The Problem with Alliance RP -- Extended Thoughts

Argent Dawn
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You seem like you need a friend

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Talk about projection :flushed:

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I appreciate the compliment, speaking as a towering Colossus of the community.

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Don’t tell people how I live, dude.

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This about sums it up for me. The “social contract” is long gone. I think I’ve noted elsewhere that the biggest problem on AD for RP is the lack of trust and co-operation between people/ guilds, compared to what was once had. The reason that the big RPvP events and campaigns work so well is that there is an assumed co-operation for that period.

With that said, there’s two main reasons that I stopped RPing in any reasonable capacity (I like to visit events from time to time, but that’s it). One was simply a lack of time, which isn’t AD’s fault. The other is the way that OOC matters started creeping more and more into RP, and things began to devolve into this weird popularity contest. I can roughly pinpoint the moment I gave up on Stormwind, which was around the time a certain Dwarf was discovered to have been intentionally paying people to infiltrate and destroy guilds. Since then, whilst I do know some lovely people on AD on an OOC level, I also know of some less-than-lovely people and it’s more than enough to keep me from wanting to get too involved again.

There’s not much to be done overall, unfortunately. The trouble with OOC attitudes isn’t going to go away overnight and would need such drastic action from a currently divided community as to be unfeasible. The trouble with trust and co-operation is tied to the OOC issues, and again would require some drastic measures that aren’t likely to happen - I’m thinking on the level of “multiple well-respected, popular figures forming quality organisations and guilds and being seen working together over an extended period, in spite of what goes on around them” (as mentioned above, the Watch wouldn’t work in current Stormwind, but if you imagine an equivalent of the Watch, Shield of Light, Shadow Sentinels, LBC and High Court all reforming at the same time, that’s where my head is).

Long wall of text aside, as far as I’m aware plenty of people are still enjoying their RP on the Alliance side, and whilst it’s not perfect maybe we should be happy that it’s enough?

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A very interesting discussion, friend. I think the decline of RP on AD can be attributed to these main reasons:

  1. The decline of Argent Archives. I don’t quite remember when, but there was a period of time when it was having server troubles and couldn’t be accessed at some times; I feel like its usage really declined from that point on. It was the glue that held the server together, so it was never the same again.

  2. Changing of the guard. There is a huge disconnect between the past of the server and its current narrative, and that is caused by a sudden loss of interest among the more active, veteran players of the past, towards the game. I myself am included in this number, as I hate this game and everyone in it, and only come on this forum now because I was banned from Paradox Interactive’s forums (for comparing a guy who liked the season 8 of Game of Thrones to a neo-National Socialist German Workers’ Party supporter). I think a lot of the active players today have no ties to the server’s past, and no interest in it, leading to a wholly different and distant server culture from what used to be.

  3. The increasing gap between people’s sources of inspiration and the actual game lore. When we got into Azeroth, with the Warcraft strategy games as our source of inspiration, Azeroth was a high fantasy world, but it had more grounded elements like inter-human politics reminiscient of feudal kingdoms. However, a rising trend in low fantasy (vanguarded by the Bioware game Dragon Age, and peaked with A Song of Ice and Fire & Game of Thrones) was met with the already high fantasy setting of WoW move towards even more high fantasy elements, what with aliens who came to Azeroth on a literal spaceship, pandas and an anime protagonist king on Stormwind throne, etc., pushed the high fantasy roots of the setting into greater significance. The result was a huge disconnect between a substantial portion of the playerbase, roleplaying out low fantasy, Medieval politics scenarios of knights, lords and noble houses, and the actual story of the game itself. I think this gap resulted in the alienation of many players, and also hinder the “server narrative”, as there were two main sections of the server roleplaying in two wholly different worlds.

I don’t think these issues are fixable. I think for a lot of people, the magic is lost; WoW is a spent game, with a tired setting. I think a lot of the veterans who built the old aspects of the server that made it unique are either entirely past the game, or find it too alien to return to. And many of them are probably grown ups with their jobs and even families, without the ability to sink the same time investment that they could. It’s best to let the past die.

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I’m sure non-veterans can be good rpers too. AD isn’t doomed just because some people didn’t play during vanilla.

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Kill it if you have to.

#UnexpectedKylo

Very true. It is what you make of it, and I see quite a few people trying to make their time role playing wonderful. Mostly it seems to work out just fine as well!

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This is always the most important lesson to take with you when you roleplay. You get what you put in; if you want to find people with similar values and a similar approach to the game, you’ve got to go in and find them. Nothing will ever just fall into your lap.

Like any hobby, approaching it with a positive outlook and a willingness to invest yourself makes it far more likely that you’ll enjoy it. I find it to be a shame when there’s people on the server who claim to despise the community, seem to hate everything they do … and then they stay anyway.

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Hahahahhahahahahhahahaha.

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Given what you can get away with on the Paradox forums I suspect there’s a fair bit more to this story.

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That’s a pretty valid poi-

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Man, I wonder how that could possibly spur them to ban someone.

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While Fluellan is very obviously baiting for a response (the Paradox Forums remark and his previously deleted post give that away), he does raise good points if we ignore that side of it.

I still use or visit AA pretty much daily, and I know a lot of people who continue to do the same thing, so my experience differs here. It’s still a great tool (if outdated) for those who want to use it.

After so many years, this is a pretty natural progression. People grow up, their interests change, the community waxes and wanes. But that being said, most of the people I know on the game have been here for a long time; I’ve played on AD since 2010 and elsewhere before that, so I’d say I’ve been around long enough to see things adapt and change.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I can see why it would demoralise people who have played for a very long time, doing a certain thing in a certain way. It can be very jarring to see how things have changed and, honestly, frustrating that your way isn’t the way any longer. You just have to roll with the punches or find a new way to enjoy yourself and your time.

This I can’t bring myself to disagree with. The game and the setting isn’t what it used to be, and the quality has definitely degraded. But what we do have is an awesome framework for RP and a very broad world which can cater for just about any theme or concept you can shake a stick at. The community and the people who still play in it make it worthwhile.

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I think he was an actual sympathizer of the said organization. Those tend to get a pass on Paradox; it’s basically a club of neo-fascist weirdo philosopher kings.

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Sure, but the past players made the identity of the server, and the new generation is not connected to it at all, which is why there is such a gap between Albrecht’s rose tinted reminiscing and the current state of affairs. Also consider the fact that general interest in WoW as a whole is waning.

Also, I have to say, the new forums are bloody god damn atrocious. I appreciate that I can post without a sub, though.

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So season 8 of Game of Thrones relates how, exactly?

Something don’t add up.

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It’s really bad. Hitler was really bad also. Make the connection, dumbo.

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Godwin’s law indeed…

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Please tell us you’re just pretending to be this dumb.

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