MyMMO demon Cortyn attended a role-playing event. But it was plagued by problems that simply should not have existed.
If you’ve been reading my articles for a while, you surely know that one of my great hobbies is role-playing in World of Warcraft.
Generally, there are two principles for role-players in World of Warcraft:
1. Every role-player is a diva, without exception. If you’re thinking “No, not me!” – yes, you too. Especially you.
2. Role-players are quite easy to please. Give them an empty space and text chat, the rest is handled by their imagination.
While point 1 is simply a circumstance one must deal with (and also accept for oneself), point 2 is primarily born out of the fact that RP communities don’t really need much content and have been accustomed for decades to little from Blizzard. As Ion Hazzikostas said recently in an interview: Many role-players don’t play WoW because of the developers, but in spite of them. It is known that more could be done here.
Role-playing in WoW – Improvements in Small, Problems in Large
Sure, over the years, some things have improved and one or the other developer seems to have a heart for RP, as we have received items like the brilliant tents in the open world or more recently, more items with which a character can hold a specific pose long-term – such as holding a torch, a beer mug, a crate, or a new leaning emote. These are small details that make the game more beautiful and mean a lot to the RP community.
I don’t even want to start on housing here – that was a dream come true for the RP community, leading to countless beautiful stories and will continue to do so.
But what role-players also need: space in the open world. World of Warcraft is an incredibly beautiful environment with a lot of history and therefore a central part of major RP events. But especially in the newer areas, it is getting harder to hold large events.
Fighting Against the Limits of the Game World
On my realm, a guild hosts the so-called “Wool Fair” every year. A large market event lasting several weeks with festivities and a lot of chaos – always a bit exhausting due to the large number of participants, but at its core, a dream for role-players.
In recent days, however, it seemed as if the organizers of the event had to fight against Blizzard and their restrictions.
A rather curious problem arose during our journey through the Arathi Highlands. This is one of the areas that still exists in the “old” Cataclysm version, but also in the “new” version from Battle for Azeroth. Here, one must decide on a phase for all characters to see each other.
But somehow Blizzard messed it up. Because there are still several phases, with a rather curious bug: Some players see a different layout of the environment. Floors, rocks, trees – everything has different heights and designs. This means that the Arathi Highlands can look completely different for two characters standing right next to each other. While Character A thinks he is standing on the street, for Character B it seems as if A is floating in the air or sinking into the ground.
WoW tries to offset this with gravity. If Character A is floating in the air next to Character B, then Character A falls down. However, the server then reports that Character A is actually elevated and pulls the player back into the air.
The result: Characters bounce wildly up and down.
Sure, for a moment it’s funny when a procession of 100 people suddenly starts bouncing wildly, as if the music genre Jumpstyle is having a renaissance again – but after 30 seconds, one starts to think: How atmospheric could this journey be right now if the stylish elf next to me, with whom my character is having such a nice conversation, wouldn’t be switching every 2 seconds between “I’m sinking into the ground” and “I’m floating above you and then falling down on you.”
The second incident happened last night. Coinciding with the longest day of the year, a torch procession took place in the darkness, along with a midsummer night ritual at one of the large stone circles in the Arathi Highlands. A bit mystical-spiritual, indeed.
But the Arathi Highlands fell flat due to the previous phasing problem. The event management had to find a substitute at short notice and came up with another nice idea: They would simply rebuild the stone circle in housing by nicely decorating one of the outer areas of a property. That’s not too much work, but for a spontaneous solution, it’s the best possible.
The torch procession set off, traversing half the hilly land before switching neighborhoods. Well, you think.
Because not only the Arathi Highlands caused problems, but also the neighborhood. Because even a neighborhood activates phasing, once more than 100 characters are present – and it’s a phasing in which even group invitations do not help to get into the correct version of the phase.
The end of the story was that the event management had to re-plan once again, and instead chose a different location in the open world where there was no phasing.
You could now say: “What are the role-players complaining about, there is a great game world, they will find a nice spot.”
And yes, that’s true. In the end, it worked out.
The New World Puts Stones in the Path of Grand Events
What bothers me a lot: It is an old location that had to be avoided. Both the Arathi Highlands and the housing neighborhood are new to completely new areas. They are gaming contents that are the most developed and should provide the best possible player experience. But they do not.
Instead, the neighborhood – an area explicitly designed with role-players in mind – caused problems. Especially, the presence of 100 people in a guild neighborhood is not even that unusual. Since guilds can have significantly more than 100 characters, this means, conversely: Meeting as a large guild in the front yard of the guild leader to protest for a larger guild repair budget, that doesn’t work at all. And that’s a bit absurd when a social feature is not even equipped to handle the sizes of the social groups in the game.
Yes, I know that housing is a new feature and Blizzard is still struggling with performance – after all, outside lighting was only recently allowed with patch 12.0.7. But if Blizzard wants this to be a true paradise for the RP community that can literally sustain itself indefinitely with new content, then there need to be some improvements.
At least one good thing came out of it: The usually prominent troll who harasses role-players without sense or reason was not seen that evening. Perhaps he simply could not get through to us with all the phasing. Hmm. Maybe I’ll reconsider my statements about phasing after all.
Your opinion is important to us!
Do you like the article? Then let us know!