No, this isn’t a thread about “what you might think” because of the word “mature”.
Just in idea, or more precisely a question I had after a second glas of wine tonight:
Do you actually think, that due to the fact that this is a revival of a 15-year-old game, which mainly might invite old players from those early days, or in our case, old roleplayers, this could lead to a significant increase of the average age of the player base on the Classic servers, and because of that also some kind of “higher quality of roleplay”, because we are all “old stagers”? (Wow, what a sentence)
Or is this assumption all wrong, because a person who is fresh into roleplay is as good as someone who loves RP for 20 years? And that there are not only old players here “reliving the dream”, but also completely new ones who are just curious to witness how WoW was in the early days, without all the extra stuff?
What do you think? What kind of roleplayer are YOU? What kind of hopes and dreams did you have the moment you chose this server?
Oh, maybe this thread is already doomed because I just threw the overall structure right out of the window, but, I still have that wine as an excuse!
For the record: in my case: Pen&Paper roleplaying for nearly 30 years, witnessed the first 2 years of WoW on a German RP server, which were the best two years of my online RP live, and never had a better RP experience in any other MMORPG ever since. If Waterlords will provide only a fraction of that, I would be more than happy!
If by “mature Roleplay” you mean “mature individuals who can have adult conversations about their problems pretending to be fictional characters”, yes, I do think that an older mean age will help in that.
On the other hand, I by no means think that this necessarily translates into a better “quality” of writing. There’s people of all ages doing great writing, and people of all ages doing very bad writing. I myself have been struggling to write at the “standard” I thought I had last time I did WoW RP. My brain no work so good no more.
I think that the great opportunity now comes from essentially having a server that’s a blank slate, and in which we can develop new RP from all the lore and writing skills we’ve been developing through the years. It’ll be different, and I think it’ll be good, and I think we’ll all kiss.
Personally, I hope it’s not going to be a club of old timers.
We’ve seen it all: the tropes, the drama, the Mary Sues and the skilled writers who seem to put us to shame in a single emote.
But is there anything more wonderful and rewarding than seeing a greenhorn venture into roleplay for the first time, wide eyed at the fantasies presented by the characters around them, brought to life by us?
Having players of all ages and all ranges of experience join into creating stories together, I believe, makes those stories more interesting (and less predictable), as well as supplying regular doses of wonder and joy at all that we’ve come to take for granted.
Yes, I meant that with “mature roleplay” (…and, in my personal opinion, good roleplay has nothing to do with the age of the player, but maybe a little bit with the actual time somebody already spent roleplaying on- and offline. Once you have a bit of experience, you don’t fall into certain traps anymore, like e.g. mixing up RL and RP in an unhealthy way (…please don’t ask how often I had to sat down and have a talk with a fresh young roleplayer in my first year in WoW who had a crush on the character of another player and cried his eyes out because of rejection…)
And yes, I totally agree concerning the fact that we have a blank slate and a fresh start here. I tried to get back into WoW roleplay once or twice within the past years, but always got thrown back because of the long-time established structures on the servers. Most stories already were tales of the past, many players already had moved on. (At least it felt like that.)
This right here is a chance we hadn’t in ages. In 15 years to be exact.
And @Tove:
Oh, definitely. There is nothing better than having a “newbie” roleplayer sitting the first time in your pen&paper group, who is realizing what kind of world he just stumbled in.
In that regard it is sometimes a pity to not being able to see other players, but on the other hand e.g. when you see a new one is coming into an inn bursting of RP, first standing shy in a corner, then typing some careful responses, and suddenly doing full-fledged roleplay half an hour later, you literally can feel him grinning of joy between the words he is writing. (Excuse my bad English, this is really hard to explain)
Yes, a mix of old-timers and greenhorns is just wonderful because of the reasons you just explained!
Hah, sounds like we’re of an age then, Tabletop RPG’s for 33 years, LARP for 25 years, MMORPG’s for 15, (Hmm, going by that pattern clearly the next iteration of Roleplaying is due shortly!)
I think a healthy mix is key. I don’t think the playerbase is going to reflect the ages at all, just from nattering in general chat it seems that the age bracket on dear old Hydra W is about the same as in Retail. For every ‘old Sweat’ revisiting their glory days, there is a newbie trying it out for the first time. I’ve not tried RPing much yet on this server, although I absolutely intend on doing so as soon as I have some decent looking kit, so I could not state what the standard of RP is like, but the signs that I have seen are encouraging, but then I absolutely throw myself at the RP scene on ArgentDawn with almost ballistic intensity, so I am pretty certain I’ll be able to find some sweet RP shenanigans going on.
As remarked upon, sometimes having new folk around reinvigorates a game in the eyes of older players. It is a really noticeable phenomenom at LARP,I remember getting a lift with a total newbie to one of the big Fest LARP’s in the UK, his Sister had LARPed for donkeys years, but this was his first one. The look of sheer wonder as we arrived on site (And this was the day -before- the event had even started!) was priceless, but also made me kinda go “You know what? This is pretty cool” just seeing it vicariously through someone else’s eyes.
Its early days to really define H W’s RP -style-, but it is encouraging that so many seem to be taking it to heart in terms of ‘It is an RP server, for RP’.
I don’t think there’s as big a difference in age range between Classic and Retail RP. I also don’t think it’s that big a difference from vanilla launch either. What I do think has changed, is the level of knowledge about the world. We now know more about how RP plays out in general in WoW which means more people who can keep up with the pace of chat, more people who can do spur of the moment RP and more people ready and willing to start events on the server to keep that interaction going.
I also think we have the benefit of more modern tools to add flavour to the RP. TRP3 has a fairly functional port for Classic already for example. The other thing, which I think is something which will have to happen eventually on Retail as well, is that there is a single community on Classic for each type (PvE/PvP). As much as Argent Dawn may have RP coming out of it’s ears, Earthen Ring/Darkmoon Faire and Sha’glade Cartel are really struggling and Classic has just taken another bite out of those communities.
I don´t see myself as some hardcore RP person, with all the very old style in language.
That being said, each char of mine has a background story and a different character. My Druid is a shy lady, who is trying to find some answers. She is very kind and helps people a lot.
Some other char is going to be a loner, a Rogue with a bit of a dirty attitude, due too many disapointments in life.
I don´t think I can play an MMO without my chars being all different, it can be a bit tricky for people that are not used to that, though.
As for this server,
I actually hope that I find a nice guild, with friendly people, who are not demanding things like voice chat or 24/7 online time. My Vanilla guild was like that, we played up to Naxx and I enjoyed that a lot.
Personally, it does not matter to me what age, gender or nationality people are, I just hope for kindness and laid back fun.
OMG, mentioning that tool just opened a whole new world for me! I hadn’t any chance yet to check out what actually did happen in the WoW-tools-section in the past 10 years, and now I fear this might be a new rabbit hole I am about to fall into!
This is exactly what I meant. Experiencing such a moment is absolutely priceless!
I hadn’t any chance yet to check out what actually did happen in the WoW-tools-section in the past 10 years, and now I fear this might be a new rabbit hole I am about to fall into! 
