Roleplaying and You: Finding an RP Guild
Scenario time, folks. Let’s say you wanted to try your hand in the Roleplaying world of WoW. You’ve found yourself an RP server that seems to fit your needs. You’ve created a toon or transferred one over and have meticulously thought out his or her backstory where it falls in line with the lore already established and can be pretty easy to RP with on a long term basis.
Now how the heck do you find an RP guild that suits your needs and wants?
You could spam trade chat with “LF RP guild”, but that just seems…wrong. And you’d probably be right. Most RP guilds I know don’t respond to something of that nature. It doesn’t display the creativity RP guilds look for. Besides, despite the accepted use of abbreviations within WoW, that may as well be considered “leetspeak”, which is frowned upon not only by RP guilds, but most guilds with a core membership above 14 years old.
“But Arrens,” I can hear you asking, “how do I go about it?” Easy, young padawan. Go to your new-found realm’s official forums. This is actually one of the easier ways to find RP guilds on your chosen server. Most of the long-standing RP guilds will be listed in a sticky at the top. It might not be updated. On Cenarion Circle, I’ll bet there’s no less than a dozen RP guilds listed in the sticky that have been disbanded for at least 2 years. So find that list of guilds, filter through it to find something you might be looking for that your character (and, obviously, you) might be a good fit in.
Other ways are to stay in character ALL.THE.TIME. This is hard and will likely bring out the RP trolls. That’s fine. You’re bound to come across them eventually. Do it early enough in your RP career and they become easier to deal with until you have a full ignore list and can go about your routine. But staying in character is an uncommon trait and will likely bring more RP your way, thus opening doors to RP guilds you might not know existed.
Find events. Attend them regularly. Become that known RP entity. The invites will surely come your way, though you may need to be the first one to ask if there’s an opening within that RP guild. Many RPers play the “lone wandering type” where they aren’t associated with any guilds due to their character’s lore. Unless you ask someone, they may assume you’re one of these types of people.
These are just three easy ways to find yourself an RP guild. It’s often said that they’re difficult to find. But a little research and some willpower on your end will bring those roleplayers out in no time.
I Pitied The Fool
Charming
Shafted!
The Rocket's Pink Glare
Nation of Adoration
Arrens, I find your blog a fascinating glimpse into the RP side of WoW. I am an RP’er at heart, although I am firmly entrenched on a normal PVE server and so my RP expression is generally restricted to my blog.
The whole idea of RP guilds and people who play entirely in character is fascinating to me. I had never heard of such a thing until fairly recently, and I enjoy hearing from those for whom this is an integral aspect of their WoW experience.
I keep telling myself that someday I will roll up a character on an RP server and give it a try. In the mean time, I enjoy learning about the RP culture from those, like yourself, who are experienced in this genre.
I enjoy your story as well. You have quite a gift for writing and kept me rivited for well over an hour as I followed Arren’s adventures.
Thank you for sharing your story, and your experience as an RP’er.
Wow, thank you. I’m glad you’ve enjoyed it.
As I may have mentioned in one of my OOC posts, I too used to play solely on a PvE server. But the drama created through raiding and getting more and more loot soon became overwhelming and, in a fit of rage, caused me to delete my now resurrected warlock. I took a 4-month hiatus from the game but was pulled back by the idea of roleplaying. I’m glad I did. I’ve met some fantastic people in the WoW community and the RP community that I consider very dear friends.
Give it a try sometime. Just roll an alt, even if you’ve no intention of leveling it to cap. Try RPing with others. It can be incredibly cathartic as well as providing blog fodder, as you’ll see here from time to time.
I actually did try once. A few years ago I did some tabletop RP based on WoW. A few months ago, I decided to re-create that character on an RP server and try my hand at in-game RP.
I leveled to about ten without meeting another soul in the starting zone. The general chat was filled with the regular “LF Tank, H-UK” that I’m used to seeing on my normal server. It didn’t seem any different. I realize I shouldn’t have expected anything too exciting to happen right away.
Actually, I’m not sure what I was expecting. I supposed, in a way, it was a relief that no one did approach me, because I wouldn’t have had the slightest idea how to respond. I imagine the feeling I experienced is similar to what I would feel had I decided to fly to a foregin country in search of an adventure. You arrive in this place, and suddenly realize you don’t know the culture, the language, or a single soul within a thousand miles. It’s a bit lonely and you feel extremely out of place.
I took the next flight back to my normal server and have contented myself with evesdropping on the RP community via blogs like yours ever since. It’s something I’d like to be part of, but I don’t know how.
You mentioned in this post, that you can check the WoW forums for an RP guild. Now, I’m coming at this from the perspective of a GM of a raiding guild. I know what I look for in an applicant, and I have trouble imagining that anyone wants a level ten forsaken, i.e. me.
Perhaps my understanding of what an RP guild looks for is wrong. Like I said, this whole culture is foreign to me. I just know, if a level 10 applied to my guild and had no family or friend connections, I would politely send them on their way.
You also mentioned in this post that you should be IC all the time and become a known “RP Entity”. I am very shy in real life. I am not the type to approach strangers, especially if I don’t know the unwritten rules. Practically speaking, as a baby RP’er and a newbie character, how do I go about being IC? I mean, expressing myself to those around me without being an obnoxious idiot making a fool of herself.
Perhaps I’m making it all more complicated than it needs to be. It’s just a bit daunting to step out of your comfort zone into a world where you feel lost. I’m the type that likes to have a manual for everything and know all the rules before I make the first step.
I genuintely am fascinated by your style of game play and would love to learn more. Thanks for taking the time to read.
The beauty of the internet, as anyone that’s been logged on for longer than 5 minutes knows, is there’s anonymity here. We can choose to all be the trolls you find on forum boards or…/shudder…Barrens chat. Or we can be outgoing, personable and mature people, even if it’s not something that shines through in our real lives. Use the latter approach in RP.
For example, if you stumbled across a group engaging in RP, you’ll find many folks use a dialect. The Dwarves have their Scottish accents. The Trolls have their Jamaican ones. Certain Human characters might even give their characters an accent, particularly if they were born in Northrend (as I’ve seen many, many times on Feathermoon). This is one way to stay IC all the time. Use a dialect and stick with it, even in General or Trade chat.
With regards to your troubles of finding RP up through level 10, RP in the low level zones is either non-existant or so over-the-top bad as to make one’s eyes pop out of their skull and run for cover (I’m looking at you, Goldshire!). Even on an RP server, RPers are a rarer commodity than you might imagine due to the trolls that make their presence known whenever a large gathering occurs. However, if you’re still interested in RPing or at least seeing it, I wholeheartedly invite you to make Horde a toon on Cenarion Circle. Level it high enough to get to the Crossroads in the Barrens on a Tuesday night at 7pm server time (the server’s west coast, so Pacific time) and see Da Doctas clinic. Even if you don’t care to participate directly, at least you can get a feel of how frantic several dozen conversations going on at one time in /say can be when typed out in WoW’s limited space.
And even if you don’t come by the clinic, I thank you once more for getting some use out of my little corner of the web.
I appreciate the warm invitation and I just might take you up on it.
As always, thank you for taking the time to share your insight.
/salute
Reant, the character I created as a direct result of this conversation, dinged 80 last night. It seemed only appropriate to add a comment here expressing my deepest gratitude to you, Arrens, for not only getting me started on this wild ride, but for being there every step of the way as a friend and guide. I can’t thank you enough. <3
Once again, congrats, my dear friend. May Reant’s level-capping goodness provide even more fodder for RP. Even IF Arrens is a big tool to her.
[...] one day last February. Fascinated by his character stories and glimpse into the RP world, I posted a comment. He posted back. One thing led to another and … here I am 80 levels later and a proud [...]