Now I know a lot of people have been crying on how WoW is dead. I do not know if that is true but I do know one thing. WoW is the pillar that is holding up the entire MMORPG Genre. If WoW were to die the MMORPG genre will collapse as well.
Now I bet you are going to say “What about FFXIV/ESO/GW2 ETC” however those games should be called MMOGs instead as they do NOTHING to support and foster a healthy RP community like WoW does. Having one of those replace WoW would be like putting together a puzzle with a few pieces missing, sure you can make out the image but it will never be complete.
Now I do not know if WoW will die or now, maybe it will, maybe it can recover but I do know if WoW dies the MMOPRG Genre as we know will die with it.
It might, but it also might give other games (old, new and not yet created) a chance to thrive. Right now WoW probably does as much damage to the genre as it does good because no one else can really compete with it.
I would argue that an RPG is defined instead by the player controlling a character who takes actions and follows a coherent story within the framework of the game world. Pokemon is an RPG. The Final Fantasy games are RPGs. Assassin’s Creed is an RPG.
WoW does not define the MMORPG genre any more than Halo defines the FPS genre. It’s a game that holds that designation, but that doesn’t make it special.
-Of which two are the de-facto ones to go to since the rest are derelict or anemic. There even used to be a joke aboiut how RP on one of them was becomming shorthand for "Raid Progression
-Jed’hin got in because an RP community darling is friends with a Dev (same to go with their dog that is refferenced in Legionfall) and it was an easy throw in. It’s a cute reference but it’s nothing beyond that. Players made that, Deves merely canonized it.
-The Sharding on RP servers was a fix to a problem the devs created themselves. Much like how the Elixir was a bandaid to fix an addon they broke. The Elixir was an exception to their usual shrug approach.
That’s not what a strawman is
It literally has 4 events listed a day wall to wall on a calender ranging from tea houses to brawls. You’re from bloody Moon Guard and you’re pulling the Goldshire analogy. If you had a clue you’d sit on the floor and play with it.
WoW-and especially not Blizzard-are not some lofty golden standard to measure how to foster an RP community by when all you can cite are Well-connected game references and bugfixes to problems they made.
The only reasonable concern you could ever have is not being interested in their respective properties. Otherwise, RP communities across most games are largely Player-run, player maintained, and player supported-WoW included.
Sides I played ESO when it came out the Phasing was out of control. You were lucky to even SEE a fellow player. Besides again no dedicated rp servers which I believe is the BARE minimum if you wana compete with WoW’s Rp community.
While I can see why you feel that way… I play on moon guard and Wyrmrest accord exclusively… I personally have ever ran into rp in the open world once… like a legit actual walk up once… actual good consistent rp you’ll find at rp hubs or guild events and that’s the same for both games.
RP Communities don’t need special Developer desginated Servers-they make their own.
Guild Wars 2 did it, FF XIV did it twice since the RP server got so large it was perma-locked and they took one of the lowest populated servers and made it mid-pop almost overnight. ESO didnt’ do it simply by virtue of being a megaserver.
You’ll find that friends of Blizzard devs get nods all the time if you know enough of them. Jed’hin isn’t special in this regard.
One could also say most MMOs wouldn’t break it to begin with. Also, Blizzard has more or less done this before: I remember a social group of Warlocks who used the metamorphasis transformation to speak cross faction before they took away the glyph that let you have a tanky demon form. They had to “Deal with it” by moving their RP to Roll 20.