I’d like to try and RP as I no longer raid or such. I have no idea where to start though and I am also very nervous/self conscious about it.
Any advice on how to start would be welcome (outside of leveling a character). I always loved watching people’s rp events happen back when people sued to RP in /say rather than party. Now this doesn’t seem to be a thing anymore, I figured maybe I’d give it a go myself.
Try and start with a concept, something you’d like to play - a simple character concept, a soldier, paladin, etc and then go from there.
I don’t mean levelling one but actually thinking “what characters in fiction, what concepts in fiction interest me” and see if you can build a basic character from that - not an OP god but just a basic person.
Test that character in RP, which means you’ll need to go and RP with people - approach people, ask questions your character would like to know. And don’t worry if they’re questions you’d like to know, there will be crossover between yourself and your character at first.
Ideally I’d try and find a guild with a concept you like on the RP server you choose, AD being the largest and the one I’d recommend but there are others each with advantages and disadvantages, it might even help you make a character by setting in your head what you’d like to do with your RP time.
Overall I’d suggest just making a character and throwing yourself in. Don’t worry about making a fool of yourself, you will, we all do. RP for twenty years or only just started - every. single. person. makes a fool of themselves.
There’s a bunch of unwritten rules to it all but honestly if you’re new the only one you need to really remember is that you and your character, and people and there characters, are separate entities. A character disliking your character is not dislike of you, in fact often times the Out Of Character relationship in those situations is very jovial provided everybody is on the same page.
Hope that helps a little, it’s a bit rambly, but good luck and hope you enjoy it.
Thanks for the advice. This was very helpful. If I wanted to play something that wasn’t a human, how true to lore does things like speech etc. have to be? I am pretty knowledgeable about overall lore and a decent amount of race specific stuff in regards to the past. But how would a character react now?
Depends on the race, for a start don’t worry about the elder races like Elves and Draenei having to sound like they speak some ‘ye olde English’ type stuff, they don’t. They generally seem to use less slang than humans, but even then as long as they’re not like “Dude,” and “Totally lame”. Likewise Orcs aren’t “Savages wot speak like bad Cockneys” but are perfectly erudite in their own Tongue. Trolls is an interesting one, some people like to include the Troll Accent when speaking Orcish, that makes sense, it is like a French person coming to the UK and speaking English, unless they were very very practiced at it, whilst their English might be word perfect, they will have a French accent. I use some of the Troll ‘accent’ on mine, but when he is speaking to other Trolls in Zandali I don’t, because, well, they’re speaking Trollish, they’re used to what their language sounds like.
Dwarves are another, some people add the Scottish accent, some people don’t bother, either is fine.
I have a personal peeve with some languages, because people sometimes use that language -in- that language.
That sentence needs taking out back and shooting, but let me explain; Two Blood Elves meet on the street, they’re both speaking Thalassian, One says “Greetings” the other says “Bal’adash Malanore” Why? That doesn’t make any sense to me, I mean that’s what Bal’adash Malanore means in Thalassian (Literally ‘Greetings, Traveller’) So why bother?
I mean Its a very minor peeve, but Bal’adash Malanore is just what it -sounds- like to non-Thalassians, to Thalassians it sounds the same but the words are ‘Greetings Traveller’
Sorry, going off track there.
Thing to remember is as long as your character is not talking like some sort of Chav, using modern slang that just doesn’t exist in WoW, then you’re probably doing it right. Some races can get away with it more than others, Humans, Goblins for example, but imagine meeting this millennia old Draenei, a creature of power and the wisdom of the ages, and they open their mouth and are all “Wassup Geezer, bleedin’ freezing today innit mate”.
Equally, don’t try to go all Cod-Shakespearian. Now I am a bit of a hypocrite in that one. I do use old fashioned swear words as Brigante, but then he is supposed to be 1,400 years old, he is going to sound a bit old fashioned to others, even younger Blood Elves of only 100 years or so.
I’ll show you what I mean (and this is just how I do it, this is not -right-, it just sounds more like the way an elf would insult people in Common or Orcish.)
Going to try and avoid falling afoul of the Word censors on the forums here…brave or what.
So, in our modern ears, a really offensive tirade would be “Don’t start on me, mate, Best part of you ran down your mother’s leg, you fcking bstard, If you want to take this outside then I’ll kill you!”
Brigante is more likely to say “Do not look at me, you wasted fragment, you swiving Caitiff!, if you want to quarrel, then it will be mortal between us!”
They both mean exactly the same insults. just one sounds more like a creature more than a thousand years old to me. Just a quirk as to how he speaks when angry.
This brings us neatly onto another bugbear some have (And also the other reason that I use ‘older’ sounding insults, those were all from Shakespeares time or thereabouts)
Look at Wow’s swearing. Its not F-words and C-bombs. Its slightly older sounding. We see the B- words for males and females alike.
Now I have no problem with swearing for Emphasis or when enraged, but wandering around Stormwind and thinking “Am In a Tarantino film?” is sometimes jarring.
In fact I could have just kept that simpler by saying “Watch some of the Cinematics, read some of the novels, or the free online stories (The Leader Short Stories is a really good way for getting a handle on the other races)”
Use that sort of language, whatever you play, and you’ll be fine!
Thank you very much for the explanation! So basically talk like a normal person and I’ll be fine?
I didn’t think of age actually. I forget blood elves are actually pretty old. What would the age of a blood elf be if the human equivalent was 20’s-30’s?
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, we know that Elves of all types reach adulthood at the same sort of time as humans, so around 20, we know that they live for ‘Several Thousand years’, and at least 3,000.
We know Sylvanas was considered an adult and able to join the army by the time she was 20.
Now, you ask that in an interesting way. A lot of people make the mistake of saying "How old would my character be in ‘Elf Years’, to which the answer is “The same as everyone else, a year is a year.” However to answer the question you ask, and asked correctly, if your looking at a certain age as an equivalent, or to put it into terms, the best advice I can give is to consider the life expectancy.
To give an example, as I say, Brigante is 1,404. Now that’s just his age, but in terms of how a Human could try to comprehend that, he’s about half way through the expected lifespan for a Blood Elf, so in terms a human (either a character, or we as their players) would consider it, he’s probably in his Early-Mid 40’s. If you were going for your character to be in their 20-30’s in Elven terms, its not an exact science, but I’d say an age of between 100-700 actual years old would fit.
I mean there is no exact definition, because even like, in our world, when people say “Dog Years” what they mean is “Human terms” An 18 Year old Dog is still an 18 Year old Dog, just that in our equivalent terms they are very old indeed.
But yeah, I’d say in their hundreds would be a perfectly reasonable age. The only really defined numbers are ‘Adult at 20 real years’ ‘Ancient at some point -after- 3,000 years’
I love your name, by the way.
Thank you again for the explanation! Yeah I was more meaning in mental maturity than physical. Just wasn’t sure how to word it. The next issue is trying to work out age in relevance to lore history. Man this is hard work xD I think if she was around 30, that would put her being born some time just before the third war, or during it? Which is WC3 and were my own Warcraft experience began (and most of my lore knowledge starts). Add another 20 years, putting her at 50, then she would possibly have been fighting when the sunwell was destroyed? Given she is a paladin, this feels like it would be a good place to start her story, being one of the blood knights to take the power of the Naaru after Liadrin. Perhaps being young and naive just following somebody she considers a hero without truly thinking about the consequences of her actions (the results of draining a naaru).
Feel free to correct me if my timeline is off.
Haha thanks. Sadly not available on Argent Dawn but I do have the name Waffles here. One I will save for a non-rp alt.
Try Cáke or Caké.
I’ve never been one for accents but they are likely taken too. It’s fine though, I have an “rp-friendly” name I will use for my main character anyway.
The open events some people host is also a great way to get a feel on how you want to roleplay or what people in that enviroment is, it can also be a way to come in contact with a guild that might suit your interest.
Yeah, that’s plenty old enough, the Sunwell was only destroyed during The Scourge Campaign in WCIII so a 50 year old who remembers its destruction and the Third War is definitely possible. The Blood Elves were still High Elves at the start of WCIII so that would make perfect sense.
This is also excellent advice, keep an eye on the AD Forums and you’ll see when such things are coming up. Mostly people are just chill to RP with anyway, but Open events are good. Orgrimmar has a ‘roughly’ monthly Storytelling night open to all, that’s quite pleasant, and very relaxed in attitude.
Thank you very much for your help. I have put a little profile about my character in Total RP3 and hopefully I can build upon it. Guess I just have to level now and see if I make any friends.
Well if we can all be any help on RP Hubs and shiz like that, just sound off, Most RP’ers love to help people break into the hobby.
Got another question, sorry. How do mounts work in the Rp-verse? I’ve always picked the one I like the most but I’m sure flying around on a dragon or elemental won’t make much sense in RP.
Don’t apologise, I can’t even log into WoW at the moment, got a ticket open (Though I suspect they will say "Your PC is a Potato, it is a miracle you were able to play for this long, we can’t help :D)
So its not like you are interrupting me or anything, and to be honest, you’re probably asking one of the right people, as Mounts are -incredibly- important to the Guild I run, given that we are all Dragonhawk Riders.
So, Mounts. Well.
There are a few factors to consider, have you decided on a race yet? Lets say you have, and it is Blood Elf, just so I can give examples.
1.Can everyone afford a Hawkstrider? Probably not. I sure couldn’t afford to keep and maintain a Horse on the money I have IRL. -However- Is it ‘wrong’ to assume your character can have a Hawkstrider? Hells no! It could be a mount you inherited, it could be a military one (I’ll come back to that later), if you have a Thalassian Charger, then those are actually -summoned-, only a very few are actual real Horses, they’re like Alliance Paladin Horses, they’re not actually -real- as such, as Spirit Horses (Although they can be if you want them to be!)
No one will bat an eyelid if you ride a Hawkstrider IC as a Blood Elf.
Absolutely not. The way we tend to handle that, is that our Dragonhawks are actually mostly owned by the Military, The individual character does not -Own- the Dragonhawk, but they always ride the same one, the Thalassian state pays for its feed and wellbeing.
So right there you have ways you can own a mount. You could actually have bought it, you could have inherited it, it could be your Blood Knight Spiritual companion, or you could be riding it for the Military as part of your job. (Closest way to think of that, is in modern day Air Forces, the Pilot does not actually ‘own’ his Jet Fighter, he flies one provided by the Military to do his job)
Way I’d look at this, is by Race. Every Race (Leaving Paladins out, as obviously they get special mounts they can summon) has a ground mount common to their armies, and an Aerial mount common to their enemies, Let me give a few examples.
1.Blood Elves. Ground Mount: Hawkstrider. Flying Mount: Dragonhawk.
2.Dwarves. Ground Mount: Ram, Flying Mount, Gryphon.
3.Night Elves. Ground mount: Saber. Flying Mount: Hippogryph.
4.Gnomes: Ground Mount: Mechanostrider. Flying Mount: Gyrocopter.
Just a few examples, there are loads more, Forsaken love their Boney Pony’s, Trolls love their Raptors, but both use Bats for air combat.
But that’s taking the simplistic approach, there are two others.
Nothing wrong with that. Brigante frequently hires Worg’s for transportation in Kalimdor when he has not brought his Dragonhawk. Likewise a Gnome may be like "Gah, my ‘Strider is in for repair, I need to hire a human mount!’. It could even be “I did X great favour for X race, and they gifted me Y mount” Which is fine. We know the Horde use Kodo’s to pull caravans, despite them being a Tauren Mount.
So basically its ‘Why am I riding something a bit odd?’ just in case someone asks.
Some of them are easy like “Hey, Mister Mage, why are you riding a flying disc?” “Because I enchanted it to fly and it is held in the air by my own power, and I don’t have to feed it or stable it, or brush nits out of its fur…Why wouldn’t I?”
Basically think what makes sense for you to ride. If you are playing a powerful Shaman, then you know what? Riding an Elemental is fine! Its one you summoned. Flying a Frostwyrm would be weird…whats the link there?. Alternatively if you are playing a powerful Death Knight, then riding a Frostwyrm is Legit! Riding an ELemental would be a bit weird…
So basically think what makes sense, or at least could make sense. Orc on a Worg or a Wyvern “Yeah, no problem, that’s normal” Orc on a Hawkstrider or Dragonhawk “Hang on, why do you have that?” As long as there is a reason, its OK…
With the exception of ‘Summoned’ mounts, like Paladin mounts, Shaman Elementals, perhaps the Mage ones, its a bit cheeky to suddenly mount up. We usually RP that our Dragonhawks are stabled wherever the Flightpath for the settlement is, and so have to physically go there to get into our Flight harnesses and take off…
It depends, what mounts were you thinking? I may be able to give you an idea, oh, and what race?
Thanks again for answering.
I have chosen a blood elf paladin (ex-blood knight so I have a reaosn for being a pally, but not bound to any blood knight rp so I can learn a little easier).
A ground mount I’d like to use is the Llothien Prowler (the fox mount from Surumar) but I know that would not make sense. I guess using the charger would be easiest as I wouldn’t have to tend to it or such. As for flying, I don’t know haha. I do have the dragonhawk from the mount achievement lucky but never really been a fan.
If it would be easier, do you have discord?
I do, but I have just gotten back a response to my ticket, so am not on Discord right now, as I’m trying to test the things they suggested, and part of the things they said was 'close down everything not necessary.
Assuming this works, you can message me directly n Whispers on ‘Brigante’, if it doesn’t, I will fling you my Discord once I have tried all the fixes…
The Llothien Prowler definitely fits into the “Unlikely, but not actually impossible” category. It would be a weird choice for a Paladin, but if there is a good reason, it could make sense. But yeah, not likely to be on Discord for a while, as I really need to get this Fix implemented before tomorrow night, when an RP PvP campaign starts up 
To be fair, you don’t need an IC flying mount if getting one would be forced. They’re not all that common, lack of one is understandable.