I’ve always been quite fascinated with role-playing, and would like to try it out. But what’s the first step to getting started? and what to avoid when it comes to certain environments?
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First step is to think about who your character is and what is it they do? Do not need to make a novel sized background story but just enough when you meet people you can answer some things quickly.
Second really is finding roleplay. Never role-played on Horde but for me I started in Stormwind so I would look to Orgrimmar. Try to strike up or get involved in conversations you see going on around the place. If you find you enjoy it, Guild RP is the best way to go. It will provide a reliable stream of roleplay, events and varied locations depending on the guild. I didn’t roleplay much out of Stormwind until I did join a guild.
Most of all have fun, people don’t bite (except the Worgens).
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Few tips
First and foremost: Avoid Goldshire at any cost.
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Enjoy your roleplay with people you like to hang out with.
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Never feel compelled to rp with people you dont like.
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Always seek new ways to improve, there is alot of people out there who can give you pointers.
Do try to find some friendly group who can help you get started, teach you all the dos and donts.
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Might I possibly giving this thread a look for possible tips?
But also what Dagnon says is also quite useful too, especially point number 2!
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I think if you’re simply interested and not looking to do anything serious, you can just make a throwaway character and try being a random simpleton in Stormwind City or Orgrimmar. Strike up conversation in the inns or on the streets. From my experience, you gotta put yourself out there, just waiting around in the corner will not make RP come to you (unless you’re in a guild, or that corner is way out of the way that someone would just ask what you’re doing there).
If that is all fun and you want to get more serious, I’d start out with planning out a character. The extent of which is up to you, though I would avoid writing anything too elaborate there. Give yourself the skeleton version of your character and flesh them out through RP. Nerathion for me was initially just a fun side-character and unlike my first serious RP character (who I fleshed out too much), his description was just ‘novice druid who smiles a lot’. Through RP and character interactions he got fleshed out and grew to be IMO a much much better character than my first.
Of course, it helps a lot to be in a RP guild, there are several who also take in newcomers. This can take some of the pressure or anxiety off from being the initiator in RP, as then people also have a reason to come to you. However, depending on what RP guild you’d join, you might feel a pressure to commit to the character as well, so I’d suggest trying out RP initially on throwaways instead. Besides - those throwaways / characters without much thought can grow on to be your main characters, like it happened with me!
So, in short:
- make a throwaway character and hit up the big RP spots, usually Stormwind and Orgrimmar. Interact with other people, don’t be passive as many might not come to you without reason.
- If this has been fun, you can create a more thought-out character, but I’d advise you to flesh the character out through RP and starting with only the brief description of the character instead.
- Also, as has been said already - avoid Goldshire (or Silvermoon Bazaar, I guess? Don’t know if that’s as bad still).
And as an addendum, few helpful tips: Try to keep to proper grammar when RPing. People appreciate some effort put into what you say. For me, RPing is more like a collective book or story-writing, bad grammar or everything in lowercase just takes you out of the immersion. Avoid abbreviations in your speech and emoticons in both speech and emotes.
Also, when writing emotes, you might want to limit what you write to one paragraph! When I started out, it used to be a bragging point for who could write the longest, and this led to some short-lived bad habits of purple prose. It was very obnoxious, especially when you’re surrounded by several people. Nobody wants to read about how a leaf falls for 4 paragraphs in your 10 paragraph emote about hitting someone!
Keep it short and sweet!
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The brief few times I’ve passed through Silvermoon to farm mogs from Zul’aman I’ve checked the Bazaar, it’s not AS bad as like, back in legion/bfa, but there are still the small number of undesirables lurking there.
Still worth to be avoided unless you’re looking for an AH and your hearthstone is on CD in the middle of Eversong.
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Many thanks to all of you, who have given me good advice 
I’ll probably try to get better at certain areas first, when it comes to myself. Just so that I can feel more comfortable with role-playing.
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Get yer’ hands on TRP
Et’s an RP add on, found on curse forge
Would definitely start out by finding a guild or group through IC interaction, and also, Horde might be harder to find rp. It’s more spaced out
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Everyone has already given excellent advice so I just wanted to say if you end up going Horde and you have questions in-game or just want to try out some casual RP, feel free to shoot my characters Teepa or Agura a whisper and I would love to help out!
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As a fellow outsider who has now spent some time on the realm I can tell you that this is a total lie. This is one of the most fun places on the entire server, if you can ignore some elements of it. It’s not all that different from a real life pub, so if you are too young for that, then yes you should stay away, but otherwise, some great fun can be had there and all kinds of people come through.
It is usually the more serious RPers who will counter-signal this place the most (those are probably also the ones who are more inclined to use these forums as well), and they are in general far less inclusive and many of the things they condemn over there they do with each other themselves in private.
in ten words.
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Ignore everything Зокник just wrote: Goldshire is sadly a terrible place outside of Chromie phasing. A lot of the internet’s worst elements hang out there, which you’ll find out yourself if you ever go into the Lion Pride’s Inn. It’s a shame, since that’s one of the first hubs a lot of new players will visit. You can still level around Goldshire if you like, just best not to stick around for longer than you need too.
Anyway, welcome to RP! Despite some bad elements, there’s a lot of fun to be had, and good people to hang out with. I hope you find what you’re looking for!
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Would have visited, now we have exiles reach. (Thank God).
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Shame we can’t just banish all the Goldshire element there with no way to return.
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I-… honestly wouldn’t. Most of the people hanging out there nowadays are part of [REDACTED]'s gang.
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I’d also suggest taking it easy, get to know how RP goes and how your character fits into the world and so on - don’t get roped into a guild straight away, it can be a bit overwhelming!
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I’ve always been intimidated by roleplaying in WoW. I’ve no idea why, I have no problem on LOTRO or SWTOR, but I just can’t muster the courage to walk up to anyone and just… well, roleplay.
It could very well do with the fact that on the aforementioned MMO’s everything is much more regimented and organised, rather than ‘slice-of-life’ as they say.
I need to work on that.
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It is okay to leave details vague if you’re testing characters out. Not every little detail has to be there in a TRP profile.
A quick read on the society of a character can truly help you plot what your temperament, demeanour, age and experience your character might have. It also helps to have a look at other lore of other races to help you interact.
Consider what your character might know and might not. They’re not going to be aware of the events beyond the shattered veil in Icecrown for example (i.e Shadowlands happenings) unless your character is meant to and even then you might be met with skepticism. Basically keep it simple to start with and add things gradually.
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It can be hard there are some things you can do, one I use but it is very limited in its actual longevity of convo, and thats being a bounty hunter after a bounty, you chat a while describe the look, they usually bounce back ect, it gives you abit of convo and a potential IC contact in future should you cross paths again, maybe if convo goes well enough you create a scenario(maybe create the “bounty” alt and have a scene commence), DM it ect, a lil mini adventure for the evening atleast, Ive done this a few times, it has mixed success whether or not it leads anywhere.
I’m seeing a ghost…