At least on the Alliance side.
Cathedral Square empty, Darkshire empty, Goldshire Inn empty. Heck, nobody RP-ing in any inn.
People tell me to ‘give it time’, but c’mon, I didn’t pick an RP realm to just quest and have no great interactions while visiting cities. On retail (Argent Dawn) I loved to just go to Stormwind and engage with random people. There was a lot of people with TRP or MRP just walking around Stormwind. It never felt empty.
And I don’t think it’s layering issue, because on multiple occasions when someone said “giving away bags in front of SW bank” or “who’ll sign my guild charter in goldshire” I could /target them every time. I think we barely have any layers.
Why should I believe things will change in a week or two, when people hit their 60’s? It’s not like you need that level to RP.
I was really hopeful for great atmosphere and getting to know a lot of people, but I’m feeling sad. Maybe you guys can get my hopes up again. Or maybe I should just get back on Argent Dawn, unless it’s empty because everyone is… questing on Classic. Well.
Same boat as the rest of us, but sadly it really is just a situation of waiting to see whether this community develops or not. The inactivity on the forums and lack of world RP disheartened me, but most people I know really are just focusing on leveling at the moment. There are a bunch of guild/community concepts on the forums and the discords, so the interest is there. It’s all just a question of whether classic stays hyped long enough to sustain a server-wide community, as well as one that engages in roleplay. Have hope! Maybe go back to retail for a couple months until most are 60 and the dust has settled, or try to set up a guild of your own.
Classic has been out for 2 weeks. The experience as explained by many is that they’ve been grabbed by the game and they’re enjoying it.
You’re comparing a two week old server to Argent Dawn, literally the most populous RP realm in Europe, which has had over a decade to grow and develop its community. RP is happening, just yesterday in Brill we had around a dozen people here and there, but overall people are absorbed by the game, which has notoriously been a success in hooking people.
I’ve seen as a Horde character how Orgrimmar has grown in population in the past days as characters start to settle in and do their business there, I’m sure Stormwind will be no different.
A good idea might’ve been to log into the forums with your actual Classic character since you look like you’re looking for RP with them, rather than some other toon. That, or join an RP initiative. Again, RP is happening.
There’s also the issue of layering to consider, which is also a thing in big cities. Had a few moments where I was trading with someone in orgrimmar and had to invite them to see them. This naturally makes open RP harder. Not impossible, but it’s an additional hurdle and may make cities seem a lot more empty than they actually are.
But yeah, I’ve stumbled over RP a bunch of times. Some weird undead patted me just the other day and ran away before I could really do something about it ; )
Just to add to it: consider this the same as when an expansion comes out in AD with an added handicap. In those cases RP always decreases tremendously until people have seen the content and are ready to go back to pretending to be pretend people. Here there’s the added trouble of having nothing to go back to, but rather having to develop all of these pretend people and pretend groups.
RP is out there, I’ve been fortunate enough to stumble across plenty of it but yeah, you are comparing Argent Dawn (arguably a freak occurrence as it dragged in RPers from all the other servers, leaving them feeling even more empty than Classic) to a fresh realm which has to find it’s character.
Believe me, as someone who played at launch on Earthen Ring and Argent Dawn, they were both like Hydraxian Waterlords is now. Sporadic RP in Old Town, Blue Recluse and Goldshire but otherwise, everyone running around levelling. People tended to settle into their characters, guilds and events at ~40 but we also tend to be slower levelling than most as we like to take our time with our character.
Apart from all of that… Open RP is really self-reinforcing. If you go around and find no one, you usually won’t stay around for long. On the other hand, if you have a wealth of people to play with, you might stay for hours and hours. Everyone who stays longer makes it less likely that the next one looking for RP will find no one to play with. So… the more open RP there is, the faster the population of people openly RPing will grow (until saturation is approached, I guess).
There is no reason to expect it to grow in a linear fashion. The slow start was to be expected.
Friendly thought: when people say ‘give it time’, the implicit meaning is actively put in deeds to build it up. We all need to build the world up, boys and girls, clean slate to write your stories and entwine it with OUR server’s narrative.
Actively make connections, search and connect with those who have spent hours and hours of time crafting RP guilds, initiatives and characters, or have a crack yourself. Others have taken the burden of building a website for YOU to use later too. Ask what you can do for your server.
I believe that this type of thread will influence those players who are less RP-centric, or yet to jump into our server for whatever reason - 150 views so far and counting. I can only say to those folk who may be scrolling down to this post that our community is working on it and requires many hands to be raised.
Good deeds and initiative shall pull through. And afterwards we shall look back at what WE have created… and it was good.
Honestly just let people level before worrying, there’s role-play already out there for the most eager individuals but for the most part you will just have to be patient.
Roleplay doesn’t happen on it’s own and it’s not enough with one person.
It only happens if you RP and someone else RP back.
That makes it tricky and sometimes you may have the feeling that “noone else” is doing it, but don’t give up, and stay in character.
Because it is out there, right now, already.
I’ve been toasting with humans in the blue recluse, I’ve comforted gnomes who’s been upset about the Gnomeregan situation, I’ve talked about how to live in harmony with nature with Nightelf druids and so much more, allready on Hydraxian, so it’s out there.
Hang in there and stay in character.
About a week ago I was fishing in a lake on Teldrassil and Nightelf sat down next to me, we made smalltalk and he said he really liked it there, because it was beautiful and calm.
He asked me if I had played Runescape and I said I didn’t play much with runes at all since I was an alchemist. He laughed and we changed the subject to our druid trainers and how they made us run from moonwell to moonwell.
It was a great meeting.
We have a lot of new roleplayers on Hydraxian, much thanks to the server mess at launch. PvP or PvE players who logged in on Hydraxian because there wasn’t any que.
Some of them are still with us because they discovered that a RP server have a different feel. People are more polite, more mature… We can even form lines, sometimes.
Some are even trying on RP now and yes, they stumble a little, but if you support them, they can still make it.
So stay in character, teach by example, and don’t give up.
Here is the simple answer. We’re still leveling.
Most people will probably just play the game until they reach 60, atleast that’s how most of my guild thinks about it.
I would agree with what have been said. People are focused on levelling right now. It’s not really fair to compare a two week old server in Classic to a 15yr old server in retail.
Also and I know a lot of people won’t like this answer but for PvE players who like Low/Medium realms (and there are quite a few), there isn’t anywhere they can go as during peak all 3 PvE realms go between High/Full. This’ll have an effect on hydraxian too.
And, yes, it cannot be said often enough: RP is already lurking in every corner, but it won’t start if everyone is waiting for the others to begin with.
Sometimes it only takes a very small step. Just complain that the bank counter is so crowded again, rant about the auctioneer not seeing your bid so you loose a long awaited sword, grumble about the costly rooms in an inn …(ok, I just realized I currently play a rather grumpy elf) …or just sigh about the full moon while sitting at a campfire.
Each of these short emotes sparked a RP situation and conversation for me (including a gnome whose name I don’t recall anymore [please speak up in case you recognize yourself] who wanted to explain to me for nearly 20 minutes that our wonderful moon might be some kind of dustball stuck to our world by “gravitationum” and one day he will figure out a way to jump so high so he can reach it, which totally destroyed the romantic moment for a nice human couple sitting at another campfire next to us) …and, where was I? Ah, yes:
Just start dropping bits and pieces of RP into this world, and you will be greatly rewarded, I promise you!
Some of us have been wanting to play this game again for over a decade, and we’re busy enjoying it.
I’ll give RP a go when we get some RP events that my character can feasibly attend, and I’ll start initiating RP myself when I hit 60 and the rush of the nostalgia and memories have had time to settle down.
