The Problem with Alliance RP -- Extended Thoughts

Argent Dawn
189

I guess a big part of the problem is that races in this setting are heavily segregated, in terms of their themes. You’ve got humans with their late-medieval aesthetic, full of castles and knights and plate armor, working alongside the gnomes, who wield exotic technology that defies science as we know it.

In any ‘realistic’ setting, this would cause human society to undergo a technological revolution as they abandon their previous methods in favor of the absurdly advanced technology of the gnomes. Knights in shining armor would be no more.

However, Warcraft is a theme park setting that revolves around having all of these different themes to cater to different players. If you want to roleplay a late medieval knight, you’ve got humans. If you want to roleplay a technological wizard straight out of science fiction, you’ve got gnomes.

Once in a while, you might see a little bit of overlap in the form of skyships and similar things, but that’s as far as it goes. These vastly different races just don’t learn from one another or affect one another, for the purpose of maintaining their distinct identities in the theme park.

The only outlier of this is the Iron Horde but even then, that got confined to its own specific corner of the theme park as well. Only the Mag’har use iron stars and Iron Horde technology because that’s their theme, and the rest of the Horde doesn’t even touch the stuff.

Now, I’m not going to say that the ‘GoT roleplayers’ are right. They shouldn’t completely isolate themselves and ignore the rest of the setting. However, there is nothing wrong with creating a character or even a guild that’s focused on the medieval knights of the humans and focusing your roleplay on that particular theme of the setting.

You shouldn’t pretend that advanced magic or technology doesn’t exist in the setting, but I wouldn’t blame anyone for distancing themselves from it if it’s not a theme they want to play with. Sometimes you just want to focus on one of the many themes that Warcraft caters to and yes, one of those themes is the low-tech medieval knightly kingdom of the humans, which does cater to fans of Game of Thrones.

They shouldn’t police your roleplay just because it doesn’t match their theme, but you should try to respect the theme of whoever you’re roleplaying with too.

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190

Speaking from someone who likes the more high fantasy aspect of things, Footman is a cool guild. Ive never had issues with any of your members :slight_smile: , and while I fling alot at people who do low-fantasty stuff,it is soley towards those who push it to the extreme/towards me, I have nothing against it since both can very well exist, and Footman proves it.

The issue on both ends, is people who try to extreme push one or the other.

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191

Its a lot of fun when the lower fantasy aspects clash with the High Fantasy ones. Footmen being all impressed by the fancy paladins coming to help, or gawking at Hippogryph riders and making an awkward pass at flirting with the elven riders.

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192

You shall be punished for your crimes inside the gnomish gladitorial arena. Your opponent is…A SQUIRREL WITH ROBOT ARMS

193

My, he’s a tall one.

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194

I think this is legitimately my position these days. We play in Blizzard’s sandbox, but they’re not going to tell me how to build my sandcastle.

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195

Definitely. Azeroth is a world with room for both - it has both archmages and poor peasants living off mud pies after all.

It’s all in the balance as previously said, in execution, and in not scoffing so much at those around us for doing things that are different.

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196

It doesnt help that litterally the next patch they could recton that Stormwind was located next to Orgrimmar on Kalimdor and once was a kingdom to Quillboars.

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197

They could, but let’s face it, they won’t. We know roughly what drives their decision-making process when it comes to writing out this setting. Every big content patch and expansion needs a new enemy and a new theme, and they’ll make whatever space they need to shove those enemies and themes into the setting, no matter what previously existed that might clash with their changes.

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198

They are willing to throw out previous lore through the window or sense though, for a cool moment or badly portrayed twist. Atop of what you said as well.

Blizzard loves their “cool” cinematic-like moments.

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199

Blizzard’s casual disregard for consistency in the lore is another added difficulty, and understandable cause for frustration from the RP player-base.

I’ve been trying to talk solutions, rather than just the problems themselves, but I’m not sure how we can adjust to this when our RP can be invalidated with a single statement from the devs.

I suppose it’s just a matter of staying in the confines of the current lore and trying to ensure our characters are adaptable to a setting that can change with every new lore-book.

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200

Another thing I personally find a bit frustrating with Blizzard, and also with Chronicles, which was meant to be their lore “this is the official lore” but are already deviating from, is that in their current writing, Blizzard are excellent at making their own world, and universe feel small. Atleast for me personally. And I think that is bad.

They dont leave much, or any room for mysteries in terms of anything like the world, the universe, the forces of nature, life, etc. Everything has to be explained and detailed rather than left vauge to give us a sense of grandeur and that there is still things to explore in the world.

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201

We’ve come a long way from uncovering fragments of the Titans’ legacy on Azeroth in Uldaman to meeting the Pantheon, killing their corrupted cousin, and imprisoning their demonic brother.

I don’t think we’re better for it.

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202

I remember when things like Argus felt like so far away in time, like “Argus will probably come in the end expansion.”

Their need to constantly up the stakes has really made everything move in such a fast pace I would have preffered we didnt.

203

Problem with the Chronicles is that there was a time when Blizzard did not give enough exposition. Things that needed to be explained — base building blocks, essentially — were not. It took us until Legion to finally find out that hey actually all Shadow magic is really corruptive and unsafe, Shadow magic = Void magic, the difference is only semantics.

That would have been really cool to have known years ago.

But then they decided to go for over exposition and things that did not need to be explained, did.

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204

This summaries it perfectly.

And yeah I do recall the pre-Legion discussions/debates if shadow and void were seperate things entierly, and diffrent views on that and a speculation that shadow was from the shadowlands and void was well…void.

205

What’s this all about? Are there guilds that do this sort of stuff and pretend that magi are unable to throw spells IC? Oh my, I hope I’ve never blinked past one of them while strolling around SW or they’d have a heart attack.

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206

I roleplayed on Alliance yesterday and it sometimes feels like roleplay you’d do on GMOD / GTA or something. It was pretty fun but it felt like I was driving really fast around town in a stolen car gaining +RESPECT instead of being in some consistent narrative

As several people have said, it is a case of the community having loads of separate narratives instead of one shared scene propped up by a team of heavyweight / respected / higher order guilds that would all roleplayed together ie. City Watch & co. People aren’t really as willing to have their character inconvenienced and will only respect - for example - your character’s rank/position as long as it is in their character’s favour

Horde had and still has the same problem, of course - and is really the reason I began to make loads of guilds at once. It’s really easy to build a cohesive RP scene when most of the guild leaders of the various groups involved are guaranteed to co-operate with each other because they’re the same person

What is the bigger number five :raised_hand_with_fingers_splayed: or one :fist:

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208

I thought it was well established that all of AD horde is just your alts, and you are doing solo rp with yourself over like 5000 accounts.

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209

Nobody’s made a horde character since Cata, it’s just hundreds and hundreds of Perroy drones directed to serve their grim master’s will. Praise be to him that rules the PCU. Praise be.

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