We’re Bringing RP Back
by Zeli
The Challenge
Stay completely in character in say, shout, general, guild and party chats on a roleplay server for the full duration of our 10 day trails/resurrections of WoW.
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This project began by accident. Pazzolupo, after a few no-shows, finally appeared in Azeroth on a roleplay server yesterday evening to game with me. We had new characters which proved to be less than challenging, so naturally, on a roleplay server, we decided to interact with the world around us in-character to add to our fun.As a group, Multiplayers tend to roll on RP servers in MMOs. We’re not strong RPers, but we do the best we can to respect the community and continue immersion. We generally enjoy the resulting atmosphere of the game more. The consequences of our actions were like none I’ve ever experienced before.
Day One
We began roleplaying as we fought the Kobolds in Fargodeep Mine and continued as we met up with another Multiplayer in Goldshire. For those unfamiliar with WoW/Alliance, Goldshire is like the capital of skank in this world and it is where things really went haywire. The reactions included ignoring us (apparently roleplaying on a roleplay server is considered RP-Trolling and people were encouraged not to feed into our actions), running away from us (seriously, one guy said “omg ru rpers?” and ran away…twice), dueling us (which Pazz (lvl 7ish) won all of them except the level 80 guy), griefing us (a couple of level 70-80 gents cleared all the mobs from Fargodeep preventing us from completing quests and gaining experience for a couple of hours), and blatant harassment (we were called faggots and whores in say, tells and even in /general).
You would think this would be very disheartening, but being the oddball crew that we are, we decided to grief the griefers with more roleplay! I guess it’s our idea of a peaceful protest. The results were hilarious. One fellow insisted that we contain our roleplay to the cathedral area of Stormwind and finally rage-logged when we would not stop playing in-character.
As the evening went on, we began to see a turn in the community. People who were laughing at us, began defending us and one even began to interact in-character with Pazz. People responded to the hateful /general comments defending RP on an RP server. One person finally stated that they reported the offensive language that the griefers were using. By the end of the night, people were asking in /general if anyone knew of any RP guilds, and when no one responded, a level 80 fellow began a roleplay guild, which we assisted by signing the charter.
There were moments in the evening where I felt sorry for the other newbie characters in Fargodeep Mine trying to complete their quests who were bystanders in this whole affair. In an effort to stop our roleplaying, the griefers were not selective about who they stole mobs from. At one point, I thought we should log since it was never our intention to cause problems. But we weren’t being adversarial with our roleplay. We did not go out of our way to interact with people who ran away from us. We responded to the griefing in-character and when the language got too abusive, we walked away to continue our gaming. The truth is, giving in to these people will only encourage them to harass roleplayers in the future and roleplaying on a designated roleplay server is not wrong.
We have decided to continue our roleplaying for the remaining 9 days we have left in Azeroth. If you would like to join us, we are on Silver Hand, Alliance side.
This sounded like a lot of fun.
The favorite thing I overheard was something like this:
The Multiplayers kept asking who this “Ty” was. When someone told them it stood for “Thank You”, I believe Pazz responded “Giving thanks is a noble thing to stand for indeed”. They were then determined to find this “Ty” individual, as he was surely a great man.
This was absolute hilarity. Hopefully I can manage to catch up (level 8 is so elusive) and actually contribute a little
Role on!
Love it. Don’t give in! Never surrender the RP!
and now I have Corey Hart’s “Never Surrender” stuck in my head.
“Just a little more time is all we’re asking for;
Cause just a little more time could open closing doors…”
I don’t know much about RPing and I try to avoid it, but people playing on an RP server briefing RPers is odd to me. I thought they all ran around saying, “thine eye has been poked by thee yonder wolf claw. I wilts get thee revenge on yonder cubs. To the trees my fair wenches. ” or something like that. Good luck purging Silver Hand of thine evil village idiots
That’s good stuff! You should join us!
What a bunch of nerds! In DAoC and EQ2 I chose a RP server because of the community, but in WoW I have avoided the RP servers because they are a retched hive of scum and villainy.
That is so random! I’ve only played on RP servers in WoW because back in Vanilla Days, people actually at least *tried* to not be dicks. After that though, I always found that Goldshire was actually a RP hub… even if it was focused on naked night-elf chicks, there was still RP!
People can be so strange sometimes, but I’m very glad to hear y’all still had your fun in spite of the weird anti-RP people…. on the RP server….
Wow Z! I knew that Goldshire on Silver Hand was bad, but I have never seen it like you described. There are usually many roleplayers hanging out there. This is/was my normal WoW server. I only have a few days left of my 10 day rez scroll and I would enjoy hanging out with you all sometime during the remainder just to see what happens.
Well I suppose it could have just been crazy timing and bad luck, but we turned it into a memorable night of gaming. It sure livened up our lowbie questing.
And you are always more than welcome!
Haha lovely! I’m not going back to WoW, probably ever, but I would certainly like to see more writeups about this!
I’ll do a wrap up at the end of the 10 days.
The absolute hatred and misunderstanding of Role Playing among the general population in MMOs is pretty ridiculous. Of course these are the same people who create names for themselves like “SilentAssassin” or “DarkNinja” which can be argued is a form of roleplay.
What it comes down to is our basic nature to be suspicious and hateful towards anything we aren’t familiar with and it leads to a lot of the conflict in the world at large. These people are small minded, repressed little jerks and I actually pity them.
I agree…
and don’t forget to pity the guy that called me a “jew” too. I didn’t really get where that came from but I was more surprised by that one than the others. I can’t believe I forgot to mention that one.
Calling people Jews was all the rage at the religious high school I attended. Never got it either (well, I got it, but thought it was rediculous), kinda went against the stuff they taught there.
People are morons. Weren’t you the “Ruler of the kingdom of faggotry” as well? I thought that was pretty creative!
It was quite entertaining! The fact that all of the challenges brought to me were progressively higher level than me. Perhaps the best one was the Paladin twice my level (I was 6 or 7 and him being 15) losing to my stout Dwarf Rogue. Nothing but excuses after the fight, but he lost none-the-less.
Oh, and the role-play of my death for “real” when the 80 Mage one shot me. Luckily a good samaritan saved me with a timely rez.
I particularly loved the fellow who said it wasn’t a fair fight because you were moving around too much…
Ahh yes, the lazy duelist. Wants me to stand still and not use any abilities or tactics while he wails on me with superior gear. Can’t use your blood money on me! Stop buying gold and learn how to fight for real!
Awesome post! This is the first time in at least a year that I’ve been tempted to resubscribe to WoW. I’m playing so many other games though that your 10 day trials would be up by the time I got it installed, patched, activated, and logged in.
Looking forward to the wrap up post though.
Dah crap… I play on Silver Hand Alliance….
Ha! The new Multiplaying event. Everyone gets a rez scroll for a one time RP event on Silver Hand! =P
Only if I can be Titanius Anglesmith, Fancy Man of Cornwood!
I was in a warband in WAR once that spotaniously start RPing one night. After about 15 min all 18 poeple were doing it. It was one of the funnest nights I ever had in WAR. I know maybe I should start RPing in Global Agenda.
Roleplaying in shooters could be very funny.
I should play some Gears of War and roleplay.
NYA Y’SEE!