people to me, never disrupted my RP experience, and actively tell other people about RP opportunities.
Yeah, it is far too hard for them to answer.
It wouldn’t really, if nothing else it would make it grow since spaces occupied by oocers would be free making new RP opportunities.
Yeah, the issue is, and I say this coming from multiple realms where there were plentiful ‘open spaces’ deprived of OOCers, is that you can’t snap role-players out of thin air and if there’s a big green pasture like AD available, they’re more likely to graze there. It’s already happening where people, more and more, are moving to greener pastures on other MMOs and in other venues that provide a better experience.
I’m not advocating that trolls, griefers/etc aren’t a problem, and that it makes inherent sense to join an RP server if you don’t know what RP is or have no interest in RP, because it doesn’t, but I do know from experience how hard it is to keep a dying community alive, and the ‘OOCer’ is merely, IMO, a very small reason for that community decay in comparison to a large number of other reasons from the state of the game to the state of the community.
Though tbf I don’t think it’s anywhere near as dramatic as that, ‘yet’.
Not sure what you mean by this, but if this has anything to do with what you said early, here is something I was taught (that I’m gonna translate)
“Better to keep current rpers than risk potencial news ones at the risk of the current ones, it’s a loss most of the time.”
I actually used to think like this until I witnessed a lot of evidence to the contrary. I’ve seen and been through this song and dance numerous times. That line of reasoning, unfortunately, only leads to loss without gain. Everyone will eventually bugger off elsewhere, and that’s definitely the unfortunate reality, as horrible as that sounds. I’ve tried to prevent it numerous times but it always ends with the same doomspeaking, the same ramblings, etc.
It’s kind of depressing to think about. XD