I think RP events are very helpful for Horde RP. In the perfect world, they wouldn’t be needed, and there would just be a healthy scene for casual RP on Horde. That’s not the case, though, and I think common events are needed to establish that scene. Just a once-a-week fireside event or something like that. If it’s enjoyable, it will grow. If it grows, people will start to hang around outside of the events. And then you have a casual RP scene, where you can find RP outside of events.
If OP doesn’t want to get involved with events, that’s fine. But if OP wants a healthy, casual RP scene, I think this is the way to do it, and if OP wants a say in how that RP scene turns out, I think he has to be involved.
Elves get everything in WoW. Just across the last few expansions, Suramar, val’sharah, emerald nightmare, demon hunters, the burning of teldrassil, darkshore, Ardenweald, Ohn’ahran, Amirdrassil and that’s just Night Elves.
I get that it’s appealing to the largest numbers of RPers as Elves are overwhelmingly popular on RP realms, but I think it’s a bit odd NELF RP died despite all they had to dine on.
They you may have met the wrong GMs. I was in a guild and the GM and the officers worked to make stories with and for everybody while fitting for the guild theme and even helped to organise serverwide public events. I personally wouldn’t call a guild/any group of people creating RP for others a “vanity project” at least not in a negative way. However you are right that there are GMs who are more concerned with themselves rather than their guild and wider community, as happened in said guild when the old GM left and their replacement worked hard to undo all the good stuff they did. That said you can still get some fun RP from “vanity projects” with other attendees if not the organisers, who are usually too busy for RP during their event anyway.
Basically it’s a multiplayer thing, your enjoyment depends heavily on who you run into. Don’t give up, there are many great folks out there.
This one is tough. The once a week gathering work, because Horde players like to be out and about in the world for the most part and they can work in stops for social interaction with other guilds in “hubs” when they know there is someone to interact with in the hub, because there is an event/gathering. Otherwise they would just keep going with their storylines in the world.
But I have no doubt there are Hordies looking for social, walk up etc RP like you, but they have to wait for the public events and gathering for that, so Alliance suits them better. It could be a case of build it and they will come. So my suggestion is to clock in every day to run a tavern and use all the tools to market it, forums, discord, argent archives etc. Tavern is the go to for people, you can order something - easy ice breaker with a stranger, the classic fantasy trope of asking the tavern keeper about jobs, rumours, news, people etc. And then there are the other patrons or just people grabbing a cold one to have a nice chat with. However you may run into many evenings when nobody comes and it will be an extremely slow start before you get regulars showing up.
I know it’s not ideal solution, but there is no easy solution I know of, but this is the only thing I can think of to at least start working toward what I think it is that you are looking for without switching to Alliance.
Sure, this has happened, I can’t argue with that. In the same vain, I could also argue that WoD was a Orc-dominated expansion (even if you didn’t RP in AU Draenor).
I can’t argue with this either - most of Stormwind is filled with Void Elves/High Elves. In the same vain, Silvermoon is dead and it’s rare to see that city filled with RP, so I don’t think it’s just an “Nobody wants to RP orcs vs elves.” I think it’s just an unfortunate balance between Horde and Alliance on AD (which has always been the case since Wrath!)
I quit in BfA up until DF so I don’t know the reason why Nelf RP was dead, I just heard it was. Sorry!
The tavern is actually a pretty good idea. That is how most race communities gather, afaik. There is a pandaren tavern night every now and then, and I know there used to be a dwarven tavern night. It could probably work to make something like that for the Horde as a whole.
I believe it was called the “Oblivion Warrior Offensive.”
Some of those words might be wrong, but I know for a fact I’m correct on the acronym because it was literally a prank guild where the shorthand was “OwO”.
Events usually end up being stood around like a spare prick at a wedding making small talk unless you’re part of the guild who have hosted it, or the person and friends who planned it. Given current events are hang around in Dalaran or Gilneas with Alliance or RP PVP I am not exactly spoilt for choice. - Though my main has indeed gone to Dalaran and mocked every blue team he’s seen, it’s not exactly RP with a lot of legs in it.
Again, it’s easy to tell me to make my own event/guild/box social but again, I’m not as young as I used to be and have limited time on my hands. Hence why my preference is for more casual roleplay. Time is forever charging forwards.
Perhaps, I mean I’ve a few ideas myself honestly. Just putting them into practice due to reasons mentioned above might be difficult.
No need for apologies, we’re all friends here, I just find it bizarre! I’ve played on and off since BC, it is what it is!
well at least we got one huh? Shame it was awful
Unrelated but I do miss the days where the Valley of Honour was hammered, whether it was Mok’lohn or some other guild. Makes me very nostalgic. (Christ, I’m old.)
Just pretend Thrall is the representative of Orc-kind and you’ll have a lot more… [side-eyes Cataclysm].
I do miss flying over on my Horde main at the time and seeing Valley of Honour full of RPers, even having a little nosey. I have a few screenshots of the place FULL of RPers during server-campaigns.
Maybe one day it’ll go back to it. We can only hope!
Hey, I am part of the problem myself, currently rping on Alliance, because my friends are, but I am still looking for a guild on the Horde side with the right theme I can vibe with, because my time is way to precious to me to spend in on something I don’t enjoy enough. But I also know you can’t do it alone, otherwise I could make a guild real easily.
You just need to give people reason to show up, which is just as hard on your own. It would definitely help if there was some easy way to network with other roleplayers, but there’s none either. You may want to try doing and interest check, ask the Horde community discord mods to help you address people, maybe allowing you to do a ping or make a announcement for you or something, I dont know.
One thing that may help you I can think of rn is trying to ask Steamfist folks, they have done some events in Orgrimmar and I believe? (not sure) they also talked about opening a bar in Orgrimmar or something. (Disclaimer: I am not a member of their guild and never was, I am just trying to help fellow hordie with networking with who I think may or may not be able to help him)
Personally I have always convinced myself that no matter how bad the content gets, as long as the story is one people can relate too and think yeah this is cool; rp will never die
I wouldn’t say that nelf RP is dead atm, but I will say that I do not doubt for a second that the recent “love” they got from blizzard was not lore they thought was cool or could relate too and that actually for once the added story actually harmed the RP scene of the race involved.
Its the same way that some forsaken have just retired their forsaken character because the last gilneas questline was so out of place and against what people were hoping for/expecting that they have trouble just engaging with the lore of the race of their main RP toons
Basically where I’m going with this is that bad, uninteresting or rushed writing hurts RP and that having blizzard write content for you is not going to guaranteed translate into a W for roleplayers
(Basically as a response as to why nelf RP would be suffering under the added nelf story content cause that might not seem obvious from the bit I quoted)
There are a lot of problems for Horde RP. To complain about one problem that touches me specifically, Aerilen is right when he mentions that aging population is a massive factor.
Gathering people together for casual role-play is difficult when you have a job. Some days, you’re just too tired to log online. Not only that, but a lot of the time one may secretly wish for some people to have respect for actually trying that, you know?
Yes I am having a old man moment. Let me bask in its glory and do what these forums are intended for: share an experience so that people may show more underst- I mean ranting.
I’m not intending to have a jab here, but I do want to point out some contradictions.
You’ve complained about the ‘quality’ of Horde RP when people have pointed out examples, yet bring up Stormwind and this here now.
Yes, there might be Quantity of RP still in Stormwind. That does not, from my experience at least, equate to quality. You have Worgen Pack RPers, you have child RPers, you have Super Leet 16 year old Archmages, the Park Dwellers… etc.
Same with ‘Night Elves got loads of stuff!’ I mean, sure… if you like being a literary punching bag and then having so many loose ends you could knit a quilt out of it. It took us months to get a super vague, non-commital answer about how the Blackmoon eyes even worked, and I still don’t know if that was a workable answer.
Surumar they featured equally with Blood Elves. And then the Nightborne joined the Horde, so that’s 0-1.
Val’sharah was mostly memed on for how terrible it handled Tyrande and Malfurion, making them effectively useless, and Ysera got killed off. 0-2.
Emerald Nightmare kinda tags onto the above, it was not a Good Time.
Demon Hunters were also given to Belves, which ties in a lot to Kael and the Illidari trifecta (Illidan, Kael, Vash), while also seeing Illidan retconned to be Misunderstood You Were All Just Mean and Wrong. Which… eh, I guess? No one really won there.
Burning of Teldrassil, oh boy howdy… yeah. Surefire W there, right? Darkshore too.
Ardenweald… Shadowlands. Ew. The less said, the better. Arguably made everything worse, and dragged Elune into “What is all this nonsense?” levels of lore.
Like, yeah, I’d argue that MoP was actually relatively positive for the Horde. BFA, a hell of a lot less so. But saying that the above was good for Night Elves, just because there was a Lot of it?
It’s like the SoO 2.0 Failcake Boogaloo Horde had to deal with in BFA, but targetting one race.
what the state of horde rp needs is for blizzard to care about individual factions again - the same goes for the alliance
its true to say the alliance has more players, but atm the alliance has more players while also having a significant number drop from earlier expansions like bfa
while players can, and do, make efforts to create realm events / rp hubs / new and social guilds that will interact with anyone, i can’t see what could convince you to play the horde over the alliance or a neutral concept, when blizzard has only focused on neutral concepts since the end of bfa, and has rather aggressively driven faction content into the ground by consistently lacking explanation for why war veterans like shandris and lilian are suddenly incredibly close friends
it’s sadly not a productive answer but i feel personally it’s the only thing that would start fixing the problem
More than factions, I’d also like to see some love given to the playable races. It makes the game more relatable. Bel’Ameth has been good because it involved the night elves.
I remember your court-martial /say, which was said while walking away from us, preceded by you standing like a statue and not saying anything for a solid twenty minutes.
From everything I’ve read, it does seem to be a ‘you’ problem.
