Current state of the RP community

[Raenmar]

Don't call me a liar or a pessimist or stupid. I'm not just basing this on my own thoughts, but on what I've been told by people who have been here much longer than me. I'm not stating anything as a certainty. Sure, maybe people are inactive because it's summer. That's what people said about Ravenholdt, and by around November, the GLF was one of two active RP guilds (excluding the two PVP-PVE-RP guilds). We transferred after being told, basically, "Ravenholdt isn't dying, the community just doesn't want RP events". RP on Ravenholdt (and WPvP, afaik) is now entirely dead. I'm not saying I know better, or that I'm right, or that DB is like Ravenholdt. But I'm speaking from experience, and a lot of people agree.

This isn't a whine thread, either. I'll describe what I see as the issue, the cause, and how it can be fixed. If you don't agree, fine. But don't derail this thread like the last one with "hurr ur wrong stfu it will never happen." I'm not saying anything will happen. I'm saying it could (probably) happen, so it's best to do something about it now, before it's too late. It's like moving an aerosol can away from your window in case it blows up. Don't reply with "hurr leave it there it won't blow up".

So, what's the problem? The shrinking pool of RPers on DB. If you think DB is flourishing with 103497904905 RPers, fine. But from what I've seen, and what I've been told, guilds are dying out, and a lot of people are leaving the server. It's harder to form new RP guilds and maintain old ones because people are leaving more than they're coming. Ganking was a large part of that with guilds RPing outside of blueshield zones. That's not to say we'll never be able to RP outside of blueshield zones. It could've been handled better than it was while the ganking continued, and people should've been prepared to accept that ganking would be a problem. I also think moving back to blueshield zones wasn't beneficial in any way, because it just concentrated all RP on Stormwind, removed a lot of variety. Then, as some of the Northern guilds died, people transferred. The loss of variety they gave makes the server less attractive to new people.

Stormwind RP has had similar problems, from what I've heard. People leave, guilds start to die. When a guild goes inactive, more members leave. When a guild dies, that has an effect on other guilds involved with it, and the random RP that guild brought. Makes it harder for people to find random RP, makes the server less appealing. And that gets into a cycle, as it did on Ravenholdt. It just grinds the community down so there are less and less people, it can sustain less variety. As things when that way back on Ravenholdt, it ended up with the RP community only really being enough to sustain one guild; the same small pool of RPers had characters in each guild, but generally the newest guild was popular, the others faded. New initiatives either didn't work out, or they absorbed the current pool of RPers and the last guild died.

Obviously, DB isn't that dire. It's sustaining multiple RP guilds, but some of them are starting to die out. The community, from what I've heard, is getting smaller. Right now, it's still large enough to get back on its feet and start growing again. But, for it to flourish - in my opinion - some things do need to be changed. I can't produce a list of what makes an RP community grow and what damages it. But, I have some suggestions, and I was hoping other people do too, and they could be discussed here. So, keep it constructive. If you think there's not a problem at all, then just don't post.

As for my suggestions: mainly, I think, DefiasRP should be made public. Someone told me that the attendance at the Westfall event was smaller than expected. Maybe that's because not everyone has an account here. Not everyone wants to sign up. And so, some people - quite possibly a lot - miss out on so many event and guild listings. That doesn't benefit the RP community in any way. I do realize that the reason the forums are private is that it hides events from those who would gank them. But I can say with absolute certainty that members of both Aboc and Mithridatism have accounts here, so making the forums private is absolutely pointless. And, since the majority of RP now takes place in blueshield zones, it doesn't matter if gankers find out about the events. Guilds prepared to RP outside of blueshield zones will be ganked either way, so they'll generally understand that they'll need to make the compromise of gearing up or RPing in raidchat.

If DefiasRP is going to be the central point of information and communication for the RP community, new people need to actually be able to access it easily.

I also think the LFRP channel should be used by more people. It's common for RP servers to have an LFRP channel, so it's often the first place people look to find RP, or to judge the activity of the RP community. Trying to get the whole community in there shows people that the server is active, and it helps them get settled in, get multiple views on the server and as much information as they need.

--

These are just basic suggestions. I could give more, but these are what I think are most important, and I'd like to see if people agree before I start giving more suggestions. Because there's no point wasting my time if nobody's gonna support it and nothing's gonna be done.

Other suggestions and constructive ideas are also welcome.

[Vaell]

The RP is dead because of summer and because of GW. It was active as hell a few months ago, these things happen. I think it will pick up in MoP, it always has and Defias is the most popular RP-PvP realm for RP. I wouldn't worry too much about that.

As for the idea of making the forum public, I would ask that it remain as the IC part being public and accounts must be made to post in those threads / non verified accounts must be moderated before their post appears. This will stop people coming on and mass spamming down threads and such.

OOC should remain closed. For common sense reasons!

As for LFRP, sure, more people could use it. I personally would avoid it as it would spam up my chat log.

[Raenmar]

No, I do agree that you should need an account to post. But needing an account to just view community-related stuff is nothing but an inconvenience. Less people hear about events, less people can see what guilds are available. And it doesn't benefit us at all. As stated, ganking guilds already have accounts here, so it's a minor inconvenience at most.

[Sonitus]

I personally say, why not go a step further and start encouraging more people here to be less reserved about posting on the realm forums? The place anyone will look by default, even from other servers.

As mentioned; while people may not like the trolls and such of the realm forums, bear in mind with use and simple ignoring or irrelevant posts it's possible to show people where to go for RP. On either side.

On the point of recruitment, I've found updating the Banners recruitment thread here is only good for updating progress, not for recruiting per se. Many people here have their characters, they're very much set in their ways, which means there will be few new members to join guilds, only people who say "I'll roll an alt for this!". Which in the long run is never overly helpful to new concepts trying to gain a foothold. A lot of people who've joined us either did so by friends or seeing us on the realm forums via our thread.

As nice as these forums are, I can't help but feel it might be healthier for RP on the realm to use the place where everyone can see and access anyway, rather than relying on a gated community of sorts. It enables new players looking at us from other servers to see that there are many events, guilds, rumors and more advertised.

As an example of sorts, look at Argent Dawn/Sha'tar/Moonglade forums. All with their own rumor sections, regular event schedules, etc. Allowing people to find them and participate. And on the point of gankers and lolers; all it takes is a /who on either side to attend these events, defeating the point of keeping them relegated to where only a small quarter of the community can see it.

Why not enable others who might actually be interested to have the opportunity to know this server does have an active and robust RP community, by using the place designed to allow us to share information with the rest of the server at large? When I started RP on this server, I did not know of this forums existence for a few months, but until I did learn of it, I did glance over the realm forums for guilds/ indications of RP at the time.

Edit: building on what Vaell mentioned, we've also weathered SWOTOR, the summer holidays and GW2 these last few months, it's only natural there may be a lull, but all the more reason to reach out to people still playing our game.

[Raenmar]

Yeah, using the realm forums more would help make the RP community more known. Problem is, it's a lot harder to keep things organized there, because everything is mixed. RP-oriented forums with categories to keep things sorted are definitely beneficial, but... yeah. Realm forums are seen by so many more people.

I dunno. DefiasRP is very useful, but I guess events and guild recruitment should be posted on the realm forums as well as here, at least.

Edit: Just occurred to me that I'm banned on the official forums. Still think making use of them is a good idea though.

[Zinkle Figgins]

MoP is coming out in a few weeks, let's see what happens then. I'm very confident.

[siegmund]

Advertise Defias Rp on Real forums even more? *Shrug* Most people don't even know about this website. Plus getting in ain't that hard of a thing to do for anyone.

New Rpers don't have a clue, you have to guide them. I've lately seen (Before my gametime was up two days back!) People looking for random rp via Trade or General chat. Well, easy we just need to go rp with em, tell em about this site and POOF!

Though yes, the best is to use the official realm forums, or even the official Rp forums. Spark intrest to everyone!

Hell you can promote rp even.. how? More events like yesterday (Although i didn't attend it).

[Amaryl]

Well, it was about time for one of these, like clockwork

[Thelos]

I personally say, why not go a step further and start encouraging more people here to be less reserved about posting on the realm forums? The place anyone will look by default, even from other servers.

Seconded.

[Ledgic]

Well, it was about time for one of these, like clockwork

Tell me about it.

1. The RP is in the middle of a -natural- dwindle. There is still plenty to be had and many guilds that are functioning fine. Once MoP appears we'll get a true indication of how many people have left, and how many people plan to remain.

2. Opening up the forum to the public will be done when I'm done. Bear with me, I'm working on pretty much everything on my own currently. As I said last time it was mentioned, you can keep discussing opening the forum up until you're blue in the face, I'll be ignoring it for the time being.

As for using the realm forum more, it's been said plenty of times but people don't really go by it. And yes, using it will result in your thread being trolled etc, etc. At the end of the day, it's the choice of the individual as to whether they post on the realm forum. I haven't seriously posted on it in a couple of years, and that was when it was free of our resident clowns.

[Eodan]

I have such a huge sense of déjà vu..

[Thelos]

You are not going to like what I am going to say, but I think that is exactly why it needs to be said.

Nothing lasts forever. WoW is an old game.A very old game. Did you think it would last forever? At some point, the playerbase is going to dwindle, and role-play is hit very hard by this, since it requires a very dedicated and large player-base.

There is nothing to be done about it. There is no fix. It's the cold hard truth that, eventually, this server is going to die. It is as inevitable as natural disasters occuring. Yes, it's upsetting, but what are you going to do about it? Get angry at the tetonic plates for rubbing into one another? It's no use getting angry at fate.

I am not saying that it is dying right now, or is about to die. It might take years still. But at some point, it will die, and I suggest you make your peace with it. Either move to a more populated server untill that one dies after it, or die along with the server and move on to different things.

Nothing lasts forever, kids. Enjoy it while it lasts, and don't let the finality of a good thing sour your current enjoyment of it.

[Vaell]

Like Thelos said, WoW RP is always dying. Slowly but surely it will be down to a very few dedicated people. I, myself, was getting bored of the world and needed something like GW to give me a necessary break till MoP.

Fingers crossed that Titan will provide the capability to RP in a fresh world.

[Feydor]

The excuse of 'its just the summer' hasn't really been that true for the past couple of years. It's plain to see that compared to Vanilla, the amount of active RP has been slowly decreasing and is at an all time low. We'll see how many people this panda shit brings back, and whether GW2 is a success or not. But in my opinion, there are too many RP servers currently.

[Guest]

Open up this goddam forum and make it easier for new rp'ers to get access.

Take on extra people to help if you are overworked, post asking for volunteers and maybe equal out the number of Alliance and Horde moderators as there -appears- to be an imbalance.

So you might make mistakes and give access to a troll, will the world really explode in a ball of flame if you do?

If we want rp to thrive, maybe even grow, we need to appear a damned sight less elitest and up our own asses as a community.

Bet you didn't want to hear that either

[Raenmar]

I'm aware that it's inevitable. That doesn't mean it will or should end now. WoW still has plenty of RPers, but most of them end up on AD.

I also noticed that it's summer. Obviously some of the drop in activity can be attributed to summer. But people don't transfer to a different server because it's summer and then come back because it's not summer anymore. People are leaving for summer, but there are also people leaving permanently.

If we want rp to thrive, maybe even grow, we need to appear a damned sight less elitest and up our own asses as a community.

Didn't think anyone would have the balls to say that. Most fearless rogue EU \o/

And, imo, it's true.

[Guest]

MoP will not save rp, it will if anything make it worse because as far as I can see from talking to people, many think they are a weak addition to the game wrt expanding rp and in fact are a bit of a joke,

[Raenmar]

I do think Pandaren RP will be popular. But if it is, it'll mostly be the current pool of RPers rerolling Pandaren, which means trouble for current RP guilds if we can't start getting new RPers here.

[Thelos]

MoP will not save rp, it will if anything make it worse because as far as I can see from talking to people, many think they are a weak addition to the game wrt expanding rp and in fact are a bit of a joke,

And I don't like Blood Elves, but that has never discouraged me from role-playing.

[Melnerag]

Speaking for myself, I have had great RP the last days. And I saw a lot of great RP happen around me. Dead? no!

[Guest]

Announce events on the realm forums.
Gets surprising amounts of positive feedback and attention, and just barely negative.

And well, nothing lasts forever, as said, but I fear this game might last at least out the next expansion, so we might as well do our best to make it more enjoyable.

[Guest]

And double-post:
Getting defias brotherhood a positive reputation on the official forums might help quite a lot too, you know, actually getting hold of new RPers (my favourite kind of RPers). Right now the whole aboc-vs-RPelitist conflict still colours people's impressions of our home server.

[John Helsythe Amaltheria]

I've said it before...

Delete these shitty forums entirely, and start using the original forums again. Just delete the forums to ensure no 1 can go back. Show your irl photos and what not through facebook or skype or what ever.

The original forums may be lesser than these, in terms of pictures, avatar, signature and what not. But it helps to flourish DB tons better than defiasrp.com.

If anything, keep only the story section. Registrate your guilds on the original forums, your events and what not. As pointed out, it doesn't matter when a ganking guild reads your stuff on the original forums or on these.

It's just that new roleplayers look @ our official forums, see jack shit, turn to AD forums, see alot of stuff, and choose AD over DB.

Nothing else will "save" rp really. Not a new expansion, not the winter. No, get out of this dark and deep cave you call defiasrp.com.

[Feydor]

BUT I HAVE OVER 1000 POSTS HERE
AND AN AVATAR

you cant take these things away from me crotchwin

but i agree, partially

[Guest]

MoP will not save rp, it will if anything make it worse because as far as I can see from talking to people, many think they are a weak addition to the game wrt expanding rp and in fact are a bit of a joke,

And I don't like Blood Elves, but that has never discouraged me from role-playing.

Well you are Alliance after all so don't technically get to rp with us much anyway (although I do x-faction rp with others). My point was that there is too much "kung-fu panda" about them, I don't recall anyone claiming they would actively avoid rp with Worgen or Goblins like people have said they will with the incoming furries. I know quite a few roleplayers who have left the game because they saw no future for decent rp with the introduction of the Pandariens so saw little point in riding the low of the natural pre-expansion lull.

I'm not saying MoP has killed rp, just that it hasn't helped.

I agree with Crojwin to some extent - we need more visibility on the Defias Blizz forum and a link to an OPEN defiasrp forum. I can't be the only person who checks out the official forum before deciding what server to try for rp? I don't think dousing this one in petrol and setting alight is the solution but it is incredibly complex to navigate and find useful information on what you are interested in, could do with simplification and a look at the proliferation of dead stickies. Take a look at the TVC forum (http://tvcrpforums.forumotion.net/), that was fairly simply although even there we had some redundant crap but at least the front page was easy to navigate from without loads of sub-folders. Oh and we allowed anyone to register without a vouch and I don't recall us getting a huge amount of trouble from it.

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