Maybe I’ve not seen what you’ve seen, in which case fair enough, disregard this, but what I have seen from the Gilneas community is an insistence not to let Horde RPers into the main city itself which I don’t think is unreasonable. Even with both factions coming in to chase out the Scarlets that took residence there, Gilneas still very much is an Alliance settlement and the Horde involvement was more of a gesture of goodwill and making amends rather than some desire to claim Gilneas as their own.
What I was talking about didn’t involve any Horde, solely Alliance.
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Nah, people like that are still around. I fired up a monk character in Dragonflight and encountered a group of your stereotype northern dark souls characters who simply could not fathom the fact that my (human) guy trained in Pandaria, or such a place even exists.
I can understand having a sheltered character who isn’t aware of everything on Azeroth, but this is a bit of a reach when it concerns a group that supposedly travels around a fair bit. Unfortunately balance is not struck and if it’s not that, then I have to interact with walking warcraft wiki characters who cannot explain a concept beyond the quotes the copy and paste into the chat. If it’s not a geralt of rivia or a baric dondarrion character, then it’s going to be a stormwind debater character who talks like a redditor or twitter/bluesky poster under the pretense that “they work with goblins a lot”.
So yeah, no wonder some people are left without no choice but to “gatekeep” their guilds, events or roleplay to avoid the absolute flood of such nonsense.
that’s a funny name we have for shooting blight catapults at the city
this is just an opportunity to use blizzard’s idiotic writing to point out that yeah, maybe horde members shouldn’t be so welcome there, but as it was pointed out before that means you’d risk being pinned with the label of an evil gatekeeper. but if people are willing to sacrifice all reason and immersion for the sake of pumping up event numbers then be my guest.
If anyone thinks this is just an exaggeration and an attempt to defend ‘bad gatekeeping tactics’, consider that the HORDE discord was recently invaded by some random roleplayer who dropped in to announce a casual event held in DUSKWOOD (with so many wonderful horde merchants who already set up shop there allegedly) and then the second someone pointed out that it’s a bit weird for horde members to go so deep into Alliance lands, said person absolutely flipped their lid and started calling people names and how they all just “want to ruin fun for everyone involved”.
I feel like another elephant in the room that nobody dares to discuss is situations like these, where event organisers under the pretense that they have to put “so much work into organising these things” act as if they have absolute political immunity and anyone who even dares to drop a drop of criticism is automatically labeled as a meanie who hates fun, and btw if you hate this event so much you don’t have to attend. 
This isn’t to say that every organiser/rp creator is like that, but it’s a trend that I’ve seen in this server for I-don’t-remember-how-long.
So I suppose that’s where the line is drawn
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But also… You really don’t, you also don’t have to pick fights or talk smack about events just because they’re happening somewhere you don’t like.
Public events live and die on their engagement, if you don’t like them, don’t engage with them. Of course, whoever this person is clearly couldn’t take it on the chin and give you this exact rebuttal, but genuinely, don’t engage.
The biggest issue in the Horde Discord is honestly how many events get advertised there and then endlessly whined about by people who wouldn’t attend it anyway lol
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I’ve kinda been on record as a Horde-in-Duskwood hater for quite a while, but honestly even that I can see more reasoning for than Gilneas. Gilneas is a city that, as far as I’m concerned, is absolutely full of citizens who have long awaited a return home (“Gilneas will be reborn from the blood of our enemies” and “Glory to Gilneas” as generic NPC lines when you click on them).
At the very least you can make an arguement that Duskwood is a semi-abandoned ghost town of a zone where maybe the Alliance isn’t looking, even if the market is set up a bit too close to Darkshire for my liking. It doesn’t fully work as an excuse or an explanation (because the real explanation is that, sadly, these people feel that Duskwood is one of a few zones that are actually open to them on their Horde characters), but I can personally suspend my disbelief on seeing a few Horde characters scattered around the denser parts of the woods.
But I also fully get how/why others don’t because a few years ago I was very much in the camp of “this sucks, this zone sucks, I’m never coming back.” Loosened up a bit since then, don’t take it as seriously which is probably a good thing - but I don’t blame others for wanting to avoid the headcanon ‘neutral’ zone. I get it.
What about …
…
NEUTRALS
who are horde in-game??
What about cheap mango smoothies on the border?
Why go to stormwind and pay double the price when you can just get it for half of it.
Used to be quite down on it, these days I don’t really care as much. I used to hold the mentality of “this zone is set up perfectly for silly cryptid shenanigans and instead it’s just silly” and now I’m more “It is silly, but it’s endearing.”
I’ve grown to accept that the zone is what it is, basically.
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Apart of the local culture indeed.
“If the San’layn, Scourge, Feral Pack and other Grimedge Clown Fiesta are accepted then the Horde shouldn’t be shunned either” is grounded in the same issue that Syelia mentioned earlier in the thread about headcanon trumping actual lore.
The cosmic horrors hanging out around Darkshire for evening tea are just as much out of place as any Vulpera caravan as they are not there lorewise.
If the average power level of the region was actually considered by the human kingdom (or Grand Alliance) with the roleplayers in mind the place would have been a target of a holy crusade years ago and probably turned into a lumberyard.
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I mean, if you go in to Duskwood and except lore accuracy or going to act as lore-police… you kind of set yourself up for that one.
It’s very much a ‘If its not your cup of tea, then don’t drink’’ culture, and apart of me belive its a better place for it since its '‘just how it is’ and trying to fight is a waste of energy really.
Makes it a bit wholesome, truth to be told.
I’m not setting myself up for anything as I don’t roleplay in Duskwood. That doesn’t mean someone can’t post any criticism about it on an adjacent discussion forum or Discord. It’s actually rather smoothbrained to assume that you can only discuss something if you have personal stakes or are personally involved.
I don’t know where you’re getting this idea of how I want to “talk smack” and “pick fights” where all I mentioned was how some of these organisers seem to really dislike any form of criticism. Maybe I should have made it abudantly clear but I was referring to the civil and polite variety, but it’s funny how you chose to twist that around. Hit too close to home, perhaps?
Well, either we’re on different discords or you’re the kinda guy who sees disagreement as being negative or “whining” as you put it. Me, I’ve never seen it.
The only thing like that was when there were discussions regarding markets being held in Gilneas or the Duskwood incident and whether or not they’re lore-friendly. Is that whining?
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Some concepts in Duskwood do make you question things, but most are just rather regular things, if undead or living. Which, considering things, it’s not surprising undead go there.
THINGS.
Never said you can’t post or critic it, but as the same time; There are nuances to everything, people who are not actively apart of X hub might not be too aware these, or ignore them all together.
And this happened to be one of them.
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And that hidden nuance being what besides what I’ve already described in my previous posts? That it being the Gothic Horror Wild West is just headcanon perpetuated by the local roleplayers (with the ambience contributing to it) and thus the Horde being tolerated is just another layer of that?
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I’m going to drop a truthbomb (my reality is my truth) that some (they’re lurking in this thread) probably (definitely) won’t like. Gatekeeping is misused so much as a term by bad faith players who are using it specifically not to maintain a level of verisimilitude - which is absolutely valid and should be encouraged across the community - to the setting but as a wedge to socially engineer what they want out of their fellow roleplayers.
You’ll find them usually as aforementioned ill-fitting character concepts, your circles-into-squares, your pseudo-grim derp rip offs from other franchises and players who want power over each other, either through triangular talks or
dodecahedron discourse.
This is textbook ‘rp provider’ apologia that is nothing more than a smokescreen for getting someone’s ego and their jollies a good ol’ rub. Lets not forget the immortal quote from one such:
“as long as the hosts are happy that’s all that matters.”
You heard it right folks. You are just set dressing for the le redditor goblinspeak bourgeoise overlord rpers. These kinds of people have wriggled themselves into positions of undue influence on places like discord ( 
) and use these platforms purely to aggrandise their own position.
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Spot on! 
is pathology the new crazymon? he fills a void (hehe) that his absence left
Yeah, it’s one of those ones where if I’m in the zone and engaging with the folk in it, then I’m gonna do so sincerely, even if you get a few whacky story beats and headcanon - why engage with something if you’re not gonna have fun with it and all that - but if it gets mentioned in another zone I’m gonna describe it to be more lore-accurate (which is to say it’s probably got worgen and witches and warlocks and wraiths)
I don’t hate Duskwood - it’s actually kind of nice to have a hub where things are constantly happening, even if some of the things aren’t always the most sensible or reasonable thing for the Warcraft setting. I use it to try and get a feel for new characters - or try to remember what older, half-forgotten characters of mine are like. And if it gets kinda naff, well I can just take them out of the zone for a bit and try again another time.
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