They did during all of the Scourge Invasions though.
At this point, before trying to tell what should and shouldn’t be viable, one should wonder whether or not this attempt to police role-play would be a good pay-off for the community, because it is what has harmed it in the past, and has often devolved into an attempt to police, blackmail, or “force” the other party into some sort of submission. Which is not to say that role-play shouldn’t have guidelines but more often than not it’s not your place (yes, yours, dear reader) to enforce it by being really obnoxious about it.
If the divide is already here, and it is, maybe we should first see if it can be mended, rather than insist to push for something the other party didn’t ask for. If it cannot, and I don’t think it can, it is in everyone’s interest to just leave these communities and let them do their own thing.
Not “policing” (AKA having standards and calling out dog-trash) RP has repeatedly led to either Goldshire-tier RP being normalized/pushed into every area, as well as giving rise to a whole slew of aforementioned people trying to brute-force things that either
Does not work in RP (lore breaking, alt-universe LARP’ing etc)
Noncery
I’d rather take “policing” RP any day of the week tbh.
Only ones I remember spotting in SW during the pre-patch were the Priests and Crusader quest giver in Trade. The crusader being human while the rest being a mix of alliance races. If there were horde races there then it is either luck that I did not see them besides the DKs. Or it’s just Blizz randomising them per reset.
I think it’s not useful, no. And it’s not the lack of policing that has led to weird RP, but a major divide in the community as a whole with groups weaponizing labels of Good RP and Bad RP to suit their own interests, which ultimately destroyed consensus on what RP can be viable on a large scale.
If people don’t trust one another any attempt of policing RP just fosters a toxic environment. Saying that you still want to police someone else’s RP when they’re like “I don’t want to, if you don’t like it, just ignore it” borders on harassment (or it already is, depending on circumstances).
I do recall humans in Silvermoon and the Undercity. Though I may be wrong.
Honestly? I’m not sure I want to look forward dragon RP in Dragonflight.
Such is what happens when someone takes “I’m a Pandaren that became a dragon due to exposure to the TWISTING NETHER, who becomes best buds with a non-evil Twilight Dragon. And helps Sethral- Setheralis- the Vol’dun Snake Loa. Becomes a Loa themselves and can shape into a Vulpera” seriously.
I mean, the lot they roam with act absurd anyway in regards to concepts…
Like trying to make their own currency and call it a ‘Shekel’ while at the same time make a headcanon Uldum language that is basically just Arabic… that only Slaver guilds have really used till now.
Because people forget, well. Wastewanders are not natives.
Other then that, yeah. They’re an ignored spec for most. A loud spec.
In general, people want to have fun RPing. Massive OOC overreactions are a tradition on this server, but that doesn’t make them any less tiresome. The fact that the things irrelevant forum personalities habitually overreact about are easily ignored and will literally never come up or bother them again (except when they weaponize anything they can in increasingly toxic year-long hatefests for no other reason than “I’m bored and on the internet.”) only makes it more ridiculous. And exposes the fact that it’s fundamentally some laughable attempt at asserting their own perspective, perhaps hoping that, somehow, by wielding the mighty like and report buttons on this forum, they can force reality and the game server to be a certain way. There are no indications that these people have any genuine interest in RP, if they even RP.
In fact, deplorable forum “personalities” getting their way would send this realm into complete inactivity much faster than Blizzard and the inexorable aging of the playerbase ever could. We’re witnessing people so bankrupt that the best they can come up with is stimulation through condescension and attempts at destroying what others build.
I’ll close out with a novel idea: RP what you like, wherever your character is. If you run into something you don’t like, either ignore it or rationalize it as best you can. That’s literally all there is to it. RP is a collective exercise. Is someone next to you not following the script in your head? You can either ignore them and do your own thing, try to weave what they do into the greater narrative (the better option, in 95% of cases), or bring the whole performance to a screeching halt by acting like a complete baby about things that don’t conform to your precious vision.
Did some military guild move far away from their home to have some insane series of events in your back yard? Either interact, or rationalize these people as hallucinating, deranged vagabonds who will shortly move on once they run out of easily available drugs. Instead of trying to police other people’s RP, which will accomplish very little except further fragment the server, how about we just focus on getting what sliver of RP we can out of the world around us. After all, the attraction of RP on this server is the server community - the very fact that characters all exist in the same world. There are plenty of places to go if you so desperately want your own little regulated bubble of phased RP.
The fragile inability to work around or just ignore things is actually somewhat worrying as far as signs of immaturity go. Some people may be physically old enough to be allowed to play on this realm, but mentally? I wonder.
Just saying “Ignore it if you don’t like it” is a cop out. Raising awareness of how stupid some if it can be amd discussing it with individuals who may not know any better will allow them to improve and gives them a much easier time with role-playing with strangers.
Maybe this is just me, but having like 10 seperate groups of 2-3 roleplayers all in the same area pretending the other groups doesnt exist because they all roleplay wildly different settings(Group 1 roleplays star wars, group 2 erps, group 3 roleplays a big un-named city and so on) Seems alot more detrimental to the server than people asking & wanting to have some basic shared themes and ideas.
As has already been said, most people who roleplay here want to roleplay within the World of Warcraft(Aka Azeroth).
Those who don’t want that and instead wants to roleplay in another universe entirely or who want to roleplay in a completely different version of Azeroth(See the Uldum sultanate things) should then simply just find another venue to roleplay out their things in.
I’m very confused as to what your message is and who exactly it’s aimed at, since you call out the ‘deplorable forum personalities’ with points that most people partaking in this conversation have been in agreement on when the Pandaria event example was brought up.
Exactly why we should do everything we can to try and preserve it. I don’t think it’s that big of an ask to conform to the very basic rules of the setting you decide to roleplay in. You said it yourself, RP is a collective experience. Steering off into odd headcanon territory or blocking people off OOC because they react in character to the ‘fun event’ someone created just leads to unnecessary division.
Arguing that people are mentally immature just because they want to apply a modicum of standards to the roleplay that surrounds them is pretty lowbrow if you ask me.
Honestly people who just RP by their own rules are just really tiresome to be around. I’m here to RP in the Warcraft setting as defined by Blizzard - even if they do make it a very flawed setting at times - rather than the Warcraft setting defined by Wattpad or Fanfic,net.
When there’s no limitations, there’s no stakes. When there’s no stakes, nothing feels impactful. If we’re not having an impact with our characters, why are we even playing a role in the first place and instead not just going on a Garry’s Mod or Minecraft creative server and making giant phallic statues out of explosives?
Personal guess is that it is another version of “PCU bad” since that is normally what happens when someone jumps in blames “forum personalities” and a bunch of thinly veiled snipes.
