DagothGeas5 wrote: ↑
March 21st, 2025, 09:55
Could you tell more details on how RP works from your experience? Back when I was playing WotLK I would just emote and use the say or yell etc functions, using whisper to OOC, but it was mostly with someone I actually had right next to me so it was more fun flavour text than anything serious, thus for me, for example, it is the first I hear of needing a program or something dedicated etc.
It depends on the faction.
I play on Moon Guard, on both Horde and Alliance. Both sides have active RP scenes, but they manifest differently. On Alliance side, most people tend to notice RP in Stormwind, because it is an immersive city with lots of streets and alleways and buildings that is attractive to people to RP in, so thus you see a lot of people there doing "walkup" RP. Basically people standing around in Lion's Rest, the Mage District, or the Cathedral District and walking up to other people there and typing things in /say or /e.
On Horde side, there was never a thriving walkup RP scene like in Stormwind. Orgrimmar is a poorly designed city for RP, with hardly any streets or alleyways for RPers to congregate in. The Drag is too small, there are not enough buildings, etc. Undercity and Silvermoon were more immersive, but not as good as Stormwind and are much more specific to undead to and elves. It doesn't make sense for most Horde characters to be dwelling there like most Alliance races can hang out in Stormwind. So people often create Horde characters and don't see obvious walkup RP and then declare that Horde RP is dead, which is not the case.
That then leads to organized RP events, which is a thing on both sides. These organized events were hosted by RP guilds and announced for the people who were not a part of any RP guild on the official server forums. Nowadays, you want to join an RP discord (the big three being Coalition of the Horde, Grand Alliance, and Warcraft Conquest), and then you can see the schedule for upcoming events. These events usually take place out in the world rather than people hanging out in Orgrimmar or Stormwind, though you do have military campaigns that begin with people lining up in those cities and then marching to the docks.
Val the Moofia Boss wrote: ↑
March 23rd, 2024, 00:48
Old World of Warcraft screenshot from 2014 when I was in the Kor'Kron Legion RP-PvP guild on Moon Guard. We RPed as Garrosh loyalists and embarked on military campaigns against the Alliance, such as this huge RP-PvP battle that happened in the Arathi Highlands. There were a lot of Horde and Alliance military themed guilds back then and server wide RP events being organized multiple times per week. Then WoD happened and there was a sharp decline in the playerbase and in RP activity.
...
2023, I joined a new Horde RP guild that was a part of the Horde Vanguard. The Moon Guard RP server had been hosting a cross-faction campaign against the Primalists. The Primalists in our RP felt far more threatening and imposing than they did in Blizzard's content. In our campaign, the Primalists are such a threat that the Horde and Alliance mobilize their armies and fleets to the Dragon Isles.
Each Horde Vanguard campaign beings with the Horde army marching out of Orgrimmar to the docks.
Alliance guilds assembling in Stormwind before sailing out to the campaign.
Horde Vanguard on their ship sailing to the Dragon Isles.
Alliance on their ships.
We encounter turbulent seas and spot storm clouds as we approach the Dragon Isles. We receive word that the Primalists have launched a preemptive strike on our fleet. Lighting strikes down gunships with hundreds of soldiers on board. The coalition's forces break up into multiple groups to respond to the many different crises occurring simultaneously.
Map showing the position of various forces as we landed on D2.
My character joins the D-day landing on the Waking Shores. We trudge inland through the mud under as a pitch black sky punctuated by lightning. We struggle to retain control over our frightened steeds. We stumble upon the dead bodies of our brothers. We become enshrouded in dense mists and can't see more than a few feet in front of us. An unnatural wind sucks the very air out of our throats. We are kneeling on the ground, gasping for breath. Frostbite is setting in on our extremities. A massive storm elemental that we can barely see through the wind and rain manifests before us. We are eviscerated by glass and sand and small rocks. The sheer hurricane force launches even heavy orcs and Tauren back, sending a trail through the mud. We turn around and run for our lives. Squadrons of gyrocopters are hurtling towards the earth and impact into the rocks all around us. A menacing voice booms like thunder through the mountains, mocking the spawn of the Titans...
DMs giving their mission briefings. The most memorable outting was the one where we had to stop a lava slime from advancing towards the encampment. Our weapons either sliced harmlessly through the slime or bounced off of it. People got captured by the slime and were being burned alive. Fun stuff.
Another Horde Vanguard RP event. This time we sailed to Silvermoon City, marched through Eversong Woods and the Plaguelands to defend Lordaeron from Rothide gnolls who were spreading disease and decay. The event where we went into the sewers and then nearly got drowned by a sewage elemental was the most fun.
A few months later, the 10th annual Tournament of Ages on Moon Guard was hosted. Event was pretty packed. I was getting 13 FPS inside the colosseum, and that wasn't even everyone there. There were more people unloaded outside. Outside the colosseum, you would walk 10 feet forward and then suddenly dozens of people would load in front of you.
The last event I was involved in before I unsubbed. Another cross faction campaign set in the Dragon Isles, which was a continuation of the Dragon Isles event from earlier that year. We were hunting an evil Primalist dragon who had escaped from the first event, only for him to acquire a magical artifact that corrupted him with the Void, and then he got killed flying over the Azure Span. He crashed, infesting the forest and making the Western half of the zone into a contaminated wasteland that had to be quarantined. Then the Rothide Gnolles that lived there got corrupted and wiped out the village of Iskaara too. We barely managed to halt the corruption from spreading further while another elite team infiltrated the forest and secured the artifact.
We used to install an addon called My Roleplay, or MRP, but it has since been replaced by Total RP or TRP. Basically it 1. changes your mouseover tooltip so other RPers know that you are also a roleplayer (before this, it was difficult to know if that guy standing over there was actually interested in RP, so now people aren't wasting their time talking to people who are in the scene and getting no response), and 2. it allows you to at a glance see some blurbs about that character, things that might not be obvious just by looking at their character model. Ie, if that player who looks like a Tauren is RPing as a Taunka, or if that Pandaren is a mainlander or comes from Snowblossom village, if that undead over there is an undead human or an undead elf, etc, if that guy over there classed as a death knight is actually a death knight or is supposed to be something else, etc. I never read people's full bios.
Lastly, there are a few unpsoken rules, some might be obvious but others not. For the kinda obvious ones, you don't "godmod" other people's characters. You don't say "I stabbed you and you collapsed to the ground". You say "I thrusted my sword at you", and then he can decide if it hits (maybe dictated by a roll, depends on the prior agreed setup) and if he fell to the ground.
As for non-obvious stuff, the roleplayer community's depiction of the world is slightly different from what players experience going through Blizzard's content. The RP version of WoW is that it is a huge wide world with many different clans and duchies out there beyond just what we see ingame, and there is a lot of stuff going on besides just the Burning Legion invasion or the Scourge and what not. The main lore characters of WoW like Anduin and the player character hero are offscreen doing other stuff, while RP campaigns are about other important things that are happening, like fighting other Primalist dragons or some other threat out there that needs to be quelled too, because Anduin and the player hero can't be everywhere at once.
RPers never RP as the actual player character hero of WoW - the one who sat with Anduin and Wrathion at the Tavern in the Mists, the guy who became a general on Draenor and then leader of the Ebon Blade, etc.
Lastly, RPers tend to treat flying mounts as a little more uncommon than seen ingame, where so many NPCs have them that flying mounts seem common. Most RP characters do not have a flying mount in lore. They might use one to get to the event location and then switch to a horse. Maybe if your character is wealthy or is a decorated soldier, they might have been awarded or bought a flying mount. Most RP campaigns have forces assemble in Stormwind/Orgrimmar and then march (while mounted) to the coast and get on a ship to another continent and then disembark and march to the event location, rather than there being massive flying armies.
The Shadowlands expansion is unpopular. You will hardly see RPers acknowledge the afterlife retcons there, or guild events taking place in that dimension. The only thing from that expansion you will see get brought up is that people still agree that the king went missing for five years and Turalyon is the regent. It might not be a good idea to claim that your character has covenant powers, despite Soulshape looking so cool. Maybe you can just say the Soulshape toy is actually something else like a magical artifact or your character just learned a little bit of druidism.
