'Just ignore it'

Argent Dawn
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This is an all too common phrase that has often emerged when two different roleplaying groups meet in the world and their events collide. Now normally, encountering groups of people out in the world should be a wonderful chance for organic roleplay to emerge.

Having said this, and with events appearing in locations that do not make sense, a phrase has been repeating itself in response to the criticism of said events being in certain locations.
‘Just ignore it.’

Hosting a party on the beaches of Zuldazar with Alliance people, within walking distance of the Zandalari capitial?
Just ignore it.

Having a charity fashion show to raise money for the poor of Westfall, held in Mistfall Village (Vale of Eternal Blossoms), not soon after the Vale was assaulted by the old god forces?
Just ignore it.

Using the Tian Monastery to host a play about a dominatrix draenei and events that (shouldn’t) happen in Stormwind, including swearing, gimp suits and… lets be honest here, lots of OOC laced activities.
Just ignore it.

Ignore it because you don’t ‘have’ to interact with these people. That may be true, but these people forget something important. You are roleplaying in the World of Warcraft, not gmod or Second Life or VR chat.

The disregard of the setting is the main problem. The disregard of the lore, the setting, the people of the area. All for the sake of having an event because the place “Looks pretty”.
The beaches of Zuldazar may have wonderful tropic vibe, but the Alliance should not be there, neutral event or not. Why? Because in the lore, even the Alliance SPYMASTER struggled to get to the island after the armistice. And even then, he was found and almost executed.

Barring that, why would any Zandalari ever want to see members of the Alliance on their shores after what they did to their king?

But ‘just ignore it’. Because who cares if someone has an event there.
Who cares?
Who cares if this event happens?

A lot of people care. Because events like this, that promote a ‘just ignore it’ attitude when criticised, only serve to degrade the quality of roleplay. When you hold these events, you are announcing loudly that you don’t care about the world around you. You don’t care about what the World of Warcraft is.

You only care about yourself and the selection of people who patriciate in these events and how you shape the world around you and not how it really is.

You enter a bubble.
You close yourself off from the world.
And the roleplay community gets weaker.

It doesn’t take much effort to make events that fit the setting. It is very easy to do if you just look at the setting and NOT what you want to happen.

Would a Grandmaster Pandaren willingly accept a group of people to come into a place which is renowned for teaching some of their most famous individuals in the ways of the monk and enlightenment… to host an event where a draenei strangles a redneck human for the sake of comedy and lust?

Sorry. But for the sake of enjoying the World of Warcraft setting… I can’t ignore this.

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No, it’s that you don’t care about other people intruding on your roleplay. It says nothing about your respect for the setting.

If Johnny DM crafts an event about Jimmy and his friend surviving in the desert of Tanaris, then it’s ruined if they happen to come across a fully stocked out batallion of friendly soldiers who immediately rescue and take care of them.

“Sure, but then you get a different type of RP,” you might say.

Okay, but I didn’t want that RP. I wanted some bleak survival RP.

If I’m playing a homeless veteran on the streets of Stormwind who can barely feed his belly and can’t work due to injury, then it somewhat kills the vibe when Joe Paladin wanders up and drops fifteen gold in my pot and uses magic to heal me.

Yes, it’s ‘RP’, but again, it’s not the vibe I wanted for that character.

If I’m playing with a group of Scarlets/cultists/other outcasts hiding in the wilderness away from civilisation because we want some insular outcast RP, that works great…until a wandering guild of knights shows up, because realistically our options at that point are “get slaughtered” (character over) or “get captured” (probably gonna turn into a weird sex thing, it’s AD).

So what’s the solution to the above?

Why am I sacrificing the event, character, or guild I wanted to play just because someone I didn’t know stumbled in out of nowhere?

And what, exactly, is the solution to that other than ignoring it?

A lot of your post includes weird, out of setting things but like…that’s not all there is when it comes to “ignore it”, not by half. You conflate, deliberately or otherwise, people ignoring ‘lorebreakers’ (actual or perceived) and people who just don’t want their RP wrecked because randos who might be lore adherent but nevertheless out of sync with what you’re after.

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Why is this a bad thing? Why not just roll with it instead of shutting it down, embracing the organic roleplay where a disaster is turned around. Or if you don’t want to interact, why not say it is a mirage and run away saying you won’t be tricked?
There are ways around it that don’t involve “Just ignore us”

And not a few minutes later, your homeless veteran is shanked by a thug who takes the fifteen gold and runs off. Damn. Back full circle.

Fleeing is an option. You are trying to survive, so don’t engage the enemy like you are an NPC mob that attacks until a HP bar runs out.

Only if you let it happen. You choose to let yourself get captured, but if it becomes the latter, you can just bolt out.

Sometimes, not everything goes to plan. If you want to have no-one interact with you, may I suggest writing a story instead?

Or going to Eplison.

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So let’s say you acknowledge it.

What can you actually do about it?

What are you able to do in order to stop them?

Will you inform them that their roleplay is in violation of the lore? Do you think that this will convince them to change their ways, or do you think that it’s more likely that they will just ignore you instead?

Do you think that stigmatising it and preaching to the choir about it on the forums will have a lasting impact? Is there anything constructive that you can actually do about these roleplayers who roleplay in a way that you dislike?

I’m just interested in learning what the viable and useful alternative to ignoring them and moving on is supposed to be, and if this has ever worked.

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I’d also consider a point where it has been repeatedly told that the Warcraft universe is larger than shown and represented in-game. Someone using a Zandalari beach (that maybe also doesn’t see frequent use otherwise?) for their purposes of representing a tropical beach isn’t always done for the purposes of examples shown in the OP.

Bad examples exist everywhere, obviously, but sometimes a location can give you a really good idea for some other type of event. Of course, if this happens and people do happen on you, this should also be clearly communicated that it does not take place at that exact location.

The argument then comes to how often people actually happen on you when this happens. Obviously using the main street of Orgrimmar or Stormwind for such purposes is inconsiderate.

I’m not sure why you need this explained. In both cases that is disruptive to the event that the players and the DM have crafted out and is simply flushed down the toilet because of the happenstance of someone random walking on you.

Not always is that a bad thing, the homeless veteran could actually feel hopeful over someone giving them a couple of silver, but then have it turn to fear because other pickpockets have now set you as their target.

But also undoing your entire character arc because of different expectations and metrics (such as what is a lot of money in-universe? Is a gold piece worth a lot or not?) is just better to have it be ignored. Especially when the character arc has taken place over a considerable amount of time.

‘Enough!!’ has been memed on often and seen as a bad thing or not wanting/accepting consequences. Is this a good thing now?

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Calling it out should be the norm. Ignoring it has only resulted in the events persisting. Criticism of events that don’t fit in the setting or the location or the lore should be welcomed.

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Because I put in hours of planning for this event and I’d really like for it not to be wasted.
Because it’s not the gaming experience I wanted.
Because it’s my character, and you don’t pay my sub.

I mean, I don’t pay my sub right now, I’m not subscribed, but hypothetically, you don’t pay my sub.

How is this any different from ignoring it? It’s not. It’s literally denying that it exists and moving on. That is the DEFINITION of ignoring it.

Gets a bit repetitive when it happens three times an hour. What happens if a thug RPer doesn’t shank me? Do I have to make one up and negate that roleplay? Seems like at that point I’ve just ignored it with extra steps.

No it’s not, they have mounts, they’re knights. You’re on foot, malnourished and lacking in sleep. You are dead if you flee, because they will catch you. - Unless you ignore them, I guess.

What’s the point in planning events if they can be wrecked on a whim by anyone who just happens to wander in? Oh, you wanted to have this cool storyline between your guild and a dragon antagonist? Well this archmage just showed up and emotes that he oneshot it the dragon. It’s dead now.

What’re you going to do now? Too bad I guess, event over. Thanks for coming guys, shame we only had five minutes of play this evening and the three week storyline I had mapped out has gone in the bin but at least we didn’t “ignore” it. I’m so glad our guild of dragonhunters could bask in the awe of Timmy Spellsalot, I’m sure we’re going to get loads of interesting RP from inter- oh, no, he flew off again.

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The “just ignore it” mentally has indirectly pushed a lot of people/guilds further and further into the “bubble RP” sphere, fracturing the community (as well as leaving room for more concepts mentioned above that thus push the “just ignore it” idea), which push more people away, and as people bubble RP, eventually they get bored/phase out and quit.

The entire “just ignore it” approach is an endless circle, which ruins the community and as mentioned prior, promotes space and acceptance for the very RP that people excuse with the phrase in question.

Many years ago, we would call out things like this. We’d put our foot down and not passively accept it. RP back then was more cohesive and there was standards. Now we’ve got San’layn biker gangs running around Orgrimmar, open ERP flooding every hub.

WoW itself (And Blizzard) taking a heavy dip certainly affects the player population. But RP’ers are the people that keep playing when there is no new content or so. RP’ers can entertain themselves. Yet the “just ignore it” mentality does almost more harm to RP and player population on RP servers than bad content. It pushes away the majority and scares away new RP’ers from joining in on this vanishing part of the community.

BadRP, openly flaunted hyper-gross sexual content etc. needs to be called out and actively pushed against. Not passively allowed to grow due to a lack of push-back and meek “Oh if you don’t like it, why don’t you just go somewhere else or just ignore it all? Stop caring lmao”.

If you call for just ignoring everything wrong with AD/RP, which is killing RP, you are part of the problem. There is a stark contrast between outright toxicity, and actually stepping in and smacking down the issues at hand.

Naming & shaming is not 100% utterly wrong, depending on how you employ it.

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I personally think there’s a difference between ignoring another group that just happens to rp at the same spot as you at the same time with a different story, I think it’s perfectly fine for both sides to just ignore the other and maybe one of the groups can change position slightly. This is rp within two closed groups that doesn’t really effect anyone outside their current story.

But when it comes to public rp that ignores the lore, the ignore thing becomes a bit trickier imo, because even if everyone is free to their own rp and all that, Blizzard have made their setting and it’s lore and you should try to abide to it when creating public rp.

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Of this is definitely true; some places in the setting can certainly substitute for others. Greymane Manor is the ideal spot for the various balls of yesteryear. However, there are many events that indeed take place and are often hamfisted through to justify using that location.

In a LOT of ways, I’d actually be less bothered if somebody just outright admitted “Look, I like how this area looks for my RP. However, we’re going to pretend it’s not this location for tonight.” vs the mental gymnastics that seem to be added to certain event posts in order to justify hosting an event specifically in that location… neutral coffee cart in Thunder Totem anyone? Or how about that neutral market + bar night in Suramar?

I think that sadly the good faith and patience has worn out, so people have trouble being nice about these things because there is a degree of expectation that people are essentially expected to be polite and deferring to the ideas of “live and let live”, which results in fruitless discussion because it means your opinion really just makes you end up looking like the :peach:

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Name & shame. Spread the word about the key offenders. Make it clear that it is not welcome, nor accepted. As you do with any issue in a community. Don’t let the new influx of RP’ers (the “future” of AD if you want to call it such) get the idea it’s “good” and join in.

Hell, how many people do you see standing in Stormwind harbor now, partaking in the ERP openly, with some sort of tag or message in their TRP along the lines of “New to RP”? How did they get there?

Because no one told them or showed them how open ERP is wrong. No one warned them, no one educated them. And thus, they passively floated towards it, and now the issue is bigger than it was yesterday.

The same applies to BadRP, all these new guild tags that mass-recruit every new RP’er and promote the issues mentioned above. How do they do it? Because no one is saying or doing anything. No one is talking about it, no one is spreading the word and knowledge of what’s what.

Bring back naming & shaming. Passive acceptance is as bad as active support.
Equally so, support new RP’ers. Teach them how RP works, how it is all supposed to be. How do we expect RP to grow and expand, if no one is helping the new ones?

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Not to mention, ‘writing a story’ is quite literally what event DMs do. What kind of events does OP go to? It’s not always a sandbox lmao.

RP is cooperative story writing.

lol + lmao, no it wasn’t, it was pretty much the same. You might have newer outlandish concepts with each new expansion or patch, but outlandish bubble RP concept happening in the middle of main city has been here since forever.

Ideally this is how the ‘just ignore it’ would go as well. The examples of the Tian Monastery and whatnot given in the OP aren’t even examples of ‘just ignore it’, as you said it - they go through mental gymnastics so as not to ignore it. Often some others will echo that sentiment while some do those gymnastics on top, so there’s a lot of conflicting information over something you just don’t want to see period.

However I’d also say it’s often somewhat clear when this happens in bad faith and good faith, especially if it’s known names vs unknown names. Good chance the latter might just be using the spot for visuals than in actuality, and hopefully the DM can also work around or come to a mutual agreement on what part of the location is used.

At least, that’s how it has been in my experience, especially when what happens is a location is used by two groups at the same time, and neither knew about the other, because both haven’t used the location frequently before. Usually it just gets resolved with ‘yeah, we’re using this part and that part, and later that part but can work around it if needed’.

Again, RP is cooperative.

I’d also say that this attitude of

in a vacuum is also very scary for the

Extremely militant and offensive attitude to this rejects the notion that this ‘just ignore it’ sentiment is not always done for nefarious purposes, such as presented in Elenthas’s post (or mine).

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I agree with everything you’ve said in your post, but I do feel like saying that there are ways around it, like bolstering the dragon’s resistance to magic (even for just that moment) or just-… ya know, dodging Timmy’s spells!

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Like, the general gripe with Tian is literally down to the fact that the constant markets etc. just felt disconnected from the setting. You could’ve just held the bazaar in the middle of Tanaris and it would’ve been the exact same bazaar, just a different backdrop.

That argument, however, tied into a general gripe that I brought up last year that essentially lamented that the same places were being used over and over for RP (also mixed in with a bit of bias against people RPing everything pandaria without being Pandaren). It’s generally a hard annoyance to convey without looking like a gatekeeper sadly :pensive:

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Nothing I wrote indicated that badRP wasn’t around back then. That does not change the fact that RP standards, the community cohesion, and general atmosphere and quality of RP was leagues above what it is today. How did it nose dive this hard? Because passive acceptance and shoulder-shrugging towards the apparent issues. The root cause of most issues growing in the world - Indifference.

Militant approaches are justified when everything else fails, and people are content with passive support from inaction. It is preferable over the alternative. If a militant approach solves the issue, then it is a good thing, and no harm was done.

If said militant approach even puts a dent in the issue? It still is far better than just accepting it.

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Thing is that in the specific examples that OP gave – and trust me, those things happened – it wasn’t that they were using the place as a stand in for another location, but that In Character they specifically name dropped the events taking place in these specific locations As They Were In The Lore.

That includes the cross-faction events deep in Horde/Alliance territory, such as the FFXIV themed night club RP in Zuldazar right outside of the capital city, and in a very specific Kul Tiran village in Stormsong. Neither of these were OOC stand-ins for another locations, but social bar nights specifically taking place outside of the Zandalari capital, and in a Kul Tiran village near Brennadam where Alliance/Horde were respectively invited by the hosts.

And as we see in Shadows Rising, the Armistice doesn’t give the other faction freedom of movement into their territory. Both Zandalar and Kul Tiras are both still extremely hostile to the opposing faction, and the terms of the Armistice demanded withdrawal of all personnel from the other island.

These specific events - which again, actually happened - cannot co-exist with the lore. We know exactly what the stance is on the presence of enemy faction in Kul Tiras and Zandalar and the answer is an execution which even Shaw couldn’t escape from if not for the Horde Council intervening (and even then Talanji didn’t want to budge until the Horde Council resolved the emerging Zandalari Civil War 2.0) and demanding his release in exchange for the Alliance’s evidence of the Dark Ranger conspiracy.

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Pray, tell. Who are they? I am utmost curious who the new shadow cabal is.

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Wait, wait, wait… WHAT?!

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did i stutter

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-… I’m probably going to regret this, but-… what’s the lore?