Hello, Argent Dawn!
Out of sheer curiosity and because I believe it would be beneficial to learn more about the potential demand for new projects I would like to pose a question.
What niches of role-play would you like to see that are not currently really present on the server or have fallen into obscurity if they existed at some point in the past?
If something does exist that would fit a particular poster’s suggestion then feel free to point them in the right direction!
Alliance or Horde-loyal Warlock projects and guilds or initiatives primarily centered around Warlocks. There’s been a woeful lack of these for years now, even with the Black Harvest setting a template for what a coven could do in their time. Everyone instead settles for the chaotic evil Legion cultists or being token Fel users in various groups that accept them usually under scrutiny and with limitations. (Which are usually well justified and acceptable)
Gee i wonder how long before a certain group of posters gets it in their heads to bomb this thread too…
But speaking of productivity. I heard rumours of a new Horde warband guild on the horizon. One that specializes in character growth!
(and not the winterfall firewater sort!)
Nothing in particular I want to see, but I would just like to encourage people to go ahead and make it. I often see people say that they would like to make this or that guild, but they don’t have the time. I won’t pretend that running a guild takes zero time, but I will say that it’s a lot more forgiving than people tend to assume. Not every guild needs to have 3 events a week and social RP on every day that isn’t an event day. It’s totally cool to commit to just what you can, even as a GM.
I mean is this really a hot take because it kinda sounds in my head that it’s going to be.
I’d love to see more “return to home” focuses from other groups, communities and collectives.
In a sense that it’s basically a “return to hub” but, I just think that a lot of groups prefer nowadays more than anything to remain insular and it’s a damn shame. (Yes this is about Horde Hub RP) .
I’m also going to say I actually miss seeing more horde centric and more horde militant themes to a point I think I am planning on changing my own group at some point back into a Military Unit. Because every guild nowadays on Horde is a Warband (I do not say this as an offence to anyone). Just that there’s little diversity left.
I will also throw in I kinda miss a lot of the more racial themes of guilds and communities.
To name a few really;
I think a majority of what I’ve put in has fell into a niche or to near non-existance that I would love to see more of and even help if / at any point I could.
I miss the feeling of a Community within the Realm and Factions where as now a lot of it is splintered to more OOC channels like your Discords, etc. But, that is not likely if ever going to change.
Before we had mass discord servers we always did “Return Home” to Orgrimmar or Silvermoon or heck even Mulgore was used for a while iirc.
Louder for the people in the back.
Yeah, this is a shame. It kind of also weirded me out a little that the recent Troll thing had over twice the number of non-Troll attendees than actual Trolls.
There’s a time and place for aiming for inclusive RP and a time for specific race specific stuff.
It’s honestly why I didn’t attend on my non-troll because it would just detract from it. (An I was busy anyway)
I find that a lot of the ‘racial themes’ are quickly bombarded by other races just anyone looking to get a slice of the cake and it’s a shame because whilst some are there to actually learn as characters it completely mutes the whole origination of the racial aesthetic.
But, to play on the other hand maybe if it was to happen again those people might be more inclined to partake on a Troll. ( Inhales Copium )
The ideal scenario would be them making a troll to attend the event and then sticking with the character if they enjoy it.
I always thought that was the idea of these kinds of events, to encourage people to try new things.
I think the big problem most people have is that they are afraid a failure and AD culture has made a lot of people think that even if you have a guild with just 5 people doing events once a week, that means your guild has “failed” or that it’s “dead” and you’re only ever successful if you can show up to a server campaign with a strong 20 numbers.
You also have to be strict, more or less depending on your concept and theme. You have to get used to the fact that you will have to say ‘no’ to a couple of people because they simply do not fit the vision you have.
I’ll add to this because it’s always something I find lacking and touches briefly on what I’ve mentioned above.
I think a lot of event organisers are fond of this idea that they more people can join the event, the better it’s going to be. That’s not necessarily the case for a lot of reasons, but I think the biggest one is the problem that Felentrick touches upon. There’s a lot of celebrations or festivities which have very strong racial themes in lore but roleplayers take them and turn them into ‘come-one-and-come-all’ spectacles which imho kinda defeats the point of those festivities in the first place and kills the vibe.
And this is a great point. We can’t really encourage people to be diverse in their racial picks if all the roleplay will be just available to all.
If the players have the choice, they’ll just pick their ‘main’ character so really I think it’s the organisers who should be a little more strict and not afraid of losing a few numbers. Having a dozen trolls in a troll event will still make for a great event.
I think one comment in another thread actually made a good point;
More, for want of a better word, ‘Civilian’ stuff.
The market events are great (and sadly work has got in my way for most of them), but we absolutely do see Orc farmers (pig farms rather than crops mind you) and the head artisan for DF is an Orc.
I appreciate it can be a little less ‘exciting’ than playing adventurers and stuff, but on the flip side from a smidge of past experience, having a low stakes character to drop onto can be actually pretty chill. And not meaning the ‘secondlife’ type of stuff that people (rightly or wrongly) bring up, but still genuine Azeroth characters. Just not ‘the chosen ones’ heh. And, on the flipside, people being receptive to that and not just using said characters as a chance to ‘flex on’ or any such.
Honestly, for something that seems to be brought up or advertised at the regular; more hub-centric RP and creating/populating new RP hubs. Having the same few locations cycled, or a seeing an initiative to populate a new area fall through brings great sadness. I still remember fondly (no doubt with nostalgia-tinted glasses) how RP used to be so heavily spread out, and me & my friends would just roam from hub-to-hub finding spur-of-the-moment adventures in RP.
More a niche of etiquette
Supporting others, their ideas and concepts
Just an observation, There’s a general apathy especially on places like the forums for promoting rp - it’s why people don’t bother using it as a resource - seems kinda dumb when half the posts nowadays complain about how rp is dwindling when nobody supports others 🫨
(I also see some rp zoomer posters like trying to larp as if they are rotgarde in the 2017 era - which kinda keeno ngl 
)
Then again in my own personal experiences I’ve found groups of players and such whispering me “who I can and can’t interact with”, this sort of mindset is fairly cannibalistic in the larger picture and makes sense why the scope of the servers social landscape is fairly polarising
Regarding racial demographics at Horde events, I’m going to cite a post that Elfculler made in another thread:
Quality is irrelevant, the pertinent point here is that due to the low RP population of the Horde and its inability to sustain a hub, public events for the Horde serve the same purpose as hubs do for the Alliance.
Without a hub where they can gather and mingle, casual roleplayers have no choice but flock to public events for accessible, low effort RP. Instead of going to Orgrimmar every night, they have to hop from a weekly Horde gathering at the Crossroads to a troll funerary rite at the Echo Isles to the weekly neutral market at Dawn’s Blossom for their daily dose of RP as Horde roleplayers.
If they want regular RP without joining one of the dozen or so Horde guilds that are large enough and active enough to not be considered “dead guilds,” they are forced to sacrifice authenticity in the name of flexibility so that their characters can attend any and all events that are available to them.
So, I think the creation or rebirth of a Horde hub would kill two birds with one stone. It would give these casual roleplayers a place where they could congregate for easy RP instead of whizzing over Azeroth between public events, which would allow these racial events to become more focused.
Vulpera and blood elves wouldn’t feel driven to attend a Darkspear memorial service if they had somewhere else where they could find low effort roleplay instead.
Also, quick disclaimer, absolutely nothing wrong with easy, accessible, low effort RP. It’s an important part of any RP community, as I hope my post demonstrates.
That’s the thing, there’s this mentality of being “too good” for low effort hub RP, or that the RP there isn’t good, and so on and so forth, but ultimately I think you’d be very hard pressed to find someone who started on Argent Dawn and didn’t initially find RP in some hub zone somewhere.
And beyond starting RP or starting characters in a hub zone - they can act as good reminders as to what a character is - mannerisms, behaviours, how they act when not facing a potential life or death situation that might not be as much of a thing in a guild where people log on for some big involved event, but not so much for conversations about said events.
Hubs are good, and although Orgrimmar sometimes doesn’t have that many people in it (and sometimes is just fully quiet), I’m glad that it exists sometimes.
I mean this is all a bit of a moot point considering the same ‘problem’ also can exist on Alliance from the few recent events that I’ve seen and it’s not like Alliance is lacking in the number of available hubs. I don’t think the two are even comparable in the first place, social events like that are much more approachable and effortless where you can just passively partake and have roleplay vs a hub where you have to go around, seek interactions and make the effort.
I don’t see how making Orgrimmar or any other place a active hub will stop those vulpera players from going to those events since it’s not going to be the same experience. We don’t really have to act like Orgrimmar is completely barren and dead either, it’s certainly not filled to the brim like Stormwind in each district but you can usually find some people to interact with.
so yeah they do, they don’t ‘have’ to attend the troll rite, they just want to. and before anyone gets any weird ideas, it’s fine for them to do that, as much as its in the organisers rights to not restrict their events, but it is a damn shame that happens for the reasons described above.
Counterpoint, there’s everything ‘wrong’ with it. Just not in the way some people here have imagined demons into their heads about it.
Low effort RP is a good ramp for people to get into a community, to try out something they have not tried before. It is NOT the denominator that should be actively pursued or replicated as the norm by communities trying to cater to a specific niche - be it a racial one, a class identity one, non-general Alliance or Horde factional ones.
I know I am not alone in seeing the repeated mantra of ‘it’s okay you can just ignore it’ being repeated when you have a specific community - say for devil’s argument sake your ye olde Arathi Highland faux GoT fanboys - who would then go create events that any old Terrence, Isaac and Thomas can join who are not in fact subscribing to that community’s aesthetic choice.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with specific, bespoke, targeted RP.
Another problem I´ve seen is that the expectations for guilds have changed in eyes of some people into being communities that should also do things outside of WoW RP and effectively act as things that transcend the game and last even if the WoW RP part of its activity stops.
And don´t get me wrong, it´s awesome when guilds become so tight-knit that people form deep lasting friendships with their guildmates, but it´s a pretty massive expectation to put onto a new GM.
But to not just post excuses, some advice from personal experience: If you have an idea for a guild, I´d say the best and safest way to do it is to do interest checks, on forums, within communities that are thematically tied to what you´re doing, pretty much throwing a wide net to see if there are people who might be enthusiastic about the idea you have and then talk to them. Even if you find only one other person that you vibe with, starting the guild as 2-man group is bound to be much easier than just going at it solo. I´ve tried the solo thing, it´s really hard, would never recommend it if it could be avoided.
Genuine question and not to remain the eternal contrarian to your points Shogg because I do actually agree with you wholesale on this matter, but:
This does seem like an easy solution, and Orgrimmar is right there, yet this solution hasn’t really happened since Org crashed in BfA. There could be a million reasons why, and one of the big ones I often see is just that “none of the Horde capitals are appealing” which frankly, I don’t honestly disagree with, Vanilla Orgrimmar is so far above Modern Orgrimmar that it’s not even comedic and just becomes kind of sad and pathetic how far it outranks it.
So what actually is stopping the Horde guys and gals from doing this, in your opinion (if not objective truth). Alliance has done it for Strom, Stormwind and Boralus but Alliance has the numbers to make those kinds of Discord-led initiatives incredibly easy. What’s stopping Horde from birthing a discord-led initiative to revive casual city RP?