Do you utterly despise it, love seeing it, or are just indifferent. I just wanted to ask because I personally love homebrewing and coming up with my own lore while trying to make it fit in with the larger world of Azeroth, and I wanted to gather opinions from other members of WRA.
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Speculation is, in part, the lifeblood of roleplaying, as it ideally helps to expand the setting in ways the devs may never will. In general, speculation that colors the grey areas of lore or fills parts of the proverbial lore hole can be quite good for an rp environment. I typically enjoy when logical deduction and imagination are combined to, at least temporarily, help build on what has been provided.
It should also be noted that we as players arenât a hivemind, and therefore donât think alike; nor are any of us actually in charge of the settingâs official development. Regardless of how much sense it makes or how cool we or anyone else thinks something is we shouldnât treat any individual speculation as set in stone and be prepared to change/adapt according to official developments where prudent.
In short:
Speculation is fine, especially if it adapts to established canon, but should remain flexible and shouldnât be publicly enforced. At best such things helps enhance immersion and gives us stuff to do or discuss, as long as we moderate ourselves and donât act like our word is law since, in the end, it really isnât and likely never will be.
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Ftfy.
Also, nah. I donât mind usually. But like most rp, itâs all about how itâs presented.
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Depends on the headcanon.
As long as itâs reasonable, isnât running over actual lore, or negatively affecting RP in a serious way, Iâm usually fine with it. Itâs better if it comes with some kind of reasoning and isnât just a âbecause I want toâ thing. But even then, not always.
I donât like headcanon when itâs something like a lore crossover and your WoW character suddenly has powers and knowledge from some other game or lore that doesnât exist in WoW (unless itâs pretty generic). Your engineer canât suddenly be Magneto, if that makes sense. I donât want to see characters from Supernatural, Game of Thrones or the Witcher walking around Stormwind. But if you want to have someone read tarot cards, thatâs all good.
I also donât like headcanon that people use to say their characters all hate a race for no reason - moreso if itâs a race they shouldnât have a reason to hate. If someone OOCly doesnât like elves, orcs, short races, etc., thatâs fine. But when someone makes all their characters hate elves, orcs, etc. with no justification, Iâm likely not to RP with them. That feels like the separation of IC/OOC is missing. Now if a character hates orcs because of what happened to them during Garroshâs big bad warchief experience, thatâs fine. But I also want to see it RPd out in a way that isnât just denying the other RPer the chance to participate (i.e. give them looks of suspicion - yes! Swap to your characterâs language so they canât RP with you - nooooo.)
And I also feel like itâs fine to say your character had nothing to do with some of the plot points you find offensive OOCly. If you donât want your Tauren to burn the tree, thatâs perfectly acceptable. If you want your characters to be less faction based, also fine.
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Considering how many times Blizzard has retconned or jumped the shark or just forgotten their own lore, Iâm not going to give anyone a hard time about their own interpretation of it so long as they realize not everyone will agree.
So long as the premise isnât completely bonkers or being played in a rude, trolling, or âforce my will upon othersâ way, Iâll likely even roll with it. I definitely am not going to nitpick at this point.
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I donât have a problem with it - so long as it works within current lore and you donât cram it down someoneâs throat. I think headcannon can add a lot to rp and helps flesh out the world.
Heck, I founded a guild based on Kinarraâs worship of the Skyfather. Itâs not something you find in tauren lore - but itâs not excluded either. Itâs just not mentioned. And it seems to be something that would fit. The character still honors the Earthmother, so sheâs not a total wild eyed heretic, well not yet. In character, Kinarra isnât going to force the idea of Skyfather on anyone. Skyfather calls people to him so not believing/worshipping him is just fine.
There is also a cave that my character refers too as âThe Seerâs Caveâ. In my head canon it is guarded by an ancient bear spirit called Great Mother Bear who protects a small spring that the Elder seer uses for rituals. The cave has a fairly important place in guild lore, but I donât stress out if someone else uses the cave for purposes of their own. Itâs just a random cave, and Iâm not going to force my head cannon on anyone outside the guild - or anyone that doesnât want to play along with me.
Now, I was an officer in a RP guild once where two certain members had worked out that all achievements were earned by the player, and all players, in character through time line manipulation. Well, okay then. We all have to make our peace with the âchampionâ issue. However, this couple refused to interact with guild members, including officers and GM, who were âof less rankâ than them and they would raise an IC ruckus about it. They disrupted a guild story line, upset anyone who tried to rp with them and generally caused chaos. In the end, we had to ask them to leave. They were welcome to their head cannon, but either failed to realize or didnât care about the consequences that they forced on other players.
TLDR: Head cannon is fine so long as you understand there may be unexpected consequences and donât try to force it other people.
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What two Elves do in the privacy of their own home is no business of mine.
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I think, as a lot of the above posts have indicated, thereâs a spectrum, from conservative to liberal. I donât mean those terms politically at all (the LAST thing I want to do is open THAT can of worms) but in response to the lore. People on the more conservative end of the headcanon spectrum are more interested in conserving the lore, working within it as a framework, whereas people on the more liberal end would see the lore as more guidelines than actual rules and try to work outside of its bounds, with other inspirations sometimes coming into play.
On the very conservative end, in my experience, you often get a very grumpy/gatekeepy class of roleplayer. To them, RP is often bound so strictly by the lore that it limits what people can play even within the lore. I think these have grown more rare over the years but I mean here the class of roleplayer who would tell you that you canât roleplay a half elf or a high elf because theyâre too rare, a Sanâlayn because all Sanâlayn are evil, etc etc. I guess it takes an approach that if the lore doesnât provide examples (e.g. no good Sanâlayn NPCs exist as far as Iâm aware) it is forbidden.
On the mildly conservative side of things itâs more that the lore establishes boundaries but where it does not specify there is room for flexibility. This is probably more where I sit. For instance, a dwarf RPer might safely headcanon that Loch Modan is no longer full of Twilightâs Hammer Cultists, after over a decade of lore time has passed. Itâs a headcanon; as far as the lore specifies Loch Modan had a bunch of cultists last we checked, but itâs a safe assumption to make given the context of the world and the passage of time. You can safely RP a not-totally-evil-Sanâlayn, for instance, because we know that individual free-willed undead are individuals with distinct personalities and values, so even if their society is largely evil, individual characters need not be so. Generally the lore is held as important, but thereâs still a lot of room for individuality and imagination.
Then on the liberal side you get a more âfreedom from the loreâ attitude. For instance, in my time Iâve met people whoâve RPed as Time Lords from the Doctor Who Universe, or who have invented a continent/island of which they are the monarch of a heretofore undiscovered society, or who are a shapeshifting alien species that escaped the Legionâs destruction of their planet, and so forth. (All actual examples Iâve encountered) Iâd argue that this perspective puts individual character ideas and inspiration above the lore, and either ignores the lore as a boundary or distorts it in some way to make allowances for the idea.
Even this doesnât sum it up. Like most attempts to lump complex humans into a simple conservative-liberal spectrum, thereâs a lot of variance within the categories or areas where people might be conservative in one sense but liberal in another. But fundamentally I think thatâs how it manifests itself. Itâs muddied by the fact that Azeroth can be a bit details-shy at times, and so even the strictest lore adherents tend to chuck headcanons in. For instance nothing official in the teachings of the Church of the Holy Light prohibits premarital âliasonsâ but youâll find a lot of those RPers frowning at the notion lol.
Importantly though, everyone headcanons in some form. We have to, as RPers - I mean the act of RPing is creating our own little Azeroth fanfic. Personally I have the most fun when the lore is kind of held as the mutual terms of RP, so to speak, the agreed-upon outline of what we can build, but not when itâs used as a big stick to beat down any sense of individuality. So flexibility is fine and fun - just keep it in universe, thatâs my opinion!
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I use it for interpersonal stuff and character stuff.
For example: Interactions Iâve had with other players in certain areas and my own characterâs relationships with in game NPCs and characters.
If something is too outlandish, I wonât really recognize it- but it doesnât matter too much from me since I never have time to RP anymore (Sad)
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Oh⌠well. Nevermind.
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As roleplayers, weâre all sitting in the in-between grey space left behind by WoWâs writing, and because of that thereâs inherently going to be some baseline headcanoning that must take place in order to rp in the first place. Is my human paladin actually the long dead ghost of a knight in Lotharâs service? Gameplay wise, no I started in Northshire Abby like all other human characters. But my rp partners play along with my character concept when I slap on a spectral toy and start waxing about the First War.
As the game has progressed and more ideas and combinations of ideas have been introduced into the canon, whatâs possible in RP has greatly expanded as well. Iâve stopped asking why to character concepts and have transitioned to why not? There are some concepts that work better in private rp than public rp, but so long as everyone in your roleplay group is on board and the concept doesnât take away agency from your partners, I see no reason to limit yourself.
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Well according to Blizzardâs messed up lore last I looked (been a while though), we all get sucked down to the Shadowlands after we croak⌠even though 20 or so years of Warcraft lore had ghosts and spirits and shamans who talked to them and priests who expelled them andâŚ
So yeah, thatâsâŚkinda why I donât take Blizzardâs lore all THAT seriously. Iâm more like: have we seen some example of it in game at some point, or has it been hinted at? Yes? Iâm cool with it, because Blizzard sure AF doesnât seem to know or care what theyâre doing half the time with their own creation 
Now if you claim to be Princess Unicorn from He-Manâs universe, I might just shrug and move on (I still wonât really care if you want to RP that though, I just probably wonât get into it myself because itâs a bit -too- out there).
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All rp at the end of the day is a form of headcanon or fan lore. At least when it comes to rping in established franchise games like WoW. Itâs certainly a spectrum of just how much is used. Even when we are trying to fit backstories into events of the lore we make assumptions. It really comes down to what people are willing to accept.
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Really depends on how lore friendly it is to me. If you can make it fit in and have a backstory that isnât blatantly disregarding the lore then Iâm all for it. As others have said, RP is headcanon already, to an extent.
However, blatantly disregarding lore to the point of omitting entire expansions, books/media and or established content? Iâm not a fan of. But I will never try to police somebodies RP. They pay their sub!
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Yeah, the Time Lords would have been a hard no from me. Iâm fine with them RPing them however they want (itâs their $15/month after all), but Iâll just steer clear.
There have been a number of imagined island/kingdom/city RP Iâve seen. For the most part, those feel more acceptable than the human RPer who claimed she was the queen of IF (it was MG during LK). Of course, there are the use of things like Garrisons or phased city stand-ins for representation (Hearthglen and Theramore come to mind).
I think a lot of us are a little less strict with concepts than we used to be, which is why there have been more people RPing Dragons, Dark Rangers and Dwarven clans with non-Dwarven members in the last few expacs versus what it was like in LK and Cata.
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There is no lore worth preserving. It must all burn.
Kind of a missed opportunity to not make the Infinite Dragonflight a bunch of insufferable lore purists trying to rewrite history to make it a better story.
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Lore is a plumb bob, not field artillery.
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Iâm gonna say this as simply as my nerdy self can.
Canon-lore is both the skeleton and framework of the game. so long as whatever youâre building fits within that framework, and functions well with that skeleton, go nuts. WoWâs lore is fairly spotty as things stand.
But its also that grounded nature of your RP that makes the most sense and will have other people Role Playing with you. Overwhelming power and BFF with major lore characters is a bit of a stretch and can stifle other peopleâs characters, which is never fun in a long-term situation.
Take whatâs given to you in the game and run with it till you find your niche, is the best advice I can offer. Thereâs multiple different paths for nearly every class, profession and race and thereâs really no absolutely âwrongâ way to play any of them, within reason.
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Iâve dug deep into what the actual developers say about the actual lore. Theyâve told us to take everything as being said by an unreliable narrator. âCanonâ in a game design context is waaaaaay different than religious canon. Basically it only sets the bounds for designing specific content. Thatâs it. And thereâs what (?) 20,000 years or so of Azerothian history? Plenty of blank spots in there. So published lore is a frontier, not a line in the sand.
iâm a pandaholic, so thatâs the only part of the lore that I know a little bit about - enough to discuss anyway. If itâs not true of the rest of WoW, then at minimum Pandaria is for sure Samwiseâs headcanon and weâre just playing in it. And, like they say, âPandaren donât really come in any bad flavors.â
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Staying solely within the framework of whatâs already canonized is difficult to maintain considering weâre playing a video game where things keep changing constantly.
Similar to Kunbo, Iâd always had and encouraged a more relaxed view of Tauren lore and the possibilities of it due to Tauren history largely being spoken tradition rather than written on anything more than just a few scrolls explaining how the Tauren believe the Earthmother created the world around them.
The whole idea behind The Earthspear Tribe back when I first started it was legitimizing my own personal headcanonâthat this was a Tauren tribe that actually did exist, it lived in the Barrens, and it was all but wiped out during the Third War. Within the context of the gameâs world and universe, the Tribe would not existâbut for myself, I set the lore of the Earthspear to be within a pocket where it could be feasibly be treated as if it could be canon.
Now, granted I was a dumb up and coming young adult with an amateur-level writing capability and never really bothered to make a whole lot of sense out of what Iâd written, but with roleplaying in WoW itâs crucial to not take everything going on within its universe at face value if you want to enjoy this whole aspect.
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