Definitely in tangent territory now, but do you know if there’s any greater lore on the Underbelly beyond it just being the PVP area for two expansions and (in Legion at least) shown to be somewhere where the guards are willing to take bribes to turn a blind eye.
That’s the extent of it. As idyllic as Dalaran tries to paint itself as, it has an ugly underbelly where the law is enforced to the extent they get paid. It’s a quite literal Zaun vs Piltover (but please without the zaney Arcane ripoff RP that some people tried to do there) to make a comparison.
Great. Happy now? If this gets out you are the sole reason Dalaran as a neutral hub ceases to exists.
This is the same vein of obscure lore everyone loves to not know about(or forget it exists) as the Highborne not being willing to teach non-Kaldorei.
I knowingly ignored this to make my worgen mage. And if anyone fights me on that, I’m going to start spelling it as kal’dorei.
You and 99.5% of the RP community, apparently
And I rather be called Kal’dorei, then have this piece of lore be forgotten!
Because Horde RP has become a hollowed out mockery of its own hubris and awfully managed community.
To many remaining Horde players (ie blood elves) some RP is preferable to no RP.
They do not want to put the effort in to rebuilt something on the Horde that has been gutted out by a whole slew of factors that really deserve their own thread and would probably cause some some peoples tingly parts to get knotted in rage.
That is not to say there is nothing on Horde, there are communities, there are guilds. Effort however is the buzzword for Horde RP these days.
Some players want to double dip. Horde aesthetics, Alliance ease.
Really? The faction divide is utterly pointless now, Blizzard have stupidly written themselves into a wall with it. Mechanically it doesn’t exist beyond a few select modes of gameplay and areas.
Perhaps TWW and beyond will break the remaining barriers with the Warbands idea. I have no problem with a mono faction world, it actually creates opportunities for character growth, development and shakes the stagnant world building up.
But currently? Horde players are stuck. Their options are apply themselves and put effort in (horror i know) to get something out of their faction or simply faction change and tip the scales even further in favour of Alliance rp.
It’s a really bad dish no matter how it’s boiled.
It’s especially harsh because it’s become a wide practise (and I’m guilty of this too) that if you want to make an IC neutral character it’s better to make it on Alliance OOC. It’s rare to see neutral/ambiguous races like Pandaren, Dracthyr or H/B elves on Horde alts even in neutral RP settings. Being Horde makes you a bit of an outlier basically everywhere, because being Alliance and talking to Alliance is “easier”.
It’s also a numbers game. For years Horde RP was kept alive by the constant conflicts with the Alliance. Think of the hooks for Horde RP - warband, undead warband. Sure there’s the nomad survivalist RP but those hinge on active hubs to travel to and interact with.
You have the city dweller blood elf noble RPers but those can’t survive in a bubble. Compare Silvermoon to Stormwind where a hundred+ Second Life RPers can be found every day, even now. Sure, it’s not the best RP around but you can sure as hell take a walk down town and interact with people. And the Old Town is different from the Dwaeven District is different from the Mage Quarter is different from the Memorial is different from the Cemetary is different from the harbour. Meanwhile, the Horde has the Valley of Honour because every other part of Orgrimmar is essentially the same thing but less viable for consistent RP interaction.
And if you want to get out of the city you can go to Duskwood for your edgy stuff or Arathi (and now Gilneas) to see what the nobles and the northmen in general are up to. There are bands of adventurers and mercenaries owed to numbers alone and they have more than one hub to flock to. Night Elves have four hubs now catering to their own flavour of RP.
Alliance is more sustainable, thematically. The Horde can’t really thrive or conjure the numbers without a major conflict, which to me is also a hilarious representation of their in-lore politics.
It doesn’t help that Orgrimmar is, simply put, not as built up or spaceous as Stormwind, and the devs neglect of every other racial capital (on both sides) means there’s distinct homogenisation.
Which is frustrating Horde side especially, as they actually have way more diverse options than Alliance, but they’re woefully under-developed.
To be honest Orgrimmar saw the most amount of diverse RP during Mop when the Kor Kron went gestapo and the trolls were forced into their ghetto. But that’s exactly the point - there was a political distinction to compensate for the geographical. Now it’s just all one homogenous mess. Meanwhile, Stormwind has a plethora of subcultures to each of its Districts, however degenerate some of them might be. Variety! Then you have Dalaran for your mages, Ironforge for the dwarf RPers and visiting Ironforge with your group actually makes sense and offers some kind of variety. The only difference between Org and TB is that TB is green. And what the puck was an orc meant to do in the Undercity, even while it was a thing in lore?
Also, not gonna lie, Undercity was a pain in the rear to navigate/actually get around.
Stormwind, and to a lesser extent Org, have the benefit of being easy to navigate and wander.
I’m huffing the Hopium that the eventual world revamp gives some meat on the bones for the capitals, but…
Not for Undercity hopefully. It’s much better with just the bones.
Rebuild Lordaeron City anyway
The monkey’s paw curls, you’ll get rebuild Lordaeron City but it will use the Cataclysm Forsaken Architecture.
Ofcourse it will be neutral and everybody can visit. Not that I know a good reason why any living would want to visit the graveyard where the death still wander around
There’s also the issue that Tauren RP is quite possibly the scarcest thing about as well. Most that I have seen RP, again as you said homogenously, in Orgrimmar. It’s an enduring issue with Horde RP scenes is the majority of it is a distilled Orc-flavoured hodge podge centred in Orgrimmar and very little else. Sure there’s the Crossroads which gets admirable use but as you said - it’s a numbers game.
Hot take but I don’t actually have a problem with opposing faction players visiting ‘enemy’ cities. If your PVP tag is off it should simply have all the NPCs marked as unfriendly and unwilling to interact with you. The problem is that Blizzard seems to want to have their cake and eat it at the same time, crossfaction functionality but not wanting to actually put the crossfaction aesthetics and world building into play.
This is true although Arooh is looking to change this with the Thousand Eyes and there’s the Tauren community who’ve got to be the most friendly, chilled and down to earth group of people I’ve met in World of Warcraft.
I remember during the lockdowns that the Tauren community (to me at least), seemed to come together really well and rp’d online.
If you’re interested at all, I’d recommend trying Tauren rp out.
Actually got a Tauren warrior I’m trying to level. Though I’m still mildly salty about how small the female model is compared to male. I was driven by the buff lass in WC Rumble, and then I got to WoW and remembered the lies…
I am not against being able to visit Horde cities either, just musing how it would make zero sense for, example, a Human Paladin to visit Lordaeron City, when its rebuild in Forsaken-style. And if its not rebuild in a Forsaken-style, but a mish-mash combination of living Lordaeronian and Forsaken styles(or heavens forbid, a new Light-inspired building-style due to Calia’s influence) then it will probably be overrun by Human RPers and the Forsaken will probably lose one of their RP-spots(as far as they have any)
But also, plate armour on tauren looks way too biiiiig.
Also just doesn’t quite look right to me. I know that logically yes, anyone on any form of frontline in WoW is going to want to be armoured from top to toe but tauren to me look most in their element when they are partially armoured, but partially unarmoured because they’re big enough to probably withstand an arrow or two without it.
Yes I know it’s not logical but it’s rule of cool and that’s frankly all that matters.