@ massivelyop.c o m/2019/10/03/massively-overthinking-the-one-about-mmo-roleplay-servers
(delete spaces in “c o m”)
Bree Royce (Editor-in-Chief):
Nobody made Blizzard put up servers with the “RP” tag on them, just like nobody made Blizzard hold back on server capacity and bogart the shard transfers. Blizzard chose to do these things. And Blizzard never should’ve put up roleplay servers it had no intentions of doing even the bare minimum to police (or at least incentivize non-RP players to play elsewhere with sufficient server space). It’s essentially advertising a curated experience that Blizzard was never going to deliver. That goes for everyone else putting up “ruleset” servers that have no enforcement. It’s impossible not to empathize with the genuine RP community in those circumstances. They deserve better.
Alatar (Reader) :
In the matter of the RP server designation not committing Blizzard to anything, I wonder how people would feel if it was the PVP server designation? Blizzard publishes a ruleset for designated server types. On a PVP server, it says people are flagged for PVP outside of designated safe areas. If Blizzard didn’t actually DO that, what would the reaction be?
The issue is GMs can’t exactly ban people for not RPing.
At the very least you can report names for breaching the RP policy, and people who persistently troll or harass roleplayers (Whether through snide remarks or standing on top of you with mounts, spamming AoEs, etc) can be reported for player harassment. The more reports for both the better.
Names HAVE been changed, I’ve kept track of a few. Some took a few weeks but they do, eventually, happen. Likely after a certain number of reports.
The main issue right now in my experience is people just aren’t RPing to begin with, making it feel like a normal PvP realm. We need RP guilds and RP events, lots of them, if we want this place to feel like a home for us, rather than us just be a niche on a sever that largely does not RP.
I think there are RP stuffs happening, but might be behind “closed doors”. As in within guilds and they don’t advertise their events publicly in a fear that they would attract OOC people to them.
Once our guild starts doing those events which involve planning the contracts we might get, they’re pretty much guild members-only (for secrecy!), so nobody outsider would know about them, making it seem like there’s no RP going on. Other events (like WPvP ones) are another thing tho.
But that theory of mine about RP happening is just a theory. A WoW theory! I could be wrong for all I know
I hate to break it to you folks, but what did you expect? This is the RP-PvP server. History has shown that most of the hardcore RP community prefers the RP-PvE servers, aka Hydraxxian Waterlords. That Zandalari Tribe would be chug full of people that don’t even wanna RP is no surprise for me.
I expect the RP community on this server to be a minority at best. A small, tight-knit one.
“We’ve ended up with RP realms that aren’t RP at all and where no RP ruleset is enforced, not even the naming policy one. RPers paid for a service we didn’t obtain, and Blizzard is doing nothing.”
This is just straight up false. Blizzard already forced many people to change their names. Guilds as well.
while some folks are debating the rather the far-fetched idea of lawsuits, others are asking for “real” RP servers and free migration to them.
Farfetched is the understatement of the year. Also, what makes people think a new rp server would make it any better? Roleplayers are predominantly spending their time on retail because of the far greater pallet of options available to you. I’ll repeat what I’ve said before. Classic has potential for rp, but I doubt it will ever become an active presence, even on servers with the RP tag. Acting like an entitled child isn’t going to solve anything either.
Without sinking too many more resources into it, companies (especially Blizzard) should have default filters in place on RP servers. “AFK” should turn into “napping,” or “gear score” turned into, I don’t know, “weight class,” just as an example. Just a little something where non-RPers will see that, hey, this place is really different.
I really don’t see how this would help anyone’s immersion whatsoever.
People need to stop making excuses and just get roleplaying. Get together, establish a community instead of having every roleplayer out there create their own little bubble-guild. The biggest obstruction in front of roleplayers of ZT and HW are themselves. Not the gankers (which isn’t griefing btw) not the ‘normies’ and certainly not blizzard’s lackluster police presence.
Another thing you have to take into account is layering, yesterday I actually ran into some RP just as I was logging. I logged back in and now I was on the wrong layer. It’s probably undenieable that layers where a necessity at launch but they are really hurting the burgeoning RP.
The one thing that I am sad to see missing is an Ooc chat, I found that having that explicit distinction really creates changes in the general mindset of players, myself included.
Then again … noChanges(amiright) and from what I heard these problems seem to have been problems back in the day aswell. I certainly know them from other MMOs.
