How's Horde RP here?

Moon Guard
163

That is very kind of you say. Thank you.

I will admit I felt horrible when I read that you don’t feel comfortable in a place where you have played for longer than most people have played the game. I don’t like seeing people not able to enjoy something.

I will also concede that I do not know enough about what the state of RP is like Horde-side, but, again…it is difficult to find. I do not want to pretend like I am not one of those people who saw no one in Orgrimmar, didn’t encounter anyone while leveling, then just figured “…oh”, and went back to Stormwind.

Progress may be incremental, but it is still progress. Some people may need to bite the bullet and do a little reaching out. Even if it’s just saying in General chat “Hey, does anyone in Org want to RP? Trying to get a feel for Horde RP.” You will, of course, be met with “Horde RP is dead rotflmao†”, “noone rps nubcakes”, etc. But you might get a few bites.

One of my friends that I talk to daily? Came about because they were asking about how to find RP in Stormwind, as they felt a bit lost and someone they had RPed with kind of ditched them. I made a point to find them (Lady Vanaelia is oddly good at that), and we’ve been cool for years.

I hope that you do find that RP, and things work out for you. I hope it works out for everyone. Even pretzel-boy, who is on the thinnest of ice.

More kind words. You’ll make me blush, you rotting abomination–

In all seriousness, though, while I appreciate the sentiment? This wouldn’t have been possible without all the people who have come out and expressed where they were coming from, too.

I was hesitant to even say anything until Pretzel Prophet stepped up and said “Hey, this is feeling really unwelcoming”. That is incredibly difficult to do, especially if you’re not necessarily in a position of leverage. But it led to more people being more open about their experiences, on both sides of the line.

I try very hard to be fair. And I try to figure out where people are coming from. I assume - sometimes naively - that other people are being sincere in their sentiments.

A lot of people get incredibly frustrated if it feels like they’re not being heard, so I try to let people know I hear them. It just makes it easier for me, frankly. Which is what matters the most.

#ElfLife

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164

I’m happy to hear that. War Wolves has just been a wonderful place for me and a great fit. Just such a friendly, supportive group of people who love orc and Horde lore and are excited to share it and live it.

If you ever see anyone with our guild tag, please feel free to say hello regardless! We randomly met (and maybe beat up) some half orcs at ToA last year and now them and their guild, a neutral alliance founded guild, has become great allies and friends of ours and has led some really great roleplay about orc traditions vs more modern views.

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165

I just transferred a few of my remaining chars from WRA to MG H. I have to say I am enjoying it so far! I hope the population will increase over time. I’m not going anywhere! :heart:

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166

At least on WRA - and it might be different on MG I don’t know - the Tauren groups have primarily just wanted to play with other Tauren. Thunder Bluff event things would be really neat and I’ve been going back and forth on whether to transfer or if there’s a point to doing so, since this character’s lived in TB for years and assimilated in to the culture in a large way.

I’ve seen mentions of a lot of criminal/black market/war related groups in here but that just isn’t my thing. That and actually joining a guild upfront is a bit iffy if you don’t have much of a feel for them already – Are there Tauren culture events done on any kind of regular basis?

167

I mean…

Why?

It’s a city, it has a tavern or two and open areas and buildings. When Stormwind gets phased for patches and events everyone dogpiles into the tiny, dark, cobwebby Darkshire. There’s sometimes some mental gymnastics as to why a character would randomly decide to go to Darkshire, just like there’s some backing into the logic of why a character would be in Stormwind in the first place, but people generally are pretty good about figuring it out for their own characters.

But if people prefer another city and go there and hang out consistently, other people will come no matter where it is, it just has to be consistent. Way back in the day when I played Horde on another server they had a lot of people who hung around in Ratchet. It was spurred by a guild of people who ran a nightly tavern there, consistently, rain or shine, for years. MG-A has fairly frequent events out in the world that get advertised in /yell in the city or in the Gnews, tavern nights or fight events or balls/parties, but those kind of things somewhat depend on having a well-used hub - either a city in the game or a Discord that a lot of people use to advertise events (MG-A has these too).

Like I said before, the large guilds that exist in MG-H currently, as long as they’re satisfied with their current membership and methods for finding new members, shouldn’t necessarily be under any obligation to build up a mode of RP that they have no intention of using and don’t like. But I’ve also seen waves and phases where people on MG-H currently start advertising trying to drum up more participation and encourage people to roll up characters there only to offer them nothing in terms of engagement, I suppose in the hopes that the people who do show up will interact with each other and end up building up a walkup scene on their own. I don’t know that that helps anyone.

MG-H doesn’t have much to offer newcomers who don’t do their research first. It just doesn’t. If people decided that they all really liked to hang out in Dalaran or Valdrakken or Thunder Bluff instead, and did it consistently, maybe with a regular series of events but made themselves available there daily, then people would come. But both asking the guilds already there to do that if they’re not interested and vaguely hoping that other people would spontaneously decide to do it isn’t going to change anything. I’ve even seen it suggested that MG-ALLIANCE should be responsible for building up MG-H walkup which is equally silly. In the past when people have gotten a “Revive MG-H Walkup” bug they get bored pretty quickly of long swaths of not many people being around because they don’t give it real effort or real time to develop.

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168

Stormtalon actually just posted to roll out story circles and Kohatan to my knowledge has been hard at work trying to develop Tauren culture, including a language lexicon. I’d say if you’re curious, pop your head in on that night and see how it sticks!

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/mg-h-stormtalon-story-circle/1869963

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169

Thank you kindly!

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170

My favorite RP was always in The Drag of Orgrimmar, which is even better now with the city revamp. I think it’s not quite like Stormwind in terms of conducting congregation but I think anything’s possible.

I’ve always RPed in Orgrimmar (or did back when it was much scuffier) and I guess I don’t understand the city not being good for walk-up RP, because I think it is, but in a drastically different way than Stormwind is set up. It’s possible to make some hubs but it’d take work and consistency from a group, and that’s the rub, isn’t it?

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171

The other bar in the Valley of Strength is, well, the Valley of Strength. It would be like trying to set up in the Trade District. Valley of Wisdom has some potential, but is pretty small as well. The Drag does too, but again, small and narrow with no real place to be. Valley of Spirits has some potential, but also has no real place to be or just exist. So Org is just plainly laid our poorly to help facilitate RP. Not saying it cant happen or shouldnt, but those are some of the struggles we content with.

Also Org would be just as phased as SW is if we have the same numbers. So thats a good problem to have. Yeah, its annoying but its a good problem.

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172

I think you’ve been very fair. You rightfully have held us to task on some things that I agree are an issue… and I won’t say I’m not embarrassed by the behavior of some of our own, but I cannot control everyone. Toxic rhetoric poisons the well and makes discourse impossible, so I really appreciate you sort of breaking through that and raising points that I feel are very fair and sympathetic, but somewhat of a reality check as well.

As I said before, I hope that the right eyes have seen what you’ve said and I’ll be doing what I can and dripping that honey into whatever ears I can.

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Alternatives would be Suramar (which Alliance also uses for proxies and hubs), Lordaeron, Darkspear Islands, Zandalar, The hold in Boralean, I can’t remember the name. Thrallmar, Silvermoon, etc.

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Funnily enough, it is an absolute -pain- to get people into Lordaeron. The fact the BFA version is locked behind Shadowlands makes it pulling teeth to get people there. Lordaeron Night Market has been hosted in old Lordaeron because of this.

Not disputing, just a funny thing. Shadowlands is such cancer. :dizzy_face:

175

One of those situations where sharding/phasing has helped the game quite a bit, but is an absolute wall to surmount if you’re trying to do things like pretendy funtime.

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176

The Tauren guilds I e ran into on WRA are completely opposite of what you mentioned. Sure there are more Tauren involved but they’re open to others. In fact several even allow other races into the fold. All the while pushing for rp in the open world, though bringing life to Thunder Bluff and Mulgore itself.

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177

Yeah. Maybe they’ll fix that in TWW. I’ll test it out when the Beta servers are up and will report back.

Could also use either of the Dalarans too.

178

We got SO excited when they said they were moving Calia and making her quest easier… but turns out they just put an NPC with the same quest and everything into Orgrimmar and you STILL need to be on the other side of Shadowlands to see her. Big stinky.

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179

Meanwhile I think Alliance still has to go to Oribos to accept. I just hope that on TWW, if you accomplished the quest one one character, the title can be accessed for everyone. I really don’t want to have to run through it again on Raina just to get the Of Lordaeron title for her.

Or other characters. Twice was enough.

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180

Oh yeah, there are certainly alternatives but there is a balance of convenience and RP accessibility. All these places are very accessible for RP, but are far less convenient to be in or go to. Again, not that any of them cant happen. Silvermoon has happened plenty of times before across multiple servers.

I’d argue its the same as tellin folks to join a guild. They dont know where to go unless they’re in the know. That they come here to the forums and ask, or in chat, or wherever. So were in a very kinda damned if you do, damned if you dont sort of situation and will probably just have to choose one of only two less idea options.

Borean Tundra? Warsong Hold

Remind me to get the broom too, btw. We got some cleaning to do

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181

One thing that I would like to point out, too, because this point has not yet been made, is that there are some Alliance groups that have made it their personal mission to give pushback against the Horde. Before I go further, I’m not talking about the IC interactions. IC is one thing but when it’s taken into OOC, as it so often is, it just creates an openly hostile environment that makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

A neutral guild on the side of Alliance may come and go as they please without anyone batting an eye. But a neutral horde guild is not paid the same courtesies and I’ve yet to understand why. The lore supports such cooperation whether people like to admit it or not. But I’ve seen plenty of instances of ‘Alliance supporters’ making it a point to go to IC discussion events only to say some wretched and trollish things about members of Alliance who tried to foster that same kind of cooperation, even threatening to pull out of engaging with them. To make matters worse, their comments very clearly went way outside the bounds of IC into trollish OOC.

Such events as the Lordaeron Night Market, hosted by Undead, don’t get as much traction as the Gilneas Black Market, hosted by Alliance, simply because of who is at the forefront of the market. And the Lordaeron Night Market has been around an entire year longer than the Gilly one.

One particular Gilnean community recently faced severe backlash OOCly for wanting to incorporate citizens raised against their will back into society. I mean, if Genn Greymane can man up and accept help from the horde, why can’t we RPers? The backlash became so visceral and horrid that the community was forced to table the bill on both an IC and OOC level.

At the end of the Reclamation event, members of the horde had to beg to give a speech at the end even though they put in just as much hard work into making it happen as the Alliance did. Not to mention the OOC harassment the UCN received multiple times just for being Horde.

This is just my opinion, my take, and I understand that the lore reasons why certain groups may ICly despise the horde. Cooperation between the factions is even in its infancy in terms of the Blizzard lore. But just hear me out with this final point: for every IC reason you can come up with as to why we SHOULDN’T interact and cooperate with the Horde as Alliance, I can give you an IC reason as to why we SHOULD based on cannon lore. And so, the IC side of things sort of cancels each other out and all we’re left with then is the OOC side of it.

I just wish that people wouldn’t take things into OOC and thus rob both groups of cooperative RP when it’s supported on the IC level. We only stand to gain from RP cooperation as far as I’m concerned. My hope is to see a more cooperative environment from both sides.

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182

Just a few more points I have after reading through and keeping a pulse here.

I know its nobody’s duty, but I do think that MG-H side could use the Alliance’s help in trying to drum things up and break down that divide.
A good place to start would be Guild leaders and players trying to mitigate that invisible wall. Both Horde and Alliance guild leaders collaborating on things to show that there is life on the other side, and its still lots of fun.

I know there was mention of things like the Gnews and such. I’m not sure if they’re cross-faction with their news broadcasts, but it would be awesome if they allowed the Horde-side to be involved for reminders for events and stuff like that.

It has to be a collaborative effort, though. One person or guild or even one faction can’t really do it alone. Consistency, as was stated, is key. And then word has to spread. If Horde leaders are willing to collab, then I don’t see the harm in giving them a shout-out at the least.

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