What's it like for Horde characters in Stormwind?

Title. For those of you with normally Horde-aligned characters who are either defectors from the Horde or in SW for other reasons, how does the average RPer treat you? How often do you get accosted?

I ask because I have a “quel’dorei” character who’s really a sin’dorei defector in disguise, and in essence I want to make sure that I won’t be constantly attacked (ICly, OOCly, or both) if she eventually elects to reveal her nature.

Is there anyone with experience in the matter that can help me make an informed decision?

Depends entirely who you run into, there is no average when it comes to RPers, just a lot of deviations from the mean in both directions. :laughing:

But seriously, you don’t make a fringe character unless you want people to notice the fringes. That said, there’s the RP equivalent of papers which show you to be a lawful resident, and entitle you to IC assistance from the guard if harassed. And there are some persons, like yours truly, who won’t give a rat’s rump what you are so long as you’re not accosting people yourself.

The definitive answer is that I’m not sure there’s a definitive answer.

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A defector disguising themself as a Queldorei… can be interesting, I think.
You seem to have the right approach to it. They wouldn’t openly admit to being a Sindorei in disguise, else they would get arrested if not outright attacked ICly.

I’ve not RPed with Horde defectors, to my knowledge. Part of me wants to cringe because I’ve witnessed a couple of SI:7 Agent RPers openly admit to being an agent (you don’t do that when you’re in a secret intel network!). I’ve also come across dragon RPers who reveal themselves as a dragon when first meeting someone.

Can it be done well? Yes.
I personally just don’t see it done well as often as I’d like. And I do hope I get to bump into your character if you go through with it.

Edit after seeing Aughag’s post below…
I agree that if you bring your horde toon over, you’ll get a lot of PvPers rolling in to to try to pwn you. If you don’t want to risk/deal with that, I’d recommend rolling a void elf. Yeah, not as much customization for the look you may want, but it’ll also prevent PvP from happening in the middle of RP.

I’d keep in mind that while most people would probably be ok with it, you will have players attack you (ie OOC pvp). It’s crappy but that’s unfortunately how people are.

On a IC level how do you plan to explain your character? From what I know Sin’dorei and Quel’dorei are political factions, not races (I could be wrong here so please someone feel free to correct me if I am). With that being said I’m not sure you could “secretly” be a Sin’dorei - your character would become Quel’dorei the moment they defect to the Alliance.

I think you’ve got a good idea here but those are definitely things to keep in mind. If I were to do something like you’re doing I’d probably just make a Void Elf. I know it’s not the most appealing option, especially since they don’t really have the customization options like Blood Elves do, but it’s your best bet to avoid the pvp griefers. Unless you don’t mind that then that’s different. Good luck with your character!

Edit: I may have misread, are you going to be playing a Horde character doing this? Or will they be Alliance?

She’s Alliance, yes. And to be clear, this is a character I’ve already been playing for several months without incident.

To clarify: when I say she’s a sin’dorei disguised as a quel’dorei, I know that physiologically there’s very little difference and it’s pretty much a difference in political standpoint. To that end, even while on the Alliance she’d still consider herself a sin’dorei because of her firm stance that her people chose (mostly) the right path following Arthas’ genocide of her people. It’s the rest of the Horde she takes issue with, hence why she’s left.

I digress.

While the physiological differences are few and far between, a quel’dorei with eyes that aren’t blue and hair that isn’t blonde or white would surely raise some eyebrows. I suppose it’s more a question to prepare myself for the future should she ever decided to rock it loud and proud as it were.

Ah gotcha, pvp wouldn’t even be a factor then. I feel like she’d still technically be Quel’dorei if she’s part of the Alliance regardless of any views she has on the path her people took but I understand what you’re getting at. There definitely may be some raised eyebrows at the green eyes things but overall I can’t see it being a big deal if she’s Alliance. Might be some small pushback but overall I think you’ll be fine, people are pretty open minded.

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If you wanted my personal opinion, too many people are doing this dumb trend these days. I’m all for cross faction RP but no Horde should be in the middle of Stormwind, or Alliance be in the middle of Orgrimmar, especially after a very bloody war that ended on a terribly sour note for everyone involved.

It’s whatever, but just don’t get upset when people rightfully call defectors or Hordies out in Stormwind and try to kill your character because, hey, the Horde kinda burned down a tree in an attempted genocide.

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In my opinion, a Sin’dorei who defects from their people is basically a Quel’dorei. They’re not separate races, just different political alignments. Of course, it’s perfectly okay for your character to hold to the founding ideals of the Sin’dorei as a faction. Renaming you people in the name of the fallen is very honorable, after all. Just clarify in your trp that they are a political refugee. If your character defected and decided to seek citizenship through either RP or behind the scenes, then they’re a citizen protected the same as any other citizen. There are, of course, racist characters who hate all elves in general, others who will claim you’re a spy, and still others who think you’ll revert the moment the Alliance does something you don’t like. I had a Ren’dorei that was called a lot of vile things because the offending character thought all elves in SW were slaves. Your character may face scrutiny or outright racism, and my advice is to RP genuinely.

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I would love nothing more than to have a defect function in WoW proper. Or even the ability to join up with the Argent Crusade to become a truly neutral character.

I detest the Horde, but they have Vulpera, so… Here we are.

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I mean ok, you’re definitely entitled to your opinion, but is it really necessary to be nasty about it? (Spoiler: the answer is “no”)

Anyway.

OP: yes, I have done this on another character. She’s a velf proxy for a neutral-aligned priest I have who works for the Conclave. I don’t play the proxy much (or basically ever), but it would be my personal rule to not divulge her “true status” unless I’ve deemed the player/character decent enough to assume they won’t act like a bag of ****s when I/my character tells them.

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I don’t mean any sort of personal attack in the slightest here, so believe me when I say that you haven’t even seen me be nasty yet. All I’m doing here is calling it as it is: dumb.

If y’all wanna engage in cross faction RP, do it! I cannot encourage that enough. However, if you’re making a troll character but don’t wanna play on Horde-side because “I don’t like the Horde because they do bad things” then tough luck, trolls are enemies of the Alliance and will absolutely be skinned alive if seen within the city walls because… hey, they’re either horribly hostile in all aspects or were members of a faction that frequently finds new and exciting ways to commit mass murder.

In more direct terms to the OP, if you’re making a sin’dorei defector to the Alliance, then you should realistically expect a massive uphill battle. Most sin’dorei are pretty content with the Horde, and actively participated in the aggression against the Alliance. I do not mean to discourage you in the slightest, but that’s the simple fact. There are plenty within the Alliance who will attack a blood elf with little to no provocation, whether it be because blood elves have readily accepted the acts of their more bloodthirsty counterparts, or to actively protect ren’dorei from sin’dorei saboteurs.

That’s just where we’re at in the Horde/Alliance conflict right now. We as roleplayers can’t even use the excuse of “I’m a diplomat” when the one guy who WOULD accept a diplomatic wing of the Horde, Anduin, be king-napped right now by a balding blue man in chains who has a thing for blonde-haired pretty boys touched by the Light. Diplomacy is out the window when pretty much every other leader in the Alliance at best wouldn’t even raise a hand to stop a mob from tearing apart a troll or tauren who “came in peace.”

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…it’s…weird…with elves.

For one, there’s no actual physiological distinction between sin’dorei and quel’dorei. It’s a political distinction, more than anything else. There’s a reason they have the same in-game skeleton, for example.

There’s no real way to tell the difference. If you put a quel’dorei and a sin’dorei next to each other, no one could tell you the difference. Even other elves.

More to the point, the presence of void elves in the city is, strictly speaking, a fairly robust bit of evidence that the Alliance is fine with sin’dorei, so long as you keep from trying to kill them. Maybe not yell out “THIS IS LIKE THE TIME I TOOK PART IN THE BOMBING OF THERAMORE LOK’TAR”, and such.

But high elf history has been mixed with the Alliance, specifically, for some 3,000 years. Within the last…I don’t know how long it’s been in game since the Third War, but that’s how long they’ve been with the Horde.

Again, it’s…it’s kind of an odd case, in general. Because of that, you probably have more flexibility than you think.

Still, I’ll tell you the same thing I tell everyone doing something like this, which is a sentiment that’s been mentioned in this thread: Don’t do something like this if you don’t want, on some level, people to react to it…and don’t get all huffy if they don’t react positively.

Respect other players, and respect the in-game lore (even if you don’t follow it to the letter). But have fun, and please please please remember you can always just say:
(I’m not looking to RP with you, if this is how the interaction is going to go).

Selama ashal’anore.

The Horde can RP as much as they want in SW.

As a corpse.

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In my experience witnessing Horde players RPing in SW, ICly you will face less issues, but OOC PvP will always be an issue. The only way to not get attacked in by PvPers in Stormwind guaranteed is to either…

  1. make an alliance toon, find an alliance buddy to party group with you whenever you log on this toon, use prisms to steal a sin’dorei model to use ICly, and then keep swapping appearance with your party member while RPing. (Requires someone else to be available as your wingman of sorts to make this work whenever you want to RP.)

  2. roll a void elf and use a TRP to say what you really are (though less customization and not everyone reads these descriptions that vary from the model).

If you don’t like these choices, the only option is to accept that you will (sometimes often if in SW) have to do a long death run back to your body as you are periodically killed by PvPers while you are RPing.

They actually didn’t join the Horde until TBC. Between Warcraft 3 and TBC they were independent. The Forsaken strong-armed them into the Horde, as their alternative was to have Forsaken forces abandon them to their fate against the growing Scourge.

But this is where I think the conversation should end. The Void Elves are almost made up entirely of Sin’dorei defectors, both first generation (the ones that were immediately training under Umbric before the banishment) and second generation (NPC Quel’dorei and Sin’dorei alike can be seen training as a new generation in Telogrus). Any hostile intent toward Sin’dorei defectors is strictly a personal IC grudge rather than the norm, IMO.

Forgive me, I was a bit careless with that. (Cut me some slack, that was on a phone.) The point I was making is that the history of high elves with the Alliance has been working with them longer than working against them.

Respectfully, I think this is oversimplifying things a bit.

Vanaelia’s been asked before why she doesn’t have conversations in Thalassian when in Stormwind. Her answer is “Despite old history, for a great deal of these people? The only Thalassian they’ve heard is at the point of a sword. There’s no need to be so exclusionary.”

It’s categorically unfair to paint things as a personal grudge if people are a bit hesitant to accept them with open arms. Especially considering the very real possibility that some of these new defectors may have actively killed the friends and family members of the people in the city.

That’s not, like, some crazy theory. That is a legitimate concern, and is kind of what’s being discussed here. If there were a group of orcs that had defected, or a group of trolls? Would there be the same response? There’s a few orc NPCs walking around Stormwind, sure. But would it still be characterized as an personal grudge if humans were hostile towards an orc defector? Or if there was a human defector in Orgrimmar?

There’s a level of nuance that can make for some fascinating roleplay. It can also make for some horrible roleplay. But even Umbric acknowledges that his people have something of an uphill battle.

And that’s with the void elves, a group that openly have sided with the Alliance. A single blood elf, though? On claims that they defected?

It’s not a grudge to be weary of that.


I should specify that by ‘hostile’, I’m assuming we’re talking about words and cold shoulders. Not bullets and blades.

Towards the original poster, that’s one thing you’re probably going to have to be able to explain:

Why did you hide who you are this whole time? That’s the kind of thing spies would do.

To clarify, I like this concept. It’s also one of the ones that could actually work. Just, you know. People might have their feathers ruffled.

And this is important because of the ancient saying: Ruffles have ridges.

Think about it.

I think you misunderstand me, because that’s exactly what I meant by a personal grudge. Maybe I’m just using poor wording – I have a tendency to that – but that was my point. On a legal level – and, from that, on an OOC level – it’s not likely to be constantly questioned, as we see freshly defected Sin’dorei in Telogrus, and in this thread we’re not seeing anyone say “NO DON’T DO THAT”. On an individual IC level (and OOC to some extent), it’ll be dependent on whether that character has a personal reason to be distrustful of a Sin’dorei, as you outlined.

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To clarify, are you planning to do this on a void elf? If so, you shouldn’t have any problem at all unless you go around announcing that you’re a defector, in which case you might face some IC hostility. I wouldn’t recommend trying to walk around in Stormwind on a blood elf character; you’ll be attacked (by players and guards) before anyone has a chance to read your TRP or consider your allegiance.

High/blood/void elf characters have the unique ability to legitimize their varying allegiances with alts, bypassing this issue entirely. You might as well use it.

To be entirely honest, a blood elf could pop in some colour contacts and go “Yes I’m a high elf hello.” and literally no one would know the difference. You could have it be a deep secret your character is afraid of revealing, have character growth there. With the re-ignition of the Sunwell, the only thing truly indicating a blood elf, that being those shiny fel-green eyes, is slowly fading. Slap Quel’dorei in your TRP (because that’s what everyone would see) and your blood elf character can prance around Stormwind as much as they like. Ergo, what you seem to have been doing so far.

Now, if you’re speaking about openly going around saying your character is a blood elf in Stormwind, then that would invite conflict. I tend to group that in the same category as a warlock having their demon out in the city, or openly RPing a universally hostile race like a demon or naga. It becomes less about actual RP and more about getting the attention that comes from people reacting negatively to your character. It forces multiple people to either ignore you, alter their own character’s reactions from the norm, or subject themselves to the horror that is random combat RP. All for the sake of something that can be easily avoided without impacting your own RP in the slightest.

So, in short, there’s essentially no reason for her to reveal her ‘true nature’ to any open degree, because her political affiliation makes her a high elf anyway. Obviously revealing it to her friends, or those she trusts, as a “dark past”, can build to some neat tension. But going around saying she’s a blood elf to everyone would 1) be somewhat inaccurate and 2) do little but add needless conflict to your RP and that of others, and not the fun kind.

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