I am very curious about your opinion and/or experience on the following:
It makes sense for people to learn another language if it helps them with travelling, friendships or work. The fact that Blizzard doesn’t allow us to learn another faction language baffles me. I have several worgen characters and two of them are fluent in Darnassian. I find tongues a very unhelpful addon since you need everyone to use it, for it to work. I use an addon called prefix to automatically put [Darnassian] in front of my /s. The big problem is for kaldorei roleplayers to be willing to do the same. No matter how often I whisper people, put in my trp my character speaks Darnassian or ask for it in an emote, most refuse to swap to common and make the small effort of writing out their racial language there. Using prefix for it, makes it no effort at all.
I even made a mage worgen who isn’t actually a mage, just so I can roleplay a Darnassian speaking worgen, yet that brings other limits like transmogs and weapons. Have you roleplayed characters that could speak another language without being able to read it in game? How do you handle it and have you experienced difficulties with it?
I really wish Blizzard would add the ability to learn languages. I do not mind farming reputation for it. Though I also wish that we were all a bit more willing to help other people and adjust how we roleplay, so people who are capable of other languages can be involved in conversations .
I maybe be wrong but the addons tongues and the Elixir that allows you to speak to Horde should make you able to also understand other languages, but I am not sure, will try it today, to give you a good answer!
Everyone should do this, not for just so that people can roleplay understanding different languages, but simply so whoever is the sole nightborne among blood elves or any conversation where they’re not included for IC reasons. OOC we can still make the wait better by having the conversation in a way where you can read it.
One thing I’ve seen several people do which is a nice touch is to write everything in common, but add [Gnomish] for example infront of it, so it looks like a proper in-game use of another language/shows they are speaking it.
It’s a pretty clever way to let other roleplayers know they are not speaking common, but still open to involve others in the conversation and roleplay.
Edit: I just realized the OP mentioned it already, it’s cool!
This is a good ideal, but not always strictly practical. For me, the language barrier can actually be immersive at times – if my character doesn’t understand what’s being said, it’s easier to depict that fluidly if I don’t understand what’s being said. Moreover, it’s a good barrier against meta-gaming when the intent is to be having a private conversation.
Of course, in more select groups where everyone knows and trusts everyone to behave with RP etiquette in mind, just manually (or using an addon) to prefix [Language] is the best way to go, yeah.
The way I’ve gotten around it on my mage is by having the Arcane Linguist spell IC in the form of a rune tattooed behind the left ear as the left side of the brain is what handles language.
My spin on it is that all the rune does is translate spoken word to the user, but offers them no insight into speaking or reading the language if they don’t already possess that skill beforehand.
Although the character can speak other languages besides Common, there hasn’t been many opportunities for those specific races in RP, but if it were to happen, I’d use a prefix [Language] to portray their speech.
my solution is to just not use the language option ingame and instead go [Thalassian] Hello in orcish
Invites meta gaming but as always such things can be mitigated by choosing your surroundings and making sure people around you agree to the same staple.
In general it’s nicer, even tho player characters IC won’t know what you’re saying, it feels a lot less exclusive on an OOC level if you do it like this.
This is my takeaway on this as well. Ultimately if you’re RPing with people who do things like metagaming then the solution isn’t to change how you RP, but who you RP with.
I agree with this in theory; its just that in practice I’ve been spammed in whispers so many times by the people who do speak that language IC that I’d rather be safe than sorry. Putting [Thalassian] before speaking in Common covers more bases than just using in-game Thalassian. Choices have to be made and I prefer the choice with the least amount of hassle for the people around me.
If someone cannot control themselves and is going to metagame knowing languages they actually shouldn’t when I do this, then they weren’t people I want to roleplay with anyway.
I agree in principle. However, a lot of damage can be done to a character’s roleplay if said meta-gamer tells other people, who unknowingly act on that information with realising, and then you have to perform damage control and fixing what shouldn’t have transpired at all.
Not necessarily a likely scenario, but a painful one to have to wrangle.
If I don’t know the people in question well, I’ll basically always default to precaution, jaded AD veteran that I am.
I’d like to see languages being learnable, even if it’s as boring as being exalted with said language or based on a specific quest you can do. Whatever Blizzard can do to incorporate more RPG elements i’m down for.
The solution of doing a manual prefix works as well, though I use tongues despite it being a bit hit and miss. I like it for using demonic during spell casting etc.
I wish someone at Blizzard channelled the spirit of J.R.R. Tolkien and gave us actual learnable languages with expansive grammar and vocabulary; but sadly that won’t happen and we have to make do with Blizzard slapping some random gibberish words out there without any thought and saying that that’s the language.
I’d be impressed if blizzard went down the Tolkien route and made functional languages. We might just have to be happy with our handful of phrases and generated non-sense.
about my mage in the past, a worgen who spent his post-Gilneas life in Darnassus.