Enenra Hackbrew stepped through the doorway and shook the rain from his overcoat. He hung his coat and his over-sized patchwork hat on a nearby rack before pointing an accusatory finger bone towards Anyaceltica.
“Us? Role play?” His dry voice barked. “How dare you! This is a family friendly forum! Accusing us of such obscene behavior is disrespectful! I don’t even like any of you in that way!”
His yellow orbs glared towards the elf as a small scroll was passed to him by a Gnome. The Alchemist snatched the parchment, unfurled it, and quickly read its contents. His face fell a bit, outstanding considering it was barely hanging on to his skull in the first place.
“Oh… you mean that sort of Role Play.”
He coughed nervously into his hand before awkwardly backing out of the room, coat and hat forgotten.
Yeah, the entire purpose of this thread is basically a non-issue. I see it as just a cry of “you should be as disassociated with the story as I am, nerd”.
The RP forums are for roleplaying. This forum is for discussing story. If one roleplays while discussing story, it’s still relevant to the current forum.
But the RPing is not what most people want out of this forum. Someone roleplaying an in-character view when arguing is extremely obnoxious and makes people not want to talk to you because you come off as too ridiculous to be worth engaging in conversation.
If someone’s dead-set on acting weird on the forum, nobody here can stop them. But all they ever end up doing is bogging down the topic with annoying posts, and a lot of threads are bad enough without people doing that.
Ya dare tell me what ta do, elf girl? I’d ratha cut off me own hand an’ feed it to a ravasaur den submit meself to de shackles of elven oppression! After we mighty trolls saved de world from de Aqir you and your kind went and blew it up! You gave up ya claim on de world dat day, ya own selfishness being de undoing of all of us.
I spit on you, and ya Alliance! An’ most importantly I spit on ya weak moon god for lettin’ it all happen!
But uh… I be seein’ you at de Cenarion Circle hotpot, yah? Don’t worry mon, I be bringin’ dem fish cakes ya liked so much last time.
No it isn’t. Its incomprehensible red vs blue screeching that ignores anything that doesn’t fit their head-canon interpretation of doctored wiki articles.
I think I understand what the OP is going for. Ultimately it comes down to “persona-based posts tend to have bias, and lore discussions should be unbiased as possible.” Which is a commendable viewpoint to take, and I can understand wanting to go for it. However, it’s also inherently flawed.
Even if everyone stopped ‘role-playing’, there would still be biases, based on a variety of factors. Sometimes it’s just as simple as aesthetic reasons, or it can be as complex as the general feel of the community in your faction on your server. Additionally (and significantly more importantly): the leveling experiences are completely different. So even if you only vaguely keep track of the lore as you’re leveling, you’re going to see different sides of the lore just based on which faction you’re playing as. Plus, with the frequent lore changes, sometimes it’s just easier to sit back and go “y’know what, screw it. Alliance is better and we’re usually in the right anyway” and argue from that viewpoint.
As an aside: The post that @roghter made about the biased Draenei poster really amused me. Especially the “there is no way this poster is sincere” bit. I know multiple people who aren’t involved in the RP community in any way (or only very tangentially) who have some very strong faction/racial pride, and they hold very similar opinions about lore aspects despite this. Because people interpret the lore differently, or cherry-pick based on pre-established opinions. We’ve been doing this since the dawn of time, WoW lore is no different.
In conclusion: Everyone is biased and roleplay has nothing to do with it. The only way to stop the bias is if we all agree that Goblins are the greatest and most attractive race, and that you should all bow down to us. And give me all of your money. For uh… safety. Yeah.
Why are people attacking the OP about this topic? This was a sticky post in the old forum. Times on this forum does get a bit rough when patches/xpacs drop, currently we’re in a content drought.
Let’s not pretend that people at times would attack people just solely based on their faction or the numerous posts that would occur as a propaganda piece.
Not actually. As flawed as working towards a neutral ground may be, it is far more preferable to the toxic cesspit as a forum full of chest-thumping degenerates flinging personal attacks that force the “janitors” to intercede with more heavy-handed punishments that WILL result in a lock-down and a cowed population that’s too afraid to post anything slightly controversial. There’s a reason why people like the Red Shirt Guy looks down on the Story forums, and blues never post here.
The clowns in Ivrine think that being a toxic player is also “showing faction pride.” Do your part in sticking it to the powers to be and dial down the vitriol.
True, to be fair as of the new forums. The RP and Story forums are combined under the “Lore” forums. and clicking on “Lore” takes you to the “Lore” forum which is a literal fusion of what were formerly known as the RP and story forums and it doesn’t even specify if the threads on the front page came from the RP or story forum. To this end you really can’t say RP’ing isn’t allowed in the story forums as they are one in the same.
I don’t see it the same way. The fact that the RP section is in a specific sub-forum of Lore and not grouped in with the Story section tells me that they’re meant to be separated.
Even if it was, RP has its place, which isn’t story discussion. I’d imagine it would be equally annoying if someone was posting a fanfic or in-game RP idea and asked for critique, just for people to start having in-character arguments over it.
No one can keep anyone from being obnoxious as long as they stay within forum guuidelines. I think the point of this thread is both informative about how disruptive and counter productive it can be and a plea for a case of agreement amongst the community, based on the information.
But it’s not obnoxious, disruptive, or counter-productive. They are still participating in a story discussion, and their opinion is merely biased in favor of one perspective like literally everyone else. Nor do they have the power to inhibit others who can just block them if they are so inclined.
You just view it that way because you have some idea of what this space should be like and you want to impose it on others.
You don’t get to dictate how people communicate here, and if you don’t like it then move along.
No, I view it that way because I’ve seen how people use it to be obnoxious, disruptive and counter productive. I’ve used it without being so but I’ve also seen how it hinders people from being able to separate IC and OOC.