I’m going to come in here and reiterate, as I hoped after waking up today I’d get some kind of explanation. The Unity of the Alliance is a Discord I have admin rights over, and in the summer of 2023 was getting geared to be a more Alliance focused, RP focused side project to the main WCP.
When it became clear that my involvement in the community would have to become minimal, I took the discord into a different folder and have simply let it sit in quiet between then and now.
At no point was it ever meant to be an “Anti-woke Counterpart” to anything and even though I know I won’t, I hoped for an explanation as to why you would think that, especially considering Claresta joined and left after 20 minutes a week or so ago and saw that nothing had been posted in there since 2023.
You can dislike me for any reason, but please- don’t lie about me or the projects I’m affiliated with. Absolutely don’t do so where I can see them, in a public space.
I have a Forsaken Rogue that I’ve wanted to RP as a “street preacher / the world is ending” sort, neutral to factions, looking to chat with everyone. This might be the perfect place for him to be and I’d be happy to park him there when not leveling him up.
Hello Enekie, what’s happening? Ummm, I’m gonna need you to go ahead come in tomorrow. So if you could be here around 9 that would be great, mmmk… oh oh! and I almost forgot ahh, I’m also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday too, kay. We ahh lost some people this week and ah, we sorta need to play catch up.
Aahh, now, are you going to go ahead and have those TPS reports for us this afternoon?
I actually would participate in an RP where I got to be some low-level worker. Like a convenience store clerk or a barista or a mail room sorter. Just meeting various lunatics within the context of an extremely low-stakes environment.
I won’t be polite, either. I’ll be a difficult, two-star worker. The only thing keeping me from being a one-star being my ineffable cynical charm.
This is my experience and input, in a nutshell - not only on WRA but on Argent Dawn (EU) as well as Moon Guard (US).
For the last 5 years or so, there has been more prominent discussion and scrutiny regarding activity on WRA. The fact of the matter is the RP here still exists, but it’s not the same population and style as we see on other servers like Argent Dawn or Moon Guard - and that’s okay. For myself, I don’t find that to be an issue, it’s actually a preference. I enjoy the small town vibes WRA affords, and I have found some of the highest quality roleplay and safe/inclusive communities on this server within both factions.
I routinely hosted multiple annual events for 7+ years on WRA (Lunar Festival, Elunarian holiday events - etc.), and I was lucky enough to have individuals eager enough to accept the torch of hosting these events after I retired. That isn’t the case most of the time when community hosts retire or take a hiatus.
It's my belief that this recurring discussion of Horde/Alliance population and RP activity on WRA isn't the heart of the issue, but rather a symptom of the real problem which is the growing discrepancy of population ratios between RP players and RP hosts/DMs for community-focused events.
Players who enjoy roleplay will naturally gravitate toward communities where other members will host/organize content for them. There’s nothing at all wrong with this, but the discrepancy between the number of willing hosts versus the number of participants is growing year over year. Hosts eventually grow tired and fatigued, burn out, or retire, which is reasonable and valid. Server activity will continue to be scrutinized until more members of the community step up to generate a wider array of unique and creative community-focused events.
If the concern is comparing WRA walk-up RP to MG walk-up RP or Argent Dawn walk-up RP, those will always be dramatically different; and the comparison isn’t entirely fair or a realistic expectation to set because the reality is that WRA does have a smaller population than both of those two major RP servers. From about 2012 through 2018, WRA was very popular and hosted a bevy of large community-focused events, which afforded a number of players with casual and walk-up RP in unique community settings. Hosts from that era are retiring now, and have been for the past 5 years.
I, for one, welcome the lull because it means there is space now for the next generation of hosts to step up and give back to the community, if/when they are ready to do so.
If this helps Thomas, it did sustain for quite a while in your absence during Dragonflight. It was around Season 4 and also the usual slower Summer season when things stagnated. You’re a beloved part of Duskwood and an integral part of its server Lore (perhaps one of the few commonly agreed on server Lore things in WrA), but know that others have filled in your stead and respected your breaks. There were 20, sometimes 30 characters at peak on some nights, with several storylines and events weaving in and out.
For my part, I was very active in DF Duskwood scene till said Summer and the more recent pre-patch and expansion. I find myself wanting to return to the old haunted wood because it’s still my favorite OG zone, and rolled a fresh face who will appear there in the coming days. It seems few of us can stay away for too long.
I just wanted you to walk away not only with the validation of the hard work you’ve done but that there is still a Duskwood when you’re having much-needed time away. It’s quiet at this part of the expansion because we’re still playing with new shinies, but we’re rounding the usual corner where we pause the grind and return to RP roots.
Yes. WrA is very different from MG. Our pros:
WrA-A is smaller, which means less crowded, more real estate, and therefore a more open RP sandbox
WrA-A/H does not have stringent server Lore that must be agreed upon to enter
WrA-A does not have the reputation of MG’s Lion’s Pride Inn or other negative mainstays of MG
WrA-A currently is a fresh slate for unwritten opportunities and less competition of a more crowded server
Much of the above is related to WrA Alliance specifically and remains my focus, because it’s where I predominantly play and purposefully transferred Vanguard of the Rose here over MG at the end of Shadowlands. The Vanguard of the Rose has cross-faction characters and has since inception, but our focus is still very much blueside and we’re vested in our new home.
Any efforts in Stormwind, Duskwood, and elsewhere have our support. Also canonically, our storyline is currently in Mereldar and we’ve been there nightly the last week and are putting out the word to invite others: (H/A) Mereldar Roleplay
This happened on my old server. It opened day one of launch but when newer RP servers opened such as WrA and MG, our population slowly began siphoning away. Mists of Pandaria finished off Horde entirely due to players detesting the direction of the Horde storyline. Alliance limped on for a bit longer till Shadowlands, which was our last hurrah before the final two established RP guilds decided it was time to finally seek a new home. One went to MG, the Rose went to WrA.
We had conversations like this. Many of us had ideas or criticisms of ideas, but there wasn’t enough starters and folks to rally around the starters to start something new. Positioning ourselves as different instead of a rival is key because the conditions that built MG into how it is now started years ago. We can’t repeat that process; we’re on a different road.
And these conversations, no matter how bumpy or prickly or contrary, are necessary because…
Discussions like this are part one. Moving on the ideas bandied or rejected in here is part two.
For my part, I will focus my energies into restarting the Alliance Guild Faire. The goal will be consistency and outreach towards Alliance guilds who did not attend the faire before. The previous iteration focused entirely on RP guild while our Hordeside counterpart invited everyone (raid, social, PvP, etc.), and we will do the same. Our Hordside counterpart has a dedicated Discord to coordinate and a carrd to spread the word, we will have the same. As soon as the October date is finalized, forum posts will go up and efforts will turn toward keeping it monthly and bringing in as much WrA Alliance guild representation we can.
Any support with the effort will be greatly appreciated because as you guys know, WrA-A needs that serious leg up.
As for the Stormwind Local Businesses carrd and map, I’ll freshen it up but also wait and see what comes next with a potential Alliance-focused Discord. It will need a home and originally I intended it to be the WCP, but I’m game to collaborate with whoever steps up alongside the plate. I also didn’t intend to end up head of the Alliance Faire, I intended to join the previous team and help out, but…
This next generation is here and we’re feeling the strain, too. Some of us also held up our previous communities years ago and lost them in spite best efforts, so are deeply vested in things here.
As for the WCP, we’re brainstorming based on recent feedback to re-tune equal energies towards RP. That said, we have very active OOC, Lore Discussion, and Character Workshop channels that are welcoming and help new people daily with getting set up and introduced to WrA, and that effort continues. We’re extremely welcoming to new people and eager to point them in the right directions for the RP they’re looking for. That said…
As for the oft-mentioned thread, the reason it hasn’t been updated is we’d hoped to finish the Level 3 grind to edit it and keep it at its current fancy iteration. Unfortunately, the grind is time locked and it’s time for us to move on re-creating it sans images and other pretties. Luckily, the WCP Discord recently reached Level 3, which means now we have a custom invite URL that will make things easier: https://discord.gg/wrawcp/. I’ll also look into a URL shortener version so no one will have to search for various codes anymore, the URLs will remain consistent.
So expect an updated thread with consistent URLs soon, Blizzard’s forum grind system be damned.
I didn’t see this post till tonight after I finished a busy Saturday. What I posted is what I heard from multiple sources I thought were trustworthy, but I’ve since privately followed up and critiqued their misinformation. Taking it and passing it on was my fault alone and I edited the original post to reflect more accurate information. If you wish it to be entirely removed, you can update or delete your quoted version of the post as well.
((I’m a person of few words so I will keep this short. When I first came to WrA I went to a few of the leather shop in Old Town events. Good times for sure.))
BOOKSTORES RULE!!!
FOR THE ALLIANCE!!!
Hammer drop that bounces onto foot. Immediately grabs foot while hopping around.
The problem with being a RP Creator is that people just show up and expect you to carry the whole scene for them, including props, and a lot of newer/younger people who’ve never RPed before don’t realise roleplay is collaborative storytelling, not competitive codpiece-measuring.
If I can ask one thing of our ‘creators’, it is to ask for help, and set some seriously immutable boundaries. You cannot please everyone, or you will satisfy no-one, and if you need some people willing to sign up at least to help set up the event, or farm materials, or even just be NPCs for an hour or two, for the love of God, ASK. Due to radiotherapy and being Oceanic, my time online is iffy and my energy levels are low, but I can be a vendor or an NPC or whatever. I’ve had too many friends leave WoW because random players came to the event and refused to accept boundaries or that they couldn’t hog the spotlight for the entire event.
I saw far too many events in the Discords advertised, both Wyrmrest and Moonguard, only to get the timeslot bogarted for other Guilds’ events whose members realised this was the ‘best’ time to do their own event and refused to back off or hold it a few hours later, or even a week later, or have their attempts to start an event or recruit people for help get their posts buried beneath nonsense and clique drama. And after a few weeks of this, they just give up and become the silent army of lurkers that’s the norm for so many ‘community’ Discords in WoW, or just quit and try to go it alone.
It might be time to start up new Threads rather than deal with several hundred posts of drekk, or revive old Discords that haven’t descended into a handful of people talking over everyone else and mocking their races/factions/concepts. And I’m saying this as somebody who’ll go off on a posting tear for an hour before descending back into the abyss of weird stuff on the internet before my brain-worms find some new fixation to bring before the masses…
Don’t set out to become the next Big Name on the server. Know your limitation, start out small and set yourself a hard limit on both time, and interaction, you play to have fun the same as everyone else, not be reduced to free content for other people.
Get yourself chat-addons to keep track of who said what and at what time so you can keep everything relatively ordered, and keep those chat-logs separate so you can deal with issues that arise without having to dig through nine hundred and ninety nine screenshots and whisper-windows.
Know how much energy you can give at a time and start slow and steady, otherwise you will burn yourself out trying to keep up with it all, and again, set hard and firm boundaries. You aren’t to be bugged during your time about events you’ve set up, that’s what the forums are for, a publicly accessible repository so you’re not fielding innumerable versions of the same question, and if people aren’t only willing to push what they want and ignore yours, then do you really want them at your event?
Thank you for the followup and admittance. I’m not going to split open old scabs here, but like I attempted to tell you once before, there is a lot of misinformation about me and my community, and I don’t often get the chance to actually correct incorrect notions.
In a different time, I’d be able to toss my hat into the ring to start up and help with an Alliance-centric discord, but I know I’m not exactly welcome anymore. (And that’s an entirely different conversation to be had about the health of WRA-A).
I was running a Stormwind Market but for that to continue to flourish, it really needs support from the community to actually host stalls and be the customers.
If the community will come out and support it to help it grow, it can keep going and I’ll post another one. However right now most of the vendors are my guild on alts and our guild comes out on alts to mingle and take part as customers. It’s tiring to do something for several years and never see it truly take off.
If you want Stormwind events that are not DM’d but feel more like a natural occurance in a city, a market is one of those. It allows people to mingle and chat, feel like they’re in a busy city, buy stuff, or just people watch… it’s perfect for that. And yet, other than regulars, I can’t get Alliance to show up.
Similarly with how I was overwhelmed with the Alliance Guild Faire and called for help, I’m glad you brought this to attention. You all have done wonderfully with the SW Market and it’s one of my favorite events.
I have vendor experience and so do guildies of mine from running a market event eons ago on our old server. I’ll rally them to help with your next event and help lighten the load. We can also put in the word in the WCP as well, however you wish to spear head it and when you’re feeling up to it.
this is a general problem with all forms of RP tbh. been around so many different rp groups and the “RP Vampires” as we put it are everywhere. They want you to come to them. They want you to do the plotting and the planning. And if you don’t do it the way they want you to, how DARE you, you cliquey jerk!!!
at a certain point, you get exhausted trying to make something fun for everyone else and just kinda slink into private RP.
i’ve been mostly doing WrA Horde stuff this expac, admittedly, what with Hellsqueal and the upcoming Dance of the Dead performance. Most of my RP preferences are based around neutral factions, which are niches within niches, so it’s hard to find too much for them. Life’s hard when blue or red isn’t nearly as appealing as “i can’t see the color, they burned my eyes out.”
I’ve been wanting to roleplay, but a problem has always kept me from doing so for a number of years. I find myself intimidated by what is and isn’t within the socially acceptable norms of roleplay in the setting. There is also a fear of rejection that comes with it, so there is added difficulty for me to even get myself to do certain necessary information for a character.
Don’t be intimidated.
Seriously, the RP I’ve found most memorable, even tangentially, is the stuff that really isn’t socially acceptable in any setting, let alone WarCraft.
The Cathedral District has been home to some depraved, depraved individuals.