I rarely ever see any of the little guys around. Dwarves moreso than gnomes, but even combined they’re don’t nearly make up a handful of the amount of human and elven players out there.
So do you guys feel you get quality RP as your races? Gnomes especially considering most view them as comic relief characters.
Other RPers, do you ever actually approach gnomes or dwarves for RP? If no, why not?
This is a valid conversation, but no one is gonna admit to ignoring them. Most people get upset that you imply that they’re only elf/human/draenei RPers, even if it’s true.
Having characters that are also less popular races, and having talked to a gnome about this very thing - they get written off as comic relief characters. I see dwarves getting taken more seriously, but the dwarves also decided that dealing with this issue in stormwind wasn’t worth their time, and most serious dwarf RPers I’m aware of are a part of the dwarf-only RP community.
It’s a shame, really. I want to make a gnome and dwarf but I also don’t want to be ignored in RP. 
A lot off the gnomes, especially, I’ve seen have grumpy ooc sections so I’m just like, aww. Little guys. People are being sucky towards you.
Well for what it’s worth, the sort of people that are gonna ignore you are gonna either be people you don’t want to RP anyway, or they’re only out for that one thing in RP and aren’t willing to admit it. shrug
So you could just look at it as a big filtering system. You will have to walkup more often, if not everytime, but I’ve talked to several people who have been successful at it and enjoy it. Just comes with downsides, though there’s an argument that every race comes with downsides.
I enjoy rping my dwarves! But have to agree they are probably the least played race rp wise! Khaz Modan needs some love RP wise!
I kinda chuckle to myself quite often as most of the RP I see in Ironforge is from other races. Lol.
I look at it this way, In a world that is so “serious” at times, I have no problem misfirin’ a spell once in a while if it gets people to laugh.
For Thelsamar!
It really is sad how the gnomes are treated but the fault lies not only with those who look down on them (and other races like the vulpera) but Blizzard in how they brought said races into the game. In both cases, they were not treated seriously, given decent lore and thus were/are looked down on as comic relief and or with other negative feelings. Many people can’t and won’t look past their prejudices and don’t care if there is a great rp’er or just a really cool person to chat with behind their character.
I’ll be completely honest, every time I play a Gnome, I seem to attract people with what I’ll call a “particular fondness” for the race which has really turned me off playing them. But they are one of my favorite races and I tend to specifically seek them out in roleplay.
For Dwarves, I don’t see too many random ones hanging around to approach. Most often I’ll just see like 3-4 members of a Dwarven racial guild hanging out together and it feels weird to approach them.
Never really saw a reason to discriminate against Gnomes or Dwarves. To be fair, though, I 'm rarely the one to initiate things these days anyway. Can’t help but feel some sympathy if there are many cases of them being dismissed, especially as one who plays a lot of Pandaren. Some days sitting in Stormwind most contact I get from folks is passing pets and boops; totally fine in moderation, but somewhat annoying when that’s not what you’re there for.
I think more people would play gnomes if transmog didn’t look so weird on them. It feels like every amror set is designed around how it will look on Humans, orcs and belfs. I think if gnomes got more gear actually designed for them like that racial sets that more people would play them.
A lot of us see it as a good thing. Because haven’t gotten the night elf treatment. Would be nice to get a little more of course as a Dwarf Rper and a All Dwarf guild. Hopefully next expac provides that.
I will. >:)
Well… nah that’s sort of a lie. I don’t ignore gnomes, I just rarely approach them because the few that I’ve managed to stumble into were all joke characters or meant for obvious slapstick RP that I’m not interested in, and the few dwarves I’ve seen while in Stormwind were using RL racist/homophobic slurs and trying to justify it as being “just RP”. (Why dwarves? Wish I knew.)
I won’t say “no” to an entire race or class just because of a few bad apples-- I play a death knight, after all, so I know the life-- but I will definitely give them the side-eye and some extra scrutiny before engaging.
Gnomes have a hard time fitting in seriously, generally because they haven’t been explored to any great depth. They don’t have a strong place in the overall story of warcraft, and they are thematically very different from other Alliance races; which makes them an outlier even amongst their peers.
Which is unfortunate, because as a race they’re supposed to be among the most naturally inquisitive, hospitable and intelligent creatures on Azeroth. But all we get is the tinkering and engineering.
Outside of that, Gnome RPers have a strange reputation. I think everyone has had multiple experiences with rude, disruptive or uncomfortably oversexualised walk-ups with gnomes. It happens with other game races too, but Gnomes seem to have a concentrated number.
Interesting. And good to know! I’m new to MG and looking to start RPing on a couple of characters I’ve created. One of them is a dwarf…what’s your impression of dwarf RPers and/or RP characters on Moon Guard?
I think Dwarves have their own reputations that can hold them back, but there is also a far greater background of excellent dwarf lore for people to pull inspiration from (LotR, D&D, Warhammer). People tend to like Dwarves and like seeing them around in roleplay, but people don’t tend to play them as much for a variety of reasons.
There is a lot of history - as was said above - with people playing them as overly belligerent or obnoxiously drunk all the time. Any cultural identity in game can have its problems, just less people play gnomes and dwarves so the bad apples tend to stick out more.
Well said and, honestly it makes sense to me that it would be like that for dwarves and RP players. I love dwarves, even though they do seem to often be used as memes and tropes in fantasy settings. I think they have enough solid lore in the WoW l, Lotr and Warhammer universes to be taken seriously if/when they want to, but yeah–that requires players who want to play them more seriously and other players who are open to interacting with them.
I’m going to give it a try though. I have some long-term dwarf characters from ED I am planning on moving over. Additionally, this druid here is my new main (essentially a copy from my long-term main on my old server) and his backstory involves being half Kaldorei and half Wildhammer dwarf, so…we’ll see how that is received :P; I’m still fresh and new to MG and don’t know the culture yet.
Thanks for the input, see you around!
Considering 80% of our species was wiped out in Gnomeregan and unlike the Long-Leggedies we weren’t spread out all over the world the way humans and elves are it’s no wonder gnomes are a little rare.
Definitely make the jump. I did it several months back coming from ED myself. MG has been great!
I decided to give Night Elf a try when I first came over here but saw this thread and decided that I also think dwarves can be played in plenty of ways (besides the same old belligerent drunk, lol). Night Elf started making me feel a little to stuffy. Lol.
Besides, we need more dwarven representation here. Cheers.
Fer Ironforge!
From my experience:
Blizzard has an insistency on treating dwarves and gnomes as comic-relief characters. Gnomes have always been portrayed as nasally-voiced, eccentric, quirky inventors whose creations tend to backfire on them (bonus points if it’s in a comedic manner). Dwarves are treated as brash, belligerent, loud drunks with awful, awful, awful quasi-Scottish “accents”.
The problems in point #1 bleed into a lot of roleplayers via osmosis - they’re attempting to emulate what they’re seeing in the actual game. My general rule of thumb is to player the character, not the uniform (or stereotype, in this case). How many times have you seen a dwarf roleplayer nudge their way into an interaction, only to say, “OCH AYE LADDEH, GIVE ME A PINT 'ER I’LL BASH YER BLOODY HEAD IN, BY ME BEARD AN ANCESTORS I’M WILLIN TAE FIGHT"? It’s a redundant obnoxiousness that results in eye-rolling and causes people to believe that dwarves are just carbon-copy cutouts.
Power fantasy. For some reason, roleplayers have this penchant for believing that, if your character is taller than another character, or is “bigger” than them, then that means they’re automatically more powerful than them. Nevermind the fact that the race isn’t always won by the swift, nor the battle to the strong. (And if you see someone who behaves like this, you should probably avoid them like the plague.) That being said, I’ve always felt like people just prefer to play as tall, handsome/beautiful heroic types like humans/elves, or muscular powerhouses like orcs, rather than squat races.
However, given the fact that Blizzard has a record of demolishing the lore of nearly any race that is given the spotlight, I am content with being “ignored”, even though dwarf paladins did not get their own custom charger until BFA came out. I named mine Blossom.
On my old realm, they used to plan out and hold some really cool cross-faction RP events. They were a blast but there was always a group of goblins that did nothing more than walk around and puke all over people. It was their attempt at the RP part of RP-PvP. Granted it was usually them trying to pick a fight but I never understood it. Lol.
But, the major dwarf guild on that old realm, now they would do things like hold diving contests in Thousand Needles. That was some really fun and interactive RP! Had a ball with those type of events!