Alas, even being outside of all categories is being in a category in itself. There’s no escaping it.
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Hrmn…
Well, years ago before I moved to WrA from MG, there were a few predominant stereotypes/reptuations I had heard.
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Elitist RP’ers: Basically there was no place on the server for anyone thinking of themselves as a Light or Medium RP’er. Didn’t really phase me at the time because I’d been in Heavy RP guilds since vanilla.
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Horde Only: The server was predominantly populated by Horde players and the Alliance didn’t exist and an Alliance RP’er would be wasting their time even trying with WrA.
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Girls Who Like Girls Only: If you RP’d a male character of any kind, or a female character that was straight, you had no place on WrA. Every female character would hit on your straight female, and if you were playing a male character you’d be lucky to get spat on just for existing, rather than just put on ignore for daring to roll a male.
Now, to be fair, the only stereotype I took seriously was the first since, reading between the lines it came off to me as the server community as a whole wanted quality rather than quantity when it came to RP. The second and third stereotypes/reputations conflicted because all these hardcore feminaz* types were all Night Elves and Draenei. I played Horde for a while and never encountered any sort of discrimination based on my character’s gender. When I swapped to Alliance I never experienced it either, but then again I never tried to mix with Night Elf/Draenei guilds since so many of them are exclusive to their races.
I came here during Wrath with a couple friends (who have loooong since unsubbed) because our server was dying even back then. We heard it was friendly. It was friendly. It’s always been friendly to me.
I’ve occasionally taken part in RP on WrA, but for the most part I just hang around and do my own thing.
I consider myself to be playing the part of Anonymous Extra #13 in the WrA movie.
I’m not sure in all the random BG’s and dungeons I’ve run if I’ve ever run across more than 3-4 negative experiences based on the fact that I’m on WrA. In fact, just the opposite. I used to make it a point to try to get everyone in random dungeons to RP with me. Sometimes I was successful, other times they just ignored me and GOGOGOGO.
MG has a ‘rep’. WrA if anything is that “other” RP server.
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boy howdy was I in for a treat deciding to look at this thread
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Just to make it clear, I’ve had nothing but positive experiences on WrA. I’ve never encountered anyone who could fit under the third stereotype.
Only semi-negative experience I had in BGs based on server was with a not so smart guy that wanted to devalue my battleground achievements on Nakhu because I “took the easy route” by playing on an rp server because he didn’t realize that I played in the same x-server BGs as he did even though we were currently in the same x-server BG…not the sharpest knife in the drawer 
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The most common impressions I get depends on who I talk to.
When I talk to people largely unfamiliar with RP, they’re likely to respond with “What’s WrA?” and when I specify that it’s a roleplay server that’s not Moonguard, they’ll likely still think of all the things people associate with RP’ers: rampant ‘cybersex’, people acting like they are their characters OOC, and generally being bad at PvE/PvP. On the other hand, RP server players are generally considered less mean and more helpful than those on PvE/PvP servers- as long as you stay out of their highschool drama.
This impression transcends WoW. I get the same response from people when it comes to RP servers on other MMOs too.
When I talk to people who actually RP, the usual response will depend on how expereinced/involved they are…
More casual RP’ers are likely to respond with, “WrA is for Horde. MG is for Alliance.” and that’s about it. They know almost nothing else. They don’t even know how to get into a guild. That’s more or less what my impression was when I came over in 2010 because he EST timezone aligned better with my work schedule at the time.
Those who have done more asking around or were on for a whle MG before I meet them are likely to tell me they’ve heard WrA is, “More elitist, cliquish, guild oriented and prudish than MG.”
And of the people I know who’ve left WrA for MG (always for Alliance MG), they generally tell me, “It’s just easier to find random walkup RP anywhere and everywhere compared to WrA.”
…
For what it’s worth, I don’t find any of the above about RP in general or WrA specifically to be particularly accurate. I like showing people new to the server or RP in general the ins and outs and help them find the kind of stuff they’re looking for. But these are impressions I regularly encounter.
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I play on three different servers and like all three. The only thing I really dislike about WrA is how it (really by no fault of it’s own) syphoned off large chunks of the RP community of other realms after the horrible WarMode system was implemented. RPPVP servers (looking at you, ED) were affected the most and their communities took big losses once people could jump ship and pvp on WrA. As I said, it’s really not the fault of the WrA community, it’s more on Blizzard for their terrible implementation of WarMode, but I’ll still always be a little salty about it.
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I never had trouble finding RP on Alliance per se but when I was last playing it definitely wasn’t a scene for wallflowers at the time if you were hoping for someone to walk up and talk to you.
I resolved this by just being aggressive and dragging people into things, pickin’ wallflowers like I was getting married every day and needed bouquets to throw.
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Wallflowers (meaning the actual flower this time) are actually quite pretty! I’d love to have them thrown during my wedding one day
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One of my favorite things to do as well!
Of course, not everyone’s suited for this, so a lot of times, I like to to gather up several wallflowers, do the hard work of breaking the ice and get everyone talking, then duck out so they can (hopefully) continue in my absence.
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Oh big same. Cause a scene and vamoose. Of course, it started as an intentional thing and eventually grew into “Its past my bedtime.”
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- We’re stuffy.
- We don’t like server canon.
- We stick to lore more than others and are less likely to be accepting of non-canon classes/races than other RP servers.
- We can’t raid.
- We can’t PvP.
- We’re too political / PC.
- Our forums have a Cabal.
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When I played on MG the stereotype was WRA was elitist. I later learned that meant lore abiding and your RP claim as ruler of lordaeron is ignored.
When I played on a nonRP realm, the stereotype I saw frequently said is all RP realms where like that deeprun tram ERP with the two night elves and that dwarf.
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yar har, hump hump
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I’ve experienced a bit of MG RP. I use to have a main on MG alliance and then Gotosh on WRA Horde. And I treated it all as one universe, as many people do (which is why I’m always a little eeeh at the idea of creating AU versions on MG and WRA since most people sort of go along that we’re just all in the same world. But dont run into each other as often.)
There is a lot of divide in mentality. And I’ve seen people being from either server basically justify “Oh they’re from that server? No wonder.”
WRA players I’ve seen described as, stated above, elitist. Aggressive. Lore policing.
From my time on MG, both as a part of the server and now a WRA player attending large MG events I’ve been able to see a lot of differing sides to it. Moonguard has a much different RP culture. The people it attracts is largely different, both in what they want out of RP and what they hear. MG is very much known for a lot of “server canon” things I noticed. And with Alliance being as big as it is on MG, there is way more chances for big events and things of historic value to happen. There is also a lot more openness to what people roleplay. I feel like due to the server being so large Alliance side can result in some more wildier ideas being around (and like it or not I think it’s bad reputation as well has a lot to do with some of the more unique characters, not as a bad thing, just something I think adds to it.)
So you have way more things that realistically, wouldn’t really be as welcome in major cities being a lot more common in MG RP. I’ve even been told by a pure MG rper that things like lore is not something thats extremely adhered to a lot on MG in general and things tend to be more loose.
(Which, again, is okay to bend things around!! Not saying you can’t.)
This of course also exists on WRA, but on a different level and manifests differently.
Your far more likely to see full on eredar in Stormwind than you are full on felorc in Orgrimmar (but I have seen one). And this is again largely due to the size of the servers, the factions, and reaction to how things like this should be handled.
So when you have a very large population where there is some times more odd things happening, people who are not familiar with this mentality and are not from WRA might not know how to react to it. They might react to it the only way they think their character does, and this may turn into an OOC discussion of why this reaction is wrong, and how they are allowed to play this character and therefore shouldn’t be attacked. But this character was just reacting to the, idk…zan-tien mogu hanging out in Stormwind or the warlock-less wraithguard standing near the Wyvern’s Tail.
MG things WRA cares about too much to the point of no fun.
WRA thinks MG doesn’t take lore seriously enough
However both servers are great, and have their positives and negatives, and are made up of largely both of the same people for one reason or another. I generallywished people would try to boost our own Alliance player base and have people stay on WRA for Alliance so we could have a better population around, but thats just me.
I just think that a lot of us don’t interact with each other enough, so when interactions do happen they tend to not really be understood, so these perceptions of a server mentality tends to grow.
I don’t know much about Emerald Dream, all I know about them from my outside looking in is that they don’t really have much of an active population as it use to and a lot of what I heard is not exactly positive into the general energy of that place. And I’m pretty sure a lot of that server came to WRA and caused issues, though I can’t remember.
EU RP servers, I don’t know what they may think. All I know is I saw some amazing screenshots of things that were coordinated over there and makes me sad I’ve not seen much of that with us.
I will say, my experience with Gotosh RPing with off server Alliance was…incredibly shocking to say the least. The amount of IC racism he faced was enough to think about it for awhile…not that I don’t welcome some hostile interactions, but it was certainly something in how different it felt. But that was my experience of course.
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i didn’t remember this and i was happier not
give me your phone
Somehow it always slips my mind just how unshy the Old Internet was about how much they hated women.
Not that the Current Internet is much better, pound for pound, but back then it seemed way more generalized and deep-seeded, whereas now misogyny seems mostly centralized around modern fascism.
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I haven’t found many good takes on RP servers from people on non-RP servers. Beyond the standard “har har ERP” there are plenty of negative RPer stereotypes.
Moon Guard is the most known RP server though, most people outside of RP realms aren’t overly aware of WrA in my experience, where I’ve been harassed while on MG toons for being from MG/an RPer.
There are some MG/WrA hot takes from either side, but for altoholics, it’s always been a case of playing on both servers – there’s a lot of community crossover.
One day, they’ll be merged ¯ \ _(ツ) _ / ¯