There was an extensive thread on this recently, but I believe that this deserves its own thread to discuss solutions, rather than problems (and will therefore be a lot less popular!) For some time now, people have wondered what exactly is wrong with Alliance RP – there has been a general milieu and feeling of something being wrong, but none of us can quite put our fingers on exactly what this is.
In my opinion, having played the server since Vanilla, there are a number of significant but not insurmountable issues. What it will take is more ability to compromise than this community may presently possess.
Lore 'Compliance’
I put quotes around compliance because, frankly, there is so much white-space left as to what is and is not canon within World of Warcraft that it’s impossible to cite facts and figured about a huge amount of what exists in the world our characters live in – but we must still do our best to make it fun and believable for the vast majority, even though many of the characters we interact with may have differences in understanding about the specifics of certain things.
I don’t have any solution to propose here except suspension of disbelief – much less than our characters have a wikipedia to refer to, poor characters may be unlikely to have a watch to even check the time – though I’m sure someone out there will pull out a line of quest text demonstrating the massively cheap availability of pocketwatches, sort of proving my point – we don’t need to assume our characters know things in lore, they have their own beliefs, rumours things they’ve been thought by their parents. When characters have differing beliefs in character about lore, let them be reflected by the beliefs of the characters, not the knowledge of the player.
More important than lore though, and I think the key point of this post:
Institutions & A Shared Narrative
In my opinion, perhaps because AD was smaller then, it was easier to know what was going on – almost everywhere. Rumours about the Legitimate Business Club running in fake watches, the City Watchman meant to be watching for them at the bay asleep, the Shield of Light holding a service to the fallen of the north, while yet more fell in hopeless campaigns. Argentism, if anyone remembers it, was an anti-Argent movement that characters have feelings towards and comment upon it to this day. The Shadow Sentinels had spies in every corner, and often even in other guilds, but without OOC malice – and when discovered, failure was taken with relative grace.
Now, this isn’t to paint a rosy picture that everything was perfect. We had arguments, bitter ones, OOC backstabbing, ridiculous and childish OOC politics, and people fell out so badly that they didn’t talk to one another for years, some of my own included. We did, however, have one shared goal – to tell interesting stories, to create an interesting narrative, and to entertain.
Now, it feels that the first priority of guild leaders is numbers – numbers count for everything, because we have destroyed our institutions. At any one time, 3 terrible emote fighter army guilds could unite and try go burn down the Watch House, arrest the Watch, do whatever they want – could they? No, because that was our Watch, something not always cherished by characters, but certainly by players.
Kerengar, the leader of The Shield of Light, was the first person chosen every time a trial event came up, because he was the recognised paragon of the Church guild. Dalrick and the High Court of Chancery were generally recognised as representing the judicial institution, adding another layer of engagement and interaction to the city’s and infrastructure, and while at that time I didn’t always get along with Didonus either IC or OOC, some truly excellent and memorable RP was created because The Royal Court existed, could be interacted with – political drama was a possibility. Infrastructure within Stormwind existed, and while it was certainly FAR from perfect, it was a much better state of affairs than its total absence, which appears to be what we have now.
The Present Day
As far as what we do have now, I find it difficult to say – I don’t play as much as I used to, but it seems to be fractured, cliquey and more than a little vitriolic. Perhaps I am being too harsh, but guild leaders have gotten too addicted to the dopamine hit from having many members online, and they understand full well that whoever has the most members, has the most power, because that is what power dynamics on Alliance have been reduced to - no subtlety, no subterfuge. It almost seems to be treated like a competition between power blocs, whereby people break into cliques that refuse to get along with each other or compromise in any respect OOC, and whose IC interactions (if they exist at all) are predicated around one-upping the other party.
There is similarly an issue whereby people are not willing to be consistent, and respect one another on a baseline level – new guard guilds are not given an opportunity to flourish (comment #235235 about ‘here we go again’ as soon as they post their thread), anything perceived to wield authority is absolutely slammed due to our collective PTSD in that regard. Personally, one of my characters is a captain – if another character tells him they are a major, he will call them major, or sir, and give them due deference. If they tell him to do something absurd or immersion-breaking, he will likely make some excuse. We NEED to apply the same principle to guilds! Give people a chance. We will absolutely never have what we always complain about wanting if we never give it the opportunity to flourish. It makes me shudder a little to think that Nath might have posted his Stormwind City Watch thread, and been subjected to the forum equivalent of a pillorying, for what was to become one of the most beloved guilds the server has seen.
I could talk about what I think the causes of this are – lore disagreements, ego clashes, a whole colorful medley – but I think that has been very aptly covered in the other thread. What I’d like to discuss are solutions, and not solutions such as ‘we need to be nicer to each other’ or ‘try to be more understanding’ because sadly while some individuals may well, it won’t change the problems we’re facing.
I’d like for people to discuss this for a while. I have a solution in mind, maybe, but I’d really like to see what people think.