Gatekeeping in RP – Where do we draw the line?

Argent Dawn
222

Elfculler already beat me to it but yes, I don’t really have a foot in this race and I certainly would be stupid to idealise the quote unquote past, particularly when I have spent a lot of effort and time in my old guild to try and be a good example to the rest of the larger SI:7 community, create stories together and so forth, among other things. I have tried to do all those things, follow the golden rule mantras that have been shared here and realised that it was all futile, so I left and went to pursue other things.

Doesn’t mean that stopped me from noticing a decline and its a sentiment that I’ve seen echoed across people I’ve talked in discords or in whispers ingame after some RP.

But you do you man, if you want to keep believing that we’re all just being negative for the sake of negative, that things were ‘always this bad’ or that there were no standards, go for it, I’m not going to stop you. I’m certain you have your own good reasons for it, I certainly am not going to make assumptions about the content of your roleplay either now or ten years ago.

But I can’t really say this is really that honest or based on reality. Of course we can humour the thought that people have matured, which I can agree with sure to an extent, but the counterpoint to that is I can spot the same people playing pretty much the same brand of character in the same brand of guild like it’s groundhog day, just using different names. And I don’t mean that as a positive example.

The community has been fractured, to the point you have to follow five different discords to have a chance of spotting some initiative out in the open world. There’s less campaigns, less narratives that encourage people to come together outside of their little haven/guild/hub. Say what you will about the PCU and their friends but they did offer a lot of roleplay to the server. Doesn’t matter what you think about its’ quality, I certainly wasn’t a superfan of everything they’ve done, but I don’t think the void they left has been entirely filled. Especially with so many anti-rppvp sentiments that are common nowadays which other posters mentioned. On top of that, there seems to be less guilds around too with some concepts not seeing any sort of spotlight.

Of course one person can say that right now is “the best time” they’ve ever had with RP in WoW and some other person can say that no, “the best RP was in Mists” because of x or y. I can only wonder why the other person has nothing good to say about their RP -now- and what you propose is that there’s just one reason: rose-tinted glasses. I just don’t think that’s entirely correct in every instance.

But I’m trying to look at the bigger picture here and I just fail to see what exactly about those current times could make it seem like roleplay is doing better now.

7 Likes
223

Biggest tru.

2 Likes
224

Nah,

Warlords unironically had the most varied and interesting RP.

And it had nothing to do with Draenor.

3 Likes
225

I suppose we are having different role-playing experiences, so we will just agree to disagree on these kind of things (also my dinner’s almost ready so I want to wrap stuff up).

That’s my interpretation of it and naturally I am not omniscient, but I think at the very least it is an important challenge for who misses the role-play of old (even if I recognize that I could also come across as a bit of the dreaded “you think you do, but you don’t”): why was the past so much better for you and others?

A lot of times, we were just more naive and impressionable, or oblivious to the schemes happening behind the curtains.

I do appreciate you mentioning the RP-PVP campaigns of old, it kind of makes me see where you come from, and what you’re advocating for[?] when you speak of the good old times. Because I hear a lot of talk about campaigns that no longer take place, of gatherings and events; and yet this stuff is still happening right now and I can clearly see a lot of big initiatives being posted on the argent archives for example, or even here on the forums…

…Even if they may not cater to everyone’s tastes.

RP-PVP is in a bit of a bad spot right now, but I even recall a while ago there have been a couple of campaigns about it? But I cannot help you there, you’d be asking the wrong person for these I am afraid.

There are definitely less players and as the population ages, the overall concepts are bound to decline. This may be a bit sad in some kind of existential “all will become dust” kind of way, but it could also be a wake-up call: better do the good RP now, the server might not last forever.

1 Like
226

Rather similar how I can see you having the same arguments on the same forums over and over after all these years. Time is a flat circle.

1 Like
227

Deeper into the archives, even the dust has dust.

20 years ago, before Discord, before Skype, things were even more cohesive. Guilds just… got on and worked together, even cross-faction, coordinated almost entirely on the official forums. Goldshire was a solid RP location and frequented regularly. GMs would visit RP events, sometimes in character…

I wouldn’t say it was better, but I certainly enjoyed it more than RP of later years (MoP and beyond). Too much drama. But I also accept there’s a whole new set of players now, all my old friends are long gone, and I’m left occasionally tutting at drama making its way to the Argent Archives. I do love a big event though. The Lunar Festival recently was great fun and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves!

1 Like
228

There’s this sort of, really interesting and honestly kind of comedic train of thought that existed during the period of the PCU where people were quite happy to lap up the public RP Campaigns being hosted every 4 months for the enjoyment of the realm - all sorts of guilds, even supposed “PCU haters” would be in attendance. But then, afterwards, they would all swear they never attend or interact with the PCU. Just a really bizarre and strange mentality.

A lot of people also mysteriously became more aggravated when the campaigns became Community/Vetted People Only. As if the community owed people the commitment to a public RP campaign every 4 months for the sake of the realm.

2 Likes
229

We’re not going to drag up the old pcu-carcass again, are we? At this point I’m surprised there’s even something resembling paste left of this particular horse…

5 Likes
230

Honestly this thread was doomed from the start to devolve into PCU namedropping. The other PCU thread where people were hugging it out and promising to forgive and forget kinda just got forgotten.

231

So you decided to go Thanos and do it yourself? :stuck_out_tongue:

Also we’re talking about the one from some months ago now?

2 Likes
232

Or CPU if you’re dyslexic.

2 Likes
233

You’re the one trying to bring it under the spotlight to be entirely fair. I kind of think barely anybody is going in that direction?

Jeyce only mentioned it as an example as far as I can see, and this whole “aaah those hypocrites!!!” doesn’t really seem to add anything. I agree with Desartin. There is no need to go on about it.

2 Likes
234

Indeed, it’s quite curious how the ‘all that matters is that the hosts are happy…’ mentality only extends to the people but well, I can understand the grievances some may have had with that community. Still, there was roleplay offered and there was plenty of it and that was just my point.

Oh no, you’ve missed the mark, I just listed that as an example of how things used to be and why I see the difference between the then and now - also why I don’t agree that the ‘now’ is better. I might have not seen eye to eye with Perroy and his community, certainly hated some of the antics they pulled, but that doesn’t mean I can’t recognise the better things that they’ve done.

Again, nobody is trying to argue that the ‘days of old’ were this tranquil era of peace and prosperity on the server. There were plenty schemes that I wasn’t oblivious to, some that are still happening to this day. I just don’t know why you keep insisting on making this link that if someone says they don’t like the state of the server in the year 2025, it means they loved it in 2015 and thought it was free of all sin.

Why do you think things are better now anyway? Because you see that the roleplay is to a higher standard, because there’s less drama, because some people you didn’t like before aren’t around anymore?

In these conversations people like to bring up Mists (or Warlords which followed shortly after and still rode on that high, most of the RP had nothing to do with its story) because the writing at the time resonated with them a lot and there was a lot to use in roleplay. The faction conflict was represented really well, Pandaren were a great new addition and had a lot of cool lore to explore. The Pandaren characters were fine or alright, even if you had to contend with a lot of them acting like fish out of water and not being familiar with most events. I absolutely do not want to say that there weren’t any bad apples but I personally don’t remember the represantation being as bad as some of the “new arrivals” such as Dracthyr. It also helped that the game itself had cool/fun Pandaren characters to show to inspire people to make their own.

Now let’s see Paul Allen’s Dracthyr character.

it’s ok, you’re free to look away

2 Likes
235

Aaawwwh shucks.

If one of them walks away with something useful for the experience, it’ll have been worthwhile writing. :slight_smile:

5 Likes
236

The same sorts now who play your kaiju dracthyr / tired bored housewife night elf matriarch / half-orc half-elf bartender / ceasefire yannow goblins.

My own issues with the Pepe Cinematic Universe (weird rote / statue formation rp) aside, Jeyce is quite right they have left a void which I don’t think will be filled because stepping into that void will paint a target on their backs. As I previously said ‘Big Community’ drives are taken with a significant dose of scepticism these days, in part because of what the PCU were or were not supposedly doing.

Highlady Essington and the twenty campaigns to reclaim Fenris Keep. The Gilnean Civil War malarkey. DEMOCRACY DAN HIMSELF.
Sir twenty goodmen hollinbery i’ll-overthrow-varian-myself-from-my-darkshire-facebook-page-with-john-olliver-mascot.

I lament my curse of having a great memory, but I lament the midwits who forget these figures even more, because they have deluded themselves into thinking Argent Dawn had a ‘golden age’ where there was no pickled herring tier rp being bandied about.

[looks at the absolute desolation of vulpera, dracthyr, earthen and other reskin races, including his own]

huh, maybe the blank-slate feature is what attracts the second lifers to them.

5 Likes
237

I remember him being about when I first got here. Those were… interesting times aswell.

238

I can attest to that personally.

I left the game for years for various reasons, not in the least due to life in general getting busy. I popped back every now and then and tried to get involved in things but upon doing so I was immediately accused of being ‘PCU in disguise’ due to paranoia.

1 Like
239

Brother if I had a pound for every time I’ve met a Void Elf RPer who actually understands they’re extremely rare and were all Telogrus Void researchers caught in that 1/10000000 incident in the Rift I’d have, like, maybe £2 idk. Everyone mysteriously RPs their Void Elf as having been the Pizza Delivery Guy who just got lost in the Rift at the wrong place and time, it’s weird as hell.

Alternatively, as being an Elf who just did a lot of Void magic and ended up [like that], not understanding that uh… that’s not how it works.

1 Like
240

is there an ooc way out of this discussion???

to be absolutely fair I’m not so sure Blizzard understands it either, at the very least I’m confident they’re not very interested in pushing the velf story forward that much (midnight copium aside), I’m of the mind that they kind of trapped themselves in the corner with making them playable.

241

This stands out as being a little strange of an addition, to me, because wouldn’t goblins be, literally, the race that could exploit a ceasefire for their own gain in this manner? Individual RP’er skill aside, this doesn’t seem all that ridiculous at the face of it.