What happened? I played wow since BC and roleplayed ever since WoTLK and always enjoyed it a great deal both true guild events and random encounters in Stormwind that ended up becoming small (or big) adventures. Now after BFA I took a big wow break when my daughter was born and came back when SL dropped. Where is all the RP at?
I have to admit i’m not in a guild at the moment since my previous one disbanded in my time off wow and I do not have many friends still playing but still … I never used to have a problem finding some random RP around town with an interesting character and going out on some sort of adventure or quest. Now all I find are void elves (like seriously is this the only “race” worth roleplaying?) with, and I quote “curves in all the right places.” Or trial characters who omniously only want to RP with 18+ people … Look I don’t judge ERP, to each their own and what you do is no concern of mine but where is everyone at who just wants to roleplay without the E?
There are the odd characters about that seem to want to straight up RP but then again they are “tabbed out” … because you log into a game, log on to your character and then go ima walk my dog now? Like 50% of the time I walk up to someone, start talking/ emoting, wait for 10 minutes looking like a complete moron who is talking to himself and leave to do it all over again.
And then another thing, where are the interesting characters at? Lord something or other from someplace or some evil crimering leader from the Stormwind underground? I have noticed it has become quit the taboo to RP as a character with anything remotly interesting about him, why? I can promise you, you’ll have alot more fun talking to Lord something who wants revenge for his family who where killed by an evil mage then you do with Joe the lumberjack out of goldshire. If i want to feel like a lumberjack i’ll grab my axe out of the garage and go cut down a bloody tree, if I wanna be a war hero or a kick sass (minus the s) worgen warrior i’ll log into wow. Isn’t that the whole point of roleplaying? Pretending to be someone you are not or can’t be in real life? I can be a bakker, lumberjack or mechanic in real life but I can for damn sure not be a vindicator who fought the burning legion for decades.
Don’t get me wrong, you do you and RP who ever you want and however you want but where is everyone else at?
I know SL isn’t the best and the whole Blizzard debacle is going on but why would you care? I like to roleplay in Azeroth, I don’t care who runs blizzard to be honest. Is what they did bad? Ofcourse. Does it affect the game I love? No, unless we decide it does and give up on it, but why should we? I play wow to escape from the real life politics, problems and drama so why would you drag all that into a world build to get away from it? Ugh … still not giving up on wow and preparing for comments coming my way (this forum can be brutal and you know it!).
So sorry for the rant and any grammer mistakes (not native english) but had to get it off my chest since I love roleplaying in Azeroth and hate to see it slowly dying.
RP moved to guilds/communities as the game population is dwindling
Because SL is an absolute dumpster fire and anyone who thinks paying like 12-15 euro’s a month for this probably hasn’t played another game in over 7 years. Which is quite possible if they’re a Blizzdrone. I’m not paying these clowns so they can ruin a game I was passionate about for 10+ years
Ok…? I loved to RP in Azeroth as well and I dearly miss my OC however the lore of the game is an absolute joke and in the end you can RP with 2 mindsets:
ignore SL, which kind of means ignoring canon lore
don’t ignore SL and then you’re left with RPing in a weird setting that doesn’t even feel like WoW
I picked neither. And I actually do care who runs Blizzard to be honest. The old guard is gone, perhaps for the best as quite a few of them were bad ppl as made clear by the lawsuit - now all that’s left is a company who has to control a mass exodus, a toxic playerbase, PvE rife with boosting and RMT, and a lead dev/manager or w/e he is, publically announcing on Twitter he’s boosting. The arrogance of the devs and story writers on twitter is mind boggling and if I was still playing, it’d make me feel very disrespected, as if they’re taking a big fat dump on you. Because after all, you don’t know anything about WoW and how it all works unless, and I quote:
‘‘never had a book traditionally published, had a movie produced, written for a TV show, written a game’’
t. Christie Golden
so on top of being arrogant, they’re also cowards as she deleted the tweet within a day
Me too my friend, I hate how it all turned out but in the end it’s either one of two options; one may keep consuming copium and see this game through whatever awaits in the future, or one moves on to brighter shores.
I don’t think you can even do that these days, at least within certain communities. (unless you RP solo or in a very strict bubble)
I really want WoW to change, I really want to stay positive with all the Community Councils and whatnot, but it isn’t like it wasn’t done before - not only once either! - because we all love the universe. But it is just not happening and recent Ion’s interview just put a last nail in the coffin.
You are trying to find meaningful RP through random interactions in main cities, which even at their best was never quite a treasure trove of quality content. And in the current state of SL, most passionate RPers which still playing tend to avoid lingering in main cities for too long because it is a mind numbing kind of RP if you do it too often. Find an adventuring guild if you wish to do more meaningful and heroic RP; D&D style events in smaller, more intimate and closely knit communities is the popular thing right now.
Not everyone has abandoned ship to go make loli dragons in Yoshi P’s paradise just yet. Whilst many have moved on or stopped giving money to Blizz - which is their choice of course - some are simply waiting and riding the storm to see if there’s a chance of the game fixing itself. RP is there, meaningful RP is there, but you gotta find it and dig through a lot of bad to find the good.
On Alliance side you’ll have a lot more choice and variety and I’m positive just asking around can find you a guild or community that you can get into. On Horde it is harder as things are more close-knit and guild focused, but Orgrimmar’s Valley of Honour does have walk-up RP daily. It depends on what you’re looking for.
Yeah the guy’s asking about RP in WoW, so writing essays about how FFXIV is better and you should stop taking the copium and quit is incredibly unhelpful to his situation
Guilds are very much still at it with quality RP, cities fluctuate but they are also plenty busy at times (Alliance side far more than Horde, granted). I cannot speak for open world RP as I rarely have time to really go out and roam, but I am certain guilds / groups do fine on that level too.
The Blizz situation put a rightful dampener on things, as well as the RP moods of many. People will continue to care about it whether or not they play the game still, as they should. Plenty of the users (including people I sorely miss from circles I inhabit) chose to drift away from the game, some permanently and some temporarily, and I cannot blame them.
Those who are still around are very much still bringing awesome RP, even if at times it takes a bit of sifting through some rubble to get it, such as checking forums or asking around for a group or guild you’d fit right into.
Interesting characters are in no short supply either. It’s just that the majority also have sense to them, so really outlandish things are either toned down or kept for more scarce occasions like events, et cetera. I’m sure you can find a lot of interesting people out there, as I personally know many (granted I’m sure our opinions on that likely differ).
Tl;dr, as a much more casual roleplayer… RP is still there, just needs a bit of effort to get to sometimes. Hope you find the type that suits you, and if not, then I hope you find another venue that has what you need!
Sincere answer: Two bad expansions in a row with the second expansion also offering very little for roleplayers in terms of story hooks or prompts, as well as people distancing themselves from Blizzard after they repeatedly shot themselves in the foot with terrible PR decisions piling up again and again and again.
Furthermore if people in a guild leave the game to play something else (that being another MMO or another game entirely) then that can have a knock on effect. It’s hard to keep a guild active without a substantial enough playerbase, and it’s hard to keep hubs active when the guilds are all on a form of soft hiatus.
That being said while things ae quieter these days, the realm isn’t dead as much as it is hibernating. You’ll still see roleplayers about either in hubs (though in less numbers than before) or guilds off doing their own thing. It’s harder to find, but it’s certainly there still.
My earlier answer sums up most of it though. Interest is tanking and it’s all on Blizz, this won’t really improve beyond maybe stagnation until the game improves.
Which is a shame because I maintain that WoW is the best game for RP, but it’s currently just not a great game for anything else.
It sure felt like WoW to me. I RP’d for months from 9.0 release until shortly after 9.1 release. My community acknowledged the hole in the sky but basically treated it as “not our problem”, and it was still the WoW I knew and loved — something I can’t say about SL lore.
Two sub-par expantions, a massive sub loss and a quite big divide* in the RP community does make it seem like less RP is about compared to previously.
But most of what is left is likely just more confined to communities and guilds, particularly on Horde side (which from my understanding has been heavily guild oriented compared to alliance).
I’m sure there’s still plenty going about, might just be a bit harder to find open world/random RP compared to what you’re used to.
*Divide being coomers vs PCU vs non-coomer anti-PCU. And then everyone else caught in the crossfire.
Is a very hillarious take considering what playerbase is coping the most ;p
But nobody mention the name of the game and it was as hethes said a Mario refference taken a step further by some.
But I do agree, talking about FF here isn’t helpful to the OP and what they’re asking for.
Which is interesting, as I’ve heard that there barely is any RP on the European FFXIV servers. And the roleplay that -is- there doesn’t outqualify the “Stormwind RP” that people on this forum love to rant about. But maybe I am wrong here.
I don’t think it is much of an issue this time, though.
