Warcraft Roleplaying Guide: Discord and Social Media

Previous Section - Part 14

By now you should have a pretty good grasp on how you can stay connected with other Players and even meet more. Really, at its base, all you need is just your Friends List, Battle Tag list, and a good guild that is willing to work with you and you can pretty much just take it from there and be completely fine. That’s how a lot of players tend to be, and don't even bother with anything else outside of that small bubble that they put around themselves. Most don't go beyond it, preferring to keep their worlds and friends list small.

So there's nothing wrong with that as I've said before. There is never a wrong way to play this game and stay connected to people. It's all centered on your comfort level.

For those that love options though, and seeing what else is out there, then the following two sections I'll be going over should help tremendously because it allows you not only more avenues for staying in contact with friends, but meeting new people as well.

First off, I'll be talking about Discord, and how it's currently the single most popular way that most players on Warcraft talk with one another, as well as discuss Social Media and how it’s usable as well for reaching out to a wide range of people as well.

I don't want to bore you with technicalities, so let’s go ahead and jump right into it!

Discord

The first thing I wanted to discuss is Discord since it's become the hub of anything related to Roleplay in the last four or so years.

If you're an older player, you might remember the days of the Early to late 2000s where Instant Messaging services such as AIM, MSN Chat, Yahoo Chat, and ICQ were all the rage and were one of the best ways to connect with friends. It was essentially a faster form of E-mail where you just sent a message out to a friend on your friends' list, and they messaged you back, sometimes instantly (Hence the term Instant Messaging). It was like texting on your Phone, but way before that became a normal thing to do.

Of course, it eventually gave way to the development of Skype, which allowed you to conference call a group of people, create small communities in the programs surrounding your friends, and even voice call at the same time. Skype at the time went hand in hand with Ventrilo, or even Mumble, as a form of large voice gatherings where you bought server space that could host up to 10 or even 100 people in a voice call at once.

Then, eventually, Discord came around and it aggregated all of Skype and Ventrilo's main functions, into one user-friendly program. With Discord, you have the Instant Messaging aspect of Skype, with the ability to create voice channels of Ventrilo. Not only that, but you even can create servers as well that don't have an upward limit of how many people can it. In fact, I'm part of several community servers devoted to Warcraft Roleplay that has more than a thousand people a part of the roster.

Plus, you even have the ability - if you're an administrator of a server - to create custom emoji's for people to use as well. You can customize Text channels, Voice Channels, and edit your community to your preference as well as add automation programs (called "Bots") that can take the place of administrators or add fun stuff to your server. Popular choices being one that adds mature filters so players can't say certain keywords, or plays music in a dedicated music channel, or allows you to roll dice like you're playing a tabletop game.

Discord really is one of the best programs to use to stay connected with friends, guild, communities, and other players.

So, what are the Pros and Cons of the program?

Well, the Pros I already went over. I honestly just think it's great because of how easy and intuitive it is. There are paid tiers to the system though, but the free account honestly is all you need if you don't want to spend money on "Discord Nitro", since having Nitro only gives you access to the ability to link Emoji's from other servers, boost a server, and other small quality of life benefits. The free version of the program suffices for your needs in every way and isn't needed to access all of the functions of the program.

Plus another large upside to Discord is how easy it is to carry on Roleplay through it. While you won't have a lot of the visual medium that comes through In-Game roleplay (and some people can't Roleplay without the game immersing them), you do have the freedom to use your imagination a lot more through the use of text, with some minor formatting features that can help you improve your writing. Granted, you're limited to only 2,000 characters per post, but you're not limited to how MUCH you can post: Meaning that you can write three 2,000 character posts in succession if you really wanted to.

This is great for players who REALLY like to write a lot, or you want to carry on Roleplay scenes beyond the game not constrained by schedules and positioning.

Well, if those are the pros, what are the cons?

Well, the downside of Discord is that it's supplanted pretty much every other program that Blizzard uses to allow you to stay in contact with other people.

Remember how in the previous section I touched on Blizzard Groups and their functions? Well, the reason that Blizzard Groups and Communities don't see a whole lot of action is that Discord simply improves on every aspect that Blizzard tries to emulate with the addition of making it easier for you to maintain contact with friends and meet new people.

Sure, having a Friends List and using your Battle Tag friends list is more immediate when you're in the game than alt-tabbing out to use a third-party program, but the in-game friend system still pales in comparison to simply spending that extra time just switching programs immediately to click on your favorite WoW Server on Discord, or your Discord Friends list, and contacting someone to talk to them. They don't even need to be logged onto the Blizzard App to do that.

Which is an upside to Discord, but a downside to Blizzard.

Another minor downside to Discord that I should mention is that you are limited to how many servers you can join as well. The hardcap is 100 servers total per account. This shouldn't be an issue for most people who join maybe a dozen at most, but if you're someone who enjoys joining dozens and dozens of servers you might end up hitting this cap pretty soon.

Still, if you don't mind that Discord surpasses anything that Blizzard can do, and don't mind having an all-in-one location for your Friends List that encompasses Communities, Discuss Groups, and Guilds then I say use Discord. There isn't a TRUE downside to its use and nothing is stopping you from using everything I previously mentioned in this guide. In fact, I use a mixture of In-game friends list, Battle Tagging/Real ID, Blizzard Groups/Communities, Discord, and Social Media (Which I'll go over in a bit). This way I cover all my bases, and I can be in contact with people who need me, and maintain a group of friends I can communicate with at the touch of a button.

Now, let me move on to the final part of this subsection of the Roleplaying Guide.

Social Media

This brings us finally to perhaps the biggest way that you can connect with the Roleplaying Community, and even go beyond it if you wanted to: Social Media

So what exactly is Social Media? Well, at its most basic, it's pretty much just any sort of platform that you use to socially connect with other people - such as blogging, microblogging, photo sharing, or anything else. All other people on any Social Media platforms are essentially doing the same thing, and often it's just full of people sharing photos, opinions, news, or anything else.

Now, I'm not going to get into the very specifics of Social media and explain it beyond that. Mostly I like to write this guide as informative as I can be on the off chance that readers might not know what I'm talking about, but I believe that Social Media is ingrained enough in our collective culture that we all know what it is and how it performs specifically.

So instead of explaining what Social Media is and risking myself 'talking down' to you, I'm instead going to just skip right to the part where I discuss the pros and cons of each media Platform and what it brings to the table in terms of connecting with friends!

Tumblr

Tumblr used to be THE place to go for information on Roleplayers and communicating with Roleplaying Communities outside of individual servers. It wasn't uncommon to see players from Moon Guard interacting and sharing stories with players from Wyrmrest Accord, Argent Dawn EU, Emerald Dream, and even players who weren't even on Roleplay servers wanting to share their creativity.

Plus, it was an easy to use platform at one time and enabled you to write long-form posts, load up a series of 10 photo's at a time, and schedule when to post. A lot of people from all sorts of creative walks of life used it as well.

So what happened?

I won't get into the details of exactly why Tumblr fell from the #1 spot as the place to go for connecting with Friends and other Roleplayers. Suffice to say that Twitter ended up becoming the platform of choice eventually. That still doesn't mean that Tumblr isn't used though. It's still preferred by many people over Twitter simply because of the way you can still use it and its ability to connect with other people. You can even use it WITH Twitter as well and allow your posts on one platform to be shared with the other.

Neat huh? Well, let me explain why it's used still by discussing the Pros of Tumblr.

For starters, as I've said, it allows for Longform writing to be used. Twitter is a microblogging platform and has a small 140characters (though it was doubled to 280 characters) limit to what you can write. This is the equivalent of about... three average sentences. Tumblr however has NO such restriction and allows you to write quite a bit. Rarely will you ever reach the limit unless you're writing a short story or the like. Not only that, but Tumblr also allows you to format your posts, so you can easily use Bold, Italics, Underscores, Highlights, Links, and more to improve your writing and make it more dynamic.

The other upside is that you can post up to 10 pictures in a post as well, as opposed to Twitter's limit of 4. This includes Gifs as well, and it's not uncommon for Roleplayers to often use that space for various reasons. Plus, for everyone who reblogs your post, you can actively see and even click on their profiles easier to go to and follow them if you want.

So, all of those upsides sound neat, but what are the downsides? What about the Cons that made people prefer Twitter?

Well, the downside is that as a platform, Tumblr hasn't much changed their user face in several years. Finding people to follow, and curating a follower list, is unintuitive. Not only that, but the "Feed" system (The system where you scroll down to see what other people post) is rather unintuitive as well. With Twitter, you can choose whose posts you see first, but you can't really with Tumblr.

Not only that, but Tumblr also has problems with its automatic flagging system. NSFW content is prohibited on the platform, and as such, you can't post it. However, the way it flags NSFW content can easily flag SFW content as well, and it’s rather hard to get your content "unblocked" on the platform since Tumblr relies on a lot of automation.

In essence, Tumblr just really needs better automation tools, more actual human staff that can help, and needs to redo its outdated and unintuitive UI. Whether that will happen remains to be seen, but otherwise, it's still perfectly serviceable. As I said before, it can even be used with Twitter and each post from each can be posted cross-platform as well.

This brings me to the final Social Media tool you can use.

Twitter

Twitter right now is considered the hot spot for connecting with other Roleplayers and for staying connected with friends. Not only can you make posts quickly, but it's designed for you to jot down your immediate thoughts and share without much formatting, and allows you to share up to 4 images or 1 gif image in a single post as well if you choose. So it’s not surprising that it's become an addicting platform to utilize since you don't have to worry about making a post look good; you just link your images, quickly write what you're thinking, and tag it with a few hashtags and confirm it.

That's all it really takes. There's not much more to it than that. It's simple, intuitive, and the UI is relatively nice because your preferred followers (Also called "Mutuals" on the platform) get posted to the top of your feed, while everyone else you can scroll down and see them in order from when they post. Following is relatively easy as well; you just click on the "follow" button, and the other person receives a notification that you followed them and they can choose to follow you back. If they do, you receive a notification as well, and on their page they get a "Follows You" right below their name to indicate that you both follow one another.

Easy! And it makes curating a list of followers a lot easier for you as well since there are pages you can go to that list people who you're following, and who are following you as well. Plus there are a lot of different strategies for people who like posting content and such (Called "Tweets”) when it comes to community building or following their friends. Some strategies including just following a small list of people they know, or just posting content and following whoever they want to, or even being a person who "follows for a follow".

So whatever you do, you're sure to be entertained by Twitter, AND be connected with other players who Roleplay - a collection of people known as "Twitteroth" on Twitter. Which is a portmanteau of "Twitter" and "Azeroth" blended together.

So, what are the pros of using Twitter then?

Well, I already mentioned the upside, but I can explain them again a bit more in-depth.

For starters, posting is a lot easier than it is on Tumblr and Facebook. While those platforms - Tumblr more than Facebook for obvious reasons - are better for Longform posting and more concrete, coherent thoughts, Twitter is great for just quickly posting things. You simply press the "Tweet" button, and write up to 280 characters - with a few optional Hashtags - and optionally load up 1-4 images (or 1 gif) and press the tweet button. It's really that simple. There's no formatting involved, you don't have to space paragraphs out, and writing short form can even be in your benefit since it'll give you space enough to type. So you don't have to worry about grammar or punctuation as much which is a benefit for those who don't write all that well.

Plus, another upside is it's a lot easier to follow people. On Tumblr, you don't have any real way of knowing who follows a certain blog account, which can make finding mutuals a lot harder to do unless they're directly reblogged on their timeline. With Twitter, you can simply click on a mutuals Twitter page, and click on their Followers, or see who they're following, and track down people who you want to follow as well who post interesting content. Again, once you follow them they'll be notified and can either follow you back or not.

The third upside is that you can link your World of Warcraft account to your Twitter account. It's true! Warcraft has built-in support and allows you to tweet screenshots, achievements, and even items that you get in dungeons/raids/Mythics. You go to your Interface settings, click on the "Social" tab, and connect it via the option there and it links directly with your Username. Provided you have access to that account, are logged into both Twitter and Warcraft at the same time.

There isn't much more that can be said on the positives of Twitter: It’s just that intuitive to modern Social Media, and seeing content and communicating with other people is just that easy. Though, that does bring me to the downsides of the platform itself.

The first biggest downside is the 280 character limit. I know I listed it as a positive above, but it actually is a double-edged sword. For small posts, such as "Look at this item/achievement I got in Warcraft!" to sharing screenshots, or even just to make a small quip, it all works just fine. However, this limit doesn't allow you to explain things, or hold conversations, in any meaningful way. 280 characters is really just about three decently sized sentences, and that's hardly enough space to convey your full thought process on a given topic.

Sure, you can add onto it with another Twitter post (you even have the option to add another tweet that links to your initial post), but if you need more than three posts to post your thoughts down you really should just use Tumblr, or some other platform and link it directly to your Twitter instead.

Another downside is that as an image sharing platform, it is still rather limited. Four images are enough for most people who are just wanting to share art, screenshots, or memes, but if you're someone who is trying to convey your thoughts through a visual medium (such as comics or the like) then you're vastly limited per tweet.

Another downside is that you're also limited in options for personalizing your Twitter page as well. With Tumblr, you can use different themes to create a working page to give your blogging space a unique look that caters to you. With Twitter, you only have your Avatar image, a header image, and the color of the buttons on your page, and one pinned tweet. That's really about it. So most of the time your Twitter page tends to look similar to other accounts other than the content of your timeline.

However outside of that? It’s perfectly fine. The downsides don't detract from the upsides in any real way. They're mostly just limitations of the platform itself since it's still billed as "microblogging", and aren't likely to change in any form down the line. As I stated earlier in the Tumblr section though you CAN still connect your Tumblr and Twitter together and cross-post though. Posts on your Tumblr page will simply create a link to your timeline for people to click on and your Twitter posts will be posted on your Tumblr page with a link to your Twitter.

So feel free to try them both out and see for yourself which you might like! I personally use Twitter more than Tumblr, since my Tumblr page is mostly just reblogging writing things, Roleplaying guides and information, and historical facts and trivia.

Conclusion

That brings us to the end of the Communication and connection section and how to maintain contact with friends and other Roleplayers. Hopefully, by now you get an idea on how easy it is to stay connected with people and get an idea of how you want to do it yourself. From Friends Lists, all the way to Social Media and Discord, there are just so many options available to you that it actually is extremely rare and disconcerting when a person simply disappears for a long while off of Warcraft. Once you get ingrained in the Community - Server-wide, Guild wide and Social Media wide - that it becomes almost impossible to separate yourself from it.

This leads me to what the next section I'll be going over is all about: Drama.

How does that segue exactly? Well, a problem with being ingrained in the Community is that far too often you find yourself in the middle of drama - which can range from spats between groups of people to potentially crippling controversies that hamper your time in the game. The worst thing about being ingrained in the community and making all of these friendships and stuff is when drama rears itself in your direction and ruins what should be a fun hobby.

So I'll be going over what Drama is, and how you as a Player can avoid it: By being aware of what things you should avoid, and what kind of people you should avoid as well, and how to get yourself out of it if you find yourself in the thick of it.

So strap in and sit back because I'm going to get into some heavy stuff.

See you then!

Start of this Guide

Part 1 - Introduction