Carbek’s hit the nail on the head. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with groups of people who don’t want to roleplay or interact with each other, and leave each other alone. No one is responsible for “the health of server-wide roleplaying,” at most people are just responsible for themselves and their own communities, however big or small they are. Though roleplaying is inherently a cooperative hobby, in the end it’s something that we all do for our own personal enjoyment, above all else. So if people don’t want to roleplay with this guild or that guild, that’s fine.
The problem is with this oddness of one group publicly shaming the other group, or harassing people for joining the other group, or trying to force their personal opinion of the other group on others, or suspecting people of belonging to that other group in a fit of paranoia. All of that? That’s just weird and should stop.
But in the end, the greatest roleplay that you will ever find in a MMORPG can be found in cohesive guilds and larger communities. From personal experience, I can say that it can sometimes be difficult to find a community that suits you and it can sometimes feel like a community would only constrain your creativity. Yet once you take the leap and join an active guild or other sort of community, you get access to so many more opportunities.
So, I wouldn’t worry overmuch about the greater community and the health of Argent Dawn as a whole. Focus on your own enjoyment and find a group of people who suit you best, whether they’re PCU or not. Chances are that you’ll find it much more fulfilling than having to navigate server politics on your own.
To offer another ex-outsiders perspective… I came to AD last year in search of a more active RP server rhan my current one. Via the forums already caught some whiff about all this PCU yay/nay drama, but as I wanted Draenei RP, just gave my current guild an honest and unbiased try- and loved the community it’s part of. We both RP with and without the PCU community, and it always absolutely boggles my mind when someone rejects my RP approach in whisper with “Don’t want PCU” (often followed by a slur). Especially when I never even met this person and all they do is reject a players friendly SW city approach based on the community they are in?!
I don’t know what drama has gone down in the past with guilds involved with the PCU and against, but I wholeheartedly agree with the OP that it helps neither side. You just limit yourself in your own hobby.
We all have different experiences. Unfortunately, my main problem now is that among the anti-PCU there are quit a lot of my acquaintances who have been playing at AD regularly for more than six or seven years, and they are really good in RP itself, but…
But.
And here’s begins some kind of story of “pride and prejudice”, and I feel very sad because of it
Honestly just RP, bros. WoW’s already heading on a downward spiral so OOC politicking won’t help one bit in trying to RP in honestly the only environment that vaguely supports it.
None of the other MMO’s seem as comfy as WoW for RP, there’s always some weird “but’s”
There are people within the PCU I dislike and I have no issue admitting such. Those people I would personally do my best to avoid, cutting RP as short as realistically possible were it to happen so that I could spend my time with people who’s company I enjoy more.
Why it always needs to come down to “every single person under this group is bad” is baffling to me. RP with the people you like, avoid the people you don’t. It’s not hard, you don’t need to make it an us vs them thing, and nobody will (or at the very least nobody should) judge you for that.
It’s disheartening to see people with “ignores PCU” in their OOC info, especially when those people are individuals you consider, or perhaps considered, friends.
I extremely find it weird, when some people RP with others, who they assume do not associate themselves with PCU, but then the next day (i.e), as soon as they find out they are from it - insta ignore, both OOC and IC.
Like, such quick 180 turns is what really astonishes me the most, as if you did not enjoy RPing with that person prior to that. Live and let live, for crying out loud.
People are free to RP with whoever they want but the people more focused on hysterically attacking each other and others need to… what’s the term these days? Touch grass. They’re actively nurturing the weeds creeping into the stonework with anxiety inducing backround noise, ruining RP.
Disagree. The people contributing to paranoid delusions, fuelling rumour mills and trying to play politics to weed out threats to their comfort zone absolutely drive people away from the server and actually do active harm.
I know this and keep arguing as I’ve done since 2012(?) that people need to actually communicate or stupid narratives are going to form from conjecture, grudges and misunderstandings. Some of this is just beyond saving, like many server politics issues and it sure as hell isn’t my job to fix.
This thread is sliding in the direction of “people who don’t want to roleplay with our community are bad roleplayers, if not bad people.” It’s not a particularly good look.
They do want to roleplay, just not with you, whatever their reasons may be. The issue is that this wasn’t a sentiment shared by everyone in the guild, so of course the guild split into two groups, one that wanted to roleplay with you and one that didn’t. This could have been averted if they were more sensible about it, by allowing people who wanted to play with you to do so while the rest did their own thing. Live and let live, like Valteryl said.
I mean, I could share my own anecdote about how I saw a guild slowly fade away after joining the PCU. Like Tenasa said, I’m pretty sure no one in the PCU thought “How can we rip them apart.” or anything like that. It just went from having active events across Azeroth to existing solely in Orgrimmar, orbiting and mimicking more populous PCU guilds. Slowly, members began to leave and eventually the guild was a non-entity. None of this was due to any nefarious agenda on anyone’s part, it was just something that happened naturally after the guild joined the PCU.
I could assume that the guild would have continued to march on proudly, if it wasn’t for that damn PCU’s corrupting influence, but that probably wouldn’t have happened. The reason behind the guild’s decay was internal and it would have faded away in some other manner, even if it didn’t join the PCU.
I bring this up because it’s probably the same case with this guild brought up by Tenasa. It’s unlikely that the PCU is so scarily powerful that it causes other communities to crumble just by existing. The fact that this was an issue at all speaks of some failures at management and leadership, which would have led to the guild collapsing in some other way if the PCU issue hadn’t come up.
This is all a very roundabout of saying that people choosing to not roleplay with the PCU isn’t a problem, it’s all of the other drama that surrounds that. There’s nothing wrong with ‘live and let live.’ There’s plenty wrong with slurs, peer pressure, accusations and other such things. Those are the marks of someone unpleasant who has other issues that are exacerbated by guild politics, whereas having your own opinion and not wanting to roleplay with someone because of it is perfectly fine.
But I’ve definitely also seen types that have decided to invest all their spare time into whispering people about the PCU and harassing guilds/people that they think are PCU, or doing wacky ‘RP’ where they just on a PCU guild IC and then when any sort of response at all comes they start calling people 1940s german bad guys and blocking everyone.
Yeah ultimately and unfortunately it can just happen that something ends up incompatible. Though, as you say, it’s hard to say with any certainty what would’ve happened if they didn’t ever join the PCU
So long as we just accept that these people, who are fixated with the PCU and devote their entire sub to harassing them, are probably just a tiny minority of the people who don’t roleplay with the PCU.
The PCU is a pretty cool union of RPers.
People get too bogged down in weird cycles of he said, she said instead of focusing on the fun aspects of the game.
Focus on what we all want (fun RP, storylines and a strong realm community) instead of what divides us and it’d all work out better.
I don’t like every single person I RP with OOC, I’ll still strive to keep going because it isn’t just about me and them.
I don’t care if people don’t want to roleplay with me personally, but I am more than willing to call out the stupidity of the notion of “I don’t like your friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, and as a result I don’t like you, your family, or any of your values despite not knowing any of them”.
People choosing not to RP with the PCU? Totally valid, anyone can choose as they wish.
‘Boldly’ declaring that you ignore the PCU in your OOC unprompted? It’s attention-seeking and stupid, and all-too commonplace. It’s childish.
As an aside, the reason why this gets under my skin so much was because it essentially cost me my place in another guild, full of people constantly chatting bag about the PCU, and despite my constant reminders that hey, hi, hello, I was a part of that for a while, they were still more than happy to put the entire group of people under the bus with some pretty scathing comments, so subsequently I left as I felt unwelcome. By the time I came to and was out of the mentality of thinking everyone had me pinned down as human garbage, the GM of said guild no longer wanted me in there and an opportunity to RP with some long-time friends had essentially evaporated.
or anything like that. It just went from having active events across Azeroth to existing solely in Orgrimmar, orbiting and mimicking more populous PCU guilds. Slowly, members began to leave and eventually the guild was a non-entity. None of this was due to any nefarious agenda on anyone’s part, it was just something that happened naturally after the guild joined the PCU.
on a PCU guild IC and then when any sort of response at all comes they start calling people 1940s german bad guys and blocking everyone.