This is an excellent capstone to kind of polish this all off and I appreciate everything you’d written because it’s 100% true and what I’ve been really pushing on since my first post as well as other things.
I’m hoping that the people who -can- effect change do look at this post and find the merits in it I know I don’t speak for anyone other than myself, but given what I know and what I feel we’re capable of, I think we could find something and will find something, it’s just finding those sweet spots.
I remember that Orgrimmar didn’t have chairs. But I thought that maybe things had changed since I last heard that. I surely wasn’t about to go around looking for chairs.
Although, right, that is another reason why Lady Vanaelia is not a fan of that dusty, arid, spiky, testosterone pit she was forced to endure for a time. Anar’alah…have you people not heard of libraries?
Some of the comments in here arn’t needed at all TBF and kinda shine a bad light on both sides of the fence.
Let people enjoy themselves… Is it sometimes easier for things on Alliance? Yes. But Horde side also has some good walk up RP and community RP. Just look for it… it’s not hard.
You have to think that you’re also speaking on others behalves when you say that RP is incredibly hard to find horde side for A LOT of players to interact with.
Take your own advice in that case.
Again, that’s partly your vibes that continue on.
Like… this is what you should have been saying those times.
Yes, but then you say
A lot of people don’t want to treat Roleplay or the process of getting it like a job, similarly applying for a guild they don’t want it to be like a job application.
Horde RP in general is struggling. Not just here but on WrA, too.
A lot of people have touched on a lot of good points here, and others have done nothing but throw shade.
I sort of wanted to reiterate a few things, though. This is coming from someone who has played on both sides of the fence, on both servers, for over 10 years now - since 2009, baby. And who, for more than half of that, mained Horde on Moon Guard.
The server imbalance and divide. The problem here is tbat, for years now, people have said to go Alliance on MG and Horde on WrA. Most people did exactly that. This was a huge reason why Alliance died out on WrA. WrA is already objectively smaller than MG is, and when one side is bustling and you are busting your butt every day for attendance… well, it was a matter of time before people all moved sides. Many of the bigger guilds now on MG-A moved from WrA-A.
1.a. People want to be where the people are. Touching on the above – this mentality built a stronger community on one side or the other, depending on server. Unlike other content on this game, people need physical bodies for roleplay. People also will take the path of least resistance to get what they want. And while there may be a point of pride for your faction and seever, understand most people don’t have this. They don’t want the work. They want to just log in and have opportunities there. Clear. Present. Available at all hours.
Aging playerbase. Most of the guilds I was a part of on MG-H have been gone for years. Remember when Silvermoon on both servers was bustling? Well. I do. Nowadays there is rarely anyone in that city on either server. And most faces and guilds that used to keep the prettier (and more RP preferential) city alive have, slowly, aged out and left. And that’s not even touching on drama blowouts that caused the same. This also touches on what I’ll mention below with faction issues related to story.
Pretty faces, pretty spaces. Alliance objectively has a better main city than Horde for roleplay and Org is absolutely terrible for it. I know it seems like most of my points before this one were directly targeted at MG-H in particular, but this one is for Horde across all servers. When alliance got 900 flavors of elves, especially ones that looked, and effectively were, blood elves, it drew more people to the path of least resistance. Noe they can play prettier races in the main, prettier city.
The story/expansion. Many people were OOCly repulsed by the actions of warchief after warchief. Garrosh was bad enough, but Sylvanas was really the nail in the coffin there. It felt, for a very long time l, that to play Horde was to be forced into the villain role. Add to the fact that, as stated, the population on all sides fell before Dragonflight because it was just. Bad times. Dragonflight is one of the better expansions in general, and definitely the best at least since Legion. So more people in general are back and playing.
The state of Horde rp in general. Its not looking so hot here on WrA side, either, as I said earlier. And much of that is owed to the above points, but to a lesser degree. RP hotspots for walkups and just -sitting in chairs- are nearly nonexistent, and what there happens to be in Org, is shameful and mostly spammed out with OOC chatter half the time. Or worse, dead silence.
Cross-server guilds. This could be a boon or a bane, but people who roll Horde on MG often lean on their established communities they have Alliance-side when they roll a character on Horde. This could help the community if they use those characters for outreach and to try and bridge the fsction divide, but most don’t. Most are comfortable in their spaces and with the people they already know, and use those characters instead for cross-faction rp and stories that are, primarily, based on established RP circles on Alliance.
I want to stress here, again, that none of these points are the direct fault of anyone running guilds or rping Horde or Alliance or anything like that. I think there has been enough pointing fingers for one thread.
Instead, i think it best to say this and wrap up my already long comment.
tl,dr: Horde doesn’t have a thriving community when it comes to roleplay. Maybe it’s getting better. Maybe it isn’t.
But many of the real reasons behind it are simply out of one person’s – or even one community’s – control. Instead of pointing fingers and bashing the other side, acknowledge what it is and accept it. I know that I’ve had to. And also acknowledge that this is something that has been the result of over a decade of issues, many outside anyone’s control.
We’re all the same, generally. A bunch of nerds just trying to find fun. That’s my long-winded two cents, anyhow.
To the person who said “ The great thing about some of these complaints, is that anyone can be the agent of change and create the very things they are complaining doesn’t exist.” this is NOT true. As someone who ventured between Horde and Alliance the Horde side refuses to budge from their ways. They don’t accept help and make it impossible to do things outside of what they want. That’s the reason they have multiple discords for their own community with half the moderators of each blocked from one or the other. All ego.
And to top it off why would anyone want to sink time into it when it isn’t wanted but on specific terms? Thats like doing a second job that doesn’t conform or agree with any choice be it good or bad.
Many people like myself have nothing but negative experiences with MG Horde. Since long before its decline into the sporadic mess it is today. You who remain will spit at the idea that people have tried and didn’t give their all but we have.
I have no doubt that you, and others, have tried. And I think that it’s not productive to say things like “you didn’t try hard enough”, even in kinder words and with the best of intentions behind it. Which is why i wanted to offer up a bigger picture for the state of Horde rp in general that kept drama and the “duty” of Horde leaders/players at least mostly out of the equation.
As long as there are people, there will be drama, disagreements, and people blocking and disliking one another. It’s absolutely present on Alliance side, too.
The difference is that Alliance is big enough to allow communities within the community and for most players to be blissfully unaware of one another as well as the drama. With Horde, its too small, and the drama and divides are much more apparent.
No the issue is horde “leaders” only accept their way as the path forward. They shoot themselves in the foot at almost every turn.
That isn’t to say some good RP never happens. It does. I’ve made plenty of friends during neutral events that to this day somehow remain on MG horde side but overall it’s a real piece of work. To put it nicely.
Oh yeah, absolutely! I agree and I think we are on the same page here. A lot of the leadership on both sides of the faction divide has drama and can be, for lack of better words, stubborn and set in their ways, even to their detriment.
But to the average, fresh-eyed player just rolling into town, they don’t see the behind-the-scenes problems that you’re describing. (Not that they don’t exist, because they definitely do!) Most rpers who pop into MG-H only witness the fallout of what you’re describing; which is that the Horde side is fractured and broken. That in turn makes it seem very small – even smaller than it is.
Why don’t you post on your Dwarven Vanguard toon? Also, don’t try to act as though you actually want Horde RP to thrive, your posts in other threads have indicated as such. Your own faction bias is showing.
Tread carefully, vulpera. If you continue making points calling for putting aside differences and working towards a common goal, taking responsibility (not fault, but responsibility) for the reality of how things currently are, and reminding people that new players to a scene are indeed new?
I will take that as a personal affront. You’re stepping into Lady Vanaelia turf.
I absolutely agree with your earlier points. Other people have also mentioned an aging player base. That happens on both sides, but at least the Alliance has several new faces showing up. They can be good, bad, or average, but at least there are people. There is a pool to draw new talent from.
I worry that when the last of the Horde RP community leaders find other ways to spend their time? That there won’t be anything left to fill the gap.
I also think people on both factions (though, really, in this case, it’s the Alliance) need to be a bit more sensitive to how much damage was done to the RP scene by the Pandaria-Draenor-BFA combo. People on both sides take things a touch too seriously at times, and I do not think it is beyond the realm of possibility that some Horde players (not characters, but players) have had to deal with Alliance transfers trying to disrupt the RP tone they’re already struggling to make work with “You guys committed genocide, you’re all culpable, you’re all horrible”. I can understand being hesitant about accepting newcomers. Not because you don’t want more people, but because you don’t want people there to - pardon the pun - troll your Horde RP.
I understand as I have seen this happen on Alliance side with what a friend refers to as “sriracha draenei”. It can be very difficult to progress a story about a repentant eredar, or one who has feelings about things if you get people essentially having OOC criticisms in their RP. When that person who usually RPs some uneducated bumpkin from the sticks is suddenly up to date on the sociopolitical structure of the Burning Legion.
I get it. Alliance players looking to RP on Horde side need to get that, too. The War campaign for the Horde was offensive, to all my brother and sisters on Team Lion. It undermined huge parts of what the Horde - especially the Forsaken - was based on. That free will thing? You know how orcs are supposed to be about honorable combat? You would be surprised how little of that there was.
So, Alliance side? I’m just saying understand a bit more where the Horde might be coming from, when trying to keep the RP they’ve been busting their butts to keep alive.
Just keep in mind that–
…yes. This.
I don’t think it’s impossible to thrive here, but I also don’t think it’s going to be a quick fix. But it’s worth it.
I’m not even active on that character. That guilds great btw, 10/10 recommend.
My words come from my experiences. Long nights spent over the course of weeks and months trying to help to be shunned. Only reason I typically main alliance is because of friends.
Do better before you come poking and antagonizing.
I want it to thrive. Be it here or on WRA. It why I’m switching almost entirely to horde characters. The barn wasteland of MG just isn’t good for actually playing the game imo. Worlds empty.
There are long standing issues with its community that won’t go away because they act like it’s nothing.
So my understanding from this thread, entirely from the Horde players mind you, is that MG-H rp is incredibly closed off, creativity is risky because you might be shunned for lorebreaking, and commenting on how closed off things are gets a lot of condescension and hostility, a lot of pride in not being easily accessible, or denial that events in isolated locales are harder to find than being located in a city, and that the only response from anyone who can’t find what they want from very narrow niches is “make it yourself”. The Horde players in this thread have communicated to me that a weird fun idea will be met with hostility and blocking, and that any difficulty with making it to events or finding my place in the current communities means I’m expected to have the time and energy to make something broader and bigger.
The behavior in this thread makes me very wary not even about making a new horde character here, that boat’s fully sailed, but even just participating in further MG-hosted Horde events cross-realm.
it’s far from closed off. More that those guilds who took the time to build themselves up aren’t going to deal with more bad acts from outside sources. Many of these people who speak of trying to take part in rp events yet are never seen at those advertised. And the venom from some of the Horde is from many years of dealing with bad actors, as well as the usual " MG Horde is dead. " So yes, it may seem off-putting to see such a response, know that such tongue lashings are justified.
I’m not trying to be argumentative here - came across this thread after returning to my Horde roots during Timerunning - what do you think the answer is? To prevent the initial backlash for people who are trying to participate on H-side for the first time OR are returning to Horde?
I played Horde for 17 years. It feels more comfortable to me than Alliance, but I’ve started investing more in A-Side because that’s where the wealth of random encounters is. I would love to be able to walk around Orgrimmar and experience what I do in Stormwind, but how do we make that happen? Is it even possible to? I could join a guild on Horde-side but now I worry it’s going to be hard to get into one or I will misstep in such a way that I’m characterized as a bad actor.
I don’t want to approach the Horde MG community like that, I want to feel like I can give it a chance and be given a chance in turn. But what is the answer for newbies or newly-returned if the initial reaction is that we’re going to be two-stepping through eggshells?
That is one reason I - and a few others - have tried to let a lot of MG-H rp posters know that that’s what it’s sounding like.
But reading a bit between the lines of what they have written, and taking some context clues from this (and other forums posts I’ve seen), I think this is a bit of making the most of what they have.
I get the sense that there is a desire for new people, and that they would like, perhaps, new storylines or narratives or goals. But not at the expense of what they have put a huge amount of effort into creating.
I think - this is only my observation, mind you - that while there is indeed that stereotyped Horde RPer, the kind that thinks Sylvanas didn’t go far enough or Garrosh should have Garroshed a little harder, there are also more people who would like some grounded storytelling that actually goes a bit more into the narrative than ‘death to the living’.
I hope that this thread - and in game comments and discussion like it - can help bridge a kind of divide. That maybe we can get to a better place of understanding where the other person is coming from.
Again, I understand your read. My first comment in this thread was markedly similar to yours, realizing that this reception was, at best, icy. But many of the later conversations became not just civil, but downright helpful.
I hope that you can give Team Red another chance, and I hope that they can make you - and everyone else - feel a bit more welcome.
“Justified” is a strong word, here.
I think the history of what’s happened can explain the sentiment, but I don’t really see how an off-putting tongue lashing is going to help…well, anyone.
How does being confrontational and closed off help grow a community?
Responding with venom to people trying to join seems, at best, counterproductive. How is that going to increase the number of people taking part in Horde RP? Isn’t driving people away just going to lead to more people saying ‘MG Horde is dead’?
Someone just said they feel like there are huge barriers to entry, and they feel like they’re not welcome.
That is a sentiment that has been repeated several times in this thread. By and large, these people are not trying to attack your community. They are telling you what their experience has been like, and what perceptions they have gained from their experiences.
There are people joining RP for the first time. There are people returning after several expansions. Is this…do you really want this to be their introduction to the Horde RP community on Moon Guard?
I think it might be a good idea to take a step back and ask what the goal is, here.
