As always I feel like that the supposed problems of the Alliance have been exaggerated in comparison to the Horde purely because Alliance has twice the number of Horde players.
I think it’d be more accurate to ask what’s the problem with roleplay in general and I think it’s less that there is a cohesive narrative or that people are in cliques doing their own thing. There are those that’d definitely put me in a clique and to an extent they’re right. But every guild I’ve roleplayed with, Alliance or Horde has had that mentality. People want to roleplay with the friends they made and continue the stories they’ve woven. Someone said above that the game and lore caters to a lot of people. Even with something like human roleplay, there are so many avenues to branch off and split, trying to railroad your members and others to keep it “consistent” hampers the roleplay in my eyes, makes it generic and par for the course. As I asked at the start of the paragraph it’s less what is the issue with Alliance and more what is the issue with the server.
It’s more rooted in the game, how the game functions, and what relationships people build OOC as they play ever aspect of this game together. There are parts of the community that simply keep to cities and want to build the narrative there. Others focus on raiding or PvP and somehow that beef makes it into roleplay with people at each others throats just by being linked to competing guilds.
Introduction to roleplay is also mega important in facilitating a good community on the server. The majority of players roll human. Their first introduction is Goldshire which is bad in of itself and then they move onto Stormwind.
What do they see? Criminals fighting guards in the streets, hero classes flexing their powers, people making snarky remarks and granted it all has it’s allure. That sort of roleplay can be fun, even if it’s antagonistic. The game breeds competition with fiercely competitive attitudes and that bleeds into roleplay. People are always going to be at odds because it’s not as if they’re forced to sit opposite each other at a table and smile. They’re behind a screen and it really doesn’t have to hold any lasting impact if they don’t want it to.
I’m gonna keep comparing it to table-tops because I think it’s apt. Each guild in itself is a DM run table-top with it’s self contained story and players that are happy with the group they have. Then the narrative skews a little to go and accomodate all of the other DM run games. There is no chance that you can roleplay with all four hundred attendees at a convention and get them to work on a single narrative.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try and at least promote a healthier community where people are more willing to accept roleplay outside of their group’s “norm” nor do away with server-wide stories, but to label the problem as Alliance only, as if it’s not a server wide issue isn’t going to do anyone any favours.
But I feel like one of the main reasons why the opposite of this is more common now, with players often concerned IC with more large scale things vs for example just RPing a poor peasant in Stormwind City worried about the law, is because of how Blizzard has set the expectations for it. Every single patch just raises the stakes a little higher in the setting.
One moment it’s “Go to space and fight demon titans and their laser shooting space ships with your very own space ship” and the next moment it’s “Fight the evil Horde with the not at all evil void tentacle elves who bring the dead back to life using the void with extra tentacles added on top”
The problem isn’t that “muh greater good” RP exists, that has always existed. Some people have always liked RPing neutrals who were concerned with the “truly important” matters. The problem is that the lore itself has gone to such insane directions that it has become almost impossible to reconcile the two types of RPers.
It’s not just a matter of RP interests clashing anymore, we’ve come to the point where the stinky peasant RPer outright breaks the immersion of the High Exarch Turalyon style lightsaber wielding RPer, and vice versa.
I feel like any effort spent on this hot mess of a setting is basically wasted at this point, and it’d be smarter to wait for Classic and give it a shot there.
Something I stole from myself from another thread.
On the topic of nobility, it is rather common for people to have supposed heritage in the background and use it in absolutely no way for actual roleplay purposes. But making your character a noble often falls victim to the same thing as people roleplaying san’layn and other odd concepts that already have a stigma to them at this point — it’s the fact that these people cannot and do not provide any depth to their character besides “My character is a noble”, rendering the fact they’re a noble absolutely useless. What they should consider more are questions such as:
How does my character’s worldview get affected by their status? Are they paranoid of a potential rival trying to steal their property? Perhaps, they grew bored of their lives of sipping wine and ordering servants around.
How does my character use his nobility status in roleplay?
What would my character have as a general life goal as a noble? Is it wealth, power? Maybe vengeance?..
Continue the list, I’m too lazy for this.
It’s this factor of lack of actual character that is usually at fault and it is a pity so many actually do this mistake. That and the fact they certainly have a tendency to invent a wheel when there’s already a bicycle. Argent Dawn could use more cooperation in roleplay — perhaps, make a Stormwind House of Nobles initiative to explore all of that supposed political intrigue. You could also throw in some business RP, seeing as to how Stormwind’s Counting Houses (or in layman’s terms Banks) rarely if ever get brought up in-character when they really should be.
Speaking of which, bank RP. Someone, please do it.
This really is where Blizzard/the writers cause the most problems for us. It isn’t the (often) poor writing or strange characterisation, it’s the sheer lack of consistency. If they can’t keep their own story straight, then how can we?
A continuous story where Blizzard didn’t retrace their steps and make so frequent adjustments would have been ideal. It would have been possible if they hadn’t decided to hammer in every single facet of the wider mysteries of the setting; Chronicles, for all the interesting lore it contained, really spoiled the intrigue of the universe.
Consequently, I tend to find player-made stories, and the personal arcs of RPed characters, to be more interesting than whatever Blizzard might throw at us. At least with a dedicated DM providing a narrative I can still be surprised and I can still feel invested in a story, because I don’t know how it ends.
Even with my own characters, where I have a rough idea of the direction I want them to go, that’s still more interesting because I’m the one writing the script. It’s something I want to do and be involved in.
This does lead into another issue with roleplay. The stinky peasant and the superhero paladin don’t contradict one another - or shouldn’t - but the players involved treat them like they’re completely incompatible.
While the heroes are always looking upwards to the next, big threat, they’re missing what’s going on below them. The common man is inevitably going to feel the strain as society struggles to cope with another calamity befalling them.
Where are all the supplies and money going to? The army and the heroes, to outfit them to save the day… leaving the peasantry (maybe possibly) destitute. There’s definitely a good opportunity for stories to be told there.
In regards to roleplay, I’m slightly iffy when it comes to Cliques (because I never get accepted), I think too often people can be dragged into the role of being a sheep and thus just continue to lark and laugh about with the group. It’s when this attitude becomes orientated around more malicious matters is when it becomes concerning to me, that players in essence are very easily “brainwashed” over the graph of power. As a result, stuff like ostracisation etc are just easy to sprout root. It’s damaging to the community in my opinion, when GM’s have feuds and people just follow in behind on either side. It grows worse when the animosity is spread to other guilds. Cliques are for the most part cool and fun, you know you can circle jerk and do lots of other tricks, but when players start tugging the wrong roots it becomes ugly and messy. This does sound like a post riddled with hypochondria, I’m just never too fond of when cliques turn into warbands, it has the potential to be very damaging to the server especially if two big content creators on opposite factions decide that they’re better playing silent whispers, inturn splitting some potentially great roleplay for some really petty reasons.
Perhaps some already touched on this already. But if so, I’ll just act as a parrot either way. I have noticed that people taking their interpretation of what we know form the lore, and running with it as the only logical thing and therefor using it as solid lore has really become a bad habit these days.
People interpreting lore and saying that it’s canon can be a dangerous game that can push you away from the bigger community. Especially when someone or a group comes along with another interpretation that clashes with the established one.
I’d personally love to see the community to be more lenient when it comes to understanding that your headcanon isn’t more right than anyone else’s. And being able to find common ground with eachother instead of just splitting up in bubbles of “We’ll do it our way, you do it yours.”
As I mentioned in my first post, this is what essentially causes the break down between groups, an inability to seek common ground. On Alliance this tends to cause players to simply avoid circles, there’s enough players for this to happen without meaningful detrimental effect.
On Horde this isn’t as easy and what contributes to the intensely caustic and vitriolic culture of “My way or the high way” confrontations between player groups. Bubbles do not co-exist peacefully on the red side, more passive-aggressively with one another.
Neither state is particularly constructive to a cohesive and welcoming community, as it simply places players in undue and pointless concern for not wanting to “step on toes” so to speak. Players spend more time fussing over what x or y group is going to do in response to their rp than actually rping these days.
Exactly, both of these situations are rather harmful for the overall community and the state of rp as a whole, in my opinion. And quite certain comes from the fact that there’s just so many people out there you can easily ignore a good few, as you mentioned yourself. I think that’s what the main difference is between rp these days and many expansions back. People were more willing to rp with each other, because there wasn’t that many people you could work with if you excluded a few.
With how the current rp population on Argent Dawn is going, I’d hope people would be able to see this once again. And perhaps there will be a change of mentality on both factions going forward. One can at least hope for it.
I’ve always wanted to see Church RPers come together and build a rapport. The Light needs a bigger presence in RP, especially in Stormwind.
Currently my Priest serves as a consultant from the Church of the Holy Light for the Guard/Lionwatch. I’m currently trying to establish a relation with the Church of Eternal Grace in Duskwood.
Plus I’ve always wanted to hold sermons in the Cathedral every week, but I fear it won’t recieve any attention because everyone wants to express their irl athiesm through their character and believe the Light doesn’t exist.
That’s only the case if you just mindlessly follow what someone else says. Which most of the time doesn’t happen, though you will have the occasional yes man who wants to blow a lot of smoke.
The big bad alliance RPer strikes fear into the heart of horde RPers.
This is often the case when any form of confrontation/conflict happens, both IC and OOC. Though it’s not limited to just set groups. Everyone to some extent purposefully or not ostracises an RPer, for either OOC or IC reasons. It’s when you said previously, people play a game of Chinese whispers, going from a small disagreement to the target being some great evil that needs to be purged.
If you give someone enough clout on Alliance side or Horde, you end up with a situation similar to [cursed dwarf general name here] and that is unavoidable when there is a large audience who want fast food RP. Some people get home from work or school and just want to be drip fed RP. But lucky for them, Ronald McDonald is here to cater to the masses.
However, on either side that doesn’t seem to be the case currently. I’ve seen at least recently, a lot of Collaboration from smaller content creators to create rich and dynamic narratives. Though I can appreciate people outside of my RP Sphere may not see this.
To be honest, if people refuse to acknowledge each other over the word of another, then it doesn’t seem like it will be incredibly promising.
The best way to avoid the problems associated with ‘cliques’ is to just pay it no mind. If you refuse to engage with any unnecessary drama, focus on your RP and remain as IC as possible, the chances are you’ll get by without these problems so much as touching you.
It’s also probably the healthiest way to play on the server; focus on yourself, your friends, and your characters. There’s nothing to be gained by investing in e-feuds.
I personally think the “cliques” became a widespread thing after Discord. Skype and what existed before wasn’t as pervasive and controlling groups were limited.
But hey, it’s just a change. We have to adapt. I can see from all these threads, people are starving to improve the RP experience. There is such an enthusiasm that really makes me miss the scene, damn it!