Night elf gender roles in RP

Argent Dawn
61

I wish!

Are you ready for a tale of drama and petty jabs at each other?

Ahem, dramatic music commences

Picture this: we’re in the middle of the Legion’s invasion. A player decides to give his beloved character a proper sendoff: he will make a campaign for all to enjoy. By the end of it, the status quo shall return, a custom demon warlord will be slain, and his evil character will be gone for good.

The campaign has enthusiastic support, it easily reaches massive numbers, with several Horde and Alliance.

He made only one mistake… he decided to use Feralas. The night elf community, instead of playing along, kept telling him what he could do and what he couldn’t do.

A notable example was The Tower of Estulan. Saying that the fel/demons/corruption (I don’t remember, was ages ago) spread up to the tower and had Estulan relocate was a big mistake apparently, for he had to face the primal wrath of plenty of night elves who swarmed the forums, telling him how he couldn’t alter the location of such an important piece of lore in the Warcraft universe, not even for a single week.

It degenerated into a massive argument until some neutral side ironically made a meme and proposed that the tower with fel corruption wasn’t the canon one, but a headcanon one called Notestulan. In the end, the two groups were so pissed off that everyone agreed to that, and I recall reading several short stories addressing the tower as “notestulan”.

In the end everyone used the Tower of Notestulan for exactly the same thing, with the locals leaving to avoid fel etc etc. So nothing changed, except for the name. The campaign also had other issues, but this one is kind of iconic.

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62

This is generally my preferred approach nowadays too. I’ll gripe about it in private to friends to vent out the frustration, then I’ll move on with my day. There’s not really much to achieve in making a big stink out of something that can be resolved with a simple choice of non-intervention.

There’s a problem with taking these issues straight to the AD forums or a relevant Discord community, too. All it comes across as is an effort to get the choir to listen to you preach — and to shame those other players, preferably into submission.

Not going to assume your meaning here as I may have read it incorrectly, but do you mean you’re nervous to RP your demon hunter because of hostility you might receive from other characters, or because you might not get the expected hostility?

For me, part of the demon hunter’s core class fantasy is that they’ve made themselves outcasts to save a homeland that will never, ever, thank them for it. They’re so committed to their revenge, they don’t care about appearances or even the sanctity of their own soul.

To reuse my example from earlier in the thread, when I played a demon hunter and they passed through night elven settlements, they would intentionally rile up the locals who took notice of them. Expecting to be rejected, and feeling bitterness over it due to the sacrifices they’d made, they lashed out first. Better to throw the first punch than fall victim to it, right?

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63

Not that this is an issue that is exclusive only to night elf roleplayers but it certainly feels like it’s more of a prevalent one compared to the dwarven or draenei scenes, but it was super disheartening back when I had a worgen druid that I’d plonk down in various zones in Kalimdor, attempt to get into whatever RP was happening in whichever hub only to be met by.

[Darnassian] Rini tur adore
[Darnassian] Banthalos
[Darnassian] Balah bandu fandu ishnu

Like nobody ever seemed to make the effort to switch to common and speak with my guy. Even if you have a character that dislikes worgen - which I think would be a stupid take but hey, characters have the right to be stupid - would it hurt to actually give the time of day to someone trying to RP with you?

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64

Not getting the hostility, but also being seen as a necessary evil if you will.
That’s how I viewed the night elf illidari.

For the blood elves, it’s a little easier as many guilds and communities do accept blood elf demon hunters like the Sanguine Eye. A necessary evil who is more accepted

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65

It’s genuinely just plain rude tbqh, you can incorporate others while still keeping their characters ‘in the dark’.

Just manually type [Darnassian]. I do it with Thalassian if non belves are about and they’re the minority. It takes no time and includes others in the conversation.

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66

I remember the fuss related to a certain campaign being taken to Feralas, which was rather actively used by people for both casual roleplay and people’s own plots at the time, and many people didn’t want to be involved with the campaign. Never heard this story of Notestulan though! Wow. Or then I just forgot all about it.

Agreed. Many would be better off focusing more on things that they do enjoy, rather than things they don’t. And though I might have my disagreements with some people on the server, I don’t actively go my way to shame them because that just makes it much harder to leave past in the past, and the more you spread stuff, the more likely you’re to find that coming back to you in the future one way or another.

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67

I do this because it’s honestly so much more fun to have characters knowingly taking advantage of that ignorance.

I’d much rather take “[Darnassian] Who let the dog in?” over autogenerated Simlish

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68

Yes and no, there’s a good example (the Saltheril Dungeon boss) of them being utterly snubbed too.

69

How do you add languages to your profile? I love role-playing with blood elves, when I’m on my Nightborne, but it always feels a little low when I can’t talk to/understand them

I use TRP3

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Short of using an old addon like tongues you can’t – it was an awful addon anyway. You have to either be a mage or rely on the charity of other people manually typing xxx says: [Thalassian] hello there.

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71

https://i.gyazo.com/d000a0afef6ea6d8fbff520f632b9532.png

For me I’m on an Alliance character and a human, so I don’t actually have the option to change language - but you click the faction insignia and it shows a list of all langauges your character can speak. Sometimes it’s necessary because Blizzard randomly decides to put you into Shallassian or what have you for no actual reason.

Agreed. I saw my share of the Tongues Addon letting people speak [Wolf] in Duskwood back in the day. “Owo” was unironically in the generated word list.

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72

Ah, shame.

That is true and funnily enough, the opposite for the night elf demon hunters, where we see night elves willingly work with their demon hunter allies.
Just in RP, it feels like the blood elves are “slightly” more accepted than the night elf ones

73

For sure, i’d say it’s always been more popular for blood elven characters to be more shadier. Just the vibes people enjoy(ed) playing on.

74

Indeed.
I would like to try and get into demon hunter roleplay, but I’d like to go for the original creators of the class, but the in game roleplayers… You can’t be sure how they will react.

The safer option would be my blood elf demon hunter

75

It was likely this one! And I won’t deny that night elves may have had their good arguments (if you’re a highborne, the idea that your Eldre’Thalas, which is your base of operations, is suddenly infested by demons is not going to be a pleasant one - and here I have to break a stone towards that very group of highborne because they always welcomed me to any RP event, created plenty of stuff, and never backed down from RP!) but in the end plenty of people were very much against letting anything happen aside from, well, their own thing, so clearly from an outsider perspective that does feel very bubbled and unwelcoming. If indeed they don’t want the campaign to happen because they have their thing going there, and they act out on that principle, it does feel a bit gatekeep-y.

And I didn’t even partake in the campaign, I was very much an outsider simply looking at what I saw on the forums and the various discords - so I may have had the wrong impression, but it would be a lie to say that it wasn’t helped by the attitude I saw around.

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76

This doesn’t have to be a negative thing, imo. A negative interaction doesn’t have to be a negative interaction if you get me?

Clashes and conflict don’t have to be negative. Just go out there, play an utter berk of a character and you’d be surprised at what can be generated with a good crowd.*

*Which is always a crux, i suppose. Random interaction doesn’t guarentee quality.

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77

I suppose I have a negative mindset :rofl:

No, but in seriousness, I think I feel safer with the blood elf community because as a Blood Elf roleplayer, I have an idea on general reactions.

It’s the unknowing from the night elf side which puts me off, because I have seen questionable rules enforced in communities before which actually are against common lore and goes against Tyrande’s law.

78

I think that it is generally good roleplay etiquette to double-check with established guilds and communities within a certain zone if you’re planning to host a public campaign with widespread narrative damages there. When you’re running something in an effectively dead/empty region that’s one thing; nobody’s going to complain if you stage a big battle in Desolace, because people only go there on short occasions and guild event chains.

Effectively taking over a zone with a mass of people without properly communicating with the local players and what they’re up to is an invitation to a very messy time OOC.

This was all a very long time ago (feels geriatric to say that Legion came out nearly 7 years ago), so I don’t have any strong opinions on it. However, what I do remember is that the host of the campaign lashed out at others quite often — including a specific instance where a member of a nominally attending guild was doing private roleplay in Dire Maul, was called out very aggressively due to it on the forums, before it transpired that this person was not even attending the campaign.

I only remember one Legion-era public campaign in Feralas, so I figure we’re all talking about the same scenario.

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79

This is a good point.
Sometimes people are bit drained IC/OOC and become a little more hostile.
Return again! Always try more than once because you may in fact find the people there are completely different.

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On one hand, anyone should be allowed to use zones for campaigns and events. No group of people has claim to any in-game zone.

On the other hand, I also have some understanding for people who weren’t too big fans of the big campaign, since activity in the zone was finally blooming, and people wanted to go about their roleplay without feeling awkward not getting involved with the campaign IC. I think some people felt like the campaign was moved there just to stir a reaction or because of the fact it was being actively used by roleplayers.

I was quite active in Feralas at the time myself, but again - I just took some distance to it all as far as I can remember. I might’ve even rolled along with something that happened IC, but memories are fuzzy.

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