Man’s getting desperate for blog content innit.
Roleplay was slow and I was waiting on a friend to play The Ascent with, roleplay fortunately picked up but my friend never did.
I don’t get your meaning, truly.
It’s just cringe when people walk away from RP because they “ignore PCU”. And it’s just very cringe when people make “anti-PCU” a part of their identity. And, of course, that’s before we get into the outright heinous stuff with the harrassment and the death threats.
One thing that sticks out to me in this thread, however, is the issue of what the “PCU” is supposed to be in the first place. A lot of people have put particular emphasis on how expansive it is, with hundreds of people across many guilds who are as diverse as the Argent Dawn playerbase in general, and how it allows for a level of organization that just couldn’t be possible without it. And that’s all well and good - but then why stick with a name that just seems to undermine this notion completely?
From what I can tell, what makes the “PCU” effective at what it does is a combination of outreach, communication and openness. To this end, calling it “PCU” is more of a detriment than a benefit, especially now that the effort has significantly outgrown its initial concept. Nothing undermines the idea of a large, diverse collective of individuals more than making one guy the face of it all. And a polarizing figure at that.
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:The blob approaches…:
because it’s a funny name, it does the job, rebranding at this stage is nigh-impossible and, on top of that
the name really isn’t the problem, despite what people try to argue. It wouldn’t change anything to go through the hassle of rebranding.
Then what is the problem?
People harrasing, sladering and threating members of our community, a problem that wouldn’t really go away with a different name, it would be the exact same thing.
E.g: I can change characters, but if folk knew my chars, would I really be treated differently?
Harassment and threats are despicable for sure. And my heart goes out for anyone who has to deal with that. But from my point of view the PCU has always seemed able to close ranks and bite back to anything critical heading their way. Mayhaps sometimes abit too hard.
If this is about people ignoring the members of the PCU or going out of their way to avoid RPing with them it seems abit more like an image problem. And maybe Balgerd was right on the money that it could be solved with a ‘brand’ change starting with the name. Maybe it wouldn’t change anything. Or maybe it would seem less like the vanity project, that it surely is not.
Sadly, the anti-pcu all thing ain’t about the name, just how they were hurt (albiet never really showing proof how or by whom) and throwing a fit rather than talking. I don’t think how changing the name really fixes anything in this case.
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Considering how often we keep returning to the issue of exactly what kind of role Perroy plays in the “PCU”, I don’t think it can be reasonably stated that the name isn’t a problem. It sure seems to keep getting in the way of what people claim the “PCU” is all about.
This is speculative though. You don’t actually know if it would make a difference, because it has never been tried. It seems like people have just decided that it wouldn’t be worth it and that’s why it stuck.
The problem is that - and I know this for a fact - a significant amount of “anti-PCU” sentiment grows from misconceptions about what the “PCU” actually is, and the name is absolutely a factor in this. It’s what you guys have decided to call yourselves and continue to call yourselves - do you really think it has no bearing?
It may not stagger any of the harrassment, slander or death threats. I expect that it won’t in many cases. But I do genuinely believe that it will, at the very least, make a difference in that people like myself will no longer be confused by the apparent disconnect between what the name is and what the purpose is. Because, as it stands, I don’t blame anyone for just assuming at a glance that it’s one big Perroy fanclub. That’s going to continue being the case until the name changes.
How thou? If I came to you on a different char/name and you knew it was me, how exactly would you react differently? It’s not the name, it’s the people.
Suppose we simply disagree on this. I’ve seen enough from these types to know that this is a grudge they’ll bear to their deathbeds, and nothing less. It doesn’t matter if we start calling ourselves roleplay incorporated or winner winner chicken dinner or literally anything.
I disagree. The reason I was initially anti-PCU was that I was of the belief that the group was comprised primarily of bigots with negative views towards people who weren’t white, cisgender, or heterosexual. The reasons I’ve seen others avoid them have been similar, or that they’re concerned they’ll be metaphorically thrown to the wolves by the group.
If they were branded as “the Argent Dawn Friendship Association” or “Coalition of created characters” or something innocuous then the false stigmas wouldn’t be any less prevelant or believable.
I agree the name is kind of stupid and I agree it can come off as a bit of an ego thing, for a while I felt like publicly hosted PCU events were some sort of display of dominance in a weird sense, but genuinely it’s just a roleplay initiative and somewhat of an OOC community that sometimes branches into other games. It’s super easy to overthink it but at the end of the day it’s a tongue-in-cheek joke name that’s mostly just stuck.
The big thing I implore sceptics to do is just see for yourself. If it’s for you, cool, you just found a new group to roleplay with and maybe make friends outside of the game to. If not, that’s still also cool, and you can find other people on the server to form those connections with. He said/she said/heard it through the grapevine nonsense isn’t the way to form an opinion in anything, so don’t do it on WoW too.
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I get the feeling that you’re mainly talking about people who harass and make death threats. In those people’s cases, I agree, they are probably gonna keep holding weird grudges and a name change won’t matter much to them, nor will anything you ever do or say. But I’m also not talking about their point of view. I’m talking about my own.
And in my point of view, if you came to me on a character called “Nordmann”, I might reasonably assume that you’re Norwegian. And if I brought that to your attention and you were like “oh, well I wouldn’t want anyone to just assume that I’m Norwegian” and decided to change your name on that basis, that would be perfectly reasonable, would it not?
Sure, some people might still erroneously believe that you’re Norwegian just because they saw you with the name before, but you will at least have cut off the possibility of any future misunderstandings by changing it.
One problem here is that your third paragraph bolsters my argument. You yourself say that the name gives you vibes that do not really reflect upon what the “PCU” actually is. If that’s true for you, do you not think it would be true for others?
The other problem is that what you say in your first paragraph is perfectly compatible with what I said in the quote. You had misconceptions about what the “PCU” actually is supposed to be, and while it had nothing to do with the name in your case, it very well might in someone else’s, which would make it a factor - as I said. I don’t think it can be reasonably asserted that no-one would look at a name like “PCU” and not get the wrong idea about what it’s actually supposed to be, and I think it outgrew the tongue-in-cheek joke name a long time ago.
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mostly just trying to cajole people into playing Neverwinter Nights these days
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Good thing I don’t do dumb names like that (at least not anymore) so yeah no worried nor that would be a name I would ever use, since it makes no sense using it to me.
If a simple name puts you off then… idk that’s a you problem? It’s not like the name is offensive so again, why should we change it? It’s not your community to begin with.
If my reply puts you off again, it’s a you problem not mine.
You can’t say ‘PCU’ without ‘Peace’, Gerthram
and that’s all we want
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I’ll be waiting for a fair bit of apologies from the anti-pcu crowd then.
Literally stuck in 2017
It wouldn’t solve anything. Even if the PCU dismantled the name, and their discord + everything but the guilds. People would still act as the same schizo fanatics they are today.
If a PCU members tells someone to drink acid/send them death threats, they’re tossed head first out, if they crash others rp events they’re kicked out. If they’re despicable human beings, they’re tossed out.
I have yet to see the same come from the “other side”. There it always seems to be an excuse of “We did it to the PCU so it doesn’t matter!”
you can’t expect people to sit by and watch as their name + that of their friends is dragged through the mud over and over again, can you?
I think these days he spends more time on other games than wow.
I can tell you, changing a name doesn’t do anything at all. if we rebranded to “Big group of friends” people outside of the community would still have the same rage. I’m pretty sure the random people with “Hate PCU” in their trp, wouldn’t even bother changing it to “Hate BGF”
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To be fair, I’m personally satisfied with them ignoring me for being part of the PCU. If you are unstable enough to be manipulated by wolf-criers into thinking there’s some huge shadow conspiracy of imposing 1930s values on the server through the hosting of vulpera market events then you are also likely a person I don’t want to RP with due to the likely OOC drama that’d erupt from anything my character would say.
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Also very true.
Ultimately the PCU isn’t the one that has/causes a problem, we’re fine as we are.