The State of Horde RP

I think you’ve put this better than I have throughout the thread, and I wear my heart on my sleeve a bit, so I can get a bit heated, but this post essentially encapsulates my own concerns much measured and eloquent than I put it.

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I’ve not read this thread, so if what I’ve already said is redundant then you’ll have to forgive me, but I get it.

I can’t compare about the modern state of Horde to the ol’ days because Horde has always been the smaller, harder-to-access faction to me, but I think anyone who played through Shadowlands has a vague idea.

Booty Bay went from seeing near-daily roleplay with at least three active pirate guilds to becoming a niche, sometimes active community, mostly frequented by visiting characters rather than residents. Stormwind remained active but there were some days - especially towards the mid and end points of Shadowlands - where it felt very sparce, far more than any other time I know of. It sucks to see things fade away, especially because in that moment it very much feels like it’s never coming back.

Admittedly it may well be that Horde RP as it was isn’t coming back - the game’s narrative has shifted and will likely continue to shift, WoW isn’t a game that’s bringing in new players, and the reducing playerbase for the Horde causes more players to leave which is a vicious cycle. But.

As I said in another thread, Gilneas revived RP for a lot of worgen players. Amirdrassil revived RP for a lot of night elf players. It’s entirely possible that something revives Horde RP. It probably won’t be another faction war, but there are other options - orcs and tauren have long-standing rivalries with the quillboar and centaur, so if they become major antagonists, maybe that’ll be enough. Maybe something happens with the Desolate Council that re-ignites something within forsaken RPers, although I’m aware that many of them are very much done with Calia.

For me personally, I’ve had to adjust my characters, or make new characters to adapt to the state of things. I can’t do Horde-loyal characters, or they’ll just inevitably end up unplayed unless I join a guild, and I’m just not generally cut out for guild-exclusive roleplay. For me, I’ve found it much more enjoyable to let my characters go to neutral hubs and engage in cross-faction interactions.

I’m aware that encouraging Horde characters to do so furthers the damage that’s already done… well, there’s not too many alternatives. You either make the initiative, follow somebody who is making that initative, or continue to face the disheartening current state of things.

Not really. The combination of the Horde currently having no identity and the story overall being really bad for years made a lot of the most active and passionate people finally move on to greener pastures. Not to say there isn’t still a lot of cool RP out there (parts of the troll community seems to be doing rather well), but obviously a lot less people wanna bother with this Nu-Horde.

The most proactive thing you could do is to start your own guild/community if you think there’s some untapped appetite for whatever RP you enjoy. Good luck.

If only…

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All the above aside I think in the future you may be better off using a proper character to raise these concerns, as people will be less likely to assume bad faith intentions than they are with a level 10 forum alt who’s name is just a switcharound of ‘biting the bullet’.

It very much gave an immediate impression of someone just trying to stir the pot, which I by now don’t think matches with your intentions in this thread.

This is where I say shoutout Terrace of Tribes server, biggest troll rp community on Argent Dawn EU :fist::muscle:

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I would say given your GM bears part responsibility for the state of Horde RP, it’s a sad state of affairs all round. However, it’s done now, so no point debating it. Again, as I’ve said throughout the thread, I don’t think the onus is upon me to force a huge change in dynamic, nor am I to tell people how to roleplay. - Edited the comment for it to be a bit more sensical and less loaded as it’s not my intent.

No, I’m quite good with the circular Horde bad narrative hopefully being done for good.

Yeah well, to be fair, you are called Swordmaster and are not max level, am I to infer your intent, or should I read your posts. Bear in mind that roleplayers tend to take things personally and I’d rather not be judged for posts on an OOC forum as opposed to how I roleplay. It turns out people have been snooping my alts anyway, so it’s by the by.

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But I mean, I don’t have a fixed main, anyway. Roleplay is far too scattered and hard to come by to play exclusively one character anyway, especially Hordeside.

(I am Bulletchewer lest it wasn’t obvious.)

And my alts are probably on some PVP/Progress site and people can (and have) snooped so.

It is entirely up to you whether you consider the character on which I post as a genuine poster or a potential bad faith actor, though I think you can surely imagine that in general people are more likely to think a guildless level 10 alt that emerges with a whole thread after 0 prior posts is a throwaway :poop: stirring alt than they are with a guilded level 60 character.

Truly up to you whether you want to take the advice or not. I ultimately am not greatly invested in this thread one way or another because similar to some posters above I think the only fix for the state of Horde RP is blizzard doing something that’d actually hype up Horde RPers, rather than the alliance aligned drivel we get in the form of the adventures of calia menethil.

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Now, I wouldn’t really pin this on anyone’s head in specific. It’s much easier and reassuring to simply point at one guild and pin all our troubles on them, but it doesn’t make it any truer, and fixes nothing. It’s almost as useless as people piping in on this thread to say that their guild, conveniently with open recruitment, are in fact, the good ones.

The way people have treated what few Horde lore is left intact like a rag isn’t a localised thing, and that’s the worst part - especially when the writers were the ones who started it all after Metzen’s departure.

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Because the Kosh’arg was historically an opportunity for the clans of the orcs to come together and in the modern Horde it would have simply made sense for this to include non-orcs, since the clan system was largely done away with. That is, of course, before we got the orc heritage questline.

https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Kyl%27kahn
https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Far%27kul_Flametongue
Both of them are AU orcs.

Maybe I’m missing something, how did you determine that those are AU orcs? Beyond their skin tone I see nothing, and mag’har orcs still exist in the MU.

I mean, what he said. They could very easily be from MU Garadar. Nothing suggests they’re AU.

That’s why I said part responsibility, I just feel a lot of the discourse caused by said person poisoned the well and put a lot of people off roleplaying Horde. Don’t think he should be harassed or wear it as a red letter and I don’t think it was the intent, and honestly I don’t think the guild in question care, they do their own thing as they always have assumedly!

Well, I wasn’t posting in a way which suggested I was trying to stir. I was posting my frustrations and I replied to everyone as best as I could. Only one person person accused me directly of trolling, which I’m not. Also, Level 10 or not, being in a guild in a thread where I find myself not finding a guild for me would be slightly redundant. But like I said, it turns out people will snoop your alts regardless, so I switched to my ‘main’.

Far’kul Flametongue? Admittedly very little. They could be from MU Garadar, but Garadar is the only known mag’har settlement left standing, all mag’har lived in Nagrand and the one MU mag’har we see in attendance Durak calls out for by name because he recognises her.

Kyl’kahn? He’s originally a brewfest NPC, his stand is all about AU Draenor and his faction in the files is the same as the other AU mag’har.

I don’t think Perroy, PCU or any other boogeyman can really be blamed for what happened to Horde RP, in fairness. And this comes from a person that has been in the said community for a fairly long time, and left with a relatively rocky departure.

I have stated this before, but what I think really did the most damage to the faction as a whole, above anything else, was the second rebellion and all the loaded expectations people had had for it.

Two sides from the same faction came to completely, wildly different conclusions about how the Rebellion and it’s ultimate outcome after Sylvanas’ left the Horde should have been handled. Neither of them were fundamentally wrong, they just stuck to one interpretation, which even manifested in the game in the form of siding with Sylvanas vs siding with Saurfang. Two sides of the same coin.

In the Garrosh vs the reat of the Horde, the pro Garrosh Loyalists were like 1-2 guilds in the entire Horde vs everybody else, and the conclusion honestly unified the Horde players more than it separated.

But the Sylvanas vs Saurfang rebellion was different. Pro Saurfang people expected the same kind of unity, same kind of obvious conclusion as had happened with the previous one. The villains are defeated and we could ho back to the way things were.

This did not happen.

Instead the pro Sylvanas side grew and in some cases even eclipsed the pro saurfang groups. While there was room to still make it work somehow, with the amount of power both of these groups, I think it was in hindsight inevitable that the community split and later splintered as it did.

Too much backstabbing, lack of goodwill and/or willingness to work together and personality differences completely broke down any hopes of reconciliation from either side. In the past, there had been instances like that, but they were restricted to schisms between specific guilds. These were however communities, which did lead to the us vs them mentality that has festered since and continuws to this date. I saw plenty of it on both sides, both passive and active. I partook on some of it too, so I claim no innocense.

The idea a community like the PCU was that when the rest of the RP was dwindling, the community would stand strong. And in some manner it still does to this date, but I believe that as SL came to a conclusion and the Loyalist forces split early 2022, it was in some sense a marking point where lots of people just either swapped guilds or flat out left the game. I saw it happen in real time.

The problem is that, now that there is scarcity of RP everywhere in the Horde, even in guilds, there is little goodwill or trust between groups (due to the history) to try and pool the small resources and groups of people together, to make self sustaining hubs, communities or campaigns to bring more players in. Big communities draw in people. Everyone knows this.

Even when there is genuine goodwill and initiatives to promote hubs or constant RP within Horde, they are isolated or brief. I am personally for example looking forward to the Kosh’harg coming, but unfortunately it will only last for a few days, as is the nature of the festival.

Add to this the constant RKO’s to the story and Horde becoming a soulless red alliance with no nuances left, and many people just find it easier to swap a faction or just leave. I can’t really blame them.

Ultimately, I think if we could return the goodwill into the community and get some great organizers* to try and pool the community to a specific place, we could try and rebuild Horde Rp. Throw in a bone or two for Horde in the story and make them feel like Horde again, and you have a recipie for greatness.

  • I know ideally the change starts with each and every one of us, but let’s be honest, every community needs organizers to bring the people together. After this is achieved, the Rp can grow organically.

I will say however that I think there is much more goodwill than people think. I personally still hold contact and even occasionally RP with people from PCU, all without any ill-will. And I think if more people tried that, or wanted to try that, we can still turn this bird around.

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Interestingly when you don’t spend an unholy amount of time trashtalking a community and its members on Discord servers, the forums, in-game channels and on TRP descriptions said community will welcome you to RP with them even in their events or campaigns that they created solely for themselves.

What a peculiar phenomenon! :clown_face:

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This goes the other way too. Sometimes giving a chance to someone you broke contact with years ago can show you whole new avenues to rp.

I am not referring to myself here, mind you.

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PCU is a community that actively slandered people on the forums, spread around entire character lists for the purpose of sending people to harass, power emoted people into quitting and held /yell spamming events to push everyone else out, and so, SO much more that led into OOC harassment.

The PCU’s behavior is what started the hatred for them, they made it hard to RP without being pulled into their toxic fold or to not run into them and have your character negatively impacted purely because you weren’t ‘one of them’.

Their downright cult-like nonsense and aggression is what made people leave the Horde to begin with, me included, and then came Bobby-boy’s scandals and criminal activities, and now we have this… An empty Horde where PCU continues to act innocent despite knowing what it did.

BFA was the worst time to be an RPer on the Horde, PCU had all the Lore reasons to be as toxic as possible, but this also let to plenty of people recognizing why they were to be excluded, their forum behavior became worse.

PCU began sending more lvl 10 DK goons onto the forums to harass people, there was even more power emoting, there were harassment scandals being quickly brushed under the rug UNTIL TOO MANY spoke about it.

Then they tried their whole ‘Church of Holy Light’ racist-fuelled murder spree on Void Elves and returned 3 times to SW-City after being driven out, with 3 different excuses.

I for one will not give PCU a chance, the fact that there’s a Rotgarde member here longing for the BFA times is what says enough for me. They want to go back to the control that they had, that is what they find fun. The bullying without consequences.

They were a group of over 20 guilds all doing the same, attacking other guilds with rumors, pushing others out. We CAN blame them partially for the Horde’s sorry state and I will be doing just that. Two were to blame, Bobby Kotick and PCU.

PCU will never have a place in the RP community if it were up to me. They deserve the hate they’re getting, reap what you sow.

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You have a very active imagination.

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The PCU pushed my 87 year old nan over and now she needs a hip replacement. :frowning:

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I ain’t reading all that
I am happy for u tho
Or sorry that it happened

(Fr I will reply once I have time).