Normally, I have a lot of sympathy for this viewpoint. But I admit that in WoW’s crumbling, ancient, sick and nearly-dead dotage, it’s probably discouraging as hell to walk around an empty city waiting for people to show up so you can possibly lure them in for RP that might or might not be satisfactory.
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I’d like to add on that RP has suffered in the game to a large part that there is just a hella lot more to do in WoW now. Like -alot- more.
Cata, MoP, Warlords especially after you did your X dungeon runs and raid for the week that was it. No artifact power, no badges to grind, so sitting around the city to RP was nearly all that’s left to justify even being logged in for a few hours. People these days, including myself, aren’t standing around in cities as often as I used to.
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I meant to respond to this once I wasn’t on my phone, and then I forgot and didn’t do that. Thank you to everybody who’s mentioned Songbird Eatery and Farstrider Friday! And thanks for the link to the Ashen Court’s thread, Thomas – I’m also going to be updating the OP on that with current/upcoming events soon.
We’re currently running Songbird Eatery on two Sundays per month (usually the 2nd and 4th, but it depends on how the weeks fall) and Farstrider Fridays two Fridays per month (usually the 1st and 3rd). I’ve thought about suggesting we do Songbird every Sunday, but I’ve also thought about starting a couple other weekly things that would happen on the intervening Sundays. I’ll revisit all that.
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To add to this, another obvious factor is that the world is simply larger, which spreads everyone out. If you want RP, you have to use your voice; share where you’re going to be and what you’re doing. Accept that not everyone may think your idea is as amazing as you do. Are you content with a small group? Do you want quantity? What are you looking for?
Years ago, I used to hang around various places in Outland / Northrend and engage rando passerby in the RP. Norman is an absolute adventurer through and through, so it makes sense for him to be traveling all over the place.
I was happy to have 15 minute, 30 minute RP adventuring conversations with anyone. It would occasionally turn into two or more adventurers heading off to complete some quest and no matter, was almost always worthwhile. The contact was sometimes so frequent, I’d almost miss acknowledging a new arrival because I was busy engaging others.
If I chose to do that now but didn’t tell anyone I was doing it? I might go weeks without seeing one person. The long time players have no real desire to run through the questing experience for the 1,000th time. The new players could, but they want to catch up with end game.
That leaves some of my favorite places in this game completely devoid of human contact for weeks, possibly months at a time.
People just need to decide what RP they want and where they want to have it. Advertise it, cultivate it…hoping for RP anymore in this version of WoW isn’t going to cut it.
this is definitely why i haven’t been huge on RP-- I’m doing M+ and Raids right now and having way too much fun. Whoops.
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More news at 11.
That’s the rub, though - as Enekie pointed out in their post:
It’s easy enough to sit on a proverbial high horse and say “well you can’t expect engagement if you don’t do it yourself/don’t stick around”… but why would most RPers even attempt it, if the city is so dead all over? For myself, I even said in my first post in this thread that I had simply noticed how dead it was while passing through during questing - while adding that I assumed it was simply because of the time of day, or perhaps it was simply the part of the city I was in! And then some helpful people chimed in with a few events that do sometimes happen in SMC, which is great to know.
But, honestly, expecting RPers - especially ones fresh to the server, like myself - to sit in SMC all day long just on the hope some other RPer, who is IC, will wander in or pass through with the same idea… is not realistic. They would go to where there is RP happening - which, for the most part, sounds like Orgrimmar (outside of scheduled events that they may or may not know about).
Some types with enough love and time for it - like Thomas - may put in the effort to revitalize dead hubs. But you really cannot expect that of everyone… especially those just dipping their toes in to WrA. They want to actually see what RP is like in general, not spend hours sitting alone in a dead city hoping some random IC person comes along to try and engage.
Admittedly, if this is the sort of prevalent attitude RPers on WrA have towards those who are thinking of joining in on WrA’s RP scene… I may just stick to Moon Guard, tbh. Because it’s not a very welcoming response to be told “well if you want RP there, make the effort to revitalize the city”. 
It won’t, for sure. But that is likely why most will gravitate towards where there is RP going on, especially if they’re newer to a server’s RP scene and just want some idea of what it’s like.
For me, it’s disappointing to see SMC dead on both major RP servers, but I’m not kicking and screaming about it and bemoaning how no one will think of the poor blood elf capital. I’ll just go where the RP actually is, and otherwise visit what events do happen there! That’s all you can do, sometimes.
Also this is very true, too. Why would some spend hours sitting alone in dead city hubs hoping for people to walk through, when there’s just… so much stuff to do. Mog farming is gonna keep me busy for a number of years, as is - let alone everything else there is to do and see and explore.
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Chromie time also caused a lot of players to be sharded from seeing one another in the questing experience. It causes the same splitting issue that say, too many gamemodes/maps in other games would, but wow’s so old at this point that opening up the leveling process from a formerly linear zone level system was probably for the best. You see it worse on rp realms, too, since we have no sharding in the old zones (barring exceptions like dazar’alor/zuldazar, current content zones, etc)
you do gotta understand that we get a thread every other week about how the server is dead and people should just go to moon guard, to the point where responding helpfully about WrA’s preference for event/guild RP gets the “oh so you’re dead and you all suck, i might as well just go to moon guard, the better server.” It’s a little exhausting for people here to hear. that does explain some of the more old guard grumbling.
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But that is the appropriate response.
Like, is Silvermoon the big bustling RP megahub as it was back in the day? No. But the whole state of WoW as a whole is not the same anymore with communities across all servers splintering, people moving on, the game itself just being more demanding of people time if they want to progress, etc.
Is there RP elsewhere on WrA? Yes. Are there RP guilds and events, and hubs, and all that jazz? Yes. But if you specifically want Silvermoon to be your choice destination and backdrop then I’m sorry, without a concentrated effort by other players -including yourself- the circumstances aren’t going to change. Outside of the dedicated days in which people do choose SIlvermoon as their party destination.
I’m not sure where you are taking the offense of the place not being welcoming when most people here have given you the most honest, concise answers possible. Which I think is a far better alternative than being misleading and completely selling you a false bill of goods. And you, pardon if I’m misjudging you, seem to presenting that because Silvermoon isn’t bustling right now that RP is dead on WrA. Which is far from true.
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I can see how that’d get exhausting, for sure.
Even so, it’s not exactly encouraging nor welcoming for every possible new person dipping toes into WrA to have people speak to them like somehow it’s on their heads to make RP happen in dead city hubs. I 100% get the exhaustion from trolls who spam threads about the server dying - gods know we have enough doing the “omg WoW is dying!!!11!!!” spiel on the GD forum; I just think it’s uh… probably not a good idea to approach every single new person posting in WrA’s forum, like they’re also a troll.
Honestly I’ve been warned away by most of my friends who do believe WrA is relatively dead in comparison to MG, but I wanted to see it for myself before making judgements! Plus, it’d be great to do some Horde RP - many unique cultures and races exist on Horde side, a lot of which I adore and want to do stuff with despite preferring Alliance aesthetics.
So it’s uh. Discouraging, to say the least! For people to say “well if you want RP here, make it happen yourself, just like this guy who revitalized Duskwood”. I ain’t got that kind of time, energy, or motivation for a server I just started on, y’all. 
I mean, yes and no. I get the point, but you’re aiming that and putting all that weight on people new to the server. As if somehow it’s our fault SMC - or any other place - is dead or near to being.
Nowhere did I say that at any point. I just expressed disappointment in it being in the same shoddy state on WrA as it is on MG. I had hoped that to not be the case on the Horde-heavy RP server, but alas! It’d be nice to RP there eventually, and at least there are still some events going on there - that’s enough for me for now! But being told “if you want to RP there, stand around narrating to yourself for hours alone and hope some rando IC person wanders around to engage with” is uh. Not only unrealistic, but kind of crummy to say to a person brand new to the server who is wanting to check out the RP scene.
Nowhere have I said as such? I would ask you to pick out exactly where I did, as you perhaps are confusing me with the OP - who I am not.
Some people here, yourself included, could’ve fooled me.
I’m mostly leveling first, right now - and planning to check out Orgrimmar first before I commit to making RP alts here, as that does seem to be - in a similar vein to SW on MG - the ‘central’ RP hub for the server. I simply check out server forums, and saw this, and thought I’d share my own thoughts.
If this was made by a known troll, then… apologies for being new to WrA’s forums and not knowing, I guess??
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I will say that I’m realllllly tired of seeing these posts. If someone wants to find RP, they’ll find it. You can:
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Join an RP guild.
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Ask about ongoing RP in chat, communities, etc.
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JOIN THE WYRMREST COMMUNITY PROJECT DISCORD that currently has 29 events listed on their calendar.
It’s not the responsibility of the forums to find RP for you. If you want to find it, then put in the work like the rest of the RPers do. There are guilds advertising. There are events advertising. There are RPers who would network with others simply if asked.
I’m not trying to be unwelcoming, but if you can post numerous times on the forums, I honestly don’t see why you can’t use that same time and effort to contact an RP guild or two, swing over to the Discord and introduce yourself, or spend more effort than grousing on the forums.
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This is partially personal opinion, but I’m saying this in hopes that it will help you make an informed decision about whether you want to invest time in playing on WrA or not: There is no ‘central’ RP hub on WrA because most of WrA’s RP is not walk-up.
We do have walk-up – a little bit, at least – but most of WrA’s RP experience takes the form of guild RP, public campaigns, freeform RP set up via OOC networking, and public scheduled events. If you want to experience WrA RP, then I suggest scrolling through the forums and/or joining the Wyrmrest Community Project to find events and campaigns you might be interested in. If you would be interested in networking with other players to meet for freeform world RP rather than finding them at random, the WCP can be used for that purpose as well.
If you mostly want random walk-up, and if you want there to just be random walk-up available without your being involved in bringing it back, then that’s fine and understandable and you should certainly check out Duskwood and the Valley of Honor, but WrA is probably not going to be your thing. We’re still working on it.
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I appreciate you being candid about it!
Though ultimately, whether or not that’s true, I prefer seeing it first myself - giving it that personal chance, so to speak, and making my own informed decision based off what I see personally, rather than what others tell me. After all, if I listened only to the opinions/beliefs of others, I wouldn’t have even made any alts on WrA at all. My friends constantly talk about WrA being fairly dead-- or at least, not nearly active to the degree MG is. But, I like making my decisions based on personal experience first and foremost. I just take others’ accounts into consideration, in addition to that!
Ironically, that’s what most say about MG’s Horde RP, as well. Which, is part of why I rolled Hordes on WrA rather than MG - compare and contrast, etc etc.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that method of RPing, personally. It’s a little harder for new RPers/shy or anxious RPers to break in to, though (which, I fall under the latter) - but I don’t think it’s a bad approach to RP at all, and oftentimes builds communities just as strong as or stronger than ones which have a heavy walk-up emphasis.
I don’t always need/want random walk-ups, admittedly. Really, they kind of make me more nervous than anything. I do, however, love ‘watching’ RP out in the world, or walk-up RP happening around me. It’s just an enjoyable pastime for when I don’t personally have the brain for RP at the time, or just am afk doing stuff with friends or things other than WoW. It also tends to give me a good idea of just… mm. I suppose the ‘style’ of RP, or general vibes of RP, for a server? Reading TRPs, seeing what kinds of RP is going on in the world as I sit around for a bit just taking things in, etc. That was mainly why I was attempting to get to Orgrimmar first, before deciding what I would do - even if, as you said, it isn’t quite a walk-up ‘central hub’ as SW is on Moon Guard, there’s likely still at least some going on. Plus, TRPs to read, etc!
I will keep what you said in mind, though. Likely the plan is, I’ll see how Orgrimmar is first - any walk-ups going on in the city, or open RP, etc. Then give the forums and the WCP a looksee. After I have those two avenues looked over/experienced, I’ll feel best informed on whether I want to commit time to leveling a couple of Horde alts for RP on WrA or not! (Which, to be fair, I love leveling - so even if I didn’t get into the RP scene as much, I’d probably still drag one to cap solely for the leveling experience if nothing else )
I’d recommend going to public events. Especially the reoccurring ones.
Since 2009, Story Circle has been held in Bloodhoof Village every Sunday @6 ST (minus some major holidays) and has been a stepping stone for many new and shy role players. It is actually the second rp event I attended way back in 2012 and how I found my first rp guild.
Going off of how important stories are to Tauren and others, everyone is invited to come and listen or even tell a story themselves. And it isn’t just stories. Sometimes people read poems or play songs. This of course is done IC.
Here is the link; [H/A/N-Rp Event] Story Circle
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That honestly sounds incredibly fun! I assume it’s fine for some to come in and just linger in silence to watch? Because that just sounds like a lovely, chill way to spend Sunday night even if I didn’t feel like actively participating in the RP.
I’ll be sure to keep Story Circle in mind for the future. 
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Yup! Anyone can come and just watch. Don’t have to engage at all. We get a lot of people leveling that come through. Some ask “What is this?” Some sit and listen.
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I think you could probably just come by and watch, as you mentioned liking to do with watching walk-up RP, at a lot of public events, especially the ones that are oriented more towards social/mingling RP. It never hurts to ask the host, but I suspect most won’t mind as long as you’re not producing any distracting jumping/running movement, toy effects, or OOC /say chatter.
Things being scheduled rather than random means you may not be able to do this whenever you want, but there are a lot of scheduled events, so likely there will be an opportunity somewhere most of the time.
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There are also events like the story circle that revolve around sitting and listening. I don’t know if Tirisfal Theatre Troupe is still active, but there are a few performer’s guilds still around, with the music festival going on right now. They’re public events where you’re actually asked to keep RP to whispers so that people can “hear the performance.”
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No one here is trolling unless you are. Forum posters - RPers who have been around this server for years - offered lots of good options for finding RP on this server. Yes, some were “be the solution,” which you didn’t have time for since you’re also starting a guild on MG, but some were as simple as “here’s where to find the other RPers.” If you’re really interested in Horde RP, poke around Org, go to a guild faire, join the Wyrmrest Community Project Discord, try some of the server events, etc.
Oh, and next time you reply to someone’s comment, please don’t bump it up into your previous post with an edit. And remember…lines like “Some people here, yourself included, could’ve fooled me” looks like the type of sarcasm that isn’t going to win you any points 
… Did you miss the last few posts? Lots of people gave good recommendations, in addition to the two SMC-specific ones that were mentioned earlier in the thread. Which was a nice, refreshing change from the deluge of “well if you want SMC RP you gotta make it yourself, quit crying”-esque posts.
I’ll continue to do so, as I prefer simply adding to prior comments rather than clogging a thread up. There isn’t really a forum rule stating this isn’t allowed, and it’s what I’ve done on most forums I’ve participated in since… well, I first got a computer.
Well, when people approach someone stating an opinion/concern with such aggressive or frankly unwelcoming posts… what is someone meant to think, exactly?
I get that WrA’s forums apparently have a bad troll problem with people coming in making “omg dead server lululul” posts, or what have you. But approaching every single person who expresses any iota of concern of there being truth to that, with that sort of grousing, is not going to help the server’s community get any more lively. Assuming the worst of everyone - especially those new and unfamiliar to the server - does nothing but drive people right back to their home server.
Understandable, for sure. Btags or a unified forum account would go a long way towards fixing issues like that, honestly…
I do get that by posting from a relatively low level character (with a bugged character display, at that), I may not exactly come off like a genuine person rather than some troll’s alt. Unfortunately I do not trust people on forums enough to not go harassing me or my guild in-game any time they take issue with or disagree with a post of mine for any reason, so I post on an unconnected alt.
I’m still mad about the display for them being bugged and stuck on this default icon, though. I have a great mog on her and everything.