This is the first time in… ever, I’ve been unsubscribed for a period of time longer than a few weeks. I haven’t played in 4 months. I genuinely cannot imagine a situation anymore where I feel anything close to an urge to return and it’s kind of sad, because I’ve been playing semi-consistently since Burning Crusade.
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Walk-up RP is still there, you just need to know the times and you need to be able to do the approaching yourself. If you sit around waiting for someone to approach, I’ve noticed you’re going to experience a serious lack in walk-up RP.
This is a lesson I’ve learned recently as well. I only ever RP’d on private servers before, and started RPing on retail in BFA and Shadowlands. I felt more people were willing to walk up in BFA (not by a large margin but still) but nowadays I’m trying to plan out specific events and reasons to actually walk up and engage people because everyone seems to just want to read TRPs or they’re already doing their own RP thing.
Unfortunately, this proves difficult with some of my characters (Undead Death Knight, really can’t think of any reason why I would want to approach anyone but I’ll figure it out one day) but for less complicated classes to RP as like Warriors, Paladins, Hunters, etc. it’s not as much of an issue.
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NGL now when I hear the opening part of Answers I start getting emotional af
I stumbled over this initially but when I took a deep breath and just plunged in anyway, I found myself absolutely adoring it. Granted some Elezen are still freakish to me but…
But not Aymeric. Big stupid awkward dumb goofy pretty face man.
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My WoW RP has never been busier. (MG forum toon - but Tym & co. RP on WrA).
I don’t do town RP. It’s distracting. Mostly, in Guild - weekly live events, vibrant Discord. Yes, that silly ad of mine for <Felheart> got traction.
WrA RP is alive and well.
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Like someone else said, the backgrounds of the races and their sub types are where they are vastly different. The most “different” race physically is Hrothgar and they are just psuedo anthro cats. But each of the races and their sub types has their own set of naming conventions and lore. From the more tame ones (Humans/Hyur) to more… out there ones (Anime cat people/Miqo’te.)
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Hot take, sometimes people aren’t going to hand you RP on a silver platter.
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You didn’t even mention that the horrible atrocity that was 1.x (or the original FFXIV) before Yoshi P took over and its deletion / rebuilding into FFXIV: A Realm Reborn (2.x) is considered canon.
They turned their worst blunder into actual lore and I find that absolutely wonderful.
It’s a good game, honestly. But for some reason, it can’t keep my attention. Which is unfortunate.
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Some games do have that effect. For example, I loved Guild Wars to bits and played it a lot. However, GW2 can’t hold my attention for long. No idea why. I occasionally get a craving, get into it for about two weeks, then leave again for half a year to a year.
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Big mood. I tried it. It was pretty. The gameplay was good. Getting onto a server was a bit ridiculous, but I managed. But the lore didn’t grab me and neither did the anime look. I couldn’t feel a connection with any of the races - I didn’t want to RP any of them. Didn’t even bother to fight for housing. I think I subbed for 1-2 months before uninstall.
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Truth be told if you have a character that might not want to talk to anyone, it’s best to find a reason why they might have to. For example if they have a problem or a question or need something done. I’d say “hooks” would work well there too but it still puts the onus on the other person and I have no idea how well they work in the first place.
The thing is they do give a fair bit of logic behind the names, which is nice to see. You know each name exists by a set of naming rules. In the case of Miqo’te, say the Sunseekers, you might stumble across one named R’vhar Tia.
The, ‘R,’ is indicative of his tribe (Raptor, I believe). What comes after is the actual name, ‘vhar,’ and the, ‘Tia,’ indicates he is a leader in his tribe. So, every part of the name has some logic behind it, which I find really refreshing: trying to figure out what might be a suitable name here in WoW can be maddening. Take Vulpera. We see Kiro, Meerah, etc… what exactly would a Vulpera name sound like? We have no idea how they are named.
What’s even nicer in FFXIV is that there really isn’t a requirement to follow naming rules anyways. Using the Miqo’te again, maybe your catboy/girl didn’t grow up in a tribe, but in a city. In that case they could’ve been named by humans and have a perfectly human sounding name. Or if you’re into more clandestine stuff, you could just make any name you like and keep their, ‘true name,’ something intimate and shared over to a few.
Most “RP’ers” are actually people who play the game mostly for the actual game content and then just do some RP on the side. Subscriber numbers are down. Fewer people with money to pay for subscriptions, longest patch gap in WoW history, and WoW being an almost 20 year old franchise with a relatively older playerbase that isn’t pulling in a bunch of younger people.
That said, there’s still plenty of RP to be had. Especially on the guild front. I’ve started a guild recruitment event every-other-month. We’ve already had a couple and another is due next month.
I’m still going to the same events I was back in Legion/BfA and adding some new ones as my in-game contacts continue to increase. Here’s some of them. Some are here.
https://wraeventscombined.tumblr.com/
https://wowrpevents.tumblr.com/
If you’re not on the WrA Discord, join it and you’ll find a bunch more. If you need an invite, feel free to add me on Discord. Tamani#2391.
There’s an RP-PvP event in the works too.
And stuff like Mulgore Mondays or the Bloodhood Story Circle.
Options are definitely fewer than a decade ago, the population is overall smaller and there’s not as many people all clumped together in one place for walk-up RP, but there’s still plenty of RP to be had. More than any singular person could ever keep up with.
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I’ve been unsubbed, but it says I can reply… so, I suppose I’ll try!
From the start, I could tell the whole narrative would be extremely difficult to adapt with. This plot is so far removed from what actually feels relevant to us as a character and, in my opinion, has that feeling of being a non-canon crossover story (something akin to a Marvel vs. DC comic). Granted, that may just be my experience, but I have to confess that I draw a lot of inspiration to RP from the current narrative of the world at large, and this one leaves a lot to be desired.
Others have mentioned terms like “borrowed power” and Covenant abilities, and I must say that I strongly agree that it is an extreme detriment to the gameplay – so much so, in my personal case, that it genuinely is what convinced me to go. I’m convinced that the Covenant abilities being tied to character performance is nothing more than a means of trying to increase time played whenever rebalancing is done and players feel compelled to swap Covenants to keep feeling optimal.
That, in my opinion, is one of the most damning things about this expansion. Even if you don’t believe that the Covenant abilities are too serious a matter to deal with, it does speak toward a trend in WoW that your RP decisions are going to factor into your performance and endgame experience. I feel that is irreconcilable when it comes to a roleplaying experience; I want to be able to do, say, act, choose, as my character would in matters of immersion, yet still be able to engage with the competitive content in a way that I don’t feel disadvantaged.
Racials factoring into player performance was, to me, already bad enough. Covenants-specific abilities (and now even legendaries) compound on this to a degree that I’ve lost hope that system will change, and that single-handedly drove me from engaging with the endgame and meaningful gameplay entirely. Combined with (again, in my opinion) a lackluster plot and… yeah. Zero drive to even stay subscribed with the game anymore.
I feel confident that the hype will return – that we’ll have more… relatable plots in the future. As for the gameplay systems themselves, I’m extremely pessimistic; however, RP kept me subbed through much of the lack of drive in the past, even if it doesn’t now.
To sum it up: Plot doesn’t feel engaging. Combined with what many perceive as a terrible design of endgame and one of the longest festering initial patches, Shadowlands doesn’t feel great nor active. But I’m hopeful things will get better someday. Take this time to find other outlets if you’re like me and lost the drive.
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Wow that was unnecessarily hostile lmao. (It’s Sarestha by the way. I switched to my Alliance character in a previous thread and I couldn’t be bothered changing back because I fell in love with Fal’therin’s glorious beard.)
So uh. Mate I gotta tell you something. I’m Australian. I’m from the Great Southern Land. Also known as the Great Place Where Most People On WRA Are Asleep When I’m Actually Available To Roleplay.
RP has never been handed to me on a silver platter. I’ve always gone out of my way to organise it for myself, and make friends who I can RP with. Until literally a few months ago I led a guild called the Unbound Order (Previously known as Lordaeron Unbound) which I would suggest was the most successful Australian timezone RP guild I’ve ever seen. At our peak we were getting 15 people at events regularly, and having almost daily RP, sprinkled with mythic + dungeons and other things. We became so successful we even made an Alliance sister-guild, known as the Hexrenders, which was smaller but still had at least weekly RP. I stepped down from guild leadership due to RL pressures, but I am very proud of my past in that I and some good friends decided to be the change we wanted to see in the world, and made a successful guild. A guild so successful that we even managed to convince Ariiah to main something that is not a Draenei, which is quite a feat (Power to the Forsaken, eh Ariiah? 
)
Now that we’ve established that people do not and never have handed me RP on a silver platter, I’m going to posit that this is entirely irrelevant to my previous posts anyway, and thus a weird thing to lash out at me with.
I was simply making an observation that RP population is declining. In both the walk-up and in-guild sphere. I believe this is an objective observation, based on having been a part of this community for nearly 9 years at this point lol. (And up until Legion, one who could even RP at American-friendly times because I was procrastinating er I mean studying at university lol)
So… make of that what you will, bud 
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Hot take fart noises
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This is the kind of garbage take that serves no purpose but to make whoever offered it seem edgy.
Like, obviously these things take effort. Obviously. But there’s no point fishing in waters the fish have moved on from.
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There really comes a point where if you tell people they need to “try harder” to do things in a video game, no matter what it is, they won’t try at all.
Maybe checks thread title role-play shouldn’t be one of those things.
The health of visible populations and walk-up matters.
It is not healthy right now.
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Every time I tried it I absolutely could not stick with it. The gameplay is fine but not particularly compelling and I can’t get invested in the world which is the larger issue. If I’m gonna play your game I gotta be invested somehow and I can’t really care about the world or story FFXIV is telling.
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FFXIV kept my interest for a good while, but I’ve moved over to Swtor recently and that’s been working pretty well for me tbh. It’s got a focus on story, but also the gameplay is less… slow feeling?
Sadly it’s not as pretty and the races aren’t as interesting to play as visually. Everything uses the same skeleton and the most variety you get is weird head tentacle physics.
gimme wookie sith
wookie noises
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