Take every opinion posted in this thread and elsewhere as no more than that, Including mine. All you’re going to get are impressions based on what the people who spend time posting on the forums think based based on personal experience and what the people they associate with tell them.
!?! I’d say that’s either an inaccurate stereotype or a gross oversimplification. I’ve encountered players individually and in groups that cover a broad spectrum of lore interpretation.
Interpretation is the key word there. I’ve yet to encounter a single loreyer or lore fundamentalist who does not ignore anything Blizzard staff have said about lore which is incovenient to their personal viewpoint.
Sure there are guilds with officers who are the official lore-enforces. Equally, there are guilds that don’t much care as long as you’re not beyond the pale, and you don’t force anyone else to comply with your particular quirks. Same goes for individual players I’ve encountered.
There are definitely things which are beyond the pale for reasonable roleplay within the WoW mythos. I’ve yet to encounter someone claiming to be one of the Mario Brothers.
OTOH there’s plenty that could pass for lore-compliant in the strictest sense but is equally absurd. Which one of the two owners of the Pig and Whistle tavern that i encountered in the same week is the real one? On a more individual level, it’s amazing how many people claim their characters have a perfect understanding of colloquial Pandaren in all dialects despite the fact that it’s only been possible to hear it for a very few years, let alone comprehend all the nuances, slang, etc. well enough to substantiate they’re claim to be lore-compliant. There are plenty more examples, but you get the idea.
A monolithic server-wide standard of what is or isn’t compliant with a universally accepted interpretation of lore doesn’t exist. It isn’t even feasible.
While there are reliable statistics on total character populations, there is nothing comparable for roleplaying character population. Add to that the fact that there are many many altoholics, and the overall population statistics become even less reliable as a measure of the balance of roleplay opportunities.
Mostly what is stated as if it was universal fact on the forums would be more accurately stated as an anecdote. “There was no RP going on when I was in Ogrimmar for 15 minutes”. I use that specific hypothetical because contrary to what you say people have been telling you there are a lot more threads here about how Horde RP is dead than Alliance. So even if you want to take anecdotes as evidence you’ve still got to figure out whose to take as valid.
The strongest subjective impression I have of roleplay on WrA in general is that currently there’s a lot more neutral, faction-blind, or nonaligned rp than ever before.
The closest I could personally come to saying anything that’s objectively valid about WrA is that roleplay activity is different than it was 5 years ago. Everything about rp opportunities fluxuates and transforms.
My personal experience is that my biggest dilemma is figuring out whether I’m in the mood take a Horde character or an Alliance character. There’s more opportunities than time, even though I only recognize maybe a couple of dozen other players’ characters by name - at most. Every single day I could RP til i’m exhausted if I wanted to. A/H/N - take your pick.
