Ohh! Yeah. I vaguely remember your organization because most of you had RBG titles? That felt like a nice level of dedication.
And then because there was that awesome gnome warlock, Flamecog.
(sorry I am derailing the thread with my boomer memories, I stop now)
And if that’s the only compromise the parties can reach, then that’s what we get. Naturally if people strive for more nuanced alternatives, incorporating all that is important or crucial from your perspective, all the the power to them.
What I say in the OP that I believe people not putting such emphasis on the armistice are just as right and justified and I explained why. I don’t know if I actually criticized people doing what you want, only validated those who don’t think the same way.
And his taller more hyper counterpart, Venn, who’s been quite a crazyman ever since.
You’ve been given a few minor examples of how individual characters could make them “pay” (though granted I don’t think any of the examples work in practice as much as they do in theory) but I think the genuine (and unfortunate) answer is that its much more likely to not ever see a compromise or consensus because the two groups of RPers have been so diametrically opposed as far back as MoP in what they want from RP and how they go about it.
Every time consequences have tried to be brought upon one group or the other it has caused either 6 months of headpounding OOC arguing or some of the worst RP I’ve ever witnessed occurring on this server that you can tell was incredibly motivated largely by spite or pettiness.
I’d prefer it if it was a compromise of last resort. That’s the way it’s seen in all other forms of RP - you should only walk away and ignore each other if your RP is totally incompatible with theirs, and I’d like to think that armistice RP is absolutely compatible with faction conflict RP and that the two should be encouraged to intermingle.
The less bubbles that there are and the more that people get to interact with each other, the better, in my opinion. The-world’s-so-big-that-no-one-cares-what-we-do-so-we-can-get-away-with-it is a valid reason to avoid conflict that involves the armistice and avoid characters who care about the armistice, but I still encourage people to engage with that sort of RP rather than retreat to their bubbles, because I think it’s healthier for the server.
I’ve honestly run into enough new blood and other people who don’t give a damn about these decade-old OOC grudges and divisions that I don’t think that this is the case any longer.
Yes, there are some roleplayers who are extremely stuck in their ways and who want to enforce consequences as a bizarre method of punishing players who they don’t like and RP in ways that they don’t like.
However, I’ve given an example of a campaign where the armistice was taken into consideration and not just ignored because world-is-big-and-we-are-tiny, and where consequences were invoked in a way that was healthy for RP and not built on a foundation of OOC animosity. Your guild was involved, actually!
So, I absolutely think that it’s possible to play this stuff out in an interesting way, and not just theoretically.
Go for it, the floor is yours in the game! You just have to acknowledge that people aren’t on the same page and are just as much right or validated in not taking part in that song and dance given the inherent inconsequentiality of what we do with our miniscule rosters. 
Man I’m really sorry to report to you that nothing ever came of that. I believe something could and should have but I also wasn’t participating in the campaign and my characters remain IC completely clueless of what on Azeroth was happening in the Ghostlands, with the last thing they got told being “Oh the Alliance just went to kill Amani” which made him briefly shudder in the sheer oddness of it, but yeah.
From the scenario you sketched I’d say that it all sounded like it happened organically and had a lot of political intrigue which if that was the case, neat
In the end, it would’ve come down to wether the relic looters were able to convince the other alliance members of the Horde agression, but on paper I would argue that if the actions of the relic looters put the Amani hunting campaign organized by the alliance in more needless danger, then that would’ve been a hook for the alliance to go after its own. A bit of a ‘what you guys did there nearly ruined our operation and got us killed/injured/looked at sternly/etc’
Out of curiosity. What do you think could and should have happened?
I don’t want to start an argument but I am trying to think. We speak about enforcing consequences which, yeah - let us assume it makes sense to enforce them.
How do we go about it? That is, how can we make it enjoyable for both parties, if we can.
Because the risk of turning it into a sort of OOC punishment is very much real.
Unfortunate, but at least it was something that was being explored at the time, even if the consequences didn’t stick. It made the RP that occurred at the time more entertaining and that’s what matters.
Validity acknowledged, but I’m still going to encourage people to take part in that song and dance, because I think it’s a fun song and dance and that they’re missing out.
Though it’s interesting how the tune has changed over time. During the Battle for Azeroth, the roles were reversed - the Fourth War was in full swing and it was the peace-lovers who were the odd ones out.
Yet there were a lot of people in favour of consequence-based RP back then whenever someone spoke out against the war or acted against the interests of the war effort, without any regard for the logic of the-world-is-big-and-we-are-inconsequential.
That just serves as evidence of how Argent Dawn has changed over the years, I suppose. So if people have moved on from that, I hope that people can move on from their OOC grudges too.
From our brief negotiations with the troll-killing Alliance, that’s the vibe that I was getting. There was a lot of frustration that these fellow soldiers who they had harboured and fought beside in the past had suddenly endangered their mission and their lives by wandering off to start trouble with the Horde for their own selfish reasons.
In that particular scenario, the consequences that were being explored and suggested were IC ostracism from Stromgarde and its community, which is something that could’ve been used to generate further RP, as these ostracised individuals could have sought to regain the favour of Stromgarde and the people whose trust they had lost.
Yeah I touched upon this mentality in one of my earlier posts in the thread:
I should add that in BFA I operated by this same logic for my characters/guild’s misdeeds, but I steered wide and clear from the Loyalist/Rebel RP scene at the time.
Assuming the Alliance groups involved would like this direction I think it is neat.
The only issue I see is… I think the risk is that if it happens again (ie. they are found out to be breaking the truce again and thus did not learn their lesson) it becomes a bit “oh, we are at it again”.
But maybe I am just being too negative about it.
Very good post overall! I am a faction enjoyer and while there is plenty one can do with faction themes without conflict, it is important part of the faction fantasy. The conflict doesn’t necessarily has to mean an all out war, could be negotiating, being stuck in a dangerous situation and having to overcome their initial hatered etc. There have always been faction conflict even when there wasn’t a cation war and we have always cooperated to defeat the big bad and there have always been neutral factions that played important role. So that every player got something for them in the story in each expansion. Sadly nowadays blizzard’s writing is what it is, luckily they leave enough room for RP PVP to still happen.
Important thing to consider is that there is plenty of other factions besides the Horde and Alliance, that we can vibe with thanks to RP, like Argent Dawn, Kirin Tor, Steamwheedle cartel etc or even hostile factions like scarlets, defias, scourge, legion, bloodsails etc. For example with the playable eredar customizations, it is a great opportunity for some RP PVP between lets say Horde and some legion remnant.
When it comes to any potential issues, it is that same as with anything with RP - just apply common sense. Don’t try to besiege Silvermoon, don’t yell in cathedral square about how you just raided and pillaged some troll villages and don’t instantly jump on anyone’s throat because they happen to mention fighting an orc to their buddies at their table in a tavern.
I made my peace about 3 years ago that there’s simply no way to go about it. It’s always a headpounding 6 month affair or it devolves into the worst, most ooc-motivated RP in existence. Neither group actually wants the other breathing down their neck and they have too much animosity to ever heed or interact in a genuine manner with the RP of the other. Now I could end up being wrong sometime in the future, but statistical data does not lie like people do, and the statistical data paints a very clear picture of people’s real thoughts on this matter. Both want consequences, neither wants consequences.
Call me a cynic and a pessimist (rightly so on this matter, I think) but I just can’t really deny the hard statistical facts and trends that have always proven true over the years (ever since the end of MoP) when it comes to trying to enforce the peace on warmongers or the war on peacemongers - neither wants it, and they’ll simply pay platitudes to the other side until they leave their RP vacinity.
Santern giving a rousing speech aboard the Bjora to his fellow Alliance soldiers (Krasarang, 2013, colourized)
In which case, the alternative is that forgiveness is not sought and what follows is a biter rivalry and friction between these two groups, who have difficulty cooperating with each other or coexisting. Again, something that can be very fun and enjoyable to write out and serves as fuel for future RP, provided that there’s no OOC hostility involved.
But if people lack a willingness to accept consequences, whether it’s out of fear of the other party being motivated by OOC grudges, out of the belief that the world is too big for the inconsequential actions of their characters to face repercussions, or out of the desire to just have their cool RP-PvP without worrying about any of the baggage, then sure, the only real choice is for them to be ignored and allowed to exist in their own bubble - which is perfectly valid, but unfortunate in my opinion.
I’d like to think that more fun could be had if people were more open to interaction, consequences and the armistice, but I accept that’s just my opinion.
Yeah he’s been a right nuisance and headache in my life ever since, let me tell you. (I love him tho)
I too recall Krasarang a rather fond experience, though not without its’ sketchy moments (in the Alliance camp at least), but overall I had fun with my (at the time) rather inexperienced SI:7 goon making sense of it all on his lonesome.
Overall a great post but I wanted to briefly touch on this point as I often experience people who are just completely incapable of realising (or simply not knowing?) this which either leads to some weird situations or comments in roleplay.
I suppose it is a tricky thing to keep mind of, it does require some dose of imagination to not simply take what you see ingame as is (eg: no roleplayers in stormwind so the city -must- be dead right guys) but the setting was always tricky to navigate and we as roleplayers have to take various concessions to work with all this mess.
In short, our characters are not the only pieces on the board and I think there’s value in reminding yourself that, even in the smallest of moments. Keep yourself humble and you can do warcrimes or execute warmongers as you please, champs.
as a world-renown masterclass spymaster of stormwind’s premier intelligence agency i can indeed confirm that the files we have on Santern’s multiple acts of warcrimes are lost in the sea of five hundred reports about skirmishes and other conflicts
Another great point (as a paranoid spy roleplayer I am obliged to agree anyway) and it touches upon a comment I saw made by someone here about members of the same faction not trusting eachother’s word straight up because the Horde is so nice and the orcs are very good now.
I honestly cannot blame the people who like faction war roleplay for disliking neutral roleplayers or at least feeling big /concern whenever they show up because even when I don’t attend that much of this content, I’ve met plenty of those characters and they were always annoying to interact with, almost as if their sole intent was to spoil the fun of everyone there, which to me felt it wasn’t a character but a player motivation.
To me a good neutral character would first of all understand why x warmonger or supporter of said warmonger show hostility towards the faction, especially when their worries and actions have been justified by repeated acts of aggresion. Instead, too often I saw tantrums being thrown about how “but there’s peace now guys and also we’ve done coop to kill the big bad together your WAR IS POINTLESS AND CHILDISH AND I KNOW I AM IN THE MORAL HIGHGROUND HERE”.
Granted, I haven’t attended a faction war event or scenario since BFA so hopefully that changed since then, but when I did and I saw people like that my good vibes were pretty hurt.
Frankly this is a matter of time and place for said neutral roleplayers, and it’s something we’ve grappled with in the past due to being strictly neutral. If something is billed as exclusively a skirmish between the factions, like say a campaign that starts and ends as a war, then we simply have no business being there, even if it ultimately means we’re “”““missing out””“”. If neutral roleplayers show up to start complaining about the war then the only valid response is to laugh them off. If there is more than that going on, though, it’s also important to try and put the OOC stigma aside.
Or shoot them.
I will never forget this weird troll druid who decided to live in Darkshire like 2 days after the armistice following BfA. This was a bad RPer and what I presumed to be an OOC troll but all the Grove folk and some of those weird resident tavern roleplayers were trying to defend their presence, while many of the locals tried to kill them. Despite this being yet another OOC-driven debacle, everybody dealt with the situation seriously and IC. A riot broke out. A local dragon roleplayer transformed and started spewing fire. A week later the captain of the Night Watch was deposed and killed (or sent to prison, I can’t remember) for publicly whipping one of his Watchmen as punishment for her siding with the troll supporters. A complete mess, but kept IC as much as it could have been. That’s what we like to see.
Wow this is an interesting topic. I enjoy both; aspects of Neutral RP and have enjoyed MANY Faction conflicts over the years, especially back on Defias Brotherhood; some glorious times on my Orc giving a kicking to Mountaineer/Three Hammers.
I honestly think Teldrassil created a schism in the whole Faction War situation. There’s war as we know it; killing, fighting with honour - All that stuff I think most of us enjoy, and then there is genocide; which is what Sylvanas attempted and arguably nearly did at Teldrassil. And that’s such a high level intense concept its sort hard to grasp. The closest we had before that was the Mana Bomb, and that took out what, 100,000-200,000 people if we scale Theramore up correctly? Would be equivalent to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and both those events ended wars almost overnight.
I think it even spurred on the idea of Neutrality even more in a lot of people because its such a visceral event. The level of grief and mourning Kal’dorei, for example, must feel over the events of Teldrassil is on a level I dont think we IRL can really understand/equate to. It also doesn’t help the Alliance haven’t really done anything similar. Jaina led the attack on Daz’ar’alor, where Rastakhan died, but it didn’t come close to wiping out the Zandalari people nor was it an attack fuelled by hatred and spite as Sylv did. It was a battle in war.
The closest the Alliance has come, to my knowledge of that level of hatred was when again, Jaina, tried to drown Orgrimmar with a tidal wave in one of the novels, right after Theramore. But she didn’t because I think Thrall or Kaelgcos talked her out of it; I cant remember.
Either way, i’ll get to my point; the Horde have, been the aggressors for a long time in Azeroth history - From the Orcs invading the planet and nearly wiping out the humans, attacking the Night Elves after coming to Kalimdor, etc. They always seem to be the bad guys. I think the neutral RPers that are so against faction conflict now might be more understanding of these smaller scale conflicts had the Alliance done a lot more awful things.
Me? I just want blizzard to write a coherent story with actual motivations for war again. Because right now, the RPers fighting these small scale fights are probably far better storytellers than Blizzard are when it comes to understanding faction conflict.
If you’re roleplaying as still aggressively attacking the other side, then I think “consequences” should meet in the middle.
IMO it is bad roleplay to both be receiving full support from your faction, and still be violating the truce.
No free lodging at faction bases, access to military assistance, or requests to assist the faction with problems and stuff.
And certainly no free transport.
And people opposed to this can
1: make it known they will not support you.
2: activley blackball the offenders.
3: just straight up snitch on them to the other side.
Some consequences should be roleplayed by the offenders, others by the people opposed to them.