What was your "Baby's First RP Guild"?

We all were new at some point. What was your first introduction to the RP Guild scene, if at all?

For me, long ago, I joined the Lordaeron Silver Hand Chapter. It was before even my first character hit max level. I joined because the Guild Leader was the first person to ever walk up to me and I wanted to roleplay with them more. I think they were kinda surprised too, because they were like “Uh… Okay. Fill out this app form on this website.”

It was super cool at the time! We had IC uniforms. There was actual RP ‘Character Progression’ to work towards. Multi-Guild events on the server. Actual lore behind the Holy Light scene.

And then, uh… The Holy Light RP Drama caused it to explode. I did manage to get into a new guild and we got pretty big at the time, but drama and Battle for Azeroth caused that guild to fall apart as well. :frowning:

That character is now a Horde character. I retired the IC concept of that previous character, but it is fun remembering your first RP Adventure.

I’m curious to see all of yours!

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I think mine was the Ironfang Clan. Cool guild, neat concept before the Orc community got toxic (or I was too new to understand). I ended up losing interest in the character but I think the guild lasted for another year before it broke up. It’s too bad because it had been around about 5 years I believe when I joined.

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My first RP guild was Sha Eros (later Hearthfire Company.) They were all pretty great when I was in it, but things died pretty badly in the lull between Legion and BfA, and I fell in with a criminal guild for a while. Though I’m not in Ravenbane Enterprise anymore, I’m still good friends with many of the people in it. I think I really came into my own in RP in that guild.

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I can’t remember if my first guild was Scarlet March or Whirlwind Knights but it was one of those. It was such a long time ago!

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Alright, I actually have a nice story about this. So, it was back in middle burning Crusade. I remember my very first time I started trying Roleplaying… …on Bloodscalp PvP server. I started off by dressing like a pirate on the ship from ratchet to booty bay and started /yelling pirate slogans. Weirly enough, another guy joined me in it. And we’d just spend some time, an hour or so a day, just sailing on the boat, acting like idiots. Was fun at the time, but go I cringe looking back at that XD

So about a month later that, I decided to try out an ACTUAL RP server. Argent Dawn, the server was. Coincidentally, this was also my first time ever playing Alliance. I had been 100% horde before that, but I thought it would be easier Roleplaying a human. So I’m leaving my new level 1 Human warrior, enjoying the new experience of a new starting zone I had never done before. I’m thinking this is pretty cool, i’m liking it. Then I wander into Goldshire, which this NOT being Moon Guard, was not filled with ERPers. Instead, sitting at one of the tables is a lady in full Scarlet Crusade regalia, which I thought was cool. But she also had equipped an item I had never seen before. A Scarlet Crusade standard issue shield.

So, wondering where I could get such a shield, I asked her where she got it. And she just up and gave it to me on the spot. I was so happy and thrilled, and sought to join my first Scarlet Crusade guild soon after. It was just such a positive experience. That’s what gave me my love for Scarlet Crusade Roleplay, and it will always have a special place in my heart.

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Back on Emerald Dream was in Kingdom of Arathor, Sentinel of the Blade, and Ru Shallora Enduril. I then found MG/WRA and found out I loved RP. But started RP when I moved from Maelstrom to Emerald Dream back in MoP.

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I’ve been in Heart of the Mountain for nearly three years, its the first RP guild I joined on MG (transferred from a pve server) and still there today!

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Oooh, neat idea for a thread.

My first ever RP guild was The Grey Hand - a very small Gilneas themed mercenary guild which had some well thought out events/campaign stories. They were a great crew! I suspect they’re still around somewhere, but haven’t seen anyone for a long time.

There was actual RP ‘Character Progression’ to work towards.

This is something I’ve been missing lately, and I haven’t actually RPd seriously for a few weeks now. @Beliastia, do you mind elaborating on what sort of things this included?

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Alright, so!

When you joined the a Silver Hand Chapter, there were three progression paths your character could choose upon taking your oaths.

The three paths available:

  • Knighthood
  • Priesthood
  • Auxiliary

The auxiliary progression, mostly, would stop there. These were the people who weren’t necessarily Light users who assisted the Silver Hand in missions. Your rogues, your more academic mages, warriors, etc.

The Priesthood path would start you out as an initiate. You would apprentice under an actual Priest and you would spend three IRL months learning the different prayers, hymns, and rituals of the Church of the Holy Light.

The Knighthood path is the path you’d take on the road to being a Knight of the Silver Hand. Similar to Priests, you would spend three IRL months as a squire to a current knight. You would have to complete three trials, representing each of the three Tenets of the Silver Hand (I think it’s now 6, but at the the time, it was 3.)

Once you completed your duties and training, the person you were a squire/initiate under would go to the Highlord of the Chapter (The Guild Leader) and they would size up your character. If they gave the nod of approval, the lead priest of the Chapter would do the same. Once their blessings were given, you are granted the title, at least for the Knight path, which is what I took at the time, Knight-Errant. You would have this title before your ceremony.

And you got a NICE ceremony when it came time for your knighthood.

ALL of the Chapters of the Silver Hand, the Clergy of the Holy Light, and various other guilds, would all gather in your CHOSEN holy site for the ritual and knighting. My character was a Gilnean, so she chose to go to the Gilneas Cathedral.

You guys can laugh about the Gilnean choosing to aid the Lordaeron Chapter now.

Your character was FRONT AND CENTER during the ritual, and you were given pieces of RP gear to equip during the oaths and knighting. Your character was IC blessed, your RP set was updated to look more knightly, and, at the end of the ceremony, all of the different people, and there were like twenty, would raid down their AoE spells and heals onto you.

You were then granted the title of Knight, with the prefix of either Sir or Dame. You were granted a MULTI-GUILD recognition of said knighthood. You were also free to take on a squire yourself if you became a knight.

My character went all the way to Champion of the Chapter before the Silver Hand guilds exploded :c

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For me I think this was the Kor’kron Legion- first one that I did some fun events in. I was in one previously for the Kun’lai huge scale battles that went down but good fun all around.

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I started RPing at the end of Mists of Pandaria and I remember receiving one of those random-whisper invites to a guild and deciding to accept on a whim. It turned out that the GM wasn’t very well liked and he had a lot of drama behind him, but I stayed for a month or two before deciding to move on for better pastures. :national_park:

It’s funny, though—My first time RPing was the same day I received that guild invite, because the GM asked me to join him in the Cathedral Square for some IC recruiting via banner-squatting. While we there, a random lowbie (I assume the alt of someone who wanted to troll him) came by and emoted shooting a crossbow at my GM and then he asked me OOC to “handle it.”

I guess he asked because I played a mage at the time; maybe he wanted me to RP using magic to stop the arrow mid-air, or to abjure a shield to block his character from harm. Unfortunately, I didn’t even know HOW to emote at the time; I didn’t know what /e was, I was that new to the hobby. :baby:

So, what did 17-year-old me do? Well, I couldn’t just say “Sorry, idk what to do.” This was a stranger relying on me and I had a lot of teenage validation anxiety (I still do tbh)! No, I couldn’t say that; I had to do something grand, something EFFECTIVE, and I had to appear like an ELITE RPER to my random-af guild invite GM, lest he tell everyone in his surely large RP circle that I was “bad.” :hushed: :scream:

Thus, I decided to do something incredible.

I chose to RP walk up to the level 1 attacker, pull out my in-game staff, and then keyboard turn back and forth while standing close to their character to simulate whacking them with it. :cricket_bat_and_ball: :boom:

If memory serves right, I did that for about 30 seconds straight before the attacker logged off from the game. Poof. Disappeared.

I like to pretend that they thought I was just an elitist dismissing them like they were a meme even though the reality was quite different. Either way, when all was said and done, I RP walked back to my guild banner, keyboard turned to stare into the Cathedral Square, and then typed “brb” in my guild chat so that I could stop an anxiety attack with a glass of water.

:wine_glass: :kiss: :high_heel: :pray: Like a goddess :pray: :high_heel: :kiss: :wine_glass:

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Before transferring to WrA, I was on a PvE server. First guild I was in, I think was called Descent, but it dissolved because of drama.
Rolled a character on WrA during Wrath (I’m a Wrath baby), met a few RPers and pretty much moved to the RP server.
Once in a great while, I’ll take a peek at MG…

Thanks for sharing this entire story.
It’s super important because it never hurts to serve the reminder that anxiety is real and can be a great hurdle for many. I am so impressed by your quick thinking and creativity!

:crown:

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omg :relaxed: Thank you so much! You’re absolutely right; it’s a massive factor.

Like—Despite no one speaking to me about the encounter I shared above, I still spent that entire night reading forum posts and web articles about WoW RP and how people write combat in fantasy settings. I was really :nerd: nerding out :nerd: because I felt so embarrassed about not knowing what to do. LOL

There’s a lot to unpack about the whole topic—For example, I haven’t carried anything that I read on those pages with me to the present; they were just crutches for me tostand on until I developed my own style—BUT, I feel a little bit of pride when I look back on the moment and think about the writer I’ve become today.

I also feel pretty lucky? I had / have a lot of helpful friends who were kind and indulgent whenever I started to rave about boring, minute pieces of information that I thought could be useful in future RP scenarios (which never were going to happen either tbh). Friendship and Perseverance :relieved:

Started at the bottom, now we here :sunglasses: :clinking_glasses: :sunglasses:

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The first RP guild I joined was on the rp-pvp server Maelstrom in late vanilla and called, “The Wolfriders.” While the RP was light at best, the group of people were fabulous and we would IC defend Tarren Mill and attack Southshore during the epic times of WPvP in that region. My character? An Orc hunter by the totally RP approved name of, ahem, Hulkababy.

Right. That being said, Wolfriders led me to an online forum site called Dramatis-Personae (long dead now), a place for WoW players dedicated to immersive RP and run by a published fantasy author. It was there I experienced my first true RP event: a paced, leveling adventure called, “Alas, Gilneas!” where a group of us leveled IC through the entire worgen starter area. To say it was amazing is a vast understatement. From then on, I was hooked.

I was in that in MoP

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I actually came to Moon Guard because I was curious about Goldshire… I couldn’t believe that existed in the game, and I had been playing for over 10 years rofl. Though that was a weird experience, I decided I wanted to stay after seeing people roleplaying in Stormwind. I think this was in 2016.

I created a new character and I remember walking around the Cathedral Square. Back then, many guilds recruited there, and the Embershield Protectorate caught my attention. I thought they were SO cool, but I had never roleplayed seriously. I was too shy and just ran away.

The next day, an OOC friend who was also trying out Moon Guard whispered me saying “hey, I’m talking to those guys you wanted to join and now they’re asking about you!” I was SO embarrassed, but I went there anyway and joined the guild. I spent around 2 years with them, until the guild eventually went inactive and changed games.

This was a very important experience for me roleplay wise, because the guild leader, Eridan, taught me EVERYTHING about the D20 combat, the markers, the emotes and lore. I had no idea about all those systems and they were extremely patient and caring. I still treasure that guild very much!

My first actual rp guild? To be honest I can not even remember the name. I do have memories of the times there though.

I was a Goblin in a Belf House guild back in the day. I was the only non-elf member and also one of the higher ups in the guild. How I pulled this off I cannot rightly say. It was my first time actually committing to a prolonged rp experience, and I remember it fondly.

Tower of Twilight on Scarlet Crusade. It was an all undead roleplay guild and the first one I joined after starting wow back in vanilla. I didn’t even know what MRP or TRP were until sometime after the original Naxx raid went live, lol. It felt like you didn’t have to use an RP mod to attract RP, it’d happen just spontaneously. If you played on the server you were interested in roleplay, period. People who didn’t and rolled there just to be with friends were an abnormality. Some of the people I met there are still around, but most have moved on to bigger and better things. ToT will hold a special place in my heart being my first RP guild. <3

Mordan was a cool dude.
Y’all almost let him die again though one time in Astranaar. You let a little gnome get the drop on him.
:wink:
SC was great for spontaneous rp AND rp-pvp.