So the invites for the Community Council Forum are starting to roll out to people in e-mails, and I’m fairly certain a sizeable chunk of us here did apply to it.
In the spirit of that, I figure having a thread to possibly discuss things would be a good idea at the least.
Source:
And seems we finally have some representation up on the Council.
Dynja
And Halite
Both are from the Argent Dawn EU server. Hope to see some great communication and stewardship from the two of them!
Both are from Argent Dawn-EU, but both are RPers so that’s a good sign.
Aye, I’ll agree that it’s an overall good sign and hopefully we’ll get some leeway in explaining RP woes that overall people have had on this game that could hopefully be addressed.
Hey guys! RPer here from NA servers. It isn’t my main thing ingame per se, but definitely something that I’ve done on and off for over a decade. I’m going to copy paste a post I made on a different thread here:
I personally have a literal dozen or more ideas that I’d like to type out and post, I just want to think critically and word them as properly and effectively as possible…one of them being customization, representation, realistic transmog, more character options, maybe even TRP3 or something similar being built in to the game and just requiring a checked box in the interface options. It’s frustrating that there’s no native support whatsoever for RPers. Having a tab at the bottom of the character window when you press C to fill out a little profile about them would be nice too; nice and non-intrusive, while maybe introducing the idea and creativity of roleplay to those that otherwise wouldn’t give it a second glance. Maybe an RP mode toggle that breaks upon entering combat that reduces/removes cooldowns from toys.
I’d also really like a WoW equivalent of FFXIV’s GPose. Narcissus does that, but it’s an external addon and is very fiddly.
Someone else on that thread mentioned the idea of “RP Mode/Explore” instances where all achievements, loot drops, and mobs are cleared from the instance, and the amount of players allowed in the instance at once is raised. I mean, I’d personally love to do things like host a big wedding in Spires of Ascension, or have a large murder mystery event somewhere like Tol Dagor, or play out a group of mercenaries taking over a train in Grimrail Depot. The possibilities are really endless there.
If you guys have any other ideas though I’d love to hear it to add on to my upcoming post in the CC subforum 
In regards to Toys, the CD’s absolutely need to be reduced if not removed entirely. A lot of RP’ers use certain toys to RP wildly different characters that normally are not able to be played in normal gameplay. Same thing with upping the buff time on certain items like the Prism, Ai Li’s Sky Mirror. It would greatly enhance the RP experience and not have to depend on second manning a second account just to RP.
Another thing would be emotes. There’s a variety of emotes/animations that NPC’s have that player characters just do not have that would absolutely enhance RP in all sorts. Standing Guard, and leaning against a bar being two major examples we saw in BFA. Heck, we know stuff like that is possible since you can whip out the map/scroll by typing /read regardless if they clip through something and the animation will loop until the PC moves, one opens the map or one types /read again to close it. More animations/emotes that loop for the player until would be amazing and better the RP immersion.
In regards to in-game stuff in terms of immersion, a good one would be to raise the concern of Orgrimmar as a city. It doesn’t really feel like a city and more a labyrinth of winding valleys and empty cliff tops. That’s not even counting how there’s barely any if no chairs in the city itself, even in the main bar most RP’ers hang out in the Wyvern’s Tail in the Valley of Honor. Overall, there’s simple steps Blizz could take like plopping the Garrison Level 3 Horde Tavern in Orgrimmar to replace the outdated one, it would definitely enhance the RP there since it’s a bigger building with even lower floors such as the kitchen. More Chairs where appropriate, benches. For long term? Org could do well with some manner of a redesign so it feels like a proper city we all know it can be. Make use of the cliffs’s for housing, use the Underhold brought in with the Siege of Orgrimmar, make caverns for the Forsaken refugees. Possibilities are endless in Orgrimmar.
I think MG, WRA, and ED all need to come together right now and start putting together some ideas for what the RP community would like to see. We have a golden opportunity to get our thoughts out to Blizzard on what we want and we should take full advantage of it while we can.
While I agree with this idea in theory, I’m not sure I see it working in practice. After observing the sentiment on MG and WrA both in-game and on the forums, I’m convinced more than ever that the RP community can’t even agree with itself.
Though I’m sure we can find certain points on which we would all be aligned, I fear there is far too much on which we may not be. If one were to consider only the most frequent feelings being expressed on the forums, it would be easy to develop a skewed, overly-negative impression. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that Blizzard actively hated RP’ers, its story, and its game after reading what most often gets posted. And yet we often forget that human nature is to make the most noise when we are unhappy. When we are satisfied, we tend to stay largely quiet, content to enjoy whatever it is we’re consuming. So if the agitated and vocal contingent were to get most of what they want, how many quiet and content players would find themselves dissatisfied with those changes and therefore become the new wave of the agitated and vocal?
Before I say anything else, I think it’s important to state that I’m not trying to discourage conversation. I’ve just seen quite the push to rally behind a singular, monolithic agenda between this thread and the one on WrA’s forum. The RP community (and every community to some extent really) is notorious for ripping out its own throat and shooting itself in the foot. As with most Internet-based social platforms, the community and the media that facilitate it (forums, fan-sites, etc.) tend to stoke extreme emotion and a lot of hyperbole. I’ve witnessed, rather discouragingly, conversations over the years devolve into basically “this is what I personally want for the game/story/characters/features, and damn what anyone else wants or enjoys.”
With all of that in mind and our biases and patterns fully realized and understood, I hope we can see some positive change come from the community council. The fact that RP representatives have already begun to actively engage with the threads here and over on WrA is encouraging, and both players seem to have very calm and collected demeanors about them despite much of the cynicism being expressed toward and around them.
One last hope of mine in regards to conversations about what changes we as a community would like to see is that we all approach such conversations with open minds and with our emotions in check for the purpose of not immediately tearing down those who may not agree with us or want the same things as us. Maybe that’s asking a lot considering how things usually go, but it’s the only way I see anything productive coming from a figurative meeting of the RP minds.
From my point of view, the monolithic agenda is just getting more attention on the RP community. There will definitely be different viewpoints on how to do that, but I think the general idea is something we can all rally behind.
More playable races, customization, transmogs, player housing, etc. are all things we can hash out. We might not agree on how these additions should look, but I say the vast majority would be behind these additions.
I know some of my MG Horde peeps are making a pretty big docket of things to bring forth to the table as it were in addition to the things that have been brought forth already.
At the end of the day, we are all RP’ers and there is a wide variety of improvements that the overall community could agree upon. More emotes/animations (Idle, looping, etc), transmog, toy CD’s reduced if not eliminated and the toy’s effects buffed in turn, etc.
You get the gist
That said, Auhgag, hit me up on Discord when you can so we can coordinate this stuff. Discord is: Dragojev#2901
Not time sensitive, mind, but figure coordinating to collate everything would help.
(This is Jab’trah)
For sure, I can reach out later tonight!
I’m quite pleased no one from Moon Guard (Or WRA) were chosen to represent roleplayers on the community council. Both have toxic communities, just one is predominantly Alliance and the other predominantly Horde. If someone that was known had been chosen from either, the drama that would have unfolded would have been immeasurable. My best hope was they would pick someone from one of the smaller roleplay servers, the fact they have gone with two EU roleplayers from Argent Dawn is a positive development to me.
My big push would be for…
A) doing away with the armor type restrictions on transmogs. Their excuse about class outlines went out the window when they made it so any class could transmog to look like a Stormwind Guard. If my priest wants to mog the Kul Tiran guard plate, my priest should be able to mog the Kul Tiran guard plate. Its asinine that Stormwind is the only one you can do.
B) reviewing the cooldowns on toys. I know some you can’t because they serve PVE or PVP functions, but a great deal of them could have the cool down removed. Outside of the ones that have some PVE or PVP use, the others are only ever used by roleplayers. Give roleplayers what they want and stop with the arbitrary cooldowns.
C) more banners on mounts and such that aren’t generic Alliance or Horde. Would like to see some other parts of the factions like Kul Tiran, Tauren, Stromgarde, Forsake, etc. The Seabraid’s Stallion felt like the biggest waste to me, at first I was super excited but then I saw it wasn’t a Kul Tiran banner flying from the back but rather a lantern… which made zero sense, what, you trying to set my horse’s butt on fire?
I know people would like to see more playable races, but I think that might be too big of an ask. The way WoW currently has races setup with unique race abilities, you are asking for them to create new unique racial abilities and then balance those versus others. This may cause even more problems with the current faction imbalance with how they play. Hopefully cross faction raiding in the future will solve that, but problems such as the racial ability balancing make this a rather large lift to ask for. Especially when there is a lot of easier, lower hanging fruit to pick for now.
Agreed. I don’t think anyone on MG-H or MG-A is suited to represent players as the more outspoken people tend to represent themselves. While I have nothing in particular to pitch, I see banners being a recurring request. For some reason a lot of these are obsessed with the Argent Crusade, but are just as restrictive as what we already have considering the options are no more broader than if there were only two banners.
I think something that Blizzard would benefit from doing is looking back on Diablo 3 and its customizable banners. The banners of Diablo 3, while possessing their own limitations, are pretty customizable from sigils to shapes, most of which are unlocked by just playing the game. I think they could absolutely learn from that. Acquire new emblems and banner types from reputation, or even earning some of the more villainous types through clearing relevant content, such as an Illidari flag for beating Illidan or a Scourge flag for killing the Lich King.
We’ve got at least a taste of customized banners with the guild banners used on some mounts, would be interesting to see that customization with factions in lore added in.
While I don’t engange in rp, I do have some suggestions that would improve character customization.
Such as an identity-tag system that can allow for more names by how your character identifies. For trolls it would be nice to pick a niche clan or something. Dwarves it would be nice to be a wildhammer dwarf, since you already got the tattoos. Some of the racial identities also limit race/class combos. Like a Mag’har warlock wouldn’t exist, but a Blackrock Warlock or Shattered Hand Warlock may be more plausible, getting rid of such voicelines that refer to being Mag’har (uncorrupted). A black rock destruction warlock would look so cool. I also know many people would like to identify as high elf on alliance as those are frequent threads of wanting stuff like paladins for void elves and this would help legitimize those choices. On horde it would be nice to play something like a blackrock warlock for me, or a grimtotem mage/warlock. My druid uses the sandfury skins and it would be nice to pick a clan for my troll and change it if I change the barbershop options as needed.
Here is a look at how my dark iron paladin looks like when she uses an Orb of Deception
Pulling of a burning blade shaman esque look. I also hope you can help support the idea of class skins as it would be nice to play some classes like paladins with different sources of magics. I myself like the fire and water versions of paladins. Love the shamanistic take and spells, opening up nice gameplay options and tanking options for races that need it.
I would also suggest pushing for no lore restriction servers. Perhaps some rpers would be happier to have less limited servers by canon lore restrictions. And it opening up some fun stories. I tend to enjoy the gameplay over lore as well I would enjoy servers like that, but I would wager it gives rpers some freedoms, like interacting with opposite factions, being able to play a race like dwarves on horde, or tauren on alliance/blood elves.
Posting the big megadoc docket that Rommal and others have been working on for folks to view and look at
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1clLauPHROvrnkA2RsycwmHZlLlY6i2YWQOAwOsjn4FY/edit
Alliance suggestions would be very welcome!
I do think that the lack of faith in basically everyone else on both servers that people are displaying is hilarious, if typical. But the thing is, who is going to say the things that you guys are listing that you want to the developers if MG and WRA are shut out of the Community Council on account of…what, spite? On the assumption that there’s not one decent person among the lot of us?
Now that’s not to say that we’re not obviously a crab bucket, we are. Anyone who posted on their main there and was like "I’m from MG and I’m here to speak for everyone from my server! 
" would have a mailbox full of “you don’t speak for me you’re not my dad!” in about ten minutes. But Community Council people have the option of posting on an alt, and it’s just plain weird the way that people from Argent Dawn keep introducing themselves and there’s still not a single person who’s spoken up about being from MG or WRA.
I would rather that the ideas that people have listed so far and the ones that are unique to our servers and the US actually be heard than to immediately fatalistically shoot ourselves in the foot by declaring every single person on both servers a lost cause who wouldn’t deserve to be there.
There is an AD individual who is looking at our feedback and ideas and is going to make a big post about them, so thankfully we’re not going to be unheard. I did find it kind of peculiar though that the only RPers chosen were EU players.
I also think it’s worth pointing out that the idea that MG and WRA are the only RP servers with drama is blatantly wrong. I’ve been to AD. The people there are incredibly friendly and welcoming, but they have some of the same issues with drama and toxicity as we do. It’s not something inherent to US RP.
I have no doubt that there are people from MG and WRA who would abuse the community council and turn it into some sort of weird status symbol, but I think for the most part MG and WRA players would be mature about it.
Hope more RPers get involved on the Community Council! 
No need to respond, I deleted my post, this isn’t the place for me to go off about how MG/WRA don’t deserve places on the community council due to the prevalence of the anonymous hate/harassment site.