Restricting RP! Rawr!

[WeedGamer]

I think bringing prestige back would be awesome...
Maybe some conquest RP, maybe.
And also interaction with NPC's, yes! Yes, of course!
Even through I never really played on the server, i just agree with the facts that seem fun, so here you go, a random noob opinion.
PS: I so agree with HelveteSong, custom lore man, that is it! The reason I joined this server!

[HelveteSong]

I'm gonna be a nostalgic nub here, Kret, and tell you the one thing that has driven me crazy since I've been here.

The ability to alter and change the very world our characters live in. That was HUGE way back when Alistus was a budding GM and crap really hit the fan. When Alistus unleashed his undead horde on Stormwind and actually conquered five out of six sections of the city, everyone was stunned! We had fel orcs in Lakeshire, demons in Darkshire, and no one was sure of how to respond! Characters were forced to react to a 'oh man, we're all gonna die' scenario, and it helped develop so many characters.

Like Krent, if you remember that charmer. (Krent, if you're reading this, you were a huge influence on my roleplaying and showed me serious character development and I will always be greatful for that.) For those of you who don't know who Krent the character was, Krent started out as a nineteen year old scout for the Stormwind Military. He was a green recruit, eager to please, and your good ol' fashioned kid next door sort of guy. He fought a Burning Legion warlock and survived, helped a convicted criminal escape public execution, fled Stormwind as a traitor, arrived in a Goblin town (I think, my memory's a little fuzzy here), and became a drug dealer/morally corrupt guy who only thought of himself and what sort of profit he could make. Mind you, this took place over months in real life. And this was what CotH was like. Demons were everywhere, the world was in chaos, and everyone on Azeroth had to fight back or die.

Now, I'm sure you might not do those exact things again, Kretol, because I know we had to restart after the Stormwind attack and it was retconned and everything, but server events where a single incident sets off a whirlwind of effects around the world I think are important, and that's why I loved CotH when I first joined. I remember seeing somewhere that 'the staff' didn't want to do any server events when WotLK was coming out because you didn't want to go through all that only to have to delete and retcon it once again. And since we've been on WotLK, we haven't had (that I'm aware of) any sort of server event where the world is forever altered. Now, I understand that you're trying to stick to Blizzard lore as much as possible, but I don't see why CotH can't have its own lore here and there. I mean, we've had guilds sprout up and new towns have been created and new everything has been created, but they don't last because they're just the same old thing.

If a new town pops up, people will flock to it because it's new and exciting and different. But the shine on it only lasts so long before people lose interest and move on to something else. However, if you kept the server on their toes because enemy X has shown up and razed town Y to cinders, everyone is gonna try to figure how to accept that shift in the world and what they can do to secure themselves in case of a future attack.

I think my point is that custom lore isn't exactly a bad thing, and events that affect more than just a few characters would be a good thing.

TL;DR: Veteran rambles about back in his day about how server-wide events and permanent effects are what the server could use once again.

[Djura]

Well, they're still open, and you can submit for one, but at this point, I don't feel like it's worth it at all.

Is it the announcement of the impending prestige system removal?

What I really dislike is that they're being removed after being out for such a short time. All that writing and work just goes to hell.

And honestly, writing half a novel is just not worth a measly roll bonus. And if it is, it's a rather... odd reason.

Perhaps the denial of conquest RP?

Personally, I don't mind conquest RP, it's a cool thing when done properly. I could live fine without it, though.

Or maybe the lack of the world being changed by every character's actions?

It would certainly add more immersion and such, but I'd live just fine without it.

Or could it be us no longer considering the RPG books canon? (We're simply following Blizzard on this)

Never read 'em, so I'm fine.

[Uthaniel]

As we stand?
I think we could / should be able to "conquer" the cities that you can conquer in-game (The ones you fight the guards for? Yeah, those.)

I honestly see no harm or any lore-bending on basically conquering a city whose control shifts all the time, anyway.

Prestiges? Yes... And no. In the other thread some people said it wasn't "a big deal", and it isn't. Losing the prestige, it's really irrelevant.

Losing the work we put into the prestige, seeing that being tossed away like it has absolutely no importance whatsoever? Yeah. That's pretty relevant. Even if it has no importance to others, it's our stories, our tales. We put a lot of thought into them, and seeing them gone? It stings.

That said, I've no intention on resparking the prestige discussion here. I'm only stating what I think are the issues with their removal to elaborate on why I don't believe they're why the RP is restricted.

Moving on.

I think there are a few things to consider nonetheless.

Can characters in CotH be truly important?
'Tis a debatable point. I've argued in the past a few people have reached the status of "memorable" in our server. Sagi himself, for one. But... The fact that I can only think of two characters that achieved this cultural status when there's ten pages of Grunt introductions in the Archived Introduction forums, with 52 threads per page? Out of aproximately 520 people, I can only think of two, right off the bat, that achieved that cult status. Tavren and Sagi.

Maybe characters should be allowed to partake events that allow them to slowly build up fame. Some of us are recognized OOCly for a few things we do or have done; Why not ICly?

Why can't Uthaniel start being recognized as an insane creep that conjured Thrall and Arthas to fight in Ogrimmar's arena?
I don't want that to happen, I just love pointing out that I did it.

But maybe that's more of a playerbase issue. I honestly don't know, I just figure I should put here things I think would be a refreshing change regardless. I'll add if I think of more.

[Ural]

My RP has never felt too restricted. Then again, my rp is usually small time stuff.

That being quoted, I like what Rosencrat and Rigley posted.

Guilds give people a chance to role-play on a semi-regular basis. It allows them to make friends. It allows them to feel as if they are part of something bigger then themselves and that their characters can have an impact on the world around them. It creates role-playing opportunities, gives people a chance to evolve their characters and helps strengthen our server as a whole.

I've always been of the impression that some conquest RP might be rather enjoyable-- I believe before I proposed that we use phasing for such a thing, and perhaps keep it in check with events for hostile NPCs to reclaim the settled areas, should there be a lack of RP there.

Call the lack of RP the gradual fall of security on the area- they loosen their grip, and the hostiles retake it.

When guilds go idle and areas get reclaimed I think that's a good opportunity for character development. After my too-lawful DK's guild stopped contacting her? She had a taste of depression and isolated feelings. What about Irogh and his infamous Battleboar after the events at Stonetalon? Seems he's back to square one trying to make a name for himself.
Final thought: The admin and GM team has created a dynamic world for me to RP with people from all across the world.

Spoiler:

[Loxmardin]

Maybe characters should be allowed to partake events that allow them to slowly build up fame. Some of us are recognized OOCly for a few things we do or have done; Why not ICly?

This brings up the thought about submitted rumours and the like, once more. I know that was up for discussion several times before but it never got anywhere.

The key to IC fame will always be OOC knowledge, though. You're not going to be aware of the going-ons ICly if you aren't somehow informed of them OOCly first.

And when it comes to recognition ICly... Well, characters have to acknowledge it. Just hearing about it is sometimes not good enough. c(:

[Karunzo]

I think that the recent announcements have attributed a lot to the feeling of constricted RP. First came the decision regarding living death knights, then there were no more runemasters and necromancers and now we've lost prestiges.

These were all things that I myself liked the possibility of for the simple fact that you can not have such things on retail or blizzlike servers. They always gave me the feeling that you could be more then the simple base classes, more then a simple adventurer. Especially prestiges attributed a lot to this feeling for me personally.

I realize fully well that is possible to achieve the same through other means, but these were the most easily accessable. Creating and maintaining a guild is a lot of work and gaining 'fame' or reputation through RP by yourself I don't really see as a viable option for most.

I myself will be able to manage without prestiges but I really felt like they opened up a lot of accessable opportunities for people to RP something beyond the standard base classes and races. Perhaps I wasn't the only one and now that they're gone or soon to be, all those opportunities will be lost.

As for what we can do to prevent this feeling of restriction?
I would say open up more opportunities for people to be something different, because in the end we all want to be a special snowflake in some way or another.

I feel that we could do a lot more regarding the aftermath of GM run event. Why could there not be a rumor page that tells us the common people's reaction about the involvement of a couple adventurers that helped slay an abomination in Duskwood? Why should these deeds only be remembered by the players that were involved?

This could attribute alot to the feeling that you are making an impact on the world surrounding you without changing to much in my opinon.

[ThePharaoh]

Is it the announcement of the impending prestige system removal?

I still feel personally that this could be solved by no reinforcement of roll bonuses. As we've discussed base classes are prestigious so we shouldn't have an issue. The deal with some prestiges are that some are stronger than our already prestigious base classes. I think RP can be used to get around this hump though. Depends on those involved. I think the GM team will come up with something. I always liked the idea that we would just have regular profiles and special profiles.



Perhaps the denial of conquest RP?

Yeah this is an issue for me. Not saying that we need to become the leader of Silvermoon or anything like that as that would be flat out ridiculous. But it would be cool for a group to leave kill a giant or fight a large sea creature and return to tell the tale. Which happens at least in the case of the sea creature, just OOC snarky comments you would catch for it are unnecessary. I am unaware why you turned it around. There are chars on the server that people trust IC and OOCly to an extent. These chars are extremely active and able to display trustworthy RP to the GMs. Like Walluce's character Raka'jin rounding darkspears up and taking over the Echo isles, and the gnomergon thing.

Or maybe the lack of the world being changed by every character's actions?

I don't think the world should be changed rapidly, but some things would butterfly effect. We should be able to acknowledge that. Like Booty Bay plague for example. I also thought it would be cool to have a server guild where everyone has at least one alt in. And the GM's would be the leaders and could lead us on adventures. Its awesome to be pit against each other. But if we had just a large guild namely conquest of the horde and we went around doing horde stuff we could solve most of these problems in one wop. We could conquest and change things, but the GM's would lead so it would be things the server and staff was comfortable. And we would be able to journey and adventure, things like that. Plus it could break down cliques and things like that even though they'll always exist. Its a good way to meet people on the server through RP.

Hope that made sense. Rather tired.

[Xigo]

Maybe characters should be allowed to partake events that allow them to slowly build up fame. Some of us are recognized OOCly for a few things we do or have done; Why not ICly?

This brings up the thought about submitted rumours and the like, once more. I know that was up for discussion several times before but it never got anywhere.

The key to IC fame will always be OOC knowledge, though. You're not going to be aware of the going-ons ICly if you aren't somehow informed of them OOCly first.

And when it comes to recognition ICly... Well, characters have to acknowledge it. Just hearing about it is sometimes not good enough. c(:

As a note. This is something I want to be able to do. Have NPCs be able to acknowledge 'hey, that guy did a pretty cool thing'.

... But I can't really.

[McKnighter]

conquest RP

Honestly, I will come back to CotH in a heart-beat if this was accepted.

See it as sad, or shallow, I frankly don't care. I love progression in just about anything of my life.

"Oh, we just had a full-scale war in a region. So many have died, but truce is called finally after many long battles." /seemingly, nothing changed.

I know the server is attempting to stick to Blizzard lore. That is also a major turn-off for me. If we play Cata, then we know what happens. We're just reliving the moments retail makes for us, in a less-epic fashion. Boring.

I want to see change. I wish to find that my actions bring effect to the area around me. Perhaps I been playing too many RPG games like Mass Effect. I don't know.

/end rantble

[Xigo]

See McKnighter. My thought on conquest is that we should keep it from being the Horde/Alliance kicking the crap out of eachother, and more of them pushing back other factions in preparation for what Cataclysm is.

[McKnighter]

I agree, Xigo. We don't have to break out the big siege guns and march off to war, but there are a lot of things that we -can- do that lead up to Cataclysm.

Scarlet Crusade is beaten back. I know the Argents and MrBubbles tried doing such, I don't remember hearing anything about it.

Western Plaguelands is actually beginning to recover? Good stuff for Argent/Druids to work on.

Not sure what else. We could do the plague-bombing of Southshore, completely wipe that out.

... Rusty on my Cata lore, but yes. There's a lot we can do if we're allowed to do things like that.

Edit: Doesn't Redridge get assaulted directly by Blackrock orcs? More food for thought.

[Cressy]

I feel where Helvete is coming from. Those events really made our characters think and explore themselves a lot. But, it also caused a lot of drama. I don't know. You don't need conquest RP for things to be entertaining and life changing.

On prestiges? I think people depend too heavily on them to make their characters special. I have no prestiges and my characters still feel unique and special. /shrug

And impact on the server? My character is one of thousands of people in this world, do I expect for things to change that much because of them? No.

[Duraza]

You know, I have to say I love and yet an iffy about conquest rp. It -is- an amazing tool for roleplay, gets characters super involved in a major plotline and leads to a lot of fun. However, in CoTHs past there is the problem of places being abandoned... And on other private servers I've played on the problem gets worst when too many conquests change lore too much and makes things... well weird. All the custom content can honestly ruin rp, no lie. And its a big turn off for me personally as a new player to walk onto a server where there is an entirely non-canon timeline of significant events.

Since CoTH seems to only really have a problem of areas going inactive, an idea I had was:

-Players go and take over an area (whether its Horde/Alliance flags in the lead, Argents, random player faction/guild, etc).

-Once an area is taken that doesn't mean the opposing faction is suddenly dead. Players will have to quell the faction in random 'siege' events (to keep action going longer but more dispersed... You could have a random siege every *insert time interval* and it could be any faction that makes sense to take the place).

-Eventually, players get inactive in that area. If there aren't enough to win then they can lose in the siege event and the area gets retaken by the original faction there, pushing them back.

-If there is just a general abandonment it works the same way, either a final event where they loose or the area is considered abandoned and the original faction returns.

Problem is... I know everyone wants to 'stamp themselves' on the world, i.e. see things actually permanently change. This sorta thing offers no permanent changes (all things are technically impermanent in a realistic world anyways right?). It would also make people actually invest in a single area... so that there would probably be a small amount of actually 'conquest areas' on the server...

But I don't know. I've never bothered mentioning this to anyone cause while conquest is fun, it still strikes me as iffy. At times I really want to see it and at other times I'm really glad we avoid it now.

[Kepora]

Well, I for one would like to see a tad less anonimity between the Alliance and Horde. Of course if you're super gung-ho and go around attacking guards and such you wouldn't be welcome, but for those of us whom try to remain neutral...it'd definitely help with RP.