I’ve been playing wow ever since the late beta back in 2004 and been a dedicated Horde player. I can honestly say i 100% enjoy the game anymore but love it or hate it, it’s part of my life nad i want to keep playing. So I’ve been trying to find new angles to approach the game and lately I’ve been thinking of getting a new start, perhaps go back to my roots in Teldrassil (sorry about that btw) (and yes, pun intended) as a Night Elf druid back in the beta.
But to get to the point, How dedicated are people and do you need to be to play on, and fit into, a RP server? some roleplaying and talking from a characters perspective would be interesting, but i’m not sure if i would enjoy the game fully as much if i had to say… pretend to take a tea break on a long journey, unmount to take a leg stretcher or not use the LFG tool for an example.
Roleplay is just another means of spending time in game. Roleplayers do use every content available to them, but when they don’t do content then it’s roleplay. People stay in character and follow the general rules of roleplay.
You don’t have to dedicate yourself to roleplay in a specific time window. You can roleplay every single day or once a month, doesn’t matter really. The point is you are interested in roleplay.
Your player character is not the character you make up. Your player character might have defeated Sargeras and stuff, but your character that you portray in roleplay didn’t. Create a level 1 character for Horde or Alliance, have a look around at the various hubs (the TRP3 addon has a neat map scan addon to find roleplayers) and see if you do like it.
Nah, that’s OOC (out of character) content. TRP3 has a neat little button where you can switch from In character to out of character. You don’t have to be in character 24 hours a day.
In short: roleplay realms are just the regular game with all its features, but people come together to roleplay as an additional activity.
I wouldn’t really say too dedicated. Though I’m currently a casual RPer who mostly does walk up stuff in Stormwind and Orgrimmar, so I may be biased in that regard. I’ve gone weeks, months even without RPing, and I’d still personally consider myself an RPer because well… I’m still interested in it and I still come back and do it again.
It’s genuinely really fun, and even if you’re just here to do some casual RP on the side of PvE or PvP activities, I can’t recommend AD enough. That first reply above linked a great guide to start for newcomers, and I’d also recommend brushing up on your lore knowledge, it’s always more fun to RP when you have more lore knowledge behind your back I find.
It is what you make of it. You don’t have to roleplay at all, it would be preferable if people who didn’t want to RP didn’t play on RP servers but there’s not much you can do.
When it comes to how dedicated people are and you need to be it varies wildly. Just like on PVE servers it’s a spectrum from casuals to hardcore players. Some are always on and in character and some only dabble in it every now and then.
When it comes to “fitting in” it’s mostly just common sense but generally just be respectful. As long as you’re not trying to be a nuisance and intentionally trying to interrupt and ruin it for others you’ll be fine.
When it comes to your character my most important tips would be to not be afraid of character flaws because it’s a big part of what makes characters interesting, you don’t wanna be a Mary Sue. Don’t connect yourself to major lore characters and do some reading on your chosen race/class. For example, since you’re interested in a night elf druid one of the most common mistakes i see is that a lot of people seem to think they are purple humans which is not the case. Anything below atleast a century in age is extremely young and they are on average 7-8 ft tall. I’ve seen quite a few 5-6 ft tall, fully fledged “adult” 20-30 year old night elf druid characters, which is odd to say the least.
You don’t have to remain IC 100% times. In fact most people definitely don’t. Playing content and roleplaying are usually two separate things one does whenever they feel like it. I’d say that if you are interested in RP and wish to do that, you’re already qualified to enjoy an RP server. Install TRP3 addon to see people’s profiles and you are good to go.