Villains and Cultists.

Drustai wrote:

Drefurion wrote:Lol, objectively comparing a set subjective assessments, good one Dru.

Saying anything in the past is better than is now is silly as your memory of the time is highly inaccurate and often get's skewed to being more positive.

But even if was better then, it doesn't fucking matter, you cannot back to the past, only work to the future. Now get on it, make good cultist / "bad guys" rp happen.

Drustai wrote:Anyone who was not playing on this server during the vanilla and TBC days simply cannot objectively compare then with now. Sorry.

I'm not going to go out and say it was better then than it is now, mind, I prefer not to bother with those kind of judgments. But if you were not actually here during those times, then you have no right to go out and say that it is better now than it was then. You don't have the experience to say either way. That's just boasting for the sake of boasting.

It's like saying an apple is better than an orange, when you've never eaten an orange in your life.

Nice reading comprehension there, Drefurion. My point was that you cannot make an opinion if you have no been around for both. I never made any comment as to which one is "better" than the other. Only that if you were not present for both, you cannot say that one is better than the other.

I never said you did compare the two, hun. Others have though!

drustai wrote: Anyone who was not playing on this server during the vanilla and TBC days simply cannot objectively compare then with now. Sorry."

In itself is impossible. It was only a joke anyway!

I had a "villain" hordeside, not a super cool evil person that seem to be 10 a penny here, but a small time criminal with big ideas.
Ally side I still have Zaoldyeck here who although isn't what you would call "evil" or an out and out "villain" is certainly not very lawful. She used to run a mafia type operation out of the Pig and Whistle, extortion, protection rackets etc. Is known to deal with horde and cultists.


On the topic of vanilla, I agree its probably unfair to compare then and now as there have been so many changes to the game. The RP has changed or rather declined, both in numbers and quality and the RP community was stronger back in vanilla but Im sure todays RP'ers would have found it boring, no god emotes or very few, not every other character was some super cool badass.

I feel the server needs "ordinary" characters with their flaws and imperfections.

"There are no good criminals like the old days." Yes, I wasn't on Defias back in Vanilla, but I've rped longer than WoW has existed - over various platforms, how can you say one RPer back then was far better than one now? I've had some incredibly fun RP with some of the bad guys who have been around over the last 6 months, some great plots and some very well thought out characters. I'm comparing it to my entire experience with writing and RPing and some of them are at a very high standard.

To simply go "Compared back to these guys" is utterly ignorant. No, I wasn't there during Vanilla - I played WoW normally until WotLK, however, Raelan - are you involved with any current ongoing cultist plots? I don't seem to have seen you RP with any over the last four months with any of the plot lines, so how can you effectively make a judgement?

Drustai, it is an ongoing thing - it is like when people complain about content being too easy in WoW atm despite them not even having cleared the content. Bunch of hipster bellends imo!

Bunch of hipster bellends imo!

Just about sums it up.

The prob now is that villains are not given the time to develop or the room, the stakes are against them far too much. If DS never happened and "Ataris, Shagrath, Fenuviel, Neferi, Melnerag, Andrek, Krev (Honestly I can continue this)" started now they would not succeed. FACT.

But yeah the general argument of Vanilla is better is quite irritating. I dont want to live in a dump, I want the good times now and repeatedly saying that things will never be good is a self fulfilling prophecy.

ofc if the Vanillla players want to step up and show us something now I would welcome it with both arms.

Lexgrad wrote:The prob now is that villains are not given the time to develop or the room, the stakes are against them far too much. If DS never happened and "Ataris, Shagrath, Fenuviel, Neferi, Melnerag, Andrek, Krev (Honestly I can continue this)" started now they would not succeed. FACT.

Melnerag (Sophyra) is proof enough that you are wrong with this assumption. It is hardly 'fact'.

I have a 'cultist' that has been around for like, nearly a year now? Before that I had a couple as well. It's going just fine, not had anyone bust me yet.

How so? DS did happen which was not the picture I painted.

Matter of fact is, the community -has- deteoriated. The quality of the realm from a pure RP standpoint has diminished. In the early days, RP realms didn't really have the reputation of being the mature audience so didn't draw so many OOCers in. I remember the days in early vanilla where I could actually RP in the Trade District, where I could go IC to a total stranger even outside of RP hubs and actually count on him being an RPer.

Back in those days, yes, the Rp scene was much bigger than it is now. Back then, we didn't have Goon Squad, ABOC or what have you causing friction on the server. This ofcourse meant there was more room on the server for cult guilds to flourish, but in reality this kept going far beyond Vanilla and TBC. I mean, look at WLK. In WLK, we at one point had 4 evil institutions flourishing simultaneously (Dark Sphere, Hand of Nightmare, Sophyra's "Underground" and that criminal guild that I don't think was the OTS but I'm not sure was the Forlorn Cartel either, both of those two ofcourse could count as evil guilds (if FC was created by then, I'm not sure when that happened)), which means it's not a "Everything was the best in Vanilla", however the phrase that WoW has outlived any sort of reasonable lifespan for an MMO rings true, and people are getting tired of WoW for whatever reason. Defias was, at some point along the line, simply unfortunate enough to have their wave of departures in our "RP Elite" (By Elite I don't mean better RPers, I mean the prominent contributors, so don't get yourself mad at that term) at too close intervals with too long between new arrivals.

Now, ofcourse, your proposal that the legendary bad guys of Defias wouldn't make it if they tried -right now- holds partly true. Because of these guys, there was a huge demand for good guys to fight these antagonists. Back then, we had what? The Blazing Shields + the DOL to fight the evils. In WLK, when we had the abundance of bad guys, suddenly a lot of people popped up to fight them. Sophyra rolled the char that ended up founding the Chapter of Holy Anethion, an institution that has proven immensely efficient in rooting out cultists. Perhaps they are a little too good at it. I mean, look at how they held Duskwood, a province formerly reserved entirely as the domain of cultists (Dark Sphere, Vortex, several nameless cults along the line).

However, Melnerag/Sophyra proves time and time again that NO MATTER WHAT, if you're not going about it like a retard, it's always possible to have evil flourish. I haven't been part of Sophyra's plots for a while now, but he ALWAYS seems to have some scheme going, something that gives bad guys a chance to rally.

Now, here is my proposition: There are no bad guys around because there is no "proper" bad guy guild around. The Army of the Damned is all fine, but the Scourge is a limited RP Scene as it is right now, and honestly it is not half as interesting as for example the Hand of Nightmare or the Dark Sphere. If a guild was to actually rise up and offer this kind of RP, I am willing to bet that it would become popular enough to flourish, and if the officers of that guild were competent enough they could ride this momentum and deliver a high quality evil guild.

This is ofcourse running with the assumption that the RP base is indeed still big enough to support such a guild, which would be my only doubt in the success of it.

Silmaniel wrote:I'm looking more for the evil archetype kind of villain over common thieves, but thanks a lot for the replies already. Any idea where they reside these days?

I have one of those.. /shrug

Ixirar/Kavalis wrote:Matter of fact is, the community -has- deteoriated. The quality of the realm from a pure RP standpoint has diminished. In the early days, RP realms didn't really have the reputation of being the mature audience so didn't draw so many OOCers in. I remember the days in early vanilla where I could actually RP in the Trade District, where I could go IC to a total stranger even outside of RP hubs and actually count on him being an RPer.

Back in those days, yes, the Rp scene was much bigger than it is now. Back then, we didn't have Goon Squad, ABOC or what have you causing friction on the server. This ofcourse meant there was more room on the server for cult guilds to flourish, but in reality this kept going far beyond Vanilla and TBC. I mean, look at WLK. In WLK, we at one point had 4 evil institutions flourishing simultaneously (Dark Sphere, Hand of Nightmare, Sophyra's "Underground" and that criminal guild that I don't think was the OTS but I'm not sure was the Forlorn Cartel either, both of those two ofcourse could count as evil guilds (if FC was created by then, I'm not sure when that happened)), which means it's not a "Everything was the best in Vanilla", however the phrase that WoW has outlived any sort of reasonable lifespan for an MMO rings true, and people are getting tired of WoW for whatever reason. Defias was, at some point along the line, simply unfortunate enough to have their wave of departures in our "RP Elite" (By Elite I don't mean better RPers, I mean the prominent contributors, so don't get yourself mad at that term) at too close intervals with too long between new arrivals.

Now, ofcourse, your proposal that the legendary bad guys of Defias wouldn't make it if they tried -right now- holds partly true. Because of these guys, there was a huge demand for good guys to fight these antagonists. Back then, we had what? The Blazing Shields + the DOL to fight the evils. In WLK, when we had the abundance of bad guys, suddenly a lot of people popped up to fight them. Sophyra rolled the char that ended up founding the Chapter of Holy Anethion, an institution that has proven immensely efficient in rooting out cultists. Perhaps they are a little too good at it. I mean, look at how they held Duskwood, a province formerly reserved entirely as the domain of cultists (Dark Sphere, Vortex, several nameless cults along the line).

However, Melnerag/Sophyra proves time and time again that NO MATTER WHAT, if you're not going about it like a retard, it's always possible to have evil flourish. I haven't been part of Sophyra's plots for a while now, but he ALWAYS seems to have some scheme going, something that gives bad guys a chance to rally.

Now, here is my proposition: There are no bad guys around because there is no "proper" bad guy guild around. The Army of the Damned is all fine, but the Scourge is a limited RP Scene as it is right now, and honestly it is not half as interesting as for example the Hand of Nightmare or the Dark Sphere. If a guild was to actually rise up and offer this kind of RP, I am willing to bet that it would become popular enough to flourish, and if the officers of that guild were competent enough they could ride this momentum and deliver a high quality evil guild.

This is ofcourse running with the assumption that the RP base is indeed still big enough to support such a guild, which would be my only doubt in the success of it.

End of expansion blues. Things will pick up.

End of expansion blues doesn't really relate to what he was talking about though Helm.

Perturbo wrote:End of expansion blues doesn't really relate to what he was talking about though Helm.

why do you care pvpfag

>

Wasn't there a lot of complaints a while back that there were too many cultists/criminal guilds around?

Helmfrid wrote:

End of expansion blues. Things will pick up.

We didn't have "End of expansion blues" in Vanilla, TBC or WLK, so that only goes to prove my point.

What I meant was people are raising the point that there are no cults about these days. I say it's the end of the expansion, people are bored of the game, trying other stuff, waiting for MoP or have quit. This expansion I can four three cult guilds that we've had which all were successful. There were more but they well to the wayside. Now tell me how many Light guilds that popped up over the course of this expansion that were successful?

Eyes of the Dark Realm, Vortex, Legion's Hand and The Serpents Coven. - All of which had events, an active playerbase, all the 'Cult' norms.

I just want to stress we're in a recession people. Nobody wants to open up a new business yet. Wait until MoP kicks in and we'll see more once again

Ixirar/Kavalis wrote:

Helmfrid wrote:

End of expansion blues. Things will pick up.

We didn't have "End of expansion blues" in Vanilla, TBC or WLK, so that only goes to prove my point.

Were we playing the same game? The term was coined within the WoW community, everyone knows about it :S

Ixirar/Kavalis wrote:Matter of fact is, the community -has- deteoriated. The quality of the realm from a pure RP standpoint has diminished. In the early days, RP realms didn't really have the reputation of being the mature audience so didn't draw so many OOCers in. I remember the days in early vanilla where I could actually RP in the Trade District, where I could go IC to a total stranger even outside of RP hubs and actually count on him being an RPer.

Back in those days, yes, the Rp scene was much bigger than it is now. Back then, we didn't have Goon Squad, ABOC or what have you causing friction on the server. This ofcourse meant there was more room on the server for cult guilds to flourish, but in reality this kept going far beyond Vanilla and TBC. I mean, look at WLK. In WLK, we at one point had 4 evil institutions flourishing simultaneously (Dark Sphere, Hand of Nightmare, Sophyra's "Underground" and that criminal guild that I don't think was the OTS but I'm not sure was the Forlorn Cartel either, both of those two ofcourse could count as evil guilds (if FC was created by then, I'm not sure when that happened)), which means it's not a "Everything was the best in Vanilla", however the phrase that WoW has outlived any sort of reasonable lifespan for an MMO rings true, and people are getting tired of WoW for whatever reason. Defias was, at some point along the line, simply unfortunate enough to have their wave of departures in our "RP Elite" (By Elite I don't mean better RPers, I mean the prominent contributors, so don't get yourself mad at that term) at too close intervals with too long between new arrivals.

Now, ofcourse, your proposal that the legendary bad guys of Defias wouldn't make it if they tried -right now- holds partly true. Because of these guys, there was a huge demand for good guys to fight these antagonists. Back then, we had what? The Blazing Shields + the DOL to fight the evils. In WLK, when we had the abundance of bad guys, suddenly a lot of people popped up to fight them. Sophyra rolled the char that ended up founding the Chapter of Holy Anethion, an institution that has proven immensely efficient in rooting out cultists. Perhaps they are a little too good at it. I mean, look at how they held Duskwood, a province formerly reserved entirely as the domain of cultists (Dark Sphere, Vortex, several nameless cults along the line).

However, Melnerag/Sophyra proves time and time again that NO MATTER WHAT, if you're not going about it like a retard, it's always possible to have evil flourish. I haven't been part of Sophyra's plots for a while now, but he ALWAYS seems to have some scheme going, something that gives bad guys a chance to rally.

Now, here is my proposition: There are no bad guys around because there is no "proper" bad guy guild around. The Army of the Damned is all fine, but the Scourge is a limited RP Scene as it is right now, and honestly it is not half as interesting as for example the Hand of Nightmare or the Dark Sphere. If a guild was to actually rise up and offer this kind of RP, I am willing to bet that it would become popular enough to flourish, and if the officers of that guild were competent enough they could ride this momentum and deliver a high quality evil guild.

This is ofcourse running with the assumption that the RP base is indeed still big enough to support such a guild, which would be my only doubt in the success of it.

The first part I can whole heartedly agree with. RPers have dwindled because of how WoW is becoming outdated and now we do have issues such as Aboc. True. However, I'd like to address the last bit of your post...

Ixirar/Kavalis wrote:There are no bad guys around because there is no "proper" bad guy guild around.

This statement makes no sense to me. I'm in a skype chat with about 10 others, mostly DoL where a few of them were saying there are too many bad guys for them to deal with currently. Yes, some of them are not as exciting as others, but there are still plenty of cultists and such about. However, there are still a lot of characters who are villains and very good at creating plots. All you have to do is ask around for about 10 minutes and I guarantee you'll learn of at least one. I'm currently engaged in about three different plots.

You don't need a guild for a cultist group. Currently there is a set of murderers in Stormwind, a death knight who is hunting down certain people, a cultist guild in hiding after a lot of engaging rp (of which every role-player involved has been a different and exciting character) and a rogue necromancer who has began to collect pets. These are just a few from the top of my head. I honestly think anyone not being able to find cultist RP isn't trying / Role-plays in too tight of a group.

EDIT: And I haven't even mentioned the up and coming ones, e.g the mage haters.

Helmfrid wrote:

Ixirar/Kavalis wrote:

Helmfrid wrote:

End of expansion blues. Things will pick up.

We didn't have "End of expansion blues" in Vanilla, TBC or WLK, so that only goes to prove my point.

Were we playing the same game? The term was coined within the WoW community, everyone knows about it :S

I assumed the fact that I was talking about the RP Scene to be rather self evident in this context. People grew bored of raiding/doing end-game in late xpac times every time, but Cata is the first time I've experienced an actual diminish of RP quantity in any sort of relevance to the end of an xpac.

This statement makes no sense to me. I'm in a skype chat with about 10 others, mostly DoL where a few of them were saying there are too many bad guys for them to deal with currently. Yes, some of them are not as exciting as others, but there are still plenty of cultists and such about. However, there are still a lot of characters who are villains and very good at creating plots. All you have to do is ask around for about 10 minutes and I guarantee you'll learn of at least one. I'm currently engaged in about three different plots.

You don't need a guild for a cultist group. Currently there is a set of murderers in Stormwind, a death knight who is hunting down certain people, a cultist guild in hiding after a lot of engaging rp (of which every role-player involved has been a different and exciting character) and a rogue necromancer who has began to collect pets. These are just a few from the top of my head. I honestly think anyone not being able to find cultist RP isn't trying / Role-plays in too tight of a group.

EDIT: And I haven't even mentioned the up and coming ones, e.g the mage haters.

I was adressing the fact that there isn't a "This is the face of the evil" kind of institution on the server atm and true evil RPers are somewhat scattered. Sure they're there and all of them making plots and all that, but there isn't anything on the level that the Dark Sphere or Hand of Nightmare used to be.

Cata as a whole has been a total slump, the first like half of this expac the RP was beyond quiet, not just the usual end of expac blues, though we're drifting off the point now.

Sure they're there and all of them making plots and all that, but there isn't anything on the level that the Dark Sphere or Hand of Nightmare used to be.

I don't agree with the bigger is better argument at all, though.

Wether you agree with it or not is irrelevant to the point I was trying to make.

I like role-playing.

erwtenpeller wrote:I like role-playing.

10/10, would read again.

Ixirar/Kavalis wrote:Wether you agree with it or not is irrelevant to the point I was trying to make.

It isn't irrelevant in the slightest, as I can guarantee there are a lot of people who disagree entirely. I'll put it simply then, you don't find big RP plots? Then it is your own fault. I've been back on this server 6 months and found fuck tonnes. Nothing on the level? I disagree entirely with that. I can't compare it to how it was then, but in a Star Wars RP I did, I was involved in a huge RP plot that involved 200 people. Is that better than what I have now? No. Because scale doesn't make things better. You can't outright say "These days were better. Fact." considering a lot of RPers would disagree with you. It is like saying "'The Two Towers' is better than 'The Fellowship of the Ring'. Fact."
Based on what? Your personal experience with the time? Are you the overmind of RP that can so openly say that one part of the role-play you enjoyed is better than someone elses experience?

The issue with the server isn't the game moving on, it isn't the lack of role-players in comparison to Vanilla - it is the lazy role-players who expect things to happen to them instead of seeking RP themselves, which by the sounds of it, is you if you can't find any villain RP.