[RP Discussion] Ten Years On From Warsong Defensive!

[Clowame-argent-dawn]

Oi oi!

Tomorrow, bladdy hell, we come to the ten year anniversary of Warsong Defensive, a landmark RP event that took place on the Sha’tar between the 9th and 15th of February, 2009.

This is how it was first described, by someone whose writing skills really did want for some improvement:

At Warsong Hold, there will be a proper siege atmosphere. Messhalls, Drills, Scouting Missions, Dungeon Missions, Mining, Construction, Training, Supply Caravans, Rituals, and all kinds of other activities, both made by the event organizations, and the players themselves. Everyone will be able to influence. All the while, the Horde will be harassed by the minions of the Scourge. Attacks on the Hold will come from all sorts of dastardly Scourge, including Nerubians, Gargoyles, Frost Wyrms, and Death Knights. Bases around Azeroth, such as the Bulwark, and Orgrim’s Hammer will also face the Wrath of the Lich King, and his new minion, Paggorn.

Pipe up if you were there!

Not that I think many readers today would have been – a good majority of the heroes (soldiers! Medics! Farmers! Ice Stone Keepers!) will have surely moved on to pastures new by now, MMO roleplay just a daft hobby they toyed with when they were younger. I’m just posting this for the posterity, if not the slim chance we might reminisce! (I’d also be posting Geis’s trailer, surely deserving of an HD remaster, haha, but I’m not permitted to add links. )

Warsong Defensive was the second of five “RP Conflicts” based on the Sha’tar realm, sizeable, week-long affairs greatly inspired by the battle of Helm’s Deep as it was depicted on the silver screen. They revolved around preparing a fortress – in this case Warsong Hold in Borean Tundra – for a climactic siege, and gave licence to attendees to think up their own ways to bulk up the defences, harry the approaching enemy, and form alliances with other player-characters. The tagline, “Bringing epic to everyone” was a distillation of my desire to run an event in which every attendee could hold some way, could see explicitly the impact of their actions. Attendees weren’t on the scene merely to fill in the numbers. They had a stake! Over time I’ve taken the conceit to different MMOs, but even taking them into account, the last one was 2016 time, I think.

Paggorn… Paggorn was a laughable concept in retrospect, I won’t hide the fact! He was my paperthin villain, a dreadlord who, having surmised that the Legion would never conquer Azeroth (well, he was proven right!), resolved to seek patronage from the Scourge. This he was given, but only after the fiends in Naxxramas had torn his wings from him, presumably so he made for a striking image on the battlefield.

But, IN MY DEFENCE, I was 19.

Running these events, with the invaluable help of a small crew of intimates each time, was enormous fun. I can’t really relate what it feels like, to run a successful RP Conflict, where for three or four hours a night your player-character is always in demand. Thinking, typing, advising, and roleplaying, all at the speed of light. Ultimately, for the duration of these gargantuan vanity projects, I was pressed to the screen in the evenings and thinking hard about them every other hour of the day. Drawing on all your stamina isn’t so difficult, when you know the whole enterprise is only for a few days, and you know you’ll miss it terribly post-finale and clean-up.

Anyway, I had a few tricks. I dealt with the swell of numbers – up to 60 a night, at a tentative estimate – by establishing different bespoke hubs, like the infirmary, the stables, places that would naturally become areas where roleplayers would cross paths. Like so, much of the roleplay happened without my even knowing it, which made my nightly patrols all the more rewarding: my character, Gremkarc, would often be solicited on things I didn’t even know about myself!

Just as important as the hubs were the spontaneous missions I would dispatch parties of three or more on. Player-made quests around Northrend. On principle I would group together characters who had never met before, to see what chemistry might arise from it. If I could find someone amongst those groups who could spin a few /rw emotes and thus build a solid narrative, I considered myself very lucky indeed. It was important, though, that every mission had an effect on the core story, something that could be reflected upon Warsong Hold.

All this without 2019’s TRP, Discord, or, haha, Battle dot net friend chat. These RP Conflicts must seem crude and even miniature today, considering the behemoth RP-PVP sagas regularly held on Argent Dawn, but the Sha’tar’s relatively modest size (in the 2008-2010 period) meant I could lead them as I did; with planning set to a minimum, friends rather than strangers as support, and room to just enjoy it for myself, strolling through Warsong Hold, watching “emergent RP”, as characters sometimes gave themselves things to do. I am quite sure I wouldn’t have the mental reflexes to run and RP Conflict-style event on AD, principally because the numbers would just get too, too much.

I’ll always remember Warsong Defensive, because I oversaw it, and because it seemed to me like a rampant success. The organiser who leads their large-scale event well is rewarded by their attendees with a tidal wave of imagination. On the very first night, I had a zeppelin blow up en route to Warsong Hold. Mayhem! And a score of player-characters (they didn’t wait for a head count) went out to look for survivors, salvage. It’s that sense that your attendees are taking your event seriously, that makes you deliriously happy.

I’ll always remember it, but, haha, those excellent attendees might not. It’s been ten years indeed, and in the time since then there’s bound to have been better-run, better-written events of a similar bent. But Warsong Defensive was also very much an RP event attached to Wrath of the Lich King, and it’s extraordinary how golden an expansion that was. For me it’s the pinnacle of WOW, vanilla included, and it fostered some of the best RP this roleplayer’s ever experienced. BFA is a nice expansion in that it draws back from the “war across the cosmos” theme that WOW will surely plunge back into next expansion. What Wrath did was to present us a war where Azeroth never left the stage throughout, and its grit was to be found in everything from the unglamorous, still-transmoggable quest reward weapons, to the bitter fight to even get a foothold onto Icecrown Glacier.

When I used to plot out RP Conflicts, my foremost concern was the stronghold itself. In all of WOW, there exist only a small number of quest hubs that might accommodate a proper RP Conflict. I like a big wall, so that the enemy has to coordinate an attack and not just swarm the area. There should be numerous buildings that could conceivably be appropriated as infirmaries, storehouses, jails, and suchlike. The zone itself has to offer space for interpretation: a battle here, or, over there, an enemy outpost we mustn’t approach just yet. My first RP Conflict was set in Nethergarde Keep (I love it so) and Stonard (ditto), being that it was an event that encompassed both factions. Warsong Hold, though, was a league above, a sprawling, glorious edifice that for my money Blizzard has never bettered, re its quest hubs. It is unique, and I was smitten when I first disembarked there, as a level 70 on Wrath launch day. Quite asides roleplay, it’s just a statement to the player that this expansion is going to be lavish, an evolutionary leap beyond what the game had already achieved.

So Warsong Hold is owed thanks too, for lending the event so much Horde-y atmosphere.

Can’t round off without a few WSD memories, so here’s a selection:

1. The Ice Stone bug! Rofl. Although Warsong Defensive was held in February, WOW servers across the world were hit by realm-wide broadcasts warning that “The Ice Stone is melting!” A line from the Midsummer Festival mini-dungeon gone rogue, on a quiet-ish weekend afternoon we decided to capitalise on the fun by running a mini-event: to find the Ice Stone, an elemental lodestone that the Scourge (or Naga?) were attempting to melt, and bring it back to the safety of Warsong Hold. The mandatory boss in this event was a Giant Enemy Crab.

2. The Scourge “ambassador” arriving to lay out terms. Unimpressed, one of Overlord Gremkarc’s lieutenants beheaded him on the spot, inadvertently releasing a highly noxious gas around the entire hold. The remainder of the night was spent out of doors while shaman and druids attempted a purge of the interior. Tense stuff!

3. Nerubians, coming up from the hold’s underground, to raid the fortress. To sew some pandemonium like that is gleeful fun, and I guess I remember it chiefly because everyone did so well, in covering each hole! Related to this, I recently discovered that there was a private WOW RP server (naughty naughty) that ran its own Warsong Defensive, same name and all, and the footage I’ve seen on YouTube (which I shan’t link here) depicts that very attack happening with real (not /rwed!) nerubians. It’s a bizarre watch! And pff, I didn’t even get any royalties, for that event!

4. Some of the build-up was rather good. Gloom-mongering with Gremkarc’s lieutenant Junka about the fate of the Horde expedition. My pal Sateal (who has gone through several name revisions since then) did something good in Shadowmoon Valley. I loved people chipping in; helped with the hype!

5. Having the trailer scripted for me! By a professional! “Blood to the east; blood to the west; traitors, to the south.” The machinima artist who was go-to contact for making trailers (hi, Geis!) even created a day-by-day recap of the whole saga, which, again, I cannot link to! Bah!

6. The almost-nightly cathartic scene of staking a Scourge lieutenant’s head atop a tall pike! Complete with much cheering and backslapping. I really enjoyed those opportunities to follow Horde customs to the letter, “NELTHARION BE SLAIN!” and all that. Greeeeet stuff.

Right. That’s done. Any more talk from me about WSD after this anniversary period would be excessive; I just thought, today… ten years! May as well mark it!