Out of curiosity, what would be your approach instead?
Iâm all three. Quarter tauren, quarter dragon, half machine, all 100% DeviantArt energy.
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Orginal character. Do nut steal.
sir put down the sonicsona. sir put the sonicsona on the ground NOW.
look i get that some people tend to blow the state of the âpeaceâ out of proportion on one side or another. some say its as fragile as glass some say its so steadfast youll get orc tourists in ironforge within the next year. its neither. its a steady peace, no real ongoing hostilities BUT its built on years of unease and distrust between races whoâve only really known conflict with each other on the whole.
alliance only events are justified about not feeling comfortable with or outright not wanting a horde presence. the same goes for the horde re the alliance. both might not be comfortable with neutrals. neutrals might not be comfortable with people harbouring animosity. and thats okay. everyones got their niche, if people want to hold hands its their prerogative but everyone should respect the boundaries that are still in effect
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What I remember about the death of Orgrimmar isâŚis how quiet it was. During the waning hours of Shadowlands, the Keti Caravan was discreetly transferred back to the Valley of Honour. It was a loud, OOC-filled trip. We all knew what was about to happen, what they were about to do. Did we have any doubts? Any private, judgemental thoughts? Perhaps, but no one said a word. Not when the cyberpunk nightborne filled the streets, not when the 69000 degree burning cat cuddled the sanâlayn, and not when the Orc DK dated a vulpera kit. Not a word.
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Even Sanâlayn need hugs.
SPEAK NOT OF THE UNHOLY NAME
LET IT PASS INTO MEMORY
And may all that it was fade into the annals of historyâŚ
I canât do this againâŚ
Also Keti probably still reads the forums because a while back he sent me over a dozen in-game mails.
And some of the members are still active elsewhereâŚ
But getting back to the topic of the death of Orgrimmar as a hub, as much as Iâd love to say it was purely that guild, I donât think it was. BFA left Horde in a bad spot where you were either a war-hungry character loyal to Sylvanas, or basically not part of the Horde, at least as how I understand it, and Shadowlands (personally) was really bad for roleplay. Everyone hailed it as a chance for people to do their own things, like what happened in WoD, but what it felt like (to me at least) was that when given the choice to do their own thing - people chose to uninstall or put their attention on a less-Blizzardy version of Warcraft.
If that Caravan was what dealt the deathblow to Orgrimmar, then the two expansions previous were what allowed it to do so, like how some illnesses allow for the common cold to mutate into pnuemonia.
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The Hordeâs RP playerbase has, substantially, a much, much smaller % of people who play civilian characters. If you take away an entire factionâs purpose and lore for 6 - 7 years, and then make expansion plots for six years that would, realistically, have none of their characters be able to interact with it, the whole factionâs RP playerbase is bound to crumble, especially when it comes to city hubs in a RP scene where nearly nobody plays civilians - not that thereâs any shame on that, mind you. I donât play Horde to be a shopkeeper.
Add that to the fact that Orgrimmar as a place for roleplay is pretty meager, and an anti-climatic ending that was then followed by a quasi-cliffhanger of seven years where nearly no races got any lore beyond small drip-feedings of lore updates, and you have Orgrimmar pre-8.2.5 and Orgrimmar two weeks after 8.2.5âs scenario, where it went from having a bustling playerbase that often overfilled to the rest of the city due to sheer numbers, to not having enough people to have the entire cityâs only serviceable tavern have any kind of random activity.
A lack of faction war focus didnât kill the factionâs walk up scene. If anything, Legion bolstered ADâs Horde numbers to a level that hadnât been seen before in Argent Dawn, not even in MoP or WoD. What killed it is a mix of cities that werenât serviceable for roleplay, a lack of interest in casual characters, and the writers leaving the faction unaccounted for for the same time span that it took Vanilla to become Mists of Pandaria - and in a lore position where they sorely needed a touch up at that, such as how all the original core races of the faction with the exception of Tauren didnât even have a racial leader, to the point that orcs and trolls still donât.
The only thing a certain vulpera did is a slap that decapitated a corpse that had been there for years, as by the time said vulpera arrived, Valley of Honor already had like 10 people tops on a good evening.
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Iâll make a correction: the Keti Caravan did not kill Orgrimmar on their own. I do think a lot of the reasons yâall have mentioned above are important, but I also think you overexaggerate the effects. Valley of Honour had a lot more RP than just 10 people on a good night. There was more going on. Not nearly as much as in Stormwind, but still a decent amount of people. What ultimately killed the valley was the âLive and let liveâ attitude. More and more cringe washed up and decided to stay, until the people who had standards decided to skip town. Then the cringe leeches, without any more RP to feed on, faded away again.
Now, if the Horde had a bigger, healthier playerbase, the cringe mightâve been camouflaged for longer, and the RP scene mightâve survived. After all, Stormwind endures. But as someone who lived through those dying days, what ultimately killed the city was people saying âWell, if you donât like the cat burning at 42000 degrees fahrenheit, just ignore it. Go and roleplay with someone else.â, until every RP spot in the valley was taken up with the nastiest stuff.
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I only ever did very little Horde RP a few years ago as a Troll. Had some good and less good experiences(Ran into the Farakki or Drakkari characters who were âpardonedâ more than once and it was pre-MoP).
But what I will not really understand is why pick Orgrimmar of all places for more civilian âhang around the tavernâ kind of rp? Is it really just ease of access? Stormwind I understand, itâs the central hub, but its also an actual normal city that has plenty of relaxed areas built into it. But Orgrimmar is, in all fairness, a rather ugly and rough fortress city. Its in a desert and very unconventional and itâs built far less for pleasing asethetics, like say Silvermoon or other places.
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The Horde was already suffering heavily by the time the Caravan scandal happened, and most people had already left the place for good.
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thunder bluff is a cozier horde rp hub and ill die on that mesa
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The Cow level was real all along and it was Thunder Bluff.
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We had a good run.
I look at the years, no, two decades of Horde RP I have been able to partake in with fondness. And though I doubt it will ever completely die out, itâs safe to say that the golden era is behind us.
Too many things went wrong with the lore. Too many things broke the already fractured faction apart. And too many people had finally the sense to use their lives for something more useful than playing a 20+ year old game.
Itâs been a privilege. Iâll probably remember things like the Spine of Kalimdor, Red August, Legacy of the Saurok, Infinite dark, all the escapedes I got with Grim Gest and PCU to do, and more, till the servers have shut down for good.
Iâm not sad that itâs past. Iâm glad it happened.
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It was rather disappointing that the Horde got very mismanaged and had effectively two civil wars with only a year or so apart, one full-blown and one more indirectly. And both in fairly short succession. The big shift in warchiefs over a shorter span of time was also very poorly handled, especially with Volâjin who only got a single expansion to lead, in which he showed up once to tell you âgood jobâ for upgrading your Garrison.
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Itâs also not necessarily dead. Itâs diminished pretty severely, but all it takes is just one notable plot point, one thing that really grabs peopleâs interest, and the folks who left will likely come back. It didnât happen in Shadowlands, and it didnât happen in Dragonflight, but thereâs nothing to say it couldnât happen down the line. Iâll admit, I donât think itâs likely to happen with how the gameâs been going - but Iâd be more than willing to bet that there are writers on the Warcraft team who are just as disappointed that the Horde has been sidelined as the players are. Maybe theyâll be given their turn in the spotlight.
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Actually, to continue my own post. While WoD was a mess of development, it was still a really strange decision that the Horde actually got very little focus during it. It was the origin of the entire faction, and the main villains were essentially an alternate version of what it could have become.
That expansion if anything should have had a more Horde-focused narrative. Sure, it would have been less to do for Alliance potentially, but it would make sense.
To be fair, everyone on ArgentDawn and their mother told [REDACTED] what they thought of them the year prior. Many criticised them, some even tried to earnestly help them, but all of that was brushed off with obtuse excuses and clumsy stubbornness.
There were three or four forum threads that each spanned over 2000 posts before they got shut down in which people from all corners of the realm came together to collectively tell [REDACTED] off.
People saw that all their advice, all their criticism and all their offers of help fell on deaf ears. Of course you would start ignoring it then.
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That entire time was very soul-draining. Especially to see how so many people actively tried to help them with genuine sincerity, only for all advice and olive-branches to be thrown out for pure spite and as you said, stubborn refusal to admit any wrongdoings.
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