As usual. .
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AD is the last server that operates as a RP server and you refused to accept this, moving the goalposts to third party servers and clinging to the absurdity that a dead RP server with maybe 10 people left RPing constitutes a functioning community.
No, you’re actually just wrong and I contest your absurd claim with staunch resolve.
If you never admit defeat, you’ll always keep winning!
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Dare I even ask what the heck is going on?
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Zaphius flexing his “I win” ego.
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He can’t tho
I win.
Nah, it’s fine. You can take that back and it’s not a gotcha moment. It’s the mature thing to do. 
But I must confess, main discussion aside (in which I am of the idea I have debunked most arguments) I’ve failed at least at one thing.
The reason I kept debating was to prove you wrong on this last bit, though at this point I’m starting to lose the drive: I wanted you to confess that you aren’t enjoying the debate and that you aren’t here because you find it funny. You’re here because you are engaged, and hate the idea to give up.
I never moved it, they were always among the servers I mentioned btw. 10 people vs. three/five guilds with about 40-70 people for several years (and what this implies for the other and most important argument, namely that nonRPers would choke RPers by proxy). Okay.
Much like people contested Galilei, he was still right and they were wrong.
The only gotcha moment is my JoJo meme
Big ups to Bee for that cute art at the end
Zaphius, take a look at who is replying to you. Look at who is agreeing with you.
You don’t have to admit defeat.
Yet you also have nothing to prove.
You don’t have to reply, mate. You’re allowed to sit back and relax.
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You wavered immediately and had to shift your argument to private servers to be consistent, then you rejected the notion of a dedicated RP server entirely, dismissing it as my uniquely egotistical standard.
But you refuse to accept when your argument fails, continuously inventing new ways to claim your opposition is invalid.
They do, as not RPing becomes the norm on a RP server. THE RP server by now. Don’t let this happen to AD just out of spite.
I’ve personally seen this happen at least five times.
If you aren’t joking, I now feel sorry for you and myself for engaging.
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He’s still going 
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You can’t teach the stupid my dude
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He must win, even thou by his own admition of what an argument is he never did.
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I’ve managed to give my sister a lift home and return.
The man is still typing.
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Probably typing the whole script of the Bee movie.
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We do like the Bee movie.
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You’re deflecting from the point I made. It’s still a contradiction.
Omg. What kind of stuff am I even reading here. Look here:
(aside from the fact that refining an argument is perfectly fine) I never shifted it: it was always in the original argument.
Also, that’s how you know I wavered? I never ‘shifted’ to “less conventional servers”. They were always two points I advanced at the same time since the original inception of the argument. I always stated that the smaller servers are a community for the whole time, before and after. If anything, it is you who keep shifting the numbers (you thought 70 people would not make a community, but now you try to argue that 10 don’t - this looks like a weird strawman).
It all depends on the definition you give. If it randomly implies the exclusion of non-roleplayers, then yes, I did reject it? It was up to you to defend it further or clarify it. In the end, I do recall I accepted the definition you gave of “purpose of an RP server” and simply pointed out how it did not lead where you wanted.
For now, aside from the point in which I falsely stated that you did it for the lols, I was mostly correct [in that discussion].
Ah, this thing again. But you see, this is still the weakest point you’ve brought. Believe me when I stress this point. It’s a half-baked argument which doesn’t really go anywhere. And I did ask you plenty of times to expand upon it, and all the time you switched to some weird vivid metaphor along the lines of “because nonRPers choke RPers” or “because I believe in AD!” which maybe would make you the protagonist of a hollywood movie, but isn’t really meaningful in our discussion and definitely doesn’t explain your point. The premise (“nonRPers normalize nonRP”) is stronger than the conclusion (“therefore, they harm the RP community”) and due to it, it looks more like an explanation than an argument at all. If it doesn’t work as an explanation, then it’s bordering on circular reasoning (“what does it mean to harm the RP community? to normalise nonRP”). I say bordering, because it could be saved by expanding on it, but you never really did?
I did even lay out circumstances that falsify your predictions, which you completely ignored. So yes, I consider this incarnation of the “nonRPers harm RPers waagh!” one of the worst ones I’ve ever seen. And over the course of the years, I can assure you, I’ve seen many.
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A RPing population on a RP server being crowded out by people with no interest in RP normalizes not RPing on the RP server until it becomes non-viable.
I’ve seen this happen several times.
You argue that RPers quitting is the RPers fault for giving up, not the pve-crowd vastly outnumbering the RPers and making RP difficult to find at all.
10 or 70 people does not make a healthy RP community on a server accomodating thousands. You try to get out of this by claiming the small group is still a community after a fashion and that concern over their circumstances is elitism. If officially approved RP servers die out, you claim RPing is still okay because private servers exist.
If your argument is that RP exists because people RP, then yes, but it will not survive and being choked out is an apt word for its slow demise. You’re just claiming a win on a technicality while refusing to recognise what makes a community function.
The original claim remains that non-RPers outnumbering RPers on the last server that offers RP (in a practical sense as all others died to this issue) is a problem that normalizes not RPing on a RPing server and that we should encourage RPing and the people who refuse to RP are a problem.
You reject that a RP server should have rules to dictate its purpose and player conduct as an expression of self destructive elitism.
I’ve seen at least five RP servers die to this exact problem. What’s your counter? It’s anecdotal? I’m empirically observing and expressing concern at a very familiar pattern. What do you have other than obdurate refusal to recognise this?
It’s an accurate description of what’s happening and I do believe in AD’s ability to keep making RP and stay strong but we have to fight for it and not go down your pessimist path of resigning to slow extinction because RP can still survive on a private server.
If that makes me the protagonist and a hero of AD, sign me up.
It’s a sequential description of consequence. One thing leads to another. Sticking your hand in water gets it wet. But you’ll just add a qualifier of wearing gloves…
Good thing that I never employed circular reasoning. You just made that up to make my argument weak. When (not if) RPing becomes abnormal on a RP server, the server loses its designated purpose and RPing becomes a shrinking niche as people have no interest in engaging with a dying community. I’ve explained this several times over and all you say is no.
And why is that? You still regard a dying community as healthy and the tiniest struggling remnant of RPers a community completely removed from the necessity of a designated platform.
You didn’t at all and I don’t know what game of semantics you’re trying to play to find some measure of peace with being disastrously wrong about a RP community being indirectly and directly harmed by the growing population utterly uninterested in participating in RPing.
Of course it is as you reduce your opposition’s arguments to meaningless screeching and dismiss it.
This whole discussion is positively eldritch and I feel my sanity fraying.
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- Strawman. I’m not arguing whether or not they’re an healthy community, I’m arguing that they are one.
- Look at any definition of community and you will never find required numbers. Because communities don’t need to reach a quota to be considered one. Small groups have always counted as such: 20 artists in a place that could accommodate thousand people inside a city of hundred of thousands -still- make a community. And it works with roleplayers too. The space doesn’t matter by itself, what the people do does.
You don’t want to trust me that numbers don’t matter? Check for a definition. Wikipedia: “a community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as norms, religion, values, customs, or identity.”
Numbers aren’t a requirement. Like, at all.
Because it is a win. Because it forces to shift the definition you’ve made. Because it is a fair point that has to be acknowledged.
These communities -are- functioning. They -do- host RP. They make content. They meet and socialize. Etc. Etc.
But that’s exactly where history proves you wrong. How come it has survived this long? If you claim it the roleplay in these servers will be choked out, how come it hasn’t been already? They’ve been a huge minority in their server for almost a decade. Let’s say from around WoD: that’s eight years where they’ve been a minority among nonRPers.
If your explanation is true, then they should have died a long time ago. No “if”, no “but”. They haven’t. They keep role-playing. Ergo, your explanation is false: they haven’t been choked out.
And this doesn’t work only for minor servers but also our communities: Stormwind has had a mixture of nonRPers and RPers since vanilla. It is perhaps the place where interaction is more likely to happen and yet it is one of the most thriving hubs. And look at Dalaran: it has been created fully knowing there would be nonRPers and players still roleplay there.
Which leads me to the last point below.
Not at all? It depends on what kind of rules and purpose we’re talking about. I’m completely fine by having a roleplay server have a purpose which accommodates for role-players.
I’m 99% certain it is a lie. That’s my counter. First, I doubt you RP’ed on each of them, especially since I understand you’ve also been on Argent Dawn since the very beginning. Second, I also believe I was in two of those five, so I can tell you directly that they did not die due to nonRPers. Third, I do already doubt your skills in reproducing accurate events, as per the above posts.
A lot of words to say it is just a description
(also, sequential and consequence are redundant for the sake of being redundant). Yes, it is a description: not an argument. I’m glad we both agree on this bit.
You didn’t because it wasn’t even a real argument. It’s just a description.
I did it here:
And here:
And here (albeit in a different take):
And here:
This is what I have been dealing with for the whole time, Levey. Someone who doesn’t even understand the arguments I’ve made, which are rather simple. And I’ve been repeating them over and over, and your replies have often ignored this point or answered like this:
Unironically.
Which is just mind-blowing to think about the fact you haven’t even realized this was meant to falsify your “description” after all the posts. Tbh I did imagine you were just rationally avoiding the point. I do not know what else to say. It’s crazy that I have to specify it and place the equivalent of a magnifying glass for you to -maybe- reply to it or understand why I’m writing it.
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My man Zaphius in a nutshell.
https://imgur.com/9gX2MSC
Allow me. https://i.imgur.com/RuIPYTp.png
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Changing nothing of what I said about your point that you’re using pointless semantics to argue it’s a community by definition, not in practice as it functions on a healthy RP server made for the purpose.
It actually isn’t as you’re just doing the worst possible disingenuous fallback of dredging up a dictionary definition to prop up a failed argument. It’s the same tier as “I’m not a homophobe, I’m not literally afraid of gay people, webster’s dictionary defines a phobia as…”
In catastrophic decline under factors that you refuse to admit to be an issue in the first place, meaning we can never have a meaningful discussion of how their circumstances erode the community down to nonexistence.
I have given no timetable. I have given you conditions and circumstances that I see as being exacerbated over time in a familiar pattern leading to a state of a server that’s RP in name only. I urge you to listen to the people who lost their RP havens and migrated to AD as the last server with any viable long term health.
And has had a RP-free zone in the market district since forever where the natural assumption is that you’re there OOC to check your auction. I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone RP there.
People RP on a RP server, so the community is doing fine. That’s where your argument ends. No ifs and buts about it, no analysis, no worrying trends and pointing any of it out makes me and others elitists.
Yet any attempts to encourage people sticking to RP server convention and respecting the server’s purpose is regarded police state repression and that we shouldn’t as this sort of gatekeeping of basic low expectations scares players away and diminishes the server.
I already told you this was across several games and several servers therein. A reliable pattern of destruction I empirically recognise as a negative and now you’re just dismissing it as “I don’t believe you”.
When it comes to WoW servers, I certainly saw the demise of defias brotherhood as a RP-PvP server and even if we observed the same things I doubt you’d reach the same conclusions as your standard of evidence and what’s actively harmful evidently differs from my own.
That isn’t my problem anymore.
You’re saying I’m using too many words when you already demanded qualifiers for so much. No, it describes events as they develop as a consequence of prior actions, such as allowing RP to become a maligned minority of a RP server. It’s basic consequentialism in action, the outcome enabled by the previous state.
You’re smarter than this so I’m going to assume you’re just dismissing my argument for the sake of it. You could argue against the circumstances producing the expected results but you don’t, and at this point I doubt that you have a case to make other than insisting that I’m wrong or claiming disbelief in my claims.
It didn’t accomplish what you were trying. You’re arguing my point is invalid because people still RP while my argument is that the RP community is in decline because non-RPers are outpacing us. Never did I claim that Dalaran’s community will be gone by Thursday but you use this lack of exact figures and a timetable to invalidate my observations. You then try to falsify a point I didn’t make in complete futility, basically arguing with yourself out of a false assumption you claim that I’m making and then get frustrated with me for not caving to an argument against something I never said. This was never the logic trap you thought it was.
Then you call me foolish for not surrendering to your infallible logic.
No, actually, RPers and non-RPers can only coexist insofar as the non-RPers stay out of the RPers way in deference to the server’s true purpose as a RP platform, as the rules state. Sadly, that fight was actually lost years ago and all we can do as RPers is to encourage the non-RPers to become RPers or otherwise know full well that this server was not made for them.
Thus, the Dalaran community exists in spite of what’s become of AD and that is a positive. A community does indeed exist, and not by some flimsy dictionary fallback. It is however not something that will last if AD continues its drift of percentages toward a server population consisting almost entirely of non-RPers as the RPers are crowded out.
Thus we return to my point; why Dalaran? It’s actually a perfect example of the signs of the end that I’ve witnessed several times already; It isn’t the sort of place that’s under heavy traffic of the overwhelming number of non-RPers, thus becoming a haven, a bubble, even. A refuge for the dwindling population of RPers on a dying RP server soon to be fully abandoned by RPers if we don’t push back and reclaim areas, recruit new RPers and actively encourage those around us to adhere to server rules and social expectation. Dalaran is either a wilting nest or an outpost from which to expand and AD as a whole has to choose.
I’m in no mood to be charitable and humour this utter refusal to be constructive anymore. Don’t call me stupid.
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