Warcraft Roleplaying Guide: Addons - Roleplay Etiquette Introduction.

So far I've gone over the basics of Roleplay, what servers are perfect for beginners to play on, and I even went through a small selection of Addons that you could use to help your Roleplaying adventures as well as a small guide on how to install them.

Hopefully by now, you've gotten this far into the guide and it's only helped you get more excited to start Roleplaying and going on adventures yourself if you hadn't already stepped onto Moon Guard or Wyrmrest Accord to check out the community already.

However, before you go diving in headfirst and start to fully immerse yourself, I feel I need to bring us to the next part of the Roleplaying Guide to discuss etiquette and all the basic information that comes with it. So let's take a step back together to discuss some things that you need to know before you start to engage the wider Roleplayer community.

The addons that I went over previously are perfect for starting out and getting yourself set up with a system that helps to enhance the game through the use of UI additions and immersion tools, but it doesn't do the one thing that you as a player need to be able to do to be successful, and have fun: Understanding how to engage and talk to other players.

How is that a problem exactly? Well, the problem is that a lot of people starting in the Roleplaying hobby for the first time don't know what to do when they're in the game and don't know how to approach other people. Some don't even know how to initiate a simple conversation as well and quickly get frustrated when they feel that their intentions aren't being reciprocated or that they feel like they're being ignored.

Imagine this scenario:

You're a player who decided that they want to start Roleplay, and you want to Roleplay someone who will get noticed. To you, antagonistic characters get noticed easily, and you want to create a little bit of excitement. So you create a character, log on, head off to where the other Roleplayers are at (Such as a tavern, or just wandering any of the large capital cities) and you target a player who doesn't seem to be doing anything.

You run up to them as they engage and talk with other players, and you demand that they give you their money or you'll attack them.

What happens 9/10 times? You get ignored. The other player might target you and then turn around as if you hadn't said anything. So you follow through with your threat, and you attack them and try to mug them as you said you would. To you, it makes perfect sense.

They still ignore you, and your left frustrated because if it happened in real life, you wouldn't be ignored. Plus, Roleplaying is all about dynamic, and collaborative storytelling, so what gives?

This scenario illustrates the mindset of a new player and how they might act out when they first join the community and start to engage other players. It also illustrates how a player who joins might not even understand the reasons why their attempts at Roleplay are often ignored at best and belittled at worst.

Of course, the player I had highlighted COULD just be a disruptive troll looking to ruin the moment for others, but I feel it's often best to give the benefit of the doubt when you see players honestly engaging other players.

Plus, this guide IS designed for those types of players and is designed to give clear directions on how beginners can improve at this hobby and integrate themselves better in the community.

Of course, this isn't a problem that's inherent to just World of Warcraft Roleplayers alone. It's honestly been a problem for fans of the hobby for years all the way back to IRC style Chat Rooms, to various Roleplay Web Forums, and even on older MMO's such as Ultima Online and Everquest. In fact, not knowing proper Roleplay Etiquette is still an ongoing problem in modern MMO's such as Final Fantasy 14, Starwars KOTOR, and even on Discord Communities and various other platforms.

Getting Started

Fortunately for all new players entering into the hobby, it's not all that hard to understand the etiquette required to play well with others. Most of it really is just remembering some common sense and some social conventions that we all follow to get along with one another. Remember when I said in the beginning that this is more or less like playing with your imagination as a child with other children? It's like that, but with also remembering courtesy to others since they're playing with you as well.

What I mean by this is that there's no ritual or password that you need to know to start roleplaying. At the basic level, all you need to do is walk up to someone, say hello, and introduce yourself as your character would (Being "In Character") and then take it from where. That's all you need for starting out; in fact, that's often how people meet new people no matter how long they've roleplayed.

It's just that understanding this etiquette helps beyond the first initial hello. Down the line, know how to interact and properly 'play' with other Roleplayers will help you learn how to avoid conflict, compromise on story development, and even help you navigate social circles with ease.

Plus, the best thing about learning proper etiquette and getting involved? When you see a player acting like I mentioned in the above scenario and remembering the early mistakes you made yourself, and wanting to help. Nothing is better than taking a frustrated new player aside, giving them helpful suggestions, and then seeing them blossom into a welcomed addition to the community.

Topics of Discussion

So what am I going to go over exactly in this section of the Roleplay Guide?

Well, as I mentioned we'll be going over proper Roleplay Etiquette. This includes four major sections that I'll be discussing:

• Tense, Perspective, and Attempts - All of these will help you understand how the flow of actions go, and staves off confusion with other players since nothing kills a scene quicker than not being able to understand what exactly is going on.

• Consent, Courtesy, and a discussion on Darker and Adult Themes - Understanding these will help you understand how you can avoid falling into the same mistakes from the above scenario, and how you CAN roleplay antagonistic characters without being ignored.

• Conflict Resolutions, Arguments, and Compromise - This section will help you avoid the much dreaded 'drama' before it crops up, and how conflicts aren't inherently a bad thing: In fact, conflicts and compromise often lead to interesting directions for character and story development and can lead to Out of Character (OOC) development into larger things.

• Misc Etiquette - This section will just be additional suggestions and etiquette that doesn't fit in the previous three sections.

I intend to go over each of those sections fully so beginners can understand why they're important, and make it clear why knowing all of those etiquettes are important for engagement.

Which we’ll be discussing here soon: So for now, take a little break before we move onto the next section.

See you then!