I also really dislike how there’s no continuous aesthetic with it. Limsa Lomansa is like some took all the gentrified patches from capital cities across the globe and regurgitated them into one place. Really wrinkles my sleek brain.
Though admittedly, I am a sucker for the mmo’s that are like “as a guild you can construct your own hamlet and warships and stuff”, something about that pleases the child in me who loved lego.
yeah as i said in some thread (maybe even this one) it’s like adding an orgrimmar housing plot and it then getting filled up with arcane sanctums and forsaken structures
They might just do that at this stage given how theyve been blowing up every other capital and turning Stormwind and Orgrimmar into a singular hub.
I’ve wandered around the player housing on Balmung and, for the most part, I haven’t seen much that was immersion breaking.
It’s genuinely tricky to find something decent because 1: MMO roleplaying is actually a fairly niche interest and 2: most remaining MMO’s on the market do not actually facilitate roleplaying in a meaningful way.
Poor chat functionality, non interactive environments and generally just limiting features to the basic intention of playing the game halts communities from flourishing and that’s if the games even have the option of an official roleplaying server.
Another issue is that random RP is not really a thing in other games, as it seems. It isn’t in GW2, at least.
I do not enjoy having to preplan everything and having to join discords and a guild to get any RP done, and having RP available only at set times. I want to login and get some RP done whenever I have some time for it.
Since AD is clearly dying, it will be a hard search to find something worthwhile.
Agreed as well. Housing just encourages bubble RP.
it was, once, a long time ago 
(but also it was a den of coomers and predators for a concerningly large part so maybe it’s for the best)
Yes, unfortunately so, and a lot of statues and semi-RPers.
It is far from ideal.
I am playing ESO as we speak and it’s rly fun :]
[mind controls you into trying it out / returning (unavoidable emote)]
Doesn’t this sum up whatever’s on offer in terms of RP on every other MMO? As well a significant portion on current state AD.
honestly the ratio was insanely worse on gw2 than it is on the others i’ve played so far
no because cyrodiil is butchered into pieces and the gameplay changes are:
Here’s hoping that the Dominion keeps it that way
Compared to AD?
No, it is far, far worse on GW2.
How’s that any different from a guild running private events and using raid chat?
Not all RP must be public/visible.
That’s what happens as a community folds into itself, shrinking and shrinking while needing coordination and mutual support to stay alive.
It’s been standard in other games with smaller, unsupported and immediately dying RP scenes as there’s nothing propping it up except the player engagement and that has a way of naturally encouraging insular guilds, communities and approved chats (now discord) to spring up.
In that environment you cannot expect to just RP, bump into randos and have an organic, free range story. Everything is connected because if it’s not, it can’t function.
Then we have the issue where said safe havens from outsiders and OOC shenanigans become mutually exclusive headcanons that no outsider can join without knowing server politics and a four week correspondence course on established neo-server history like how House Haus siezed power in [Faction Capital] or player guild leader king Claus the Confuddled became the accepted canon ruler of the major faction or how all the mages have to answer to the authority of whatever mage theme guild made the niche their fiefdom. To say nothing of enduring vetting worse than a semi-legal job application just to keep out the rats from Rival Guild X.
Just a bunch of self cannibalizing until the last people lose interest or end up as “those people” who rant in general chat about how many OOCers are in the old RP hub.
Point is, nurture your random RP, community.
Having your own instance to lock away your inner circle is how roleplaying servers die, among other things.
I’ve seen several cases of this happening with healthy community numbers still not producing a functioning community because everyone spent their RP hours in their guild halls, houses and custom places. Then, in total lack of self awareness they asked where everyone went, then they quit because they couldn’t find anyone to RP with once their house emptied out.
I mean I’m not saying do all your RP in there, but if my character has an emotional breakdown because their cat died i’m not gonna’ have it in the city tavern you know?
A guild running an event for their members in the open world still contributes to the feel of that world, be it that you’re allowed to join them (I think people should be as open as possible, really) or just walking past them / seeing them in the distance. This is not true for private instanced roleplay locked away within the confines of phased player housing
The “not all RP must be public/visible” argument is really only valid as a technicality. Yes, that is technically true, nor do I think anybody will argue otherwise on that same technical basis, but it really isn’t difficult whatsoever to imagine why people being locked away in their houses - some of the people on this server who I know for a fact would resort to almost exclusively roleplaying in these houses - would ultimately contribute to a more diluted, empty world, and it’s really something that WoW’s RP has going for it. Yes, garrisons and dungeons exist to crawl away and hide in, but this is something that would inarguably be amplified by a drastic margin if we had established player housing
I think the point is that… no one does most of their RP in their house. It’s a nice addition when you want a more private setting. Whether people use party or go in an instanced house or some spot no one will reastically run into them the result is the same.