When milling about I often see people’s OOC section describe a love for World RP, something I also enjoy, but generally I see these people in Org, or if I’m on an Ally alt, Stormwind.
So, how do you discover people out in the wild, or encourage other hubs? The only solution in my mind is to just, hope you bump into someone while strolling through Kalimdor.
Maybe I’m projecting but I think social anxiety is at the center of the issue. It can be intimidating to approach a stranger.
Easy, you RP your character doing the mundane chores and dailies the game has you do. However, you’ll notice most if not all World RP is improvised and you’ll hear all manner of excuses as to why people don’t do or like improvised RP. I love impromptu and improvised RP, though.
Honestly, the best way to encourage World RP is to, and this is going to sound crass, play with yourself.
If you fully act not as a player but as a character in the world itself, the greater your chances are you’ll get someone else interested enough to see who that rando is talking to and suck them into things as well.
But like you said, you’re kind of just hoping someone happens by. Otherwise you’re just playing pretend by yourself with no guarantee someone will come by. That said, it does work.
I still have fond memories of the idle conversations my first character - a Priest - had on Thorium Brotherhood while leveling fishing on the border between Elwynn and Westfall. People would happen by, and we’d chat IC.
Honestly, some of the biggest hurdles to World RP are nothing to do with the RP itself but rather the game. Thanks to phasing, it’s incredibly hard to do random RP in cool parts of the world without having a party already made. I’d love to just hang out at Temple of the White Tiger forever, but there’s no telling if anyone will actually see me based on whether or not they did the quests there.
start by making a decent expansion
Yes, yes. Game is bad. Yet here we all are anyway.
One of my favorite memories in the game was of questing in Sholazar Basin a few years ago, and happening upon a belf warlock who was just chatting away with her summoned demon as she walked down the road. It was the kind of thing I’d assumed always happened on an RP server when I first started playing. Makes the world feel so much more alive.
I always tell myself I’m going to do something like that, maybe near a quest hub, just to see what happens. But being terminally shy and anxious is such a pain to work through.
World RP on any noticeable scale basically only works with a guild or guilds, or just groups, who network and plan it.
We personally have just been hanging out in Tyr’s Hand lately, using it as proxy for some other Crusader settlement.
Real talk, the hardest part of those Priestly interactions was typing “Hello there.” in / say.
For those who want World RP, there has to be the courage to put themselves out there.
Community has to decide new hubs - and use them.
Also, the Community function should be utilized more. I remember when it first came out, everyone and their uncle was starting RP Communities, but they all fizzled out.
My hope was there would be Communities of different “flavours” of RP. Crusaders, Mercs, Socialites, Spooky Shadow Magic People, etc. A way for people to engage with certain RPers and types of stories while still staying in their guilds.
I’m curious what you mean by “improvised RP”. Isn’t that all RP? I don’t think I’ve done anything like “planned RP” before, unless I’m misunderstanding you.
Also good replies all around folks. It’s reassuring to see that others have fond memories of bumping into strangers in the middle of nowhere.
Maybe using Communities for specific hubs, so you can see if anyone is there, could be useful?
ive never seen world rp happen so im decently certain its not real
but the way id encourage to happen is genuinely like anything else. you have to do it yourself to see it get anywhere, and while youre at it youve gotta realize its not gonna come easy.
my main thing with world rp is that the world of warcraft is really big. azeroth is huge. it’d be a very time consuming thing to run into someone who is both an rper and actually looking to bump into another rper on the road. something like this is just very difficult.
the best way for me to see it happening is definitely through communities, guilds, or other places (like off of social media, discord, etc). it’s not something at all reliable spontaneously.
Step 1: add known rper to your friends list
Step 2: stalk them like a paparazzi and jump out from behind a bush to forsooth at them.
World RP!
Four words: Scan for Roleplay button.
Sometimes if I spot a high level in an area doing dailies, I will whisper them and ask for contact if their TRP matches something I am looking for.
You really just need competent Guild masters from local guilds, that can bring people out for balance and good RP/WPVP, that’s how healthy rivalries and roleplaying happens.
Having healthy guilds, good GMS is the key from a player perspective, server issues over all balance issues - most of it blizzard could fix, if they wanted to.
Phasing ruins everything tbh.
back in FFXIV we have a fellowship called the Wandering Roleplayers where people would place something that was pretty much an advert of their character, where they are and how long they would be there. It was something to promote getting out of the city(mostly Ul’dah’s Quicksand) and while it still kinda suffers the same problem, the premise was a good idea. But like someone else says, phasing can be a problem…
This too. Tbh, sharding/phasing is a huge issue this xpac. I’m constantly disappointed how little use Boralus gets these days.
No kidding, i did a test sometime back with some friends, I was standing at one spot in Boralus, so were all my friends… But in all different shards of Boralus, we were not grouped… so 10 different boralus shards.
World organic RP isn’t possible with so much phasing sadly.
Oh man I always forget that’s a thing.