Dragon RP discussion

Argent Dawn
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Dragon RP has long been frowned uppon on Argent Dawn. In my years of rping I have seen multiple of them around both fantastic and horrible ones. I am intrested to hear peoples opinions on what the pros and cons are of it and why people like it/dislike it. Please do mention examples of rpers you have meet when discussing the subject and what you think they did right and what they did wrong. Please don’t mention any names, I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable over the discussion!

My main concern about the bad ones are the following:
-Some tend to not stick to the lore, I have seen all from lightforged dragons to half dragons for instance. Things like these dosen’t make sense and is not supported by the lore at all.
-God emoting. Let’s face it dragons are decently powerful creatures but most of them shouldn’t be able to take on more than at maximum 2 mortals in their mortal forms. When a dragon rper decides to play god and break the lore we have something that I like to call “the dangerous snow flake”. The dangerous snow flake will do everything in their power to be the strongest and always brag all the time. Their characters don’t have any flaws either.
-The third and final thing is that some tend to be massive attention wh**es.

At the same time I have met people who have done a fantastic job at doing their rp:
I have seen fantastic story telling and events made by dragon rpers. For instance I once met a blue dragon on my mage that needed help with fixing some leylines. After defeating some manaworms and a dangerous anomaly thanks to the dragon and multiple other mages we managed to fix the broken leyline. This event was goreous. The person made a good example of how dragons aren’t the all powerfull creatures they once were and that even they can need help from a mortal sometimes.

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Dragon role-play is just like any other kind of role-play. I don’t understand why it is given such special treatment.

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What players will frown upon or tend to, is their immersion feeling invaded by the likes of dragon roleplayers. Which is completely fair enough. Another factor would definitely be that Blizzard doesn’t cater dragon styled classes for the player to choose, and many of the roleplay scene is birthed from the base set of classes and races, anything that goes widely out of the range won’t really fit with what the players feel they’ve been given. Same applies to races.

But I personally think if players want to do Dragon Roleplay, that’s cool and fine, just be prepared to self-ostracise yourself from most of the community and it’s roleplay, and more work with a small sect of players.

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Dragon RP is no different to any other RP. If a player knows the lore behind them and they feel confident in portraying one, there’s absolutely no problem.

The argument that “most dragon RPers are bad” can be aimed at most races/concepts in the game - there’s always someone, or a great many someones, doing it “badly”.

There’s a lot of conflating the actions of the loud, “bad” minority with the many, which isn’t particularly fair.

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Dragon RPers have a long standing history with ERP because something-something, I don’t know (people have very weird fetishes). That’s one reason for a stigma to perceive them negatively.

I also don’t really understand how you can label ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ on RP, considering how when one person will begin madly spouting that being OP IC is very fun, the other person will begin grunting in filthy farmer Joe the Useless Man.

In all honesty, I’d have written something lengthier for this thread, but the topic of dragon RP has been discussed so often and so thoroughly on AD that it’s just getting dull at this point.

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Like all RP, dragons can be done well, or poorly.
To do it well, know your lore, know your audience, keep your power in check and ultimately (as always) don’t ERP.

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I 100% agree that it’s akward to see ERP focused dragon rpers, really does creep me out.

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I think back in time there was a huge surge in people who roleplayed a dragon. Though nowadays you rarely see any. I don’t really get the issue that people have with said thing to be roleplayed when we also have nearly any other fantasy trope in Warcraft.

I don’t think that dragon roleplayers are as much of a problem as any other lorebenders. It can be pretty cool. Though most people over do it massively.

My worst memory is of a female black dragon roleplayer back in the day. Of a certain guild in Duskwood. Who went around and collected pieces to make “a lesser dragonsoul”. Which still, according to the emotes displayed, apparently could just turn people into dust.

Some cool idea but this just displays the powertrip that some roleplayers are on. Though that’s the case for any other role to be played out too. So I don’t really see the problem with the dragon roleplay thing itself, more on how people play it out.

I can remember some female character who made friends, joined a guild and I do not know what else since I forgot. After a year (or so) she sacrificed herself and her secret got out that she was a dragon. Nobody knew. People did not even knew OOC. She was a blue dragon who wanted to study how the mortal races deal with arcane. Disguised herself as an apprentice and studied under actual playercharacters arcane. It was great.

I remember another dragon roleplayer who was pretty cool too in Duskwood. Wonder where that pandaren is today.

I mean not gonna meme, they sort of do exist. Dragonsworn are sort of half dragons. But it’s pretty rare to see one.

Which is why I brought the example with the blue dragon up. It has zero point to display yourself as this mega powerful being and it’s all flexing while nobody cares really.

I would like to bring up a fourth point: people that only roleplay a dragon (mostly red dragons) for the erp.

Was that at the Nexus in Northrend? Because if so, then we have met the same person! I met a dragon roleplayer on my former pandaren character in Northrend while just randomly walking by. It was pretty sick.

Though this kind of roleplay is, in my opinion, not very straight forward like other.

See it like this:

  • You are a dragon. You mostly (if you don’t roleplay a whelp) are old and experienced in your specific field. Let’s say you decide to roleplay a bronze dragon. Cool. Now you watch the timelines.

Ok, now what? Will you, in roleplay, run around and watch random stuff and be like “ah yes, exactly like it should happen!”? Because I do that on my timewalkers character on occasion.

Other flights like the black or blue one might be more suited for a more “let’s see what these silly mortals do” approach. But others aren’t at all. The bronze ones are probably more suited with a group. Or you just be silly like me and go to random places and gather a few people for a smol event. Most can work really. Though make sure it is not anything heavily lore bending or so.

Over all I would say you have to be aware of many like the lore, powerlevels and so forth to roleplay a dragon roleplayer or anything related to it.

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Brilliant post! Regarding dragonsworns they are more of servants dedicated to the dragons. They may be awarded power by their masters giving them some draconic appearances.

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Green or red dragons taking up with a group of druids wouldn’t be a stretch. The protection of life and nature being important to them all. They also spend less time in cities and are often in the wilds.

The green flight also has a strong relationship with the nelves.

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This is correct, I once saw a green drake in the duskwood grove who was doing some sort of ritual with a bunch of druids near one of the moonwells.

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ERP with Dragons is pretty similar to Belves, the game has over sexualised the two corrosively over the years. Whereby which the most intelligent races seemingly take Bikinis for their attire, imagine if this logic was in Lord of the Rings lol.

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I don’t really find it difficult to understand why the arguably most beautiful race don’t share modern perceptions on clothing. Intelligence doesn’t mean you cover yourself.

That being said, you can apply that logic to most races. Orcs, trolls, and tauren aren’t known for hiding their skin either.

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Having fur is arguably cheating.
But it’s not uncommon in the real world for some cultures to wear more revealing outfits.
It’s part of wow that some races show skin, even some humans do it. It doesn’t mean anything dirty.

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Okay furry.

There’s some weird social conservatism on AD at times. If a character shows skin, they must be an ERPer and should be treated as such.

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Uh-oh, I’m in trouble…

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If they hadn’t given Alexstrasza big old bazoongas the dragon RP scene may have gone in an entirely different direction.

I want to go to that alternate reality.

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I think I would actually find it strange if dragons wore full outfits when in humanoid form. They’re giant, magical scaled lizards, clothes seem a bit redundant for them.

There’s not really a dragon RP scene though to my knowledge - just various people RPing them, here and there.

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Throughout society in our own world, the revelation of skin be that 600 years ago has always been deemed sexualised especially from a western perspective, as example shown throughout times of the Renaissance or onwards. It doesn’t mean anything dirty, instead it’s considered part of eroticism which again is just human natures fantasy of idealisation. Anyhow nowadays it’s just the result of society adapting from the repressed state it was previously in.

I think because of this merge from AD’s perception and WOW’s own visual image that causes a very distorted view.