What makes an Alliance Military guild Good/bad?

Argent Dawn
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My records were incomplete.

My shame is everlasting.

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Being lore accurate aside, here’s a couple more niche things I feel are lacking from some guilds in that category I’ve interacted with:

  1. Not being accomodating enough to other players outside of the guild. When you run a large military force you do potentially control some sort of social power over other RPers, no matter how much you claim IC=IC. You have numbers at your disposal which are easily abused to bully and corner RPers with less influence. It’d be nice to see those numbers be wielded more responsibly.

  2. Not being aware enough of the Alliances many issues. That sounds stupid, I know. But I’d love to see some nuance beyond blindly yelling “for the Alliance!”
    Being part of a military force is complex and difficult. You’re going to be faced with choices that will tear you and your comrades apart. It instantly makes the RP more interesting if there’s room for political and emotional complexity.

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Thanking god every day I did not get into military RP too much and not touching it ever since late BfA. :pray:

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Having been in a fair few human military guilds, both as an officer and a member, in my time I can honestly say that I think its the ability to foster the environment and encourage social rp that makes or breaks a guild, or makes one good or bad. I’ve done the formation rp, the parades, inspections, drills etc… But the stuff I remember most fondly is mucking around in the barracks prior to or after events, that’s where your relationships are forged. I’ve got friends I play games with to this day and have met irl that I started mucking around in the barracks with 7 or 8 years ago.

The way you conduct the soldier RP itself doesn’t super matter imo. Some people are just always going to disagree with the way you run things. Some people really like the way some guilds in this thread have been mentioned, others don’t. More ‘casual’ military guilds also have an appeal. The AD military scene is so varied that honestly you can just do what you want and there’ll be somebody that’s interested. Foster a good social environment, have people want to log on and interact and you’ll succeed.

tl;dr, AD’s audience is super diverse and varied, the amount of modernity you do or don’t incorporate is really down to you. Enable the troops to have a laugh and you’re gaming, no one wants to spend 3 hours doing formation rp and then log off, but that’s just my two cents.

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An excellent question.

I think there’s a couple of primary reasons for this.

Firstly, Wow’s fantasy setting isn’t really suited to a low fantasy military guild. A line of lads with swords and shields isn’t going to stand up to a single fire ball, a charging Tauren or a Death Knight. What’s that? A neat line of men and women who are carrying basic equipment? They simply cannot go toe to toe with fantasy creatures. How is your little swords going to stop a Kodo charge? A giant ball of magical fire or a death knight who can literally throw people about with magic and carry swords that might be bigger than you. And of course, they don’t want mages, priests, shaman etc anything that isn’t a man with a sword or bow, because it is hard to reasonably balance power in a low fantasy setting. Or if they do let these classes in, they are limited to being really underpowered versions of what they are. A mage that can only use one spell every twenty minutes or something.

My point is that a lot of military guilds try to be low fantasy in a high fantasy setting and sure you can role play the guild in such a way that you only fight low fantasy enemies but the setting is just not for it. A Draenei will almost always be stronger than an average human, a tauren is probably going to be stronger than a Draenei. A death Knight probably can smash through a line by themselves.

A second issue is that most folks who make military guilds are just making it up as they go. They’ll read books about fantasy or Middle Ages military groups and try to transplant their ideas into the game. Not a bad idea per se, but you end up in a strange situation where you try to have neat orderly lines, except to do that you need the same people on at every event otherwise you have to just randomly assign the lines and no one knows their places. You end up making formations that don’t make sense like forming a line against cavalry or circles against infantry… everyone has their own ideas of which formation is better for which situation. Which is usually irrelevant because real life cavalry might be challenged by spears for example, but what if the incoming cavalry is Kodo? Might work. Might charge right through you.

There’s also, I think, the issue that these guilds are basically almost always the same. Same ranks, same rules, same ideas, same events. You’ll get drills, which are almost exactly the same each time with a SGT or LT shouting “RUN!” “LINE FORMATION!” “WEDGE/ARROW/SPEARHEAD FORMATION!” And half the time you won’t use these formations or if you do it is probably the wrong formation for the situation. And I don’t know about you, but I pay my sub and role play for fun, not to pretend to be on watch outside a meeting for four hours at a time while the guild leaders sit in a room and have great fun planning a campaign. Whereas if I talk in formation, I could be punished In character. And travel RP in these consists of someone saying “FOLLOW IS YOUR FRIEND!” and you watch someone take too sharp a corner and find that the line is walking into a wall because half the line is afk because all you are doing is RP walking from one zone to another and aren’t allowed to really role play anything other than bored.

Finally, I find that these guilds have a problem which I refer to as the “House guild problem”. The house guild problem, is that all the officers who are members of the house, knights or elite veterans etc get to actually do the role play. They get to discuss campaigns, go to important meetings to role play with other guilds during realm events, and get to dictate how the guild runs. You, as a grunt or ‘retainer’ or house guard, get to essentially just be a vehicle for that role play. You are expected to stand outside a meeting for hours at a time trying to turn away other role players so they don’t interrupt your boss. You are there so that the guild officers can say “I have twenty swords at my disposal” so they can justify their being at a council in role play. And more often than not, you’ll never be able to enter the upper half of the guild because it has been founded by a small group of friends or previous guildies and they don’t want to break up their rule of the guild because it is how they like it. Military guilds generally work the same way, but instead of a Lord you’ll have a General. Instead of Knights you’ll have Captains and lieutenants. And instead of house guard you get Privates. And if you do get promoted it takes MONTHS. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t have two years to sit in a military guild to maybe make SGT to have a modicum of ability to influence the guild.

There’s some other issues, but this is already turning into an essay.

The best military guilds I have seen try to play out as irregulars. Groups that while being military themed, don’t bog themselves down in it too much and try to be flexible. They might play as shock troopers, marines or something that is just above the norm. They will take on other classes and use them as they should be. A mage can be used to blow holes in walls, scatter enemy formations and raise defence spells. A Death Knight can crash into an enemy line while the rest of your men pick off those that run. The best military guild I was ever in was back when I was on Sha’tar, a little group called Horizon. We styled ourselves as a para-military irregular group who took on jobs and missions that weren’t suited to regular companies. As such, we had a wider range of classes, abilities and equipment. We still had military ranks and some military protocol, but we engaged with the high fantasy elements rather than against them. It also meant we could simply do more. We could have siege events where we lead assaults on high powered enemies, we could defend a keep against them, we could chase down rogue monsters or dangerous enemy units or we could do travel role play and fight with a larger unit as irregulars to be moved around the battlefield.

In summation, the Military guild model generally doesn’t work because it isn’t suited to the setting. People don’t know how to run military guilds or cannot because people can’t be relied to always be at an event to have their same positions. The guilds are largely the same with slightly differing ideas on the same approach. The hierarchy is usually rigid and you’ll never get into it. And the best way to go is probably embracing the high fantasy and making an irregular unit. Let the NPCs be the low fantasy character, you can be the high fantasy.

Hope this doesn’t sound like a manifesto!

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Thanking god every day I did get into military RP and made 15+ friendships for life with people I have played games with and met in real life over the last 8-9 years since late WoD.

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These posts are pretty disappointing to see. Military RP does not attract a certain kind of player any more so than any other form of roleplay, and to “thank God” you did not touch military RP for that reason is a bit over the top. From my experience, military RP tends to differ per guild vastly – you used to have very strict guilds which employ formations or other military procedures and other guilds which merely employ uniforms or hierarchies but leave it there. In my eyes, it’s a poor generalisation to say military RP, as a whole, attracts a certain kind of player.

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vulpera rp also attracts a certain type of player

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Every type of concept attracts some sort of odd RPer.

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thanking god every day i never made a vulpera

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The same thing that makes every other type of RP guild good or bad - good narratives, good opportunities for individual characters to grow, and a good OOC environment.

It’s very easy to point fingers and laugh at people who take military RP too seriously, but every niche of RP is guilty of it. Personally, I’d much rather see a group of military enthusiasts putting time into their drills than yet another auburn-haired ‘itinerant’ beauty with a bow wearing supple leathers whose Argent Archives page is all flowery artwork and two lines of bad poetry in each section.

I can think of many, many more good military guilds than bad ones over the years, and it’s very tiring (and quite boring, actually) to see members of our already-fragmented community greasing up their posting fingers purely to act the “get a load of this guy” playground bully. We’re better than this.

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As I recall, [name redacted] went through the wringer years and years ago, when the actual event went down in Northrend. At this point it’s more like Argent Dawn societal server-archaeology than breaking news.

That particular case asides, I too can recall several tight-formation military/warrior guilds that seemed to do rather well. So the formula itself is absolutely no recipe for disaster, provided it is integrated well enough into the community on a larger scale.

Yup.

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For the record, I first started playing on the server since 2017 and this is the first I’m hearing of this, so I presume it predates that.

In terms of staying on topic, I can’t really say what makes a military guild good because the one thing that I think really makes them special is the one thing I’m not personally big on, that being uniforms. I do think that if you have everyone looking as one part of the same unit it’s great and is super thematic, I just have an obsession with expression through clothing/costuming that I cannot part with.

I’ll also give a shoutout to the Footmen guild from a while back. There was a sort of cross-guild collaborative event thing that happened a few years ago involving three of the active pirate guilds at the time, and because I was a warlock I helped summon in the Footmen OOC, and it was the coolest and most terrifying thing to me to see twenty or so people in the Alliance blue and gold slowly appear to presumably ruin our characters’ days.

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We’re talking 2014, early Warlords of Draenor. It’ll soon be 10 years since the Mad August.

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I have not been in a low fantasy, military guild so this is quite interesting to see what all of you have to say - But in a casual high fantasy.

But, with little to no knowledge about the inner workings of such guilds some of my most fun and memorable experiences is randomly coming across them, and interacting!

One memory that have been with me for years is when my, at the time guild had a campaign in Plaugelands, the less plauged one, and we took shelter at a farm, sitting around the campfire then…
We used inky potion so it was truly dark

Out of the cornfield I see a pair of glowing yellow eyes, and movement.
My intial reaction to that was… …wait, what was that…? Is my eyes playing tricks on me, is the game graphics glitching?
Then an undead appears, and another… until there was a big group of them… creeping out of the cornfield in the pitch dark.
They were friendly enough mind you, might also help we were both Horde.
At the time, they just wanted to know what we were doing around the area and left shortly after.

It was unexcepted, it was incredibly creepy but so well executed because they were respectful and did not try to

"Hurr durr, we are military so we get to over power you and boss you around.
That made me love every second of that interaction!

I do remember the specific guild and this memory have stuck with me for years.
That was, fun to interact with because they took an interest in us in a sensible manner!

So, I do belive one thing that makes a ‘good’ military guild is how you interact with the rest of the population!

Are they offering to help civilians, protect a certain area, send guards out to protect and patrol the roads and interact with induvial about day to day things? Do you offer to escort people a long a known dangerous road, or caravans?

Do we get to see these people, off duty?

Or are you just going to be a mute NPC standing somewhere and doing seemingly nothing? Then stomp your feet excepting my character to listen when it suits you, despite doing absolute nothing to earn respect , or have anything else to offer than a supposed claim to rank and power.

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Moderation is key I think, though that kind of goes for all sorts of guilds

For example,

  • Formation stuff with a bit of variation can be fun every once in a while, but it gets old fast when on repeat (you can only change up “stand this way, walk this way” in so many ways and eventually people learn how to do it, what’s next?)
  • Discipline stuff can be used to generate interaction, like a bit of maintaining order within the ranks or busting someone sneaking a snack, but only to a point. Actually having characters just stand perfectly still and silent somewhere, however realistic, is really boring RP for that 1-3h slot we intended to spend online tonight.

What aspects of military RP is it that people generally actually want to engage with? And I don’t mean the one-offs like a cool full rank and file parade every blue moon, but what is the every day stuff?
Some RPers genuinely just want to RP the soldier being ordered around, then casually engaging with what’s around when there is no direct assignment
Some want to do the whole military strategizing thing, with staring down at a map and concluding “By the Light.” at how hopeless the situation looks, though that’s seen more in a cross guild interaction than within
Some probably want to do the busting chops RP and create a bunch of mini interactions from being a perpetually displeased drill instructor

There are probably some more that you’ll see in long-lived military RP guilds though those were the ones at the top of my head

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Personally, I think it comes down to what you’re looking for. I just happen to enjoy that style of RP. I’ve been in several different military guilds, SWI included, and I have met all sorts of people.

I don’t think it’s a secret that most (if not everyone) in here is talking about Stormwind Infantry and as someone who spent six years with the guild, I can pretty safely say that the biggest obstacle was unfortunately the leader himself and it pains me to see the guild as a whole get a bad rep because of it. Most of the people were great and some of them I am more or less still friends with (haven’t met them irl, but we still play games together sometimes).

I guess that for me the biggest flaw is also maybe the biggest strength. Low fantasy isn’t for everyone and it of course becomes a problem when higher fantasy stuff is ignored, ridiculed etc, but at the same time this makes it more approachable and (I’ve found) a good introduction to RP for those who are new and interested but aren’t sure how to approach RP in general and much less ready to take on the higher fantasy stuff comfortably. I will say that one problem I always had with having big numbers is that during campaigns, we were often expected, both IC and OOC, to pull quite a heavy load. Understandable in some ways, but it became a problem when members were more or less harassed when some people felt we didn’t do our part, regardless of if that was because we were resting IC or people were just busy OOC.

TL;DR (maybe?): The things that make a military guild good/bad are the same things that make other guilds good/bad, it comes down to what you’re looking for and how well the people you end up playing with do it. If you don’t enjoy standing in formation you’re probably not going to enjoy a military guild and if you don’t like bartering you’re probably not going to enjoy a merchant guild (maybe not the most solid comparison, but I hope you get my point).

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I think that is a fair way to put it.

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It was very typical of guilds back in the day, Stormwind Infantry included, to exert an authority over others when they should not have. The most eye-rolling events I can recall from years back was when a series of guilds in Stormwind, fronted by a few military guilds would put the city in lockdown and impose a curfew upon the people RPing there.

A typical misstep made by military guilds is that they will quickly get a form of social power, the ability to exert their authority as an “official” arm of their faction, and there is a short step from acting under the authority of their faction, to acting with the authority of their faction.

Although this might be typical for military guilds in general, often when they set themselves an area or region where they work in, this is by no means exclusive to military guilds, and tends to extend to anyone who for some reason or another feels it right to exert authority over any region or place in the world.

As for the aforementioned Arthedun, I think it is rather lowly of people to belittle him for whatever shortcomings in real life anyone here assumes he has. He was certainly a character, but to say his service in his country’s armed forces was in any shape of form laughable is pathetic. Whether you serve short periods actively or as reserve (which I recall he was doing at the time when he was mostly active), at least he was serving, performing a duty that he should not be discredited for.

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I remember that, fun times :sweat_smile: