I guess you’re the judge of that, huh?
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i love u
<3
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The parents of my character, in my head canon, is a troll woman Cook and a troll Fisherman. The Fisherman´s favourite dish the is one his wife made him when they lived on the Broken Isles. It is made out of chicken, love and voodoo. She made it for her husband as packed lunches for he went fishing for days at sea to bring home food for the village. The dish is dear to them and the taste nostalgically reminds them of a time in their old home on the Broken Isles, so they named their only child after it. I know kind of lame background, but we can’t all have epic stories that makes us destined for glory and greatness.
Richter I think you are missing my point, either on intend or for the sake of argument. If people start down the road of name shaming then I think they should google their own names first.
I don’t have a problem with names but 15+ posts on the subject suggests that the forum-vocal part of the community is somewhat bothered by it and I am curious why?
My understanding of the word “policing” means “enforcing rules”. The RP naming rule is only in effect on RP servers. Enforcing an RP server rule is RP policing. How can you see that any different meaning of those words?
You keep talking about server identity. What is the server identity or the spirit of the realm?
If the naming issue is not an IC immersion issue but, as you say, a “server identity” issue, what is this server identity issue?
Is it about insisting on everyone confirming to a community etiquette made up by some members who pay just as much to play and be part of the community as everyone else?
Is it something Blizzard has defined specifically for Hydraxian Waterlords?
As for names, who decides what sounds perfectly fine? What is binaural bliss to one, is fork on a plate to another, so I think its fair to say that it is very subjective.
Help me understand please.
What is it that this forum thread is seeking to achieve apart from its original ask for Blizzard representative answer on Blizzards enforcing of their own policy?
If it is venting frustration, fair enough, everyone needs that and I can understand and sympathise.
Is it to get all names changed to conform to the following criteria? :
- Must be “medieval/fantasy”
- Cannot be “Latin”
- Cannot be “pun”
- Cannot be “pushing a political agenda”
- Cannot “a battle cry for something someone represents in the real world”
- Isn’t a “distraction” and
- Is not “too un-RPish”
Because that is very subjective and more or less all names can be reported for something like the above.
Reading through some of the forum I have noted a tendency to make the Hydraxian RP community divisive and all about “THEM and US”. Them being the ones that upset role-players and us being the role players. I don’t think it is a healthy attitude. That is what I am arguing against when I comment on the posts. But maybe I am seeing intention where there are none. I just think it is important not to take RP too seriously as that leads to orthodoxy and when we lose the ability to laugh at or make fun of ourselves, we become close minded, intolerant and exclusive. To me RP communities should be all about tolerance and inclusion.
To me it doesn’t matter who you are or what you believe as long as you don’t intend or set out to hurt or bother others, you should be welcome. If members of a community keep making up, and that is what they are doing are doing when they are suggesting community rules – they are making stuff up, then they will keep finding excuses to tell others they are not welcome.
A call “to “arms on” character name reporting to me is a step down a path of intolerance.
Obviously if some guild or persons name is designed to incite hatred then that is a nasty thing but reporting some one because their otherwise trivial name is a “distraction” seems to stem from a place of hurt and misery rather than a desire to do good or foster a tolerant community, would you not agree?
That is was what I am arguing. I am stating not my opinion as fact. I am not necessarily saying I am right. I am presenting my point of view. If my opinion doesn’t confirm to intra-community popular view then so be it. But as my basic intention is human decency what does this say about the forum-vocal part community if it is met with a lot of resistance?
Yes, I can agree to that. It’s usually not the definition people do of “RP policing”, so I concede that.
The server identity is that it’s the one and only RP server (not RP-PvP). The spirit of a role-playing realm is to create a space conducive to role-playing. Otherwise it would not be a role-playing realm.
I never said it wasn’t an immersion issue, I said it wasn’t an in-character issue, agreeing with you by default to name tags not being visible to our characters. But they are visible to the players, and those are damaging to the immersion of many.
No, it’s about following the rules set out by Blizzard when it comes to naming conventions in RP realms. The only one remaining rule we have for RP servers by now as the others have been stripped, I might add.
It doesn’t have to be a good name or have a pleasant sound (subjective), it has to be a name an actual character from that universe might have.
No. Names have to conform to this criteria: https://eu.battle.net/support/en/article/135764
And you’ve consistently accused the RP community of making these exclusionary claims that their posts never referenced, essentially fabricating an attitude that is not being displayed here.
And to others, not being able to follow a simple policy that is exclusively extended inside the one RP realm is also exclusionary because it hurts the the one space Blizzard has given them when there’s literally dozens of servers out there where these rules don’t apply and people don’t have to worry about them.
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The Gamemasters. Which is why the names get reported.
I don’t like when people reply to my posts in the style of quote-post-quote-post as it is in my opinion a sort of weak argumentation where someone seem to lack the faculty to comprehend or counter the overall opinion or argument, and resort to chopping it up in tiny bits and attacking each bit out of context with exaggeration, falsehood and dramatization, or have completely missed my point which means I feel I will have to write even longer posts to try and get the message across. And I think I have written more than I should already.
But you are aware of this as I have said it earlier so I can only think you are doing the quote-comment-quote-comment for a specific reason and/or to provoke a reaction.
The overall message being, yes, some people are jerks, and yes, some jerks are jerks on purpose, while others are so unintentionally. Grouping up with likeminded thinkers in a forum thread and sharing all the disliking and egging each other on to utilize the system punish, in my opinion, makes those that do belong to the first group where as the random jerk and has a character name that is basically a hand hitting the keyboard like “lskdjgf” is not being a jerk on purpose or with ill intetions. Intentional jerks on the other hand are worse than unintentional jerks. They actively work together and try to figure out how to inconvenience others.
The criteria on the list I posted was from the previous replies in this thread, so that list is, if you will, a criteria list borne out of the “server identity”, which you are pretending to defend.
I don’t believe the community is limited to the a few people who post on a forum, while they are part of it they are not the whole so the notion of a community identity as being based on the opinions of a few forum posters in and of itself is invalid.
When you write that I am consistently accusing the community of acting in an intolerant and disclosive manner, that in itself is an exaggeration coupled with a falsehood. An exaggeration because it is blowing something way out of proportion for the sake of drama and a falsehood because language is layered. A message can be communicated without being quoted verbatim. I can say that a several members of the community joining voices in a forum thread and sharing ideas of dis-inclusion towards others can be intolerant and be true even though in their conspiracy, to use a Richter exaggeration, have not used the exact word “intolerance”.
Some (not all) people in this thread (NOT the entire community (I feel I have to emphasize this now)) are saying that people who name their characters in ways doesn’t meet their expectations, are being intolerant and inconsiderate and they are combatting this intolerance and inconsideration by sharing of ideas of how little toleration they have of this and of how to report/ignore.
How is one different from the other?
Do you want to be one of the intentional jerks, one of the unintentional jerks or something different altogether?
Also, I still don’t feel we have gotten an answer to what the actual issue is with the naming is. You have said it was not an immersive issue.
People get angry and annoyed when something interferes with their plans or intentions. But your game or play is not really interfered with.
Is the issue that you feel people are not showing you or the community the respect you think you and the community deserve or that they don’t take you seriously when they are breaking easy to follow rules in the environment they and you inhabit?
Dang could you sound more of an self centred donkey-behind? I am starting to consider that maybe your a troll in more then just one way… Or someone whom really SHOULDN’T been on this server in the first place.
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That is not a very nice thing to say.
Is it your opinion that because you do not like my forum posts I should not be on the server?
No its my opinion based on that fact that you can’t seem to understand that there are rules here on the server which is set by blizzard NOT by player… You keep attacking the Rp’ers in your posts and a number of other things you have said here in this thread.
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I am not attacking anyone I am commenting on their posts, questioning their motives. I think attacking someone in dialogue on a forum would be if they got personal and started name calling and invited other members to leave the server because of their opinion or attitude.
It feels like you are helping me illustrate my point.
Thank you.
And that’s a nice opinion to have. I personally think that quoting different fragments of text helps to make the point as I can try to bring forth the idea that the person I’m responding to isn’t being misrepresented by virtue of people being able to quickly compare with the original post instead of needing to scroll up.
Any message can be exaggerated, falsified, dramatized or have the reader miss the mark whether you have or you haven’t quoted them - in fact it’s easier to do so, proven by the fact that you continue to misread peoples’ posts and claim as fact things that are the opposite of the point they’re trying to make. But thank you for putting my comprehension ability into question.
In this very same thread you have seen people discuss the issue from all ends of the spectrum, from people who are militantly in favor to people who are against any naming rules being enforced. It’s not been a homogenous group. In fact the original author only asked to wonder if the naming rules from Vanilla WoW would apply to Classic. Nobody asked for punishment, only that the actual rules of this specific server as defined by Blizzard be enforced.
No. Many of them you made up or misread from peoples’ posts, as they weren’t actual criteria anyone ever mentioned as necessary or even relevant.
Agreed. No one ever made that point.
How many times makes something exaggerated is also, coincidentally, a subjective opinion, but it’s not false because your message was clear in your posts, as layered as language can be.
Literally nobody in this thread is saying that.
For the third time, I never said it wasn’t an immersive issue, this is the second time I tell you that I do think it is an immersive issue.
It’s that there’s a pretty simple additional rule to RP servers that is to follow the specific RP naming policy and even that generates extensive debate when that was the rule before people joined anyway.
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But a lot of the people in this thread who are lobbying for this policy being enforced does not exactly observe this policy themselves or does it not apply to everyone?
How do you differentiate between the terms immersive and in-character in this context?
The main topic of the thread is the lack of tolerance for people with non RP policy names.
My question is how does anything written here help stimulate the RP feel?
To me all I can see it that it has a great potential to make it worse.
While I can appreciate a need to vent frustration from time to time I am trying to understand how it actually helps to report?
If the report is ignored you have wasted your time.
If the report is actioned by Blizzard and someone gets a forced name change and or a temporary ban the one reporting them have ruined someone else´s day. If they are the petty sort that like to huddle up in groups with like minded people, they will plan a way to come and cause grief to try and get retribution. Which you can then report again but it ends up in a vicious circle.
A knock on effect of this is that in the pursuit of righteousness it will have created more grief that everyone in the path of the ones whose day you ruined will now have to suffer. So if the balance of of these efforts and their outcomes are measured is it worth the time and energy?
It is not right and it is not fair that some people have to be jerks but it is not really making anything better by trying and failing to out-jerk the jerk. They have many many years of experience and it is so much easier to destroy and disrupt that it is to create and inspire so it will be a game that cant really be won.
What is the positive change that comes from reporting someone with a name that you don not find appropriate on an RP server?
My personal favorite in this thread is by Row the Night Elf Rogue.
The positive change is that immersion gets broken less via stupid or downright offensive names. Since you’re attacking yet another poster here I’ll chime in on that: Row is a better name than ‘n00B$l@y3r’. The latter breaks immersion in an instant and you probably facepalm as an rper, the former is interesting because it perhaps has meaning behind it or is an in-character nickname.
And regarding whether it makes it worse: Should we rather follow the one rule specific to an rp server and should we care more about the fun of fellow rpers, or should we care more about whether being forced to change their idiotic name ruins the day of an oocer that went on an rp server without caring about rp or rpers and chose a stupid name because they didn’t care or bother to check for a moment what the ‘RP’ in ‘RP-PVE’ meant?
Also, as usual the smaller group is asked by the bigger group why they can’t behave like back at home in the smaller group’s place.
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I’ve shown you the naming policy. It’s not really rocket science. The majority of names in this thread observe it.
To be clear: there are no bans for having your name reported, nobody is looking for that, and if there is a ban issued for someone’s name they probably deserve it because it was a vile and hateful name. The rest are just hypothetical slippery slope arguments.
Also Row is a perfectly fine name, it really isn’t that hard.
The positive change is simply that you’re encouraging more RP-friendly practices in the one server Blizzard has reserved for RP. If we’re using slippery slope arguments, not pursuing the observance of the RP naming policy leads to Blizzard not caring for the last rule they left for RP servers (there used to be more) and RP servers ceasing to exist.
This has happened to me and many others, by the way. I come from a WoW server that ended up losing its RP tag and it hurt the RP community immensely.
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I think that deserves a highlight. While I personally don’t report names, I can understand why people do it. In the end, if someone wants a server where they can use non-RP Names without fear of being reported, they have a whole lot to choose from. But we got one. Maybe two, if you count Zandalari Tribe, but since I don’t particularly enjoy cuddling the ground while half a dozen alliance players have a barbecque nearby that’s not really an option for me.
There’s nothing else for roleplayers. This is the only RP PvE server in the entire EU region.
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Frankly I wonder if and when there will be FCM from Hydraxian Waterlords, like there are from Zandalar Tribe.
While ideally the ‘Queue Refugees’ would then depart, realistically IMO the best thing to do would be creating a new RP Realm where those who subbed early for the Naming Reservation proces would gain first FCM access - it wouldn’t be perfect but the best way available to access wether someone actually want(ed) to play on a RP Realm or not.
It’s utterly rediculous that it is even up for debate wether or not character names should follow the specific rules set in advance by Blizz and the ToS or not, if you don’t like to follow the naming policies don’t roll on a RP Server. Simple.
Blizzard’s apparent lack of action - or even adressing it, despite being pointed out since Launch - in this matter, as in other matters (with an unhealthy dose of cronysim thrown in to boot), is already affecting my desire to play - and pay - for the game I waited litterally years to come (without indulging in pirate servers in the mean time,nsomething that apparently would have been a-okay, too).
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At this point a new RP realm would be a disaster for the RP community. Transfers away from the server to non-RP realms, maybe. A new (english, I’m still all for German/French RP servers) RP realm? Please no.
All that would do is splitting the community apart. Even if a large amount of roleplayers would use the transfers, it would never be all of them, so you’d end up with two servers that have some roleplayers on them, instead of one where all of them (well, all the ones that have no interest in PvP) are located.
We already have communities formed here, guilds who interact with one another, friendships with other players… a new server would be detrimental to all that and tear it apart.
That all said, I don’t think it’s particularly bad with the non-RPers at the moment. There’s a decent amount of them, but the vast majority I interacted with were perfectly pleasant people. Haven’t seen a single person making fun of roleplayers yet, nor anybody trying to disturb roleplay. The names are silly and unimmersive at times, but that’s what the report button is for.
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I’m not “attacking yet another poster”. Please don’t put words in my mouth or deliberately misinterpret what I write. I like to talk about ideas, not people.
My mentions on Row were positive ones.
I don’t have an issue with people’s names. I am questioning the motives of people who do. The posters in this thread are the ones who feel the need to report people with names that does not please them. The OP is asking the community if Blizzard has plans to enforce the naming rules and state that she has reported many but seen little results. This is then answered to various degree of perceived credibility in terms of my assuming that few of the people answer actually work for Blizzard so their answers are opinions, guesses and anecdotal testimony at best.
I was asking what a positive change to the issue was and as a preferred example I was commending Row. I think his suggestion towards the solution was the best one: to flood the server with positive inspiring RP actions that makes griefers go away. Fighting the negative effects or giving RPers a hard time with a love and passion for RP instead of anger. Row seems to be one of the few sensible people here who I sense has a great sense of humour. Fighting hate with love instead of trying to fight hate with hate. Row suggestion, to me, moves things in a positive direction and promotes a goal I think we should aim for. I like what he wrote.
When arguments are hard to find but someone wants to progress the debate, it is sometimes easier to call the opponent, ridicule and patronize them, to try and destabilize their credibility, is that why you are trying to paint a picture of me as someone who is attacking you or the members of the community?
When you use phrases like “attacking members of the community” are you then trying to polarize and make it “them (or in my case him) vs us”?
Does that somehow enable and legitimize the collective negativity?
On topic of names I would clear up some confusion. I am not opposed to any of Blizzards policies. I am questioning the motives and methods of people (subbed players) who take it upon themselves to try to enforce these rules, especially the one relating to non-fantasy and non-medieval names, on RP servers.
Blizzard policies and code of conduct, as I understand them and it, is about tolerance and accepting for people of all colours, sizes, shapes, genders, religions, political views and anything that would in other non-secular societies be grounds for persecution. It is what I like about their games. The stories help us understand things about ourselves as humans. While blizzard have stolen with arms and legs from just about every other popular culture in the genre of fantasy and science fiction, they have done so in a respectful, loving and caring way, to pay homage. One of the unique things Blizzard have managed to do is to make Orcs sympathetic, before WC3 that was more or less unheard of.
There will always be haters. The naming policy on names that are in violation of copyright, are inciting hate and intolerance or is impersonating Blizzard staff is, theoretically, in effect on all servers. What is unique to RP servers is the addition of a non permittance of “non-medieval” or “non-fantasy” sounding names. If someone is ´griefing´ other players or going out of their way to hurt others or disrupt their game play, it is my opinion that they should be reported regardless of what server they are on, because it goes against the policies but more importantly because it is a terrible thing to do to another human being.
What I am trying to question, here in this thread, is the motives of the players trying to enforce of the latter, the one with the specific RP-feel clause, as that the rule is subject to personal opinion and therefore in itself contradictive and ambiguous, making the attempted enforcing of it subjectively difficult for both reporters and blizzard staff.
But it is there and it is possible and I am not questioning the how. I am questioning the why?
If this was a brand-new feature within the game it would be hard to tell if it works but we are fortunate enough to have experience and to a certain extend data available to examine and analyse.
So, after 15 years of Role-players reporting people with names of players and guilds on Role-playing servers that sounds non-medieval or non-fantasy -like, what is your impression of the levels of success of this reporting on the RP server demograph?
If you played from the beginning, as many of us did, do you see more or less non-medieval and non-fantasy names on RP servers now than you did then?
And if you do so, do you think it is as a consequence of people reporting the names?
And what, looking back, do you think the effect of this reporting has had throughout the last 15 years?
My personal impression of that is that it has created more negativity and bad reputation for Role-players in that people remember bad experiences better than good experiences, being reported and on the receiving end of a forced name change I think is mostly perceived as a bad experience. It has helped build a ´freakshow´ image of Role-players, unintentionally inviting people to come when they are bored to point and laugh and try to stir things or wind up easily offendable players, especially if there are server queues and they naturally are jerks. Enabling these jerks by playing into their game just makes it easier for them and it is my opinion that reacting with anger and reporting just add fuel to the fire.
Example from a typical WoW player-troll mindset:
“Booooooored, lez all roll bald gnome chars on an RP server, strip naked, run to IF and die naked in the shape of a giant piece of the male anatomy in front of the anatomy and watch the tears come flooding”
(this actually happened on my server and the names of the naked bald gnomes did not support any level of immersion).
But that was a side track and my opinion and personal impression alone as I sense a pattern and a correlation between the number of people who are reported and who come to disrupt our game play.
So, after 15 years of reporting non-fantasy and non-medieval -sounding names of characters and players, what are the actual effect on the RP servers, are they better or worse and is their correlation that can prove that the change for better or worse is influenced by the reporting?
If there is no evidence that supports that reporting non-fantasy and non-medieval sounding names has a positive effect and stimulates a change for the better, is it then worth doing?
Also, Blizzard are not exactly observing their own policies, how many NPCs have names that are directly referring to real world people and or are popular cultural references?
But as mentioned these are done with love and care e.g.:
Harris Pilton the Bag Vendor, Old Man Hemming (Ernest Hemmingway, author of, among other stories, the book: The Old Man and the Sea) the Fishing Trainer and one of my personal favourites a signpost on the western edge of Deadwind Pass that bears the words “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”. In some translations of Dante’s Inferno, these same words are written on the gates of Hell.
So, my attempt at addressing the issue is to advise to roll with the punches as Blizzard themselves lovingly makes no reservations about not adhering to their own policies, as opposed to spending time, energy and effort to report non-fantasy and non-medieval -sounding names.
What I want to know is what do you get from reporting non-RP sounding names?
What are you hoping to achieve by reporting?
What, if any, effects have you actually seen these reporting’s have had, in terms of numbers (e.g. after I started reporting the latest census shows that non-RP names on the realm has gone down by 14%)?
I don’t know if this point has already been made because tl;dr… but such a rule may have been enforceable back in the day, but it’s hardly fair enforcing it now. At least on retail on realms such as Argent Dawn it’s nearly impossible to get a unique, good sounding fantasy name since they’re all taken. Already there is a similar problem on Waterlords. These days I let character names lie and rely on addons.
Gotta be honest, I never had any issues in that regard. Sure, sometimes it takes a while to find a name that isn’t taken, but so far I haven’t had any problems eventually finding one I was happy with. It’s certainly not a good excuse for using names that quite obviously break the rules. Nobody names themselves “Lmaoshadowkiller” just because “Ferandis” (Name pulled out of my behind, similarities to existing characters unintended) is taken.
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