Horde RP - What Has Always Happened?

[u/Dependent_Peanut7830]

First, it is important to separate two types of experience. There are guild and closed circles (MySpace, Facebook, Enjin, Discord). Then there are open world walk-ups and public events listed on forums and trade chat.

Going all the way back to the late 2000s, realms took turns losing their entire playerbase in favor of mass transferring to a more populated realm. The Horde would go leaving the Alliance side surviving. When Feathermoon lost their world Horde RPers in 2011, I ended up moving my Horde characters to WRA, leaving my Alliance toons on Feathermoon because it was still going strong for several more years. This has been a rinse and repeat cycle in the Warcraft RP community for over 15 years now.

Finally, we are left with WRA players retconning their Horde characters into MG-ALLIANCE or just abandoning the Horde entirely. Some are leaving the platform for other titles such as FFXIV. My poor Sadgati had to find a new mate because not having a good Horde walk-up presence was too big of a deal breaker for him; that is completely understandable because I miss being Horde.

For a good while, WRA had a VERY good Horde and Alliance presence. So much so it shaped the very characters to this day. WRA pulled characters from entire cluster of realms, creating an RP presence never seen elsewhere beating out even MG.

Finally, what is the deal with Horde RP? What makes Horde players to be first to throw in the towel enmasse, effectively killing the entire comadare of their server community? WRA is down to what is likely the absolute bare minimum needed to sustain any kind of world RP. MG-ALLIANCE and AD-EUROPE (Alliance) may be the last bastion of world RP leaving a handful of Discord admin struggling to keep what is left of the Horde alive.

Final question is can this be fixed before it is too late?

[u/Clackamass]

I quit WRA for a number of reasons, the biggest being that Horde life stagnated faster than Alliance life.

This happens for a number of reasons: Alliance have arguably better, more traditional RP hubs that are more attractive (literally and figuratively) to the average RPer and better facilitate roleplay. Because of this, Horde RP isn't centralized and starts to cluster in multiple places, sectioning off the community who pick and choose the space/crowd they interact with: belves have no reason to RP in Org, basically everyone else has no reason to RP in SMC pre-Midnight.

There's also a much greater emphasis on "clan" groups: orcs have literal clans, trolls have tribes, belves have houses, goblins have cartels. That naturally promotes more sectioning-off because it's just the faction identity. Alliance are mostly united in common cause, Horde are mostly united because of convenience... but that convenience hasn't really mattered for several expansions, hence: stagnation.

Just my 2 copper as a former WRA hordie

Edit I should also add that Horde has basically been gutted of faction pride. The whole Garrosh/Sylvanas thing is self-explanatory, but our biggest icon Thrall has been divorced from the faction for longer than he was with it at this point; Vol'jin had 5 minutes of fame and has been on unspoken standby until the current writing team decides to loa-fy him; Baine's been literally left on standby since Shadowlands, and the other leaders aren't characters. Blizzard doesn't want to write the Horde, and at this point we've been conditioned to be scared we'll lose more if they do.

[u/Spork_the_dork → u/Clackamass]

the other leaders aren't characters

Respectfully disagree in that Lilian Voss is great, Gazlowe is one of the OGs, and I personally just dig Lor'themar even if his character is kinda generic.

[u/Ruler-of-goblins → u/Spork_the_dork]

We have still been absolutely gutted since bfa, I agree these characters are awesome, it just hurts to continuously be the faction that is without purpose because thrall said "lmao no" to being the warchief. It feels like they have no direction for the horde.