Hi there! Posting here to give feedback in regards to some things since Developers and GMs don’t read realm-specific forums as far as I know.
As someone who has been on quite a few of the Roleplay servers for years, on both US and EU there’s been some problems that have propped up more and more as time continues. Most notably after Cataclysm, when the ‘new’ report system was implemented, there’s clear lack of Roleplay server rules being enforced. This most notably includes Roleplay disruption/griefing, and non-RP names.
Non-RP names are not as big of an issue due to RP-addons allowing you to choose different names to show as long it’s not too off the wall, but it’s definitely appreciated if you try for a name that more fits the game lore more accurately; but it is still a rule.
RP disruption, RP griefing, and basically anti-RP hate is something we have to deal with on a daily basis on RP servers. There are people that roll on RP realms that have zero intention of RPing, or ever even trying to get into RPing but rolled there anyways. Quite a few of these people, actually dislike RP but want to take advantage of certain aspects of the realm like no sharding in old zones and better sales on Transmog items.
Some of these people disrupt RP, and are quite vocally anti-RP on a regular basis. They will go into an active Roleplay event or with people doing walk-up RP say in Stormwind and spam toys, block visuals with large mounts and pets, spam stuff in /say and so forth. Ignore only gets rid of 1 of those 3 things, and basically you end up forced to either try to ignore it and hope they go away, or move and hope they don’t follow.
The problem is that nothing is happening to people that are doing this, and it’s happening on a more consistent basis especially since particular streamers have taken to running events on RP servers with no intention of abiding by any of the RP server rules. In the past month, Argent Dawn has had major RP hubs completely lag out or crash from events like these 4 times. There was also major RP disruption, making it practically impossible to focus on a RP or to find someone to do walk-up RP with. People spamming slurs in every chat, and much, much more.
Despite it being against the rules to do so, the very same people continue to do it week after week with clearly no deterrent and no action taken. We’ve also had our forum threads basically brigaded with spam posts, off-topic stuff, and petty attacks or treating it like twitch chat for whichever streamer pointed them to the thread.
This had led to a lot of people from the RP community taking a stronger dislike and stance towards what we refer to as 'OOC’ers, which are people that at no point Roleplay which is one of the main purposes of a Roleplay realm.
The right click report system doesn’t appear to be doing it’s job, and often even tickets don’t appear to be doing anything as we’ve had people that consistently break these rules daily, some of which have been going for longer periods of time than others. It’s strange to know that as time goes on the rules are less-enforced, to the point that that they might as well not exist. More needs to be done, and reports should definitely matter on an account no matter if they’re a streamer or not.
People need to realize that setting up a Roleplay can take quite a bit of time, and you don’t know how long someone has been setting up a Roleplay or going through a Roleplay with people. A single Roleplay can go on for quite a few hours, and they often go for at least one or two. Disrupting for 10-20 minutes or longer, can definitely effect something that took hours of time and cause the Roleplay to take an abrubt ending because one or multiple parties don’t feel like being hassled while they’re trying to do something that’s a hobby.
TL;DR RP server rules are not being actively enforced, RP disruption occuring frequently especially with streamer events. Blizzard needs to take a look into actively enforcing such rules and making reports feel like they matter, currently it feels like reports do nothing to stop people.
