I also hope that the whole “if this goes on, there will be consequences” schtick is classic flexing companies/people in charge do despite having no power or willingness to act upon their threaths.
If Vanilla private servers showed anything, it’s that people will act upon a demand for WoW content for things Blizzard stopped offering (and as former private RP server player, let me tell you that even mixed servers created after combining RP and PvE servers where main developer doesn’t really care for RP offer far better support than Blizzard does).
Really cool post, glad that Blizzard has it on their radar but I suppose the action they end up taking is what matters
To be honest, if we’re told “don’t ask for basic support & moderation or you could lose the server” I will go ahead and say I don’t care and would rather risk that
Argent Dawn as it stands gets basically nothing from its status as an RP realm - even the bare minimum of what we were sold by the RP policy is ever enforced and the Goldshire et al situation speaks for itself
The strength of Argent Dawn is in the existing community and there are 100 and 1 absolutely dead / empty servers that can play host to that community if Blizzard decides to just delete roleplay from their platform than dedicate some moderation to it
It’s better I think to roll the dice and hope for something better than to stop rocking the boat because the almost nothing we have now is technically better than actually nothing
We are actually paying customers so the idea that we’re being done some big favour by having a tag that has existed since the day we bought this product is really razy
Spot on. As I said earlier it’s a wierd flex because it’s not like we enjoy massive protections based upon the RP tag is it? Else we wouldn’t be raising issues in the first place. The only concession we’ve got is the lack of phasing one; which can be argued to be not even specific to RP (as it’s part of what brings PVErs here to recapture the Vanilla community experience) so blizzard could easily investigate such without event considering RPers at all; and the fact they don’t really take a strong stance in defending the RP tone of server from those who flock here primarily to use for PVE non-sharding suggests they don’t even necessarily consider it an RP mechanic in itself.
So yeah, at this point, what really have people got to lose? Primarily the congregation of people on a single server. If worst comes to worst all AD has to do as a server is agree upon a new target server which is largely unpopulated and then try and set up things there whilst competing with sharding. The situation then wouldn’t be any worse that what RPers have had to endure prior (when we were sharded for example)
So it seems a bit of a wierd “Careful, we’ll take the toys away” statement. What toys? The only toys we play with largely are those we bring ourselves and we could just take them elsewhere could we not? Fact remains you’ve sold us this space as a place for us to use those toys, and you’re not maintaining the space. That’s the issue here. It’s the promise of the space’s spirit we find wanting, but nothing about the space in and of itself with regards to how blizzard maintains that really plays into that other than it being a matter of circumstances due to history. Outside of the sharding AD doesn’t offer anything outside of the players here to facilitate the RP. WIerd flex.
But lets not forget that it was “just” a GM who said this. Not a community manager or a dev. GMs don’t have the complete picture and don’t serve to bring news to the playerbase.
About removing the RP tag: remember they did spin up an English RP and RP-PVP server for Classic WoW (and a German RP server). Not doing that would have been an “easy” way to stop supporting those for Classic.
As people have stated already, the GM probably doesn’t have the full picture and it does seem counterintuitive to get rid if the RP tags especially when (as Lissobel above has stated) they went to lengths to create RP servers for Classic.
In fact I think it would be a lot more accepted and less harshly judged from outside perspectives if the conveyed narrative was “it’s kind of like D&D” as opposed to “uhhhh yeah, a lot of people cyber in that one tavern in Elwynn” - D&D isn’t really something that’s looked upon oddly as far as I’m aware (though, granted, I’ve not actually played it myself)
One thing to add to this, I´ve been watching discussions on Classic WoW subreddit at the time and most of people who argued for RP servers were not roleplayers themselves but people who saw them as more mature servers.
Which is also why there was much bigger push for RP-PvP servers than normal RP servers (which are far better for RP simply because griefing there is harder), as Classic fanbase prefers PvP servers over PvE.
If Blizzard removed RP tag from servers and added sharding (which is far more important than any server tag), backlash wouldn´t come just from RP community, but from substantial amount of OOCers who enjoy that aspect of RP servers, which makes me think even more that the GM was BS-ing.
For some extra information: when I submitted the ticket, I tried to give as much information as possible in evidence from all angles. It took about 4 days for a reply (due to the current corona situation) and originally, the two tickets I made were separate (one for griefing, one for ERP). The GM responded to them both at the same time. Whether or not corona and his limited time he had to reply had an impact on what he said is debatable.
I’m not entirely sure myself what was meant by RP servers being “more costly and troublesome than what the RP community … represents”, as it was put. Myself and the GM who responded were in talks for a long time, and I was aware he had other tickets to resolve, so a lot of what was adhered to, there wasn’t time to properly delve into or explore. I was there for probably a good 30 minutes, give or take, chatting to the guy.
I feel just by being in game and making themselves available and around to see what’s happening would be incredibly beneficial, and perhaps that is what they’re doing, but if it is - I have no evidence to support this other than what Klastiom told me through the ticket I raised.
Have you been on them, though? I have, and I can say with confidence the amount of non-rpers there is far higher than Argent Dawn. It’s like a rare surprise when I find another RPer in Classic. I’m not entirely sure what the point was.
It probably just means that the costs in terms of manpower/time/resources compared to the amount of people who benefit (people actually interested in preserving RP on AD and having OOCers get reprimanded for violations) is quite significant given the ratio, particularly when you consider there will be some whom are opposed to such policing on the server.
Doesn’t make the stance right, but it is objectively correct that in terms of ratios it would be probably be a fair higher cost then they’d employ elsewhere due to the playerbase size in this case. The wording was a bit iffy that said, then again GMs aren’t official mouthpieces of blizzard.
So, what actually -are- those extra costs? Is running the physical server more expensive because of no sharding? We do not have more moderation than PvE servers as far as I can tell. Troublesome? Sure, but that stems from Blizzard’s own inaction regarding ERP and trolls and our desire to have a clean server.
It’s an unfair thing to say too. Roleplayers make their own content and tend to stay subbed even through content lulls. We do not demand raids or new battlegrounds.
I don’t think AD is harder or more expensive to manage than (former) PvP servers. There is -a lot- of toxicity on those servers. You can’t tell me Blizzard just lets that go.
Classic is RP unfriendly, and I think the lack of RP comes from people waiting on each other to get it started. There was plenty energy for it, but if no one lays the first brick…
I just think the RP potential in Retail is easier and more convenient than in Classic, I’d say for the first… Couple months it was quite popular and had tons of people around, first weeks mostly people leveling though for sure. There’s just not much you can only RP in classic, a lot of it can be done in retail outside of removed areas.
razy