???
?!?!?!
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Use your words, Enekie…
I’m just saying, our problem has never been that we’ve got too much groupthink.
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We still host Mulgore Mondays. The past few events have been very lively.
So I am genuinely curious as to what you mean by that if you would humor me. What do you mean by that? And how would you suggest that as individuals we try to improve that?
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I have a lot of hot takes that would probably explain Maladonir’s point, but I’ll soften them a bit for the forums.
The vast majority of events and RP that isn’t strictly slice of life is Guild RP. Guilds, by their very nature, are groups with like interests. If you don’t have those like interests, you generally don’t join the guild or don’t last very long. You end up alienated.
WrA is too small for you to move on to another group if you don’t jive with one, or you get savagely bullied or ridiculed or singled out by another. I’ve heard an awful lot of people claim that WrA is tightknit, almost like it’s a threat. All it takes is a couple bad run-ins to make you scared. You have scared people scared of scared people. Blind leading the blind, and they all seem like they just barely pretend to like people they harbor nothing but contempt for, only because they can’t see each other’s sneering faces behind the screen.
Okay maybe I waxed poetic and it might be slightly off topic, but Maladonir’s experience is not a unique or false one. That’s the point I’m trying to make.
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I’ve played on both MG & WrA, I’m a new player myself (Only a month in) and I gotta say from my own personal experience MG seems to have a lot more open air RP going on, while WrA has definitely seemed a lot less; the whole tight knit thing is real where it comes off clique-ish, I’ve seen groups standing in silence and can only assume tht their RP’s are in like a group, guild or whisper chat.
My warrior is in The Horde Army and last night I randomly encountered another guild member and we started chatting until a rando popped up which is fine I enjoy the random walk up RP’s, but we all hit it off, the rando joined our guild and I noticed we had more players kinda surrounding us tht weren’t there before we started chatting which felt kinda weird. Not sure if they were interested or what, because a couple of them only chimed in occasionally. In MG it’s seems like there’s more players who are not shy at all to walk up and engage, I’ve only encountered it once personally on WrA; usually I’m trying to find a reason to engage with others, some may respond or ignore you even if their TRP says “walk-ups welcomed”.
its like a rule that if the character isnt max lvl, its a MG alt and can only be used to talk about how WRA is dying
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Just wanted to add in one perspective here: our guild has sometimes switched our role-play to party- or instance-chat, when there were large groups of other people nearby, for one of two reasons:
- Anxiety of some in our group at suddenly being ‘on display’;
- Nearby folks start trolling, which ruins the immersion of the event we are trying to enjoy
Not saying that’s what was happening in your case, but it could have been.
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So you are saying that that the issue is not being able to find others with like interests? Given that we aren’t as big and sharding can keep us apart as well, it might be harder to find some groups. However, I have had friends that refused to join guilds and got along just fine with their friend groups they made. Or so they said.
The above just comes off as very accusatory to me like we, as a server, want to alienate people. However, when I have had people complain to me about being alienated, it was usually because they didn’t feel ready of confident to put themselves out there to find friends or Rp.
So I know that this is not entirely true. We had a guild stalker that was not only able to sneak into my own guild four times after I kicked them, but found at least 11 other guilds to get invited to. She usually shot herself in the foot by trying to spread awful rumors about us those guilds in which their officers would contact me asking about the situation. Only when they saw screenshots would she get kicked.
However, other times I was told by guild or community leaders after the fact that they thought it was just some personal disagreement or it was something they didn’t think was a big deal until she started causing issues with them. This was after I put a big warning out about her to the community. Point being; we are not as tightknit as some people might think else someone with as a troubled past as her wouldn’t have been able to find her way into that many guilds or communities.
I will say this; I have never seen someone blacklisted from multiple guilds for not joining or for not staying long. As a guild leader I don’t get many warnings about players. Nor do I give out many either. Just for stalking or being a big problem.
I mean there are people I will be civil with and their are people I block. If I dislike someone, waving is the most I will do. Otherwise, I won’t interact and avoid them. I have had people try to weaponize inclusivity with me and sorry, but being inclusive doesn’t mean I have to allow abusers into my circles or events.
Let me say that you should be careful on MG Horde or Alliance. I was invited into the inner workings of MG the past couple of years. I was tempted to move over there with how cool their events were and how I wish we could have things like that here. I was even advocating that MG was a great place too for a while. oh boy did I see some crap in the guild leader channels. There was very much a competition in regards to who was hosting what and who’s guild was getting attention. The backstabbing and accusations were insane. It got so bad that people were blackmailed and forced out of leadership positions. A whole Rp community died and one guild came over here to get away from that garbage. That backroom drama can stay over there though.
Forgive me but if I had a nickel for every time someone threw the word “clique” at my guild, or specifically our leadership, I would probably have 5 or maybe 10 dollars. Most of which really meant “These people wouldn’t put up with the problems I made.”
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You have a great point here I don’t think people realize.
The ostracization of anyone not part of X, Y, or Z’s community or the community at large is frowned upon. When I came here a mere two months after the server opened, I had no experience in WoW RP. Prominent RP figures on the forums frowned upon anyone not making RP top priority, calling for them to leave this server as it was for Roleplayers and roleplayers only.
Of course this caused sour feelings between myself, the guild I was in, and anyone who looked at us funny; because we didn’t want to harass or troll RPers, we just wanted to play a game on a server with what we heard was a good community. These forum mouthpieces continued haranguing newcomers or people who honestly made a mistake and asked what they should to so to comply with etiquette. I recall a player running from A to B in Northrend dalaran on their mammoth, passed through RPers, and got yelled at in whispers about it. The player posted to the forums asking if this was normal and a forum mouthpiece berated them for their “trolling”.
So yeah. Non-roleplayers were made bitter, but this made communities tighter. Not liking a smidge of someone’s RP put them on the other side of the fence to go RP elsewhere, and now we’re here, having effectively walled ourselves off in our own yards with walls so high we couldn’t see how empty the server had become until it got too empty in our own worlds.
But of course, with years and years of investment in storylines and not having time-invested characters fit hyper-specifically in others’ stories, the willingness to try isn’t there because we’ve come to feel there’s too few pieces of the puzzle to make a picture we like.
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Did it take you 12 years to realize this?
When the RP communities numbers were similar (and once upon a time, they were), you had many choices on both servers. Both communities were thriving and both servers have their own unique vibes. Choices. Options. People came and went from each server and it was great.
At this point, it’s a numbers game.
On MG, you will find quantity. (example), 100 guilds. Odds are, many will fit your interests and you have choices. If one guild doesn’t fit, you can try on many others. So many people milling about that public RP is easily found.
On WRA, you will find a fraction of that. If one guild doesn’t fit your interest, your options are then limited with what choices remain. Public RP, kind of difficult to find so again, choices are limited when you do find it.
Just my humble opinion, but in many ways we did this to ourselves. Self-actualization, reality, blah blah. WrA will always be my home, but I ain’t gonna lie. Tripping over to MG just to see what it looked like, was…shocking. SO MANY PEOPLE.
I love WRA. I’ve been here forever. The reality is, it’s a ghost town and I don’t mean in a favorable way like Duskwood, which is of course Best Ghost Town.
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Is that why MG has so many people using AI in their rp?
Raton, I love your passion, and I get where you’re coming from, but you look like you’re assuming an attack when none was mounted against you. My post was expanding what I thought was Maladonir’s experience, one he and many others has dealt with. Sinister, high-functioning psychopaths trying to manipulate people in the way they’ve been taught works in high school wasn’t even in the scope of my post’s point.
It was about fear. Fear, and honestly pretty much everything Thokk said.
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What if we fed the Horde a diet more rich in fiber? Would that help RP?
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Part of why I ended up moving to MG and only occasionally poke my head into WRA is because I’ve been on WRA since early Cata. I’ve been in a -bunch- of the RP guilds on wra, I’ve seen a lot of the inner workings of most folks that run those guilds as well. And nowadays, the only guilds left are guilds I’ve either already been in and left because I was done telling stories in that genre, or wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole.
Just knowing everyone for so long, I wanted to go see people I hadnt met before and didn’t know intimate drama details about every person I ran into on the server. It’s nice not knowing about a random guildmate’s history of IPV against another guild’s officer or some random bullpoo like that. Though I’m very much aware that those stories will come with time, for now it’s nice just being oblivious and new again.
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I’m sorry. I don’t mean to insulate that you or anyone else is attacking me or to get worked up. Nor am I saying that there are not really messed up people on the server that are just terrible.
I have seen people trying to control the community or create communities in which they are in control before.
However, I don’t think that the community as a whole is as bad as it is sounding. At least in the way I am interpreting posts. I associate with a good number of guilds and individuals, most of which are great folks. Between my good and terrible experiences, the vast majority of them are good.
And for those sinister people, I find that more often than not the truth comes out eventually. One of the most dangerous individuals I ever met in this game eventually showed his face enough to others that he had to jump ship from Tauren to orcs. Then the same thing happened and he jumped over to MG Alliance before coming back to WrA Horde and behaved himself between long stretches of not playing the game.
So not saying what Thokk said isn’t true. However, Thokk is talking about 2009. I wasn’t around for that and it honestly sounds terrible. However, I have been on the server since 2012 and it has seemed to change to me in that time. It has seemed to change in quite a few ways. I haven’t seen any behavior like that in recent years and should it start up, we shouldn’t allow it to continue.
Ultimately, I feel that the biggest reason it feels so prevalent is not because of the community itself but the overall perception of it.
I believe this is a big factor in the perception of our community. I see so many, myself included at times, that would rather sit and be approached. Approaching is a risk. Never know how someone might react or if their character is going be rude, etc.
And so we will go to a place with others and sit.
Most either read other profiles or rp, watch Youtube, chat in discord, etc.
But then so many others are doing the same thing. So few are approaching. Well, why aren’t they approaching me? We don’t know what other people are doing or thinking so it is easy to chalk up to it being something about you. We can fill that blank in with so much.
And after time, it can seem like the community is not very welcoming. Then you might have that one bad experience or two, or hear stories of others. Or even one of the people you see Rping you have heard about already and you really don’t know if it’s true.
Side note; one of my current friends used to think I was a terrible person because someone told them that. They believed it until they got to know me through other friends and now we are friends.
Then the community just seems terrible and it just snowballs from there. At the end of the day, no matter how easy it is just to ignore the person that reacts badly to us, we still don’t want that to happen at all.
The above is just what I feel is a big contributing factor. And we cannot forget the other issues such as Sharding, people leaving the game, the writing, and then Blizz as a company. Not as many are playing making the approaches even less.
As for the way to fix that, easier said than done. Like I said earlier, even I can’t always muster up the ability to approach. That anxiety is always there feeding potential bad experiences that could happen. Sometimes its strong and other times it is not.
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The attitude spanned from 2009 when I got here to mid 2016 or so. There was always exclusion and foul attitudes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m full glad you weren’t a witness to the worst of it. Especially with WrA Secrets tumblr making everyone paranoid. It was easy to want to lash out and get even with your aggressors.
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You know what, I do recall my previous guild had rules that if you were online and there was a guild event; you had to be there. No excuses. I saw the tension it made when it was enforced once and didn’t agree with it. One reason why I made events and Rp not mandatory in my guild.
Every community has bad attitudes and terrible people. However, as someone who had abusers trying to weaponize inclusion against me, excluding those people is not such a bad thing.
I do believe our community is, for the most part, a welcoming one. After all, I am involved in multiple community events and campaigns that are all open invite.
Oh yeah, no doubt it is easy to lash back. But I learned if you just stay in your lane and keep having fun, eventually your aggressors will shoot themselves in the foot. Happens sooner or later.
It actually still exists but merged with the Mg one. I’ll used to read it from out of boredom during loading screens. Like a tabloid. But after a while it really just cycles through topics to be mad about. Friends send me screenshots from time to time. Like the below gem.