I just wanted to post up here in this ol’ forum again, haven’t done so in a while - mostly because I’m only a recent returnee to WoW but…
…is it just me or do towns and maps almost feel hollow now? I mean, I know that roleplay comes and goes in waves - we’ve seen that the past few expacs. But I feel as though I have little to no chance of developing a story or connection for my character by sheer exploration and chance. Once upon a time I’d log on, decide on a map (i.e Elwynn, Duskwood, Redridge or Stormwind) and just start riding around - waiting until I see some roleplayers pop up - though I will say, it wasn’t always like the roads were fully stocked in the past either.
Anyhow, I was wondering what people’s thoughts were? As I understand it, roleplay is more clustered between certain groups or collabing guilds - and while that’s a good way to preserve roleplay, I don’t exactly feel like it’s a way to promote roleplay. Now please don’t take that as bashing, because I know that there are a lot of DMs and event organisers who do far more than I do to try and create dynamic and entertaining roleplay. And yet I also feel like roleplay is almost tribalising itself.
TL:DR; does Argent Dawn feel emptier to people? Do you feel like hubs are disconcertingly quiet these days - or am I just being a debbie downer?
PS: I love this game. I love the lore. And I love the roleplay community. This isn’t meant to represent a nihilistic view on the future of roleplay, just how I feel - and how I’m struggling to find the sort of passion I know I once had for the game, and the stories I could make within it - with friends -and- strangers.
The realm’s population has definitely taken a dip lately, that’s for sure, but there’s still plenty of RP going on if you know where to look for it. Disconcertingly quiet - I wouldn’t say so, but that might be because I’m in a large + active RP community (The [PCU] 😈 now recruiting! [250]), so there’s no shortage of things to do there.
There’s definitely less people in Duskwood and Redridge, and many of the former popular spots in the North. As to whether that’s a bad thing in the case of Duskwood, well…
Anyways, you’re better off finding a good solid core of people in a guild to do your adventures with nowadays.
Orgrimmar is a perverted cesspit. A pale imitation of the Hub it was. The things you see there are not worth blinking your eyes at, let alone RP with.
Some have moved to that one private server where you can do custom things. But most are just restricted to their own groups, because it’s more consistent than going somewhere for RP, only to be met with poor writing and even worse behavior (Both IC and OOC.)
RP is alive and well, but casual, open-world RP is what’s suffering. It’s not gone, but it’s not all there either.
It definitely does feel emptier to me, but I personally think it’s because current expansion is very underwhelming for RP, especially with all the convoluted afterlife lore and retcons that definitely don’t do roleplayers any favours. Of course, not to mention the lawsuit and Bobby Kotick controversies which drove even the most ‘loyal’ players away from the game, and thus far it seems like improvements, if any, aren’t bound to come around any time soon. I can only hope the next expansion will provide an engaging narrative on Azeroth, and if not…Well, remains to be seen.
Your best bet is joining a guild since that’s where most RP takes place nowadays.
Unfortunately, you’re not alone with this. I’ve been trying to get some nice interactions and stories with others, but as I do not belong to any guild or community anymore since last winter, it’s been really difficult. Cities (Stormwind especially) are no longer the most reliable places for RP and smaller hubs are incredibly inconsistent with their activity. If you do meet someone out in the wild, chances are it’s either a pair or a group wishing to stay private and/or are doing an event.
It’s more than apparent that you need friends or a guild to find consistent and enjoyable interactions these days. Especially if your character has some niche concept that wouldn’t fit very well with most guilds, which unfortunately most of my characters are.
It’s why I’ve committed myself to planning a guild/community of my own, which would hopefully give me the chance to bring some life back into the world. Not something I would have decided on if the overall state of the server was better, but I figured it’s now or most likely never.
I feel like it is emptier more or less anywhere you can think of. That includes the hubs which while not outright empty, are not as lively as they once were.
What I used to do is go to a zone that my character was in, which usually was in the middle of nowhere, and then I just stood there or maybe patrolled the same road for like 3 hours hoping that I’d come across someone. Of course, I almost never did. I didn’t really want to use all my free time doing this so then I just gave up and started doing the accursed thing of logging into a character, RP scanning a few zones and then going there for RP. If I didn’t see anyone, I’d just logged off.
I feel bad for doing this, as I am contributing to the problem. But I also don’t want to walk in a circle for 3 hours.
All of this is so true and was put far better than I could have managed. I don’t know what Alliance is like currently but Horde is suffering big time from certain guilds blatantly using OOC in /say in the only RP hub we have in Orgrimmar. These people are basically trolls with TRPs pretending they are roleplayers. That’s not to mention the super weird ‘rp’ that goes on, which isn’t even rp it’s just Second Life avatars chatting crap.
Not 100% sure about this. I think there were 100% a lot more cool initiatives that got a lot of RPers in one place. But in terms of casual, downtime RP it didn’t come to me as easily as it did in Legion. Maybe they were about even, depending on what you were looking for.
That’s part of it too. We’ve had too dismal expansions in a row, where as I’d call Legion pretty good. I think people remember it a little too fondly these days, but it’s a little easy to forget the bad with a 77 day patch cycle. Ultimately I think a lot of people will agree that RP is very cool but if the game it’s attached to hasn’t been doing great for years then it feels like you’re wasting money on sub fees.
For me, the poor state of the game had a knock on effect on my RP where I’d do my daily chores and feel burnout for Warcraft overall.
Silvermoon feels a bit like the canary in the coalmine, looking back. The Bazaar was always a melting pot of Goldshire-but-Horde type characters, but the eastern half of the city seemed more or less serious about their RP.
Lakeshire has a bit of activity recently. I believe a guild’s taken over the inn there as well.
But no you’re right it is definitely more quiet. Inbetween a content drought, an expansion that doesn’t lend itself to RP, and Blizzard’s… Everything… People have been leaving and taking breaks.
it’ll have a small uptick in 9.2, usually always does, then start dropping again as we wait for the next expansion.
This is the usual rhythm. Everyone knows this. I think the severity of all those three problems and that they are all piling up on each other at the same time, means that there is a bigger RP drought than usual. If 10.0 is good then I believe it’ll rebound, role players are a very stubborn breed that way.
It wasn’t quite there years ago, though I think the big warning sign that the community was depleting was when it just lurched to the usual tauren, orc and fembelf coomers.
