???
2 Likes
Honestly I’d pay money to get the Night Elf archer outfit, and all of the outfits from the Suramar NPCs. Though, I’d want the amount to be based on the amount of -content- from the purchase. If I’m getting every single outfit from Suramar Nightborne for example; citizen wear and all the sets from most covering to least covering, then I’d feel cozy about spending like 20 bucks or something. But for just one item set? Eeeh …I dunno about spending more than 5 bucks on a single set. But then again if it really looks pretty good; not like I’d be buying the mog more than once.
Also yeah, the day Lordaeron Unbound was made I was just starting to get into RPing my Undead WArrior, Johlein. She’s now my main, pretty much, and I’ve not had so much fun RPing any of my characters as I’ve had with Johlein. She’s just so much fun!
4 Likes
Personally, I think it might be a little early to doomsay about permanent decline in roleplay until we see what the next expansion holds. Obviously, there will be a surge of new and returning players regardless (unless it is catastrophically unappealing), but even throughout Battle for Azeroth, it seemed like the community was mostly stable even with so many of us vociferously disliking the story beats.
Compared to Shadowlands, which has given many roleplayers a prolonged drought of any common reality in which they are able to exist. The Fourth War was dumb and most people hated it, but at least there were things you could do on your own that dealt with the conflict and use that as inspiration to connect yourself to other players. But we’re all stuck in the Shadowlands, with no clue whatsoever of what might be happening back on Azeroth. How do you weave that into a story if your character isn’t the type of hero to be entangled in some cosmic battle with Sylvanas and the Jailer? Those lower characters are all left adrift, and if you want to interact with someone, you have no choice but to craft something entirely of your own design. It works decently well for organized guilds that can lean on some driving purpose and the shared burden of storytelling, but it can be very intimidating for individuals and make normally shy players into total introverts because they lack the confidence to come up with an excuse out of thin air. What do you talk about these days when you walk up to someone?
And worse, it can still starve those organized guilds of new members because everyone is on a different page of what the unifying “theme” should be for storylines, like a murky conflict in BfA or the steadfast determination of everyone being threatened back during Legion. Even the guilds who styled themselves in direct opposition to that were able to benefit, where quirky and lighthearted guilds would have an easier time attracting people who might feel burnt out by all of the serious stuff.
To me, this is just a uniquely difficult expansion for the RP community. And despite being one of the most negative personalities on the WRA forum when it comes to criticizing the game, I’d still come back in the future as long as Blizzard gives me something that I can actually care about with my characters.
6 Likes
jots down ‘Kazimir Moustacheman’ in my bio as a character mine has killed, scribbles in 27 kills in my TRP ooc tab
what a wild time that was
3 Likes
now i’m remembering when there was an honest to goodness riot in-game over that one guild that kept a log of all the people they’d “icly” killed
(and not only had all of the people on the list not given them any sort of permission, a lot of them weren’t even aware that this guild had at some point murdered their character)
~memories~
Now I actually think SL does have a unifying theme that should be punctuating all rp that happens on Azeroth, and that’s the fact that dying has a lot more weight to it right now. Everyone who dies is heading to the Maw. No matter what kills you, no matter your morality, from NPCs to Player Characters, no one can escape.
Even if you want to go by the idea that what’s going on in the Shadowlands isn’t common knowledge, rumors are going to spread. An Ebon Blade letting slip their comrades being conscripted to fight in the Maw, or Argents who were there when the sky shattered, there’s ways to know that there’s a cosmic threat without having even set foot in the Shadowlands yourself.
And these rumors should change people’s behaviors. I’ve seen people keeping their loved ones in soulstones to keep them from passing on to the Maw, I’ve seen characters wracked with guilt for being forced to kill in self-defense knowing full well that it’s doomed that person’s soul. Would people start to view necromancy differently? I’ve even had hypothetical conversations about people bringing ailing family members to cursed locations to get their souls stuck on Azeroth instead of sucked into the broken death machine.
There’s a lot of untapped potential in the concept of fearing an assured damnation, and the lengths one may go to avoid it. Ironically, the same path Sylvannas took before she decided to try and tear down death itself.
3 Likes
That’s actually a really good point, Thomas! My Undead WArrior has expressed her frustrations over people wanting to resume killing Alliance again, knowing that it’s only going to feed the Maw more souls. And of course, every Hordie that dies in any such conflict also ends up there.
And that’s just death via conflict! What about the unavoidable, when accidents happen that prove fatal?
1 Like
I come from an RP community where you could RP kill anybody. Like, there was no consent needed for randomly shanking a dude to death in a bar, and people on WoW who kept lists of all the characters they killed is still weird to me.
Good writers in RS tended to engage in one of 3 types of RP: private where you couldn’t join unless you were invited, assassins, and political RP. If the 2nd strikes you as weird, it’s because we used to be paid obscene amounts of ingame money to kill characters or not engage in a certain conflict. If Lumbridge was rising up against Varrock, someone would come over and bribe us all with 100mil to just sit there and do absolutely nothing, so we’d just watch the war IC by smoking dwarf weed in the sidelines. Memories.
3 Likes
Oh man. That reminds me of years and years ago (Wrath I believe) when I was in a RP guild for all of fifteen minutes. They seemed pretty cool, joined up, and in between the typical “Welcome to our guild!” messages there was a heated debate raging about the fact one of the members of the guild, who I believe was max level and raid ready gear wise, wasn’t deleting his character because one of the guild officers had executed him for treason or some such.
Didn’t catch all the context, or even if it was weirdly in jest, all I know is I just straight up gquit immediately.
4 Likes
LMAOOOO. I live for this sort of nonsense. We didn’t delete our characters on RS either, we just renamed ourselves (though most of us had several RP chars on one account, so we’d just dress our chars differently and put char name in our introductions). What a comical and sometimes pathetic hobby we have.
4 Likes
I’m not sure any RP I’ve witnessed on this server will top the pregnant DK during Wrath who gave birth on the Cathedral altar; that and the ensuing weeks of arguing about it in public chat channels.
It was glorious.
9 Likes
This is literally the only thing that validates Shadowlands and it’s stupid, broken and out of touch story for me now.
1 Like
I was standing in Stormwind once and was backstabbed. I went along with it because it was entertaining. While stabbed, we were then arrested and carted off by the Stormwind Guard for fighting. We were left there so after awhile of being ICly cooped up in this room while the guard went off to do their own thing, we decided we’d just… break free? It was fun at the time and makes a fun memory for sure.
2 Likes
I don’t think anyone had Night Elf Kor’kron snipers on their bingo card.
1 Like
The first guild I joined, in MoP, did the exact same thing. Only it was to me. Because the GM’s character didn’t get along with my warlock.
So one day he just emoted chopping off my head and told me to reroll, lol.
I was still fairly new to rp so I actually did do it too. That GM did some far worse things that made me leave in the long run xD
5 Likes
Someone in my guild shared a story once about someone trying to pickpocket their undead and they emoted back that their pocket was full of spiders and the would be thief went with it and ran away screaming 
11 Likes
Ugh I feel this one. I RPed a Warlock and was still new to RP, I let people get away with doing way too much to my character (mainly Orcs surprise surprise) without my permission. I know how to stand up for myself and counter this now but it was tough to deal with at the time.
6 Likes
Yeah I had moments like that too when I first began RPing. Seems we’ve all been there, done that, at one stage or another.
3 Likes
This plays a huge role. I know a lot of people who are just taking a break until the new patch comes. Same with the in between xpac lull, there’s usually a decline in player activity.
WoW is old and a lot of us have just moved on. I also truly believe that things like the group finder had a negative impact as you don’t have to try to make friends with people on the server to do stuff with. Speaking only for myself but I suspect I am not an outlier, many of the better friends I have made in RP were also people I did content with. Also the lack of fun PVE/PVP content I also think is a factor even though neither are directly related to RP. People who RP also play the game and for many if they aren’t having fun with the game itself it becomes harder to justify logging in or keeping your sub active.
5 Likes