The State of RP in BfA

Moon Guard
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I want to preface this by saying that I’ve never been a doomsayer when it comes to World of Warcraft, and always have ignored the cacophony of ‘WoW is dead!’ or ‘WoW is dying!’ soapboxers that seem to come out of the woodwork every now and again, particularly when a new expansion is either a) coming out or b) near its end during a content lull.

That said, I really got into “serious” RP in Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria. I didn’t stick around for Warlords of Draenor and came back during Legion. I remember when I returned to Legion, I noticed that the game seemed significantly less populated than it had been, which I somewhat expected given what I heard about Warlords of Draenor.

I didn’t become a naysayer though and saw that the population stabilized and there was plenty of good roleplay, guilds were doing fine and overall the game was a fun experience both in RP and out of it. I stuck around to the end of Legion and faithfully awaited the release of Battle for Azeroth.

Come BfA, I managed to get a few characters near maximum level and enjoyed the aesthetics and of Kul Tiras but eventually real life dictated things for me and I was unable to put in time, I quit for a bit and came back when I got an itching to RP. Not really play any of the end game content since by now, and with what I was hearing about it, I’ve lost interest in it, but I still wanted to RP.

Now this isn’t to say that there aren’t wonderful RPers out there right now, and maybe its me just being a grumpy old lout upset that all my old friends and groups have dwindled or are gone, but if Legion seemed significantly less populated than Mists of Pandaria or Cataclysm, Battle for Azeroth seems significantly less populated than Legion.

Newer guilds seem to fail every time they try to pop up due to a lack of recruitable players for all the disparate concepts, older and more established guilds seem to have dwindled down to a select core of members logging on to represent them and continue their RP while they too struggle with recruit intake and their other members seem completely absent, walk up RP in Stormwind is still a possibility but the rate at which it happens has dwindled as well and the city, even in some of the RP hubs seem to have the same level of population I would’ve expected on Alliance side Wyrmrest Accord back in Legion, during prime hours.

I’ve been able to find good roleplay with my guild, and over the course of the past few weeks a handful of good walk ups, but it just seems in general that the server feels more ‘dead’ than I remember it ever has (again, I didn’t roleplay in WoD so I can’t make a comparison there). I’m still having fun in the roleplay with my guild which mostly takes place outside of SW, and the more occassional roleplay I get in Stormwind City, but it just seems less lively.

I’m not sure what the point of this post was except maybe to vent a bit about what feels to me like a community that’s shrunk quite a bit, if this is overly pessimistic my apologies, but I figured why not post it?

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For the most part, I’d agree; though I’m not entirely sure what else can be said from me or even what can be done to circumvent the feeling. It seems that this expansion is a bit of a lull for most of the RP community (in spite of the continued presence of server events, which serve to prove wonderfully that the community is still fairly well off regardless).

It just seems that outside of major server events, the general flow of activity is on the downward trend. I know more people, myself included, who have largely sat this expansion out than in any previous expansion (at least, in regards to roleplaying actively).

There are a number of reasons for this; peoples’ frustration with the direction of the story, a lack of enjoyment in the game itself, personal life issues… Everyone has something different, and perhaps not even directly related to the community or the game itself.

Personally, I think these things come in cycles. I would say that this is a bit of a down-cycle, but it may only be a matter of time before it trends up again. It has happened before, and will happen again.

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Well if we try to look at this positively, bad expansion > less people > less rp > only those who want to rp badly stay > better quality

Thats just an optimistic theory tho lol

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I’m new to the RP thing altogether. I think I’m on–what is it now–day 3? That said, I don’t think you’re being pessimistic or negative at all. The reason I came to Moon Guard is twofold: 1.) I heard there was still a relatively unsharded community there, meaning you could see the same person more than once and actually form reputations and relationships with other people on your server. So far, that is just sparklingly true. 2.) Because my community on my non-RP servers is just gone. It’s totally gone. I used to play this game with literally more than 85 other people. That is now down to 7 (and that includes my daughter, who wasn’t part of the original 85 because she was a baby then).

It’s true that the population is shrinking all over WoW, and the community has gotten smaller, more closed off, and less civil.

The good news for the RP community is that, if you can be patient with people who are totally new to the RP way of playing this game, you will be getting spillover.

I have had more fun in the last 3 days on MG than I’ve had since Vanilla as far as community goes. In only 3 days, I’ve started to recognize names and see the same people over and over again. That has not happened for me since BC. At all.

I know it’s discouraging, and I don’t think you’re alone at all in noticing the decline. That said, on the RP servers, you’re in a better place with all of this than the rest of the player base.

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I’m kinda feeling it too. Many of my friends have wandered off, or show up rarely, and I find myself more often than not just wandering aimlessly through the city with little to do. There was a burst of nice RP last fall when I met a bunch of new people, but that only lasted a few weeks as they all wandered away from the game (or switched characters, who knows!)

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I find it tends to go more like bad expansion > less people > less RP > only severely addicted people who want to RP because it’s all they have in life stay > use your imagination.

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Lollllll my imagination went a bit too far bro

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;_; I’m sorry.

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Every month there are less and less roleplayers.

If people currently roleplaying didn’t have connections to others and friendships, no one would be here.
There are options such as Final Fantasy XIV where you can have player housing, dyeing armour, etc. The same can be said about a ton of other games.

The roleplaying community is around on MoonGuard due to friendships that have been built over a long period of time playing the game, because of the lore many people spent time to learn, and because of the fond memories people have for the game.
It is hard to move on but with ALL of the drama going on with the company itself and with an expansion that is rated worse than Warlords of Draenor it is losing interest in people who are slowly moving on.

Is it time to say World of Warcraft is dying?
It isn’t.
The company that made it is slowly dying though, Blizzard as they become more and more like Activision.

Less people can mean a more close community with less trolls.
But, I’ve seen a lot more trolls around lately.
People around Gnews with big mounts, people stealing other’s Total Roleplay profiles, people using /yell throughout roleplaying zones to talk about random stuff, etc.

RP will always be around in the game but it is slowly becoming less and less. However, public events are still around and are still strong due to the game still having a lot of amazing RP guilds, which is what helps to keep the server going.

So, my suggestion would be to check out some of those public events and to give the host(s) some support.

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The playerbase, as a number, is dwindling across all servers. According to last reports, Moon Guard stands at just around 15K to 20K in terms of Active Characters. The future of WoW will depend if this number rises or falls.

Despite that, as someone who doesn’t really RP much, you can still easily find RP. A quick stroll through Stormwind, and you will likely come across a few dozen players all in their various scenes. Other RP servers, like Kirin Tor, are ghost towns at this point.

Moon Guard still has some life left to it.

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I feel like a lot of this is due to the story - not only is it one that, generally speaking, is viewed as one of if not the worst in WoW history, but also how deeply it affects the setting and everyone’s RP.

WoD had an awful story, but because the story took place a universe away, you didn’t have to acknowledge it or really get all that involved from an IC perspective - the Iron Horde was a threat, but unless you were related to the war effort it didn’t affect daily life for the average citizen.

Same with Legion, after prepatch, the war was on the Broken Isles. If you didn’t like the story, it was easy to keep your head down. The threat of the Legion was on everyone’s mind, but save for soldiers or refugees, life went on.

Now we get to BFA. As previously stated, this story is generally considered the worst that WoW has to offer, yet it is the one hardest to ignore.

Want to stay neutral? Well, sucks to be you, Teldrassil was burned and the Horde commit genocide. Honorable Horde? See previous point.

Average citizen trying to plod along? We’ll be calling up farmers next.

You can’t ignore BFA’s story. The faction war permeates into every faucet of a character’s life. It’s always there, lurking around the corner to remind you that you can’t escape it.

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In addition to the problem of the hard-to-circumnavigate story that Elenstelle pointed out, I think a lot of RPers are also getting tired of the constant cycle of faction relations.

Pretty much with expansion, the Horde and Alliance are at peak tensions, then a common threat comes along forcing them to team up. So, people RP out those band together situations, their characters might undergo growth because of it and start to view the opposing faction in a different light, and from there new opportunities for cross-faction RP tend to emerge. Buuut then a new expansion pops out its head, with faction-tensions rising again for the opening. Because of that, now everyone has to hit the reset button on their character’s development to conform with where the story is heading, and then the cycle repeats. It’s exhausting. And it’s especially exhausting this time around because Legion was pretty much the pinnacle “we must band together!” pack, only for BfA to come along with a big fat “PSYCH!!!” It effectively threw a massive wrench into people’s RP and character developments. Hell, I felt like I had to practically retcon all my character developments made during Legion so that I could even get involved in BfA RP and that felt awful.

As far as the RP scene goes now, it’s rare I even come across a guild that’s doing anything related to BfA, instead opting to do their own thing. Honestly, I can’t blame them.

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As a refugee from WrA (and someone who played on MG actively during Wrath and Cata), I can say in the three days since I’ve been back to MG I’ve gotten more RP through expressed interest (in this case participation on the forums) than the last several months on WrA.

I made a post on the WrA forums where I introduced several characters and expressed interest in finding a long term RP partner or group and in several days of daily bumps with profiles of various alts of mine, not one person was interested.

I interact with ONE forum post expressing interest in forming a Dark Iron guild and now here I am in a Dark Iron guild.

And it’s not just me, I see forum posts with interaction on them regularly with people ready and willing to set up RP here on Moon Guard.

I will not disagree that there are less people around now than there were in Cata, but the Gnews is still around. People I RPed with here in Cata are the only ones to show up on my friends list. Of course the sub number decline is hitting MG, but not nearly as bad as other servers I’ve played on recently.

When I have to beg for RP on MG, then I will worry that things are at an end.

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I’m not even sure the reset button is necessary, but then I’ve never played (or roleplayed with) characters who were “faction uber alles” types. Instead of a reset, I’ve been left with a lot of characters on both sides who essentially feel betrayed by the leadership of their respective faction (or, in some cases, consider them irredeemably incompetent).

As such, their focus has turned to trying to maintain contact with their counterparts who are still as helpful as during Legion, and as determined as before to protect the many innocents on both sides from the depredations of the power- and revenge-hungry who have a grip on the seats of governance.

From the standpoint of what they’re looking forward to…and even working toward, if possible…besides the obvious removal of Sylvanas, there’s the equally important removal of Genn Greymane, and anyone else in power who actually thought this war was a good idea. (The boy king can stay…but only if he gets wise enough to have better advisors.)

Anyhow…that’s not a reset, it’s a logical continuation of “hey, we were in this together, and now fools are trying to rip it apart”. Which, even if we all know it’s got a snowball’s chance of actually being supported by Blizz’s storytelling…to use the term loosely…is at least something to fight for, and which can be RPed either on a large or small scale, whether or not you have people wanting to play characters who oppose said efforts.

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I think generally speaking, Moon Guard is one of the best WoW servers around. Our RP may not be as plentiful as it once was, but it still a lot better than a number of “RP” servers where no one does any RP.

Even when the current storyline is bad, or the content doesn’t please everyone, it is RPers who can make their own stories and keep the game enjoyable. Take for example, the letters that most goblins have received from Zinbo. That storyline has created so much hype in our guild I had to create a dedicated channel in our discord for it!

Even when things are in a lull, RP will keep Moon Guard alive.

As a side note, and perhaps an unpopular opinion, I think the LFG tool is the main reason WoW communities are disappearing. People get what they need done quickly, efficiently, and without hardly even a hello to another person. If we don’t interact on a personal level, we may as well be in a single player game.

I know a lot of people like the LFG tool, despite the toxic people you often come across. But if you’re like me and prefer grouping with people you know, try a bit of old fashioned networking and chatting. Sometimes you may be asked to help with a quest you don’t need, and it costs you some time. But, down the track, you can expect the favour to be returned.

Lots of little groups that work together like that is basically what a community is. I think we all need to slow down and stop expecting instant gratification, then maybe we’ll find more time to RP as well.

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I think that really depends on the type of character to be fair. I’ve actually heard people praising the story outside of the Sylvanas narrative; Drustvar had a solid grasp and the Zandalar/ KT stories have been top notch. If you play someone who isn’t interested in the Alliance and Horde, however, this expansion 's story won’t sit well, yes. But the same could be said for the many other expansions where we basically ignored factions for the sake of neutrality. Legion, for example, its story barely resonated with my circle; whereas BfA has been fantastic for us.

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The problems with those is that the zone stories, like Drustvar and the like, in the grand scheme of things don’t matter and will rarely affect the greater overall plot. The deal with Sylvanas being a (what should have been a surprise to absolutely no one yet everyone is shocked by this turn of events) monster will last through this expansion and likely beyond. Blizzard has a terrible track record of having more than one real long-running narrative, with everything else being put on the back burner.

As for the OP, it all depends on who you are and what you roleplay as. I work nights, so I have no idea what usually goes on during people’s weird normie day hours, but interesting characters and unique race choices typically are far more palatable than “standard human rogue.” Moon Guard RP also tends to lean more towards the niche corner side of things; people RP within their close-knit social circles and guilds because Moon Guard has a very long, disgusting history with people trying to control people’s RP, backstabbing wastes of flesh who only thrive off of seeing turmoil, or other such things. While there is certainly merit in saying that the server population overall is on the decline thanks to the lackluster launch and performance of BfA thanks to it releasing several months before it was ready, there are other factors to consider as well.

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I’m snooping around here from WRA trying to see if the grass is greener. I’ve had trouble finding a guild for ANY of my characters on WRA–Horde and Alliance. Every time I ask, the same 2-3 guilds reply, and those guilds have themes I’m really not interested in for these particular characters. So I’m heartened to hear that it may be worthwhile to invest in a bit of time on MG to see if I can’t find a permanent home this side.

That said, I think BFA is just seeing a downturn on ALL servers and ALL aspects of WoW gaming styles. It’s just not a good expansion from nearly any angle. I’ll be honest: as an RPer, I’m really tired of the rehash of FACTION WAR every time we get a “filler expac”. It might be different if it were done in an interesting way, but BFA, up to this point, is almost a rehash of MOP’s storyline. We have a warchief that has probably gone bonkers and lusts for power, is doing awful things both to the Alliance and the Horde (let’s not forget the Desolate Council, poor blighters), and unless Blizzard pulls out something amazing by the end…well, Sylvanas will probably turn into the next major villain. OR, even worse, the Horde will be thrust whole-heartedly into the role of EVIL BADGUYS…which :confused: would suck. I played Horde during Thrall’s time in the big seat, and I much preferred the theme of savage-but-usually-honorable underdogs trying to scrape together to survive in a hostile world that didn’t want them there. Also, there was tension between Horde and Alliance for that period-like a cold war-but it wasn’t so all-encompassing you had it shoved in your face every time you turned around.

I might be waxing nostalgic…but given the lull on all servers, I’m going to guess I’m not the only one that feels the same.

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You all have inspired me to make a video
http s://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/407635247270723594/535106105416613909/phasing.mp4

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You, dear sir, win the interwebz today.

That was fantastic. I giggled.