People should be willing to live and let live and move on with their days when they encounter things they don’t like, it’s true, but you’re also choosing to engage in the wild west that is public city RP where anyone and everyone congregates. Every kind of opinion, character and trope exists in a public space, because there’s zero filter for it.
You can’t really complain about people judging others’ lore takes and RP on the forums while simultaneously telling everyone that they must accept your character and version of events. It’s just not how this hobby works.
That said, I don’t really like the whole Man’ari in Stormwind thing just like I don’t like the whole Scarlet Crusade in Stormwind thing, or people openly tutting around Horde-aligned characters there, or demons in public and plenty of other things. I think it makes no sense, but people enjoy it and therefore I avoid it and everyone’s mental is all the better for it. This can be applied to just about everything in RP thankfully.
And yet when I am on my warlock with my demon out and a trail of imps following me, no one but the pretentious rp control freaks say anything.
It was stupid then and it’s stupid now.
If you don’t want to engage because I’m breaking some arbitrary “rule” then don’t engage and ignore my character’s existence. If I do approach you, send a whisp saying “hey I don’t agree with that RP, please don’t engage”.
I’m not saying you have to like my RP and engage with it. I’m saying don’t make a whole idiotic scene out of nowhere saying “You are breaking law, you aren’t allowed to have demons out! REEE!” I don’t care about because of it. (yes this happened with my lock a couple years ago out of nowhere.)
Just don’t police how others RP. That’s all I’m saying.
Believe me when I say: I would love more defined and exact lore, one where only light bending with actual good player writing is allowed. That isn’t feasible, I think, because the nature of the lore isn’t for the roleplaying community, it’s merely justification for the content we are engaging with.
If that canonical time skip happened, it would actually have killed many player’s individual stories, campaigns and even some guilds, all for the alter of perfect adherence to a storyline that some players did not want to engage with at all.
That we’ve seen yet. Every quest and the installation of new NPCs are a snapshot in time. Who knows what’s been happening in the last two years since the Man’ari customization option rolled out. Doesn’t it seem weird that they’d give the skins to everyone if they only meant for a handful to sit under Daddy Arzaal’s watchful eye in the Exodar or be off-world in the story?
We also only saw Velen’s side of accepting them, we don’t know if further discussions happened within the Alliance.
In the absence of fresh lore saying “it has been two years and there are still no Man’ari anywhere but the ones twiddling their thumbs trying to aggressively ignore the urges to go murder everyone”, that leaves it open to personal interpretation. Your personal interpretation leaves them frozen in time until new game lore rolls out. Someone else’s personal interpretation might say that they were all free to go some time ago, or maybe their Man’ari got the equivalent of “papers” for being the Goodest Boi countersigned by Arzaal and Turalyon or something.
Everyone is free to think what the other person thinks is silly and ignore it.
BUT…
Conflict doesn’t have to be a bad thing. An IC “I think the thing that you’re doing is wrong, grr!” can be a great scene starter if everyone is down for it. And expecting other people to modify their characters to make yours more comfortable even to the point that they wouldn’t even say anything also gets into the whole this-extends-past-the-tip-of-your-own-nose issue.
Some people roll with the interpretation that demons aren’t allowed in Stormwind. You roll with the interpretation that they are. A “SCREEEE a demon!” reaction is valid, it doesn’t really affect anyone but them. A “((You know you’re not allowed to have your demons out according to the lore))” reaction is not valid. No one should be starting OOC tussles about RP stuff with people that they can just choose to not interact with instead. An “/e lunges at the imp with his sword and destroys it, banishing the vile fiend from this plane!” is also pretty uncalled for right from the jump, even if it leaves wiggle room for it to be an “all actions are attempts” kind of thing, to just go in swords blazing with no buy-in for direct conflict from the target.
In my mind, everyone needs to extend other people some grace in both directions, and if it’s too much what either one wants to deal with, just ignoring what’s going on and doing your own thing is always fine.
Lore, eh? Okay. Lemme see… Once upon a time we were just chilling, doing stuff and then a big dragon burst out of the ground and caused a lot of dragon drama. Then a few years later this Cosmic Space Giant stabbed our planet with a really big sword for some reason. And then a dead elf lady broke a guy’s magic hat and the king of the long-leggedies went to jail. Then some dragons caused a lot of dragon drama again which dragons are prone to do it seems. Then this bare foot goth lady who used to be a knife started causing a lot of drama underground somewhere, I dunno, the Pook wasn’t there.
If that’s not the lore then the Pook doesn’t know what is. Gnomes aren’t really known for caring about lore and lore related accessories. Dwarves really seem to like that sort of stuff though. Met a few Humans that were obsessed with it too. I heard the king of the long-leggedies is out of jail now. Good for him, I hope he goes clean now.
Lore-accurate is a term that means next to nothing in a setting that is overburdened with retcons in it’s golden years, and crippled by inconsistency in the current. That said, there is a consistency to the vibe of what kind of writing people want to do. Pulpy sword and sorcery, low fantasy HEMA LARPing without the L and A, even slice of life anime or the absolute popslop detritus that is Critical Role fetishists.
You aren’t going to square the circle on all of these different people wanting different things in a setting that has so thoroughly lost its identity. The same people that want Man’ari to be walking around in Stormwind also think Turalyon is going to turn it into a dystopian theocratic police state. The same people that want a redemptionist Scarlet Crusade movement ignore that the Argent Dawn and Silver Hand exist.
People just want something to blame, and something to rationalize their own bad behaviors.
Also a part of the lore. The Pook is wearing the Hadaka Apron of Protest right now. I don’t know what dead elf broke what guy’s magic hat to create the current round of enshirtification but the Pook is protesting it!
You know, I’m just going to expand on some thoughts I was having the other day about why RPers in MMOs seem to have so many hairs up their butt when it comes to world RP… and I think I finally stumbled into the answer.
A great deal of people, I think, are roleplaying under the assumption that they are playing in the same sandbox as everyone else, so when they see things that don’t fit in their perceived vision of what the sandbox should be, they get upset.
But therein lies the problem: We’re all playing in different sandboxes. John Stormwind is playing in a low fantasy sandbox where everyone is low key and spooky. Cool Voidelf is playing in a high fantasy sandbox where everything and anything can happen. Some people aren’t even playing in the Warcraft universe as we know it, IE Warrior Cats and “LFM Gilneas RP”.
The guy standing next to you could have a wildly different idea of what sort of RP they want to participate in, and he’s just as valid as you… but some people can’t leave well enough alone, and turn to harassment instead of just ignoring the thing they don’t want to get involved in. Honestly, if we had the ability to just client-side shadow ban anything we didn’t want to see, we’d probably have a lot less problems in general.
Okay so what I understand of current events is that barefoot goth girl is thirsty for some elf lady and has decided to make that everyone’s problem. Am I caught up on the lore now?
I would like to remind anyone clutching their pearls about “Muh lore!” that WoW and the expansion writers change the lore and contradict it even from patch to patch… heck they can’t even have options for races and classes in dialogue, DKs and Forsaken get offended in the land of the dead when everyone goes: “LIVING MORTAL!!”, how about being a Dracthyr in DF and everyone acting like they’ve known you for years? ETC etc.
Blizzard quite literally cannot and does not follow their own lore, so you just look like a for caring that much about it at the end of the day.
Oh yes, people caring about the story in an RPG are the idiots.
Thank you for enlightening us. You know, with that logic, I think you could make a great impact in every gaming genre. FPS players should stop caring about the in-game weapons. MOBA players should stop caring about their champions. The list goes on…
I think you really discovered something here. People playing genres that interest them are cringe because they’re interested in the main appeal of those games- what indeed.
for caring that much about it at the end of the day.