Not all Roleplay is valid

Argent Dawn
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This post has been on my mind for weeks but I’ve never had the energy to write it. 50mg of Setraline and a Stormwind-induced aneurysm later I decided to go ahead and do it.

The other day I saw a handful of human nobles confronting two Dark Rangers near the park in Stormwind, and what started out as flinging hard swears at each other and openly forging permits from the king (and the Ebon Blade for some reason) soon turned into an entire bracketed OOC tirade in /s in which both parties accused each other of being PCU and wanting to control roleplay.

None of the people involved were in the PCU.

Dark Rangers aren’t even with the Ebon Blade. Even then it makes no difference because Death Knights do not have to be with or represent the Ebon Blade either. The notion of Death Knights that are not with the Ebon Blade being considered “rogue” is a complete, unwarranted headcanon. There are various instances in lore of Death Knights leaving the order to join their faction again. What they don’t do, however, is frequent taverns and pick fights.

And what is it with the constant permit roleplay? Why would the king pardon every other Blood Elf who wants to come into the city in the middle of what is an armistice, not a peace? What makes Kirin Tor roleplayers believe they have any sort of authority outside of Dalaran that they go out and demand to see portal permits in the middle of Kun-Lai?

And boy oh boy, don’t get me started on the hard swearing. I can tell by your Sanctum of Domination LFR mail chest and legs and that level 30 “Stonecutter Claymore” on your back that you just finished watching seasons 1 - 6 of Game of Thrones, dear male human noble, but more importantly by the fact that you cannot stop using a four-letter-word in every other sentence.

We have so much beautiful lore to derive perfectly in-universe insults from.

A Tauren could be offended at being called “born in the shade”, implying An’she’s warming gaze is averted from them, or “four-hooved”, as it compares them to the Centaur.

“Buzz off”, as innocent as it may be to most, could be a much more grave insult to Pandaren as it could be used to liken them to a Mantid. Or simply call them “thin”.

Where is all the wit, the finesse? Or is your tongue just not as sharp as you make that sword of yours out to be? (winkyface)

I came to ArgentDawn over 4 years ago to roleplay in the Warcraft setting with Warcraft lore in the spirit of what makes Warcraft Warcraft, but as years have gone by I have realized that a lot of people just don’t want to do that.

Some people just want to hang out in taverns and chat, which in and of itself is fine, but more often than not it’s used as a generic fantasy outlet for quirky Second Life interactions. They have no intention of interacting with the setting itself, and any semblance of adversity is avoided or ignored.

Some people want to be super mega powerful and bend the lore around 20 corners and through 20 loopholes to make their character as special as possible, yet they are unable to accept the consequences if they bring their Nazmani-Kaldorei hybrid or their K’thir to Stormwind and rather put “Ignore me if you don’t like my RP” in their TRP3.

It is quite disheartening to see, for it only drives wedges in between the many splintered cliques we have on AD. The larger ones, such as the PCU, can well sustain their own roleplay. More power to them, honestly, but when I look at Orgrimmar nowadays I only see a shell of what once was, when a few years ago the Valley of Honor was bustling with life every night. For better or for worse, you at least had some people around to interact with.

I wish more people would come together and try to reach a consensus, put their foot down, and at least try to uphold the spirit of Warcraft. Roleplay is the only thing I’m still subscribed for, and even that seems to be slipping away more with every passing day.

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk, and sorry for the ramblings.

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Thanks for this TedTalk

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Honestly
This is something I’ve had on my mind as well, you’ve said it better than I could so :handshake:

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I’ve been summoned.

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Trying to police the quality of rp across all communities/individuals/the realm itself is probably a pointless task, as even…what, 15+ years later we still have the same issues crop up day after day, like the PCU and well many other communities evidently as of late have shown you can to an extent atleast keep a certain quality control/standard going among those involved in said community(s) that you interact with, hoping that all these random lower tier rp’ers will eventually stop rolling horrible char concepts and stop OOCing in say and blah di blah is futile in my opinion anyway, no matter what game you play on whichever realm it is you play or even in pretty much every community, you will find people with self inserty/no respect for lore/general cr*ppy tier roleplay, other than giving the occasional helpful /w if you feel it’ll bare some fruit? not a great deal you can do, if someone wants to roleplay as a Deathknight bar maid or a Dark Ranger with a permit from Turalyon himself, theres not a great deal many could do to convince them otherwise and ultimately you’ll likely just end up in some annoying/stressful back n forth with them and no results at the end.
C’est la vie

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absolutely
I just wish that it wasn’t. That we’d all have equal respect for this inherently co-operative writing hobby.

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10/10 rant. I should’ve written it myself but you beat me to it.

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Wishful thinking, if it was possible surely it woulda been done by now.

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I think its also like an almost “generational”(probably the wrong term to use) issue, you get more experienced roleplayers who’ve been around for ages that generally know what is expected from them in terms of quality, but you will always get newer roleplayers who dont and maybe take some criticisms as an attack, as some criticism is an attack at times which then pushes them further into a stubborn mindset of “f what they think, I enjoy this, I’ll do it anyway” and then I also think you get the roleplayers who’ve been around long enough but simply dont care about quality and have always and will always just throw quality to the wind n rp however they please, its arguing with a brick wall really and rarely produces positive results, just slap them on ignore or pretend they arent there.
Tldr version: If willing to learn? teach, if not? dont waste your time, you dont get paid to teach people how to rp correctly.

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Apart from some people lacking the creativity to come up with any other insult other than a certain four-letter word starting with f, it is indeed quite a shame that there are a few people so adamant on doing their own thing, even if it is directly against the setting.

Now, sometimes it is really just someone being new to rp and not knowing what is proper and what not, after all, we’ve had to learn that too when we first came here. And to this day I still remember someone whispering me a long time later to thank me for the fact I took the time to go through their character concept with them and work out any kinks ( There was nothing much wrong with it other than a bit too close relation to a lore-character and wielding Thori’dal IC, which was quickly changed into a random family-heirloom-bow). It’s those little things that make one happy to help new rp’ers along.

But sadly all too often an attempt to help, no matter how well-intentioned, is met with “Shut up, I can do what I want” or “But aslong as I’m having fun, it’s alright, right?” or “Stop being so elitist, omg.” The thing is, when these are new rp’ers though, I can still sort of understand.

Yet quite often, these TRP-profiles tend to be -very- elaborate and well-made, even if the concept is ridiculous af, which shows both that some people are perfectly aware of what they’re doing, and that “Has roleplayed for X amount of years” is not always a guarantee of quality, -and- that sometimes these people are not just clueless newbies.

It also doesn’t help that , quite frankly, WoW -is- quite a wacky setting where we have both knights on horses and space-traversing demon spaceships in the very same place. Which makes it hard to agree on what is the “correct” way to behave in the setting. But I do believe there should atleast be some general things like “Dont walk into a hostile city as a race that has a clear history of hostility with said city” etc, or “Don’t start shooting up the entire city in plain sight and expect to get away with it.”

And I think that it is not bad to expect our fellow roleplayers atleast adhere to these very basics, considering this is a cooperative hobby, wherein everyone atleast , imo, has the right to be able to play in the setting in a way that makes sense.

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There’s those whose bullheadedness and disregard for RP etiquette persists through puberty, and it’s those people new roleplayer tend to encounter first when they enter cities. It sets a bad precedent.

And I don’t think my rant can suddenly turn around and redeem every bad apple in the orchard but I hope that at least some people have this post in the back of their mind the next time they type out an f-word or start working on that TRP for their really cool new character.

Or maybe some guild leaders see this and get the courage to finally put their foot down.

I don’t know what I hope to achieve with this post in the end. I just needed to let my frustrations out really.

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The Orgrimmar situation was:

-Few PCU guilds who keep to a standard+ quality for their RP.
-One or two heavy anti PCU
-Few guilds who are dog droppings cus of said rant above.
Few guilds who were not PCU but respected a modicum of quality, and thus ended up joining the PCU, thus becoming PCU.

Then the ppl in our community ended up with such a bitter taste thanks to the half elf half vulpera child rp second lifers that we just left Org.

What was left was the Rant-ables and the sporadic non PCU guilds, which eventually left cus there was no one to interact with, leaving just the dogpile.

It’s a sad thing to see, but people will manage.

One day we will come back to Org I hope…

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Yeah I think swearing loads in rp is pretty crass anyway, like others have stated its pretty creatively bankrupt, and maybe your message will impact even just a small few, and if so, thats some result atleast.
Edit: Generally I’m always willing to give a few pointers to a newer roleplayer but if your advise falls on deaf ears thats where the convo should end, dont waste your hobby time, this is a hobby, none of us get paid to teach roleplay or create content, its a hobby.

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Even if only -one- person reads it, then the post has already done what it was supposed to,but, sadly, I fear that outside of us usual forumites, not many bother reading these forums. Either they dont know of it, or they consider this place as “toxic” or “elitist” .

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I understand this 100% and you’ve conveyed it in a far better manner than I could.

I’ve been in communities where the mindset of tolerating RP means the adherence to lore-friendly aspects get torn apart. Communities where you eventually feel at odds with the wider world because the RP you engage in feels more bubbled than anything else.

I fear it’s the mentality of “all RP is valid” that enables outlandish concepts to pervert the general theme of an area. I fear that a big part of why a certain caravan guild managed to infest the Valley of Strength for so long was that people perhaps didn’t want to be seen as the ones poking holes in their RP without looking like the villain…and see how that turns out.

Now, I don’t think the image of SW being a bit of a mixed bag will ever ceased. But I would like to hope that people can eventually grow to accept that perhaps their concept doesn’t work in that area? E.g. a K’thir in Stormwind or a Yaungol in Orgrimmar.

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Agreed, I doubt the types of roleplayers mentioned in this thread are the types to scan the forums for advise/tips on how to get better, but alas like you said, if only one does and improves, then its a result.

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Well that’s impossible because by default the person you are arguing with if you are non-PCU is in the PCU. That’s just how it works.

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I think its good when some put “new to rp, please be patient” or w/e type messages in their trps, as it kinda seperates them from people who likely have rp’d low tier for a decade or more, people like that you can kinda turn a blind eye to, or maybe give a lil harmless /w of advise to as we was all new rp’ers once, and likely awful, I was shocking back in late TBC

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I think a good start to appropriate roleplay is that your character, while not necessarily an average joe, isn’t the main character. You cannot hold your RP character to the standards of the player character because the player character is a literal demi-god, and everything they do is an exception to the rule.

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Everyone on Argent Dawn is PCU except you.

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