Criticism: The Playground mentality.

Small rant. But I feel it's needed. Different opinions welcome.

Just an issue that I have discovered to be present within our server. Sometimes it can be incredibly hard for a newcomer to join in with a roleplay event without dropping the name of a more " renown " roleplayer on the server, or being in a given guild. Sometimes it's even met with hostility!. The amount of times i've stumbled upon some roleplay event on an alt and been totally ignored or met with out of charecter insults because I " wasen't invited. " or " Don't have any idea whats going on. ".

Or when I've slipped up during a roleplay session and end up replying poorly to someones action or a charecters intention is miscommunicated. Suddenly people begin whispering me OOC about my Godmodding or how I'm an incapable roleplayer and should go back to school! Or not roleplay at all! Really? Is that the attitude we want to be encourageing here. Crushing peoples confidence and creativity because of a mistake, labeling people due to rumors, holding grudges, creating arguements over mishaps and things beyond our control.

It feels like a playground, like I'm back in primary school and I have to kiss up to certain bigger kids, pick on other kids because the bigger kids don't like them! remeber where I'm allowed to go and where I'm not wanted because I'm not friends with this boy or this girl. A passive aggressive nature is grasping our server and choking out everything that we enjoy about roleplay. Lines are being drawn and fences are being brought up because people refuse to swallow their pride or reconise that NO ONE is a perfect roleplayer. Hell, NOBODY is perfect.

Bullying is not acceptable in any shape or form and our server isn't the world-wide-web here. It's our home, cheesey as it sounds and we should be remebering that.

We should be encouraging each other to teach newcomers and learn from them. Not shower them with insults and whapping out the cold shoulder. Enjoyment of roleplay over egos and superiority complexes!

When you start typing down such stuff, think about this:



Then think about yourself. Then move along and play carefree!

...Ironically I was watching that last night.
I can see your point, I shouldn't take this to heart so much. But, there needs to a line where people don't resort to bullying or name-calling because someone slipped up.

Yeah, I know the feeling of having to rely on others to make sure that 15 euros a month isn't going to be wasted is a bit of a pain, but seriously, there's loads more people to RP with on the realm than those you are currently targetting. Just ask what's going on OOC-ly from one guy and if they get to be douchebags just leave them to their intrigues. They are probably either assholes or want to finish off their RP the way they want to anyway.

Which side are you currently on? Alliance or horde?

Alliance. But I feel this is noticeable on both sides.

I think people convince themselves so much that secret circles and clubs exist that they alienate themselves before they even try.

People shouldn't be looking at their roleplay as "an event" or "something we arranged". If a new roleplayer comes up to me, I don't analyse who he is, if my character as reason to speak to him, he will. If not, he'll get on with what he was doing, no ooc social status needed.

You had a bad RP experience, just announce their names already so we can outcast them like the whiney assholes they are!

Paragus wrote:People shouldn't be looking at their roleplay as "an event" or "something we arranged". If a new roleplayer comes up to me, I don't analyse who he is, if my character as reason to speak to him, he will. If not, he'll get on with what he was doing, no ooc social status needed.

You had a bad RP experience, just announce their names already so we can outcast them like the whiney assholes they are!

Please tell me your jokeing.

And Anaei, As much as I would agree sometimes people do over think these situations. How many times have you seen out of charecter disagreements result in the complete and rather abrupt end of a roleplay event? I can name a few.

Yes it was. Although I am curious as to who it was.

I'm not gonna name any names. Because I don't believe in the whole " name and shame " ethic. It's a difference of opinions I'm sure the guy/gal I had a disagreement with would believe himself to be in the right, that goes without saying.

But. I reckon we need alittle more free-love.

Re-sharing an older experience that was the most characterestic example of all my experiences about Alliance RP (some few exceptions, but that's the general rule of thumb in my experience). Don't be quick to go defensive, you might be among the exceptions. I'll only "name" one of them by the end of the post.

Some time ago, I grew to dislike Stormwind RP. I found very very poor "rp'ers" all over the place, being accepted to flaunt their 6 feet long e-penis around. I am not talking about "inexperienced". I am talking about bad. The kind you see and facepalm. Next to them, were the other group of bads. Namely mary sues, white knights & co. There were a few (very few) good rp'ers, drowning in the swamp of their lousy environment. What's worse, they were embracing it, in their instinctive desire for more rp, lowering the standards of what's acceptable and what should be tossed off the window coupled with a sub cancellation. But I won't extend to all this, just demonstrating the view I had about it. Still, I decided to "sneak in" for the sake of those few aforementioned.

I rolled a low level alt (that's pre-RealID, btw), came up with a background, adjusted my story, bonked it over the head a bit even, to make sure it wasn't extravagant: a young man, just rounding up his twenties, aspiring to become a paladin. Long story short, this was the result:

After four hours of non-stop walking around a satisfying (in amounts, not quality) quantity of rp'ers, four hours of giving reasons to establish contact, four hours of attempting to approach, four hours of struggling to receive any sort of response (and, if anything, imagination and creativity in new ways is not my weak point, as some of you might know by this point)... by the end of those four hours, my friendslist was enriched with ONE PERSON.

And when I say "my friendslist", I should make it clear that I had decided I'd add whoever I managed to establish even a bit of rp with.

Want to know what was even sadder?

That person was already in my actual friendslist. (I hate you, btw )

If someone who knows people and situations, has a past of a certain rp background, takes four hours of constant effort to establish a ten line dialogue, what do you think the situation is for a newcomer? (I don't think I need to explicitly express my conclusions on my experiment, tbh)

Perhaps all that has improved, I won't tell you it's a god-given truth now. I'm not even criticising it. Cba. It's long in the past and I'm not even playing any more. I have nothing to gain. But you might. Just keep it in the back of your head, maybe it'll help you help others and maybe it'll make things better for everyone. Me, I went back home and found my roleplaying intact. Didn't lose anything except a bit of faith that I'd be proven wrong.

Bottomline, I can see where Vect's coming from, here. He's not typing all this to damage anyone, but to help. Receive it as it's meant to be, instead of dismissing input as "conspiracy theories", because that's no different to dismissing new rp'er names as "not invited".

(what does "not invited" mean anyway? unless it was a private session or actual grounds that require invitation -such as a closed council meeting for example- I can't see why anyone should throw a "not invited" to an rp'er being somewhere. they're not your pup to send away, they have as much right to be there as you do.)

Edit/PS: And ofc, always keep ooc communication open. Explaining how your character reacted or sharing some background insight can give the other party some idea so they can: a. not misinterprete it and b. think of more ways to further the plot. And don't forget. If you have fun with the other person while roleplaying, roleplaying itself is more fun too. (obviously on a more restricted scale on larger events, but still - complete block of communications leaves the other person guessing. and not always guessing right. add that to the real-time disparity between IC reactions and actual time elapsed while you type.)

The annoying thing about this topic is that the people it's aimed at - namely antisocial players - are not likely to be a part of the forum, nor at a vast majority of the characters who think they're god reincarnated... thankfully.

Have to admit though that RP breeds strange behaviour in both Alliance and Horde, and I have to admit I've been quite hostile towards some newcomers when they've tried to entered events and such. Though the defining difference is if there's a newcommer who's come along and is honestly clueless as to what is going on - and just requires some help - and the ones who just don't 'want' help... *cough*

You get nice people, just have to find one and hope it leads on to more.

I've heard of loads of people conducting a similar 'experiment' to Nayan. I can't remember all of their results or even a trend but I do know the reason I've never done it myself, despite being tempted, and that is that I realise that we were all new once and when I was new I found this a very welcoming server. Maybe things have changed but less than a year ago I transferred to the server, jumped in feet first and was accepted, on top of that I told Tarvik to transfer here aswell and he started a guild almost the moment he arrived, with no help from me on Genevieve as that would have spoiled the guilds first series of events.

It's for the above reason I think any 'old boy' snobbery is exaggerated. Or the victim of any such snobbery very unlucky.

That said I'll unabashedly state that I would ignore any RPer unwilling to see reason if I was on a criminal/cultist character involved in a 'secret' meeting. IF they wonder in brazenly then expect to get out alive because they won't give OOC permission for their character to be killed well that's it, they're on my mental black list. If you don't want your character killed he/she shouldn't involve themselves in other people's business.

The above was included as my take on the 'not invited to RP' scenario.

Last week I rolled a very 'questionable' DK, character wise (and by that I mean a commited pacifist, Light worshipper, and philosopher), but I RP'd for five hours straight in Stormwind with not a moments peace IC and not a word said OOC!

I've got two other unguilded alts who are played with such infrequency that people they meet tend to have gone inactive by the time I play them again but I still have no problem finding RP ont hem when I want it. Although in this case a few people do know who 'the player' behind the character is. But I highly doubt the people in the know are going around warning people to RP with my random alts unless they want to..I don't know, 'earn my wrath'? *shrugs*

This turned into a bit of a ramble. My apologies.

Geneviève wrote:

That said I'll unabashedly state that I would ignore any RPer unwilling to see reason if I was on a criminal/cultist character involved in a 'secret' meeting. IF they wonder in brazenly then expect to get out alive because they won't give OOC permission for their character to be killed well that's it, they're on my mental black list. If you don't want your character killed he/she shouldn't involve themselves in other people's business.

I fullheartedly agree with this, but not to the extent of having a secret meeting in a public area, like the top levels of the Cathedral or the Slaughtered Lamb. However, the moment that meeting is being held in the catacombs of either place, there's a _reason_ for it, and that reason is generally to handle such a meeting in secret. I know for sure that on my old realm my guild was very infamous for acting like a militia of grunts and guards entitled to uphold law, while in secret we were conducting human experiments regarding combat drugs, torture, endurance of various races and other stuff. Just for this, _alot_ of people on the server went on a crusade against us and, since they were mostly playing rogues of various qualities ranging from dragons in disguise to San'Layn (Blood Elves, our primary source of labrats!), they just did a '/who Den' on their chat box, go to the Apothecarium of the Undercity, as that's where we held our RP Events, and just stayed there, stealthed, then claiming they saw everything IC-ly. Do you know how freaking irritating that can become?

We even once moved to the Cleft of Shadows, and most of them followed us there as well. Silly people. But yeah, purposeful or accidential interruptions of private/secret events are bad unless you clarify things beforehand OR ask if its okay to join in, suffering the possible consequences of becoming the next sacrifice or labrat to be torn apart and cannibalized by ghouls.

If you have a 'secret' special meeting you want nobody to see, organise it somewhere special and secret.

Otherwise it can be really fun to RP with someone that randomly turns up even if he/she isn't part of the RP plan/meeting of the evening. ^^

Vondun's issue doesn't really strike me as being related to where secret meetings are held and whether someone could accidentally find it, but rather other people meta-gaming specifically to find where they are, then going there and RP'ing rather badly and expecting the attendants to go along with it.

Yeah, it's really a case of people wondering into 'special and secret' locations IC on the off chance there are people there trying to have a special and secret meeting. Or going there aware there are people trying to RP with the sole intention of not cooperating and imposing their own characters 'heroic deeds' on everyone else.

But we've gone rather off topic.

I wasn't replying to Vondun but on the 'wasn't invited'-RP thing

Good to see someone else recognizing this issue.

I've made similar "experiments" like Nayan has with about the same results.

I'm not condoneing people for using resources out of their charecters reach to gain an upperhand on finding Cultists. Or anything like that.

The topic is more a critism towards the roleplayer mentality where it is far easier to argue with someone then it is to talk things over, help someone or not allow out of charecter prejudism to affect in charecter actions.

I must say it's not always easy to help people either though. Recently an emote of mine got ignored. Thought it was by accident so I notified the lad, who replied "..." and simply kept ignore the emote. He's on these forums, I hope you read this!

A few months ago though, I saw a kaldorei description telling that she was old on kaldorei years. I politely told her that humans have the same years as Kaldorei. "What do you care?" she replied, although she did change it.

What I'm trying to say is that a proper attitude needs to come from both sides, which isn't always happening at all. Perhaps this tired some people?

I try my best not to ignore anyone, not even the new roleplayers that make every possible mistake they simply can. If there is a bigger event going on I might miss some emotes or things that are directed to me due to the spam on chat, in which case I hope people notify me in whispers instead of thinking that I am ignoring them on purpose.

I was recently approached by a random lovesick Deathknight (...), and after a moment of IC conversation I decided to explain to him in whispers that Deathknights and romantic feelings just don't mix. He took my advice surprisingly well and ended up rolling another class, as he seemed to be quite interested in relationship roleplay at that time. I only wish there were more people like him among the new (And even old) roleplayers, as it is quite discouraging to keep handing out advices and only get insults and total denial in return.

There have been cases where a new roleplayer has gone: "WTF YOU ARE NOT A GM! MY CHARACTER HAS BEEN ELUNE IN DISGUISE FOR TWO MONTHS ALREADY SO SHUT THE F*CK UP!" when I've contacted them and pointed out a flaw in their RP flag, or the way they roleplay.
In cases like that I rather just make my character think that the other person is crazy ICly, or ignore them completely if they are a real pain in the ass.

I'm sure your not one of these people Nessra. You seem to genuinely intent on helping the Death knight.
But sometimes it feels like people offer more critism then advice, a misplaced sense of superiority that people like to flaunt? I dunno that's just my experience from such sitauations. People dislike being wrong and equally love being right. But roleplay shouldn't be about that.

Nessra/Anegra wrote:it is quite discouraging to keep handing out advices and only get insults and total denial in return.

Story of my life

Vectoria wrote:a misplaced sense of superiority that people like to flaunt? I dunno that's just my experience from such sitauations. People dislike being wrong and equally love being right. But roleplay shouldn't be about that.

Spot on.