I am not directly having a go at the GM or the officers, The RP was good, the communication I got wasn’t very good, I asked for clarification on points several times and I offered suggestions to solve it, so I knew where I would stand, had I been told its really not looking good I would have just left sooner.
I invested precious time to being active, spending a good 3 or 4 hours some days in the guild, allowing one of my characters to be IC killed off. Offering a grand send off event to allow the slaves to escape doesn’t really do much for me, why would I want to invest another week of time in a guild I won’t be part of?, also the escape of the slaves makes no IC sense , you let them escape and they will bring the horde down on you, so the logic behind it conflicts the entire decision. My main issue is I do not quite understand why people joined up to a guild that stated very clearly what it was and then they had issues with what the guild was about and forced it to change. That’s not your issue and if anything I feel as disappointed for you as I do about not being able to play out the concept as it was originally done.
Been around on my (guildless for now) troll and I was surprised to see the slave RP cut off so short and being so short lived. Especially since valid concerns about slave RP brought up in the previous topic were brushed off and players with ‘Zandalari don’t do slaves’ got the ‘but this is an extremist seperate group of villains that think otherwise and if Horde will destroy us for it, so be it’ reply.
HoZ was advertised as a small extremist group with slaves being one of their unique aspects, but from what I gather from the posts above there hasn’t been effort during recruitment to see if applicants suited that concept. And it has led to forcing a part of the playerbase out of the guild who specifically joined or planned on joining because of the advertised concept.
I understand guilds change and grow over time and I can only support that but (for an outsider) this felt a lot like something that could have easily been prevented by listening to concerns beforehand and picking the slave-free option from the start. Or better, be more careful with recruiting to ensure you had a healthy amount of trolls supporting your concept IC instead of the mass recruiting done. I am fairly sure a Forsaken Saurfang-fan wouldn’t get far in Rotgarde either, if you catch my drift. However my troll was approached in Orgrimmar and during the recruitment talk and RP in Zuldazar slaves were not brought up once IC or OOC – it is not strange then that you attracted mostly trolls against the concept, making it all feels like a lack of communication. Makes me worry for the Hakkari players in your guild.
In regards to our trip to Orgrimmar - that was a one-time event we did when we headed to Orgrimmar at the launch of Zandalari to make our presence known and advertise the guild. Of course slaves weren’t brought up IC, we were in Orgrimmar. If we had had no subtlety with how we went about it, we would’ve been lynched for going into Orgrimmar with an anti-Orgrimmar group. There’s a real OOC stigma around that these days - to the point where even the subtle work we did do was criticized as well.
You’re right, there were some who warned us of the awkwardness of the slavery concept, and I do wish I had listened to them, but ultimately the reasons that ended up bringing the concept down weren’t what any of us actually expected it to be.
Finally - I can only say that you are gravely mistaken in believing that we just recruit people without interviewing them. Save for a handful of trolls who joined us as a result of random RP out in the world, we have interviewed every single person who’s joined our guild quite extensively OOC, and you’re free to whisper and ask anyone for confirmation on that fact.
The trolls who were against slavery in the guild were not part of that Orgrimmar emissary trip either. We always welcomed people of different minds to join the guild regardless, but they were AWARE of the slaves. But guilds develop, and that brings me to my core point here, to answer Ilistria as well; RP is RP with us. That is the crucial rule we enforce. I did not force her to kill her character off, I gave her the option of escaping, just as I will with the slave RP:ers who don’t want their characters to die in the send-off event.
The concept was always prone to change and adaptation, because we let IC rule over OOC. That said - for the OOC upset caused to the slave RPers who weren’t ready for this to happen so soon, I have said and will say again: I am sorry.
In my case at least, I am far from upset - I suppose I am just a little bit disappointed.
I waited a long time for the guild to finally launch and had quite a lot of fun when it eventually did, and it’s unfortunate to have a plot I intended to invest in long-term be ended so abruptly.
I am not angry and I respect Rak’s decision absolutely. I am sure we will interact again in some other way.
Maybe the whole concept got tainted by people wanting in on the RP for all the wrong reasons. I mean… you shove rp down peoples throats about leaving your nasty underwear around for them to find and… whelp. Don’t think you should complain so very loudly about not ‘getting the rp you were promised’ when you made it hella awkward.
While it´s absolutely understandable that guilds change and therefore does their RP, it seems quite strange to me that this argument is used here, as total of 9 days passed between event where first major group of slaves was caught (with more being captured later) and announcement of end of this type of roleplay.
To me, this doesn´t look like guild changing, but rather utter lack of preparation or planning for how to justify the concept. There was no case where PCU crew charged in on meat wagons and kodos with inferiority complex, and attacked Hand on one of their events, killing or capturing some of the members. There was no troll killed by a slave. No uprising, no threats from the Horde (that I know of).
Only trolls that were ICly going against the concept right from the start and vague possibility of Horde retaliating.
That really doesn´t sound like guild changing, rather players RPing their characters in the way they wanted and planned, and leadership being surprised that racist trolls from racist troll guild were being racist trolls.
We were ready for internal conflict, but - since this topic keeps coming up, I shall simply lay all the cards on the table and list all the reasons to why slavery was removed.
1 Too much internal conflict coming from the fact that nearly every single troll in the guild was opposed to slavery. We knew there’d be some resistance, but not a 9/10 ratio.
2 In regards to Leionie’s comment - I will not say that this was a common issue. We enforced a strict rule of keeping sketchy subjects away from RP surrounding the slaves, but yes - to some extent, we did realize that a few of the slaves were there for all the wrong reasons.
3 What we had in mind was to get a sizeable host of peon-type slaves. Such as orcs, tauren and goblins that would carry out the work-load and act as suitable galdiators. Instead, what we ended up with was a group of majority blood elves who were useful for very little IC and were primarily just alts that rarely logged on, with the exception of a few.
4 Above all - because of the reasons prior, the system was not WORTH the risk it posed. Although the real threats hadn’t come in yet (if only due to the fact people didn’t OOCly want it to just yet), we no longer HAD any justifications to keep the system going, not when the potential consequences of slavery was that the guild would have an IC rebellion from within OR be crushed by the Horde for having Horde slaves the moment that the STV RP-PVP campaign starts?
Finally - people have brought up that giving the slaves the choice of release might have the same consequence. Yes, of course? But our issue has never been accepting consequences IC. The issue is that we couldn’t have our characters justify taking that risk anymore. If the conflict comes - so be it. It’s a different thing entirely to ask that our trolls value the enslavement of a couple of elves above the survival of all their friends and everything they stand for.
Isn’t that then again, a result of communication / mass recruitment problems? If the goal was to have peon type slaves, you could have only recruited peon type slaves, or make clear to any elves a useless character would not be tolerated or be killed instead. I can understand ERP elves is a reason to rethink your concept, but it honestly sounds like a planning / communication issue - sad to see that lead to cutting out a type of RP all together.
I wanted to give the people who were interested in the concept a chance IC before anything else. Sure, we could’ve just banned all elves, but then we’d barely have had any slaves at all and even less reason to justify the concept.
Just to make it very clear the guild never did anything remotely ERP and it went above and beyond to make sure of this and had I seen or thought it was going on I would have been out the door in a flash. My final thoughts on it is that it was one week, The sensible thing for me is just roll my characters back a week and assume they never got caught…and move on.
The core concept of this guild has not changed, the slaves were one small part of it. Most the guild’s numbers have always been trolls, so I think they will do just fine.
Never have I seen so many people upset about not getting to play a slave elf.
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STRANGE