10/26/2018 02:04 AMPosted by
Pelican
RPers bring it on themselves. Just ignore trolls that try and trigger your RP sessions. Trying to stop RPers from joining a server is a futile effort.
I've been playing on RP servers since Vanilla, they only people that ruin RP are the RPers themselves. They either leave the server, blacklist entire factions, start drama, blame non-rpers for the drama and then move on to another server to rinse and repeat.
A griefer ruins a moment, RPers ruin the server.
Nailed it. The only people that destroy RP servers are the role players themselves. Too many role players are try hard "role play police" and NO ONE wants to be around them, so the server dies.
10/26/2018 09:33 PMPosted by
Shuffix
They pretty much killed RP, stabbed it in the heart, with right click to report feature.
I have yet to see factual evidence of this.
Roleplayers (the good ones, anyway) typically create a character, and then roleplay as that character, in the context of the fictional universe they're RP'ing in, while trying not to break established lore. They do NOT roleplay as a person playing a virtual toon in a video game. That's Deadpool levels of fourth wall breaking and doesn't jive with the environment. (Not hating on Deadpool btw, that movie was fking awesome)
I ask because I'm very casual about rp. I dislike sitting in one location and writing out stories or maintaining ongoing plot lines independent of what the game itself presents. I rolled on an RP server because I like staying in character while I play the game.
My "rp" follows the game's story line, and how my characters react to it. I want /say and /yell in character. I like seeing active events and will participate if they're open ended enough to allow others, though again... I don't like to write out my actions, beyond some flavor text. And I don't want to maintain stories that take me away from the core of the storyline presented in WoW.
I don't present my characters as the main hero when joining in random events or talking to people, but I LOVE groups that will run a dungeon and RP using the quests and story line as the reason for being there.
Unfortunately, I've often gotten the vibe (and at least one direct accusation) that this isn't considered true "RP". It also certainly isn't accepted on normal servers. Neither fish, nor fowl, nor good red herring... it's honestly a little irritating.
2 Likes
10/25/2018 11:57 PMPosted by
Nurdan
Can anything be done to preserve RP servers for RP crowd and avoid their death again? Obviously Blizzard can't police the server and ban people who don't RP. So what else is there?
As someone who absolutely favors RP servers, my experience was that it wasn't the non-RPers who caused any death. In fact, I saw more RP damage done by BC adding mana addicts and space goats, with "bend the Light to my will" paladins and "we flew our spaceship from the orc planet named after us, and crashed here", and then Wrath capped it with a hero class leading to a flood of "super important paladin/warrior that the Lich King personally chose to be a Death Knight".
There was another problem, and that was the implementation of paid character transfers. Both RPers and non-RPers gradually became more willing to just uproot completely, moving to the highest population realms where they could raid or to one of the top few RP realms who had very particular cultures. Sentinels was one of the later RP realms and never had a high poulation to begin with, so players jumping ship hurt.
By halfway through Wrath, the vast majority of players I knew well and RP'd with had faded away from the game or switched realms.
(I can't speak well for after that because I never was much for the guild RP or the face-to-face RP. I attended events like a story-telling at the graveyard in Duskwood, or the running of the bulls, but otherwise most of my RP was having a backstory, a full name, having RP gear sets, and an internalized story and viewpoint of each character and how they interpreted events going on around them. For a while I had fun writing stories on the forums, or changing posting character and with it my "voice" - my gnome mage is pretty funny to see my speak as.)
===
Anyway, long story short, I agree that those who want RP need to think about what it is they want and early on seek out the realms where others have a similar desire.
I also admit this is one of my more selfish reasons for being very pro-addon. I want whatever our version of an RP addon is, where even if I don't directly RP with others, I can have my backstory, description, some context, a quick "what you see" - all that good stuff - and see what others have written as well.
Roleplayers (the good ones, anyway) typically create a character, and then roleplay as that character, in the context of the fictional universe they're RP'ing in, while trying not to break established lore. They do NOT roleplay as a person playing a virtual toon in a video game. That's Deadpool levels of fourth wall breaking and doesn't jive with the environment. (Not hating on Deadpool btw, that movie was fking awesome)
I ask because I'm very casual about rp. I dislike sitting in one location and writing out stories or maintaining ongoing plot lines independent of what the game itself presents. I rolled on an RP server because I like staying in character while I play the game.
My "rp" follows the game's story line, and how my characters react to it. I want /say and /yell in character. I like seeing active events and will participate if they're open ended enough to allow others, though again... I don't like to write out my actions, beyond some flavor text. And I don't want to maintain stories that take me away from the core of the storyline presented in WoW.
I don't present my characters as the main hero when joining in random events or talking to people, but I LOVE groups that will run a dungeon and RP using the quests and story line as the reason for being there.
Unfortunately, I've often gotten the vibe (and at least one direct accusation) that this isn't considered true "RP". It also certainly isn't accepted on normal servers. Neither fish, nor fowl, nor good red herring... it's honestly a little irritating.
Oddly, you RP exactly as I RP - let's make a guild together! :-)
2 Likes
Old school Emerald Dream here. I remember a time in which you could report someone for a non rp name. I also remember using () in order to speak ooc.
I think the server being rp-pvp attracted a lot of !@#$ heads over time that really ruined the experience though. I won't make the same mistake for classic. I'll either roll a straight rp or pve server.
1 Like
10/25/2018 11:57 PMPosted by
Nurdan
As anyone who has played on a RP server can tell you, probably less than ten percent of people who play on RP servers have any interest in roleplaying.
This trend of people uninterested in RP rolling on RP servers started way back in vanilla, when RP servers developed a reputation for being laid back and casual, which made people decide to play there not because they care about RP, but because they want to be surrounded by "mature" people (or in some people's cases, they wanted to be on a server filled with "baddies" so they're "best" player around), not to mention all the people who rolled there without paying attention to the server tag.
I was reading a thread where people were talking about differences between PvP and PvE servers, and someone in it encouraged people to play on RP-PvP servers because of the perceived maturity of people who play on RP servers. So it seems very likely that the same thing will happen again.
Can anything be done to preserve RP servers for RP crowd and avoid their death again? Obviously Blizzard can't police the server and ban people who don't RP. So what else is there?
I rolled on an RP server originally because even though I was a PvP bro, I liked the general quality of the people on RP servers. The community, over all, was clever and tight knit, and such things appealed to me.
For the longest time, I'd just forum troll (nothing malicious, just inane shenanigans), and watch the RP between queues. It was interesting, but something that had a stigma among those of the circle I generally played with.
But, eventually, interest surpassed awkwardness, and I dabbled in it. It was fun, and though I'll never be one to RP hardcore, the fact that I even do it lightly and I respect it all stems from the community that welcomed me and gave me a chance, despite my primary interest being only logging in and queuing up.
You can't "protect" an RP server if you offer anything more than RP. The best you can do is to keep trying, pushing through the hardship of keeping a community afloat. Yeah, the anonymity of the internet makes it difficult, but such things usually are.
My main has been on Feathermoon for the entire time I've been playing WOW, so I've seen a lot of RP come and go. For the most part, RP is indeed dead on Feathermoon, but RP is possible even there. It's mostly driven underground, and is guild based, I guess. I've not participated lately.
I think you'll find that the case on all RP servers - that RP is still there but you have to hunt for it. It won't necessarily come right out and hit you in the eye.
What happens on RP servers when you use voice chat? Do people stay in character? Like would a Dwarf us a Scottish accent? When the guild leader rages at people during a raid what happens?
Can confirm, I did play on an RP server and did not RP. I can understand why this is important. Blizzard should definitely try to accommodate and bring RP servers into classic for people who enjoy RPing. Problem with RPing is that there is a stigma associated with it and that tends to diverge opinions on the matter altogether so I think it is a difficult question to raise. Here is to hoping you get an RP server though.
I played on an RP server in vanilla; it was awesome for the most part.
Though after Cross-realm BGs were introduced, it was a lot less fun. We used to have people on both sides who were RP/pvpers, and meeting in BGs was kinda cool; like you were fighting a long-term rival or something! I loved that :D It made me want to learn my Orc Warrior a lot more, especially when I went up against paladins back in the day.
After Cross-realm, I felt that slowly dissipate away. Honestly it's kinda sad, I find on retail no-one even talks to each other, it's such a solipsistic experience and it sucks. Retail is like a michael bay movie with all the flash and explosions, but no real substance
So, I'm pretty excited for vanilla & hopeful for RP servers-- earthen ring was one of the best back in the day, along with Argent Dawn.
That said vanilla does have it's issues -- it's the complete opposite of what retail wow is-- tons of gear grinding, tons of people to meet, it's difficult and yet, kinda rewarding. Though I do love the fact that greens, blues and epics are actually worth a damn (for the most part :p )
Can confirm, I did play on an RP server and did not RP. I can understand why this is important. Blizzard should definitely try to accommodate and bring RP servers into classic for people who enjoy RPing. Problem with RPing is that there is a stigma associated with it and that tends to diverge opinions on the matter altogether so I think it is a difficult question to raise. Here is to hoping you get an RP server though.
I'm hoping you're misunderstanding WOW a bit. RP was what started the whole thing, after all it's a "MMORPG" .. and those last three letters are "role playing game". So it should never be a possibility that Classic won't have any RP servers on it.
I'm really hoping that part of what will make Classic successful will be all those disappointed RPers that will return to WOW Classic.
1 Like
Coming from someone who does table top rpg's, WoW sits in kind of a weird place for rp. The story (in vanilla at least) is not a complete railroad experience, and there is room for your character to actually be your character; the world never changes though, which limits what can happen.
For example, I'm currently playing a dark heresy campaign (warhammer 40k setting), and our party has been sent back in time by warp shenanigans, so we are now the group that is reconnecting this planet with the imperium, and our actions are likely to have drastic effects on the future of the planet if we can ever get back to our own time. In a previous campaign, we recovered some ancient technology that (once studied) will gives us benefits that would otherwise be unavailable.
These types of things can't happen in WoW, because the rule set is rigid and defined, and the world can't change to reflect the actions of those within it. Good rp can obviously work around this, but the limitations are still there. This leaves less experienced rp'ers out of the experience because they haven't practiced the skills that let them overcome the limitations of WoW, and they aren't provided the opportunity to practice those skills in game. Even if they find a group for a good table top experience to practice rp'ing in, WoW then feels constricting in its nature.
Add all of the above to the fact that some people's rp is going to contradict someone else's, some people are simply not going to rp sometimes, and that some people are just going to be d-bags no matter what and you have a setting that does almost the opposite of fostering rp.
The honest "solution" to rp realms would be to change the game almost entirely so that rp was able to flourish, but at that point it would literally be a different game.
Coming from someone who does table top rpg's, WoW sits in kind of a weird place for rp. The story (in vanilla at least) is not a complete railroad experience, and there is room for your character to actually be your
<snip>
The honest "solution" to rp realms would be to change the game almost entirely so that rp was able to flourish, but at that point it would literally be a different game.
I don't know. I never played RP scenarios where our characters were world changers. It was mostly the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker got thrown into the world and had adventures.
Heck, just having a few people playing in a group doing all the standard Classic quests is a great adventure right there, that would last months.
When the quest giver says "kill 15 stags and bring me the meat" it would be the work the party would do for that evening's play. The point would be the interplay between the characters while collecting the meat.
I don't see it as being limiting at all.
RP servers used to have dedicated GM's that would ban people who didn't have RP names or did certain non-rp things. This lasted about a month.
Now RP servers are not much different than PvE servers with the exception of more ERP.
10/27/2018 08:38 AMPosted by
Malaw
Coming from someone who does table top rpg's, WoW sits in kind of a weird place for rp. The story (in vanilla at least) is not a complete railroad experience, and there is room for your character to actually be your
<snip>
The honest "solution" to rp realms would be to change the game almost entirely so that rp was able to flourish, but at that point it would literally be a different game.
I don't know. I never played RP scenarios where our characters were world changers. It was mostly the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker got thrown into the world and had adventures.
Heck, just having a few people playing in a group doing all the standard Classic quests is a great adventure right there, that would last months.
When the quest giver says "kill 15 stags and bring me the meat" it would be the work the party would do for that evening's play. The point would be the interplay between the characters while collecting the meat.
I don't see it as being limiting at all.
Perhaps my example from our current campaign was a poor one, but my 2nd example is definitely more what I'm talking about.
As to your example, that's exactly what I mean by good rp working around the limitations of WoW's systems. Unfortunately, that starts to fall apart at lvl 30+ as the quests start to turn more "adventuring hero" style. It can still be worked around of course, but it becomes harder and harder for less experienced rp'ers to deal with which can turn them off from rp'ing altogether.
Just using the numbers given earlier in this thread, if 10% rp, those people are capable of and willing to rp within the system; 90% of people are either incapable, unwilling, or both, this is the problem as stated by the OP. How is that solved?
The honest "solution" to rp realms would be to change the game almost entirely so that rp was able to flourish, but at that point it would literally be a different game.
10/25/2018 11:57 PMPosted by
Nurdan
As anyone who has played on a RP server can tell you, probably less than ten percent of people who play on RP servers have any interest in roleplaying.
This trend of people uninterested in RP rolling on RP servers started way back in vanilla, when RP servers developed a reputation for being laid back and casual, which made people decide to play there not because they care about RP, but because they want to be surrounded by "mature" people (or in some people's cases, they wanted to be on a server filled with "baddies" so they're "best" player around), not to mention all the people who rolled there without paying attention to the server tag.
I was reading a thread where people were talking about differences between PvP and PvE servers, and someone in it encouraged people to play on RP-PvP servers because of the perceived maturity of people who play on RP servers. So it seems very likely that the same thing will happen again.
Can anything be done to preserve RP servers for RP crowd and avoid their death again? Obviously Blizzard can't police the server and ban people who don't RP. So what else is there?
That's because it's not the
servers that are RP, but players' systems. If you see an RP event somewhere, and decide to join it (in-character of course), people around you will be pretending as if you were not there. All you can get this way is getting on /ignore list, and maybe a /w to "stop disturbing the RP".
Because people use their own rules to create RP servers on RP servers. If RP servers are to fill their purpose, all that roleplaying addons, dice roll systems, etc, will have to go, and all RP will have to be based only on in-game interaction. Aka, if you duel someone, you actually duel them and the duel result will decide the duel result, not some dice roll in alt-tabbed discord window. If RP servers are to be RP servers, all players must be using RP servers as RP servers, not some discord channels or internal rules.
Also, there was an urban legend saying that RP realms have no world PVP at all (like, no horde territory rule, no 5-minute rule), the only way to PVP are battlegrounds and duels) - which brought a lot of casuals to RP servers.
Also, if RP servers were really to be RP... /ignore would have to be disabled on them. Either banned or heard by everyone.
10/27/2018 08:38 AMPosted by
Malaw
...
I don't know. I never played RP scenarios where our characters were world changers. It was mostly the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker got thrown into the world and had adventures.
Heck, just having a few people playing in a group doing all the standard Classic quests is a great adventure right there, that would last months.
When the quest giver says "kill 15 stags and bring me the meat" it would be the work the party would do for that evening's play. The point would be the interplay between the characters while collecting the meat.
I don't see it as being limiting at all.
Perhaps my example from our current campaign was a poor one, but my 2nd example is definitely more what I'm talking about.
As to your example, that's exactly what I mean by good rp working around the limitations of WoW's systems. Unfortunately, that starts to fall apart at lvl 30+ as the quests start to turn more "adventuring hero" style. It can still be worked around of course, but it becomes harder and harder for less experienced rp'ers to deal with which can turn them off from rp'ing altogether.
Just using the numbers given earlier in this thread, if 10% rp, those people are capable of and willing to rp within the system; 90% of people are either incapable, unwilling, or both, this is the problem as stated by the OP. How is that solved? The honest "solution" to rp realms would be to change the game almost entirely so that rp was able to flourish, but at that point it would literally be a different game.
Meh, we just ignored the rest of the world. :-)
How do you propose to keep non-role players off of RP servers?
I don't know. That's why I made this thread in the first place. I'm interested in seeing what other people suggest. I guess the best suggestion is to try to get all the RPers to coordinate and all roll on the same RP server, but that still won't stop them from being a tiny minority of the server population.
I once heard someone recommend making RP servers harder - make it so, say, you have a 25% reduced XP and gold from both mobs and quests, so both leveling and making money is harder, to try to make the server as unattractive as possible for people not really invested in it, but that probably wouldn't work as it would attract people who aren't interested in RP but want to play the game on "hard mode", and would make RPers themselves feel like they're being punished.
And what exactly do you consider essential to meeting the RP "standards"? What does a person have to do to be called an RP'er?
I'm not an elitist and I don't have high standards. As long as you're interested in and willing to participate in RP every once in a while, on your own terms, you're fine with me. Basically just need to know what RP is and think RP is interesting. If you're not even interested in actively roleplaying yourself but just want to occasionally observe other people roleplaying it's fine with me. I don't think of myself as elitist in the slightest. I only find it disappointing to know that probably more than 90% of the people who play on RP servers have never even thought about roleplaying. If I could make it so only, say, 50% of the people on RP servers are non-RPers I'd gladly take it.