Fitting In

Image from Blizzard Entertainment.

Roleplaying is something pretty near and dear to me. We have a new patch, transmog and a new expansion one the way with a radically different race, class and location from anything yet seen. It gets the old creative juices flowing, eh? So this time it’s gonna be a rundown of character design basics, some broad guidelines and some tips to help you fit your character into the world avoid a big rules lawyer argument with other RPers.

-Know Your Lore-

I can’t stress how important it is to have a basic handle on the in game history, big events of who, what and when. The in game timeline is vague, there are a couple versions around and they are always running behind the current state of things, but there are some basic reference points to think of. If you know your history and follow its guidelines many RP pitfalls can be avoided.

•          Going backwards we have the events of World of Warcraft, all these have taken place in, more or less, the last 5 years.

•          Before that is the Third War, which took place around 10 years ago and saw the Scourge destroy Lordaeron, the orcs coming to Kalimdor, the founding of Theramore and the uniting to the humans, orcs and night elves at the battle for Mount Hyjal. After this we had Illidan, the naga and the blood elves going to Outland, Arthas becoming the Lich King and somewhere in there the night elves grew Teldrassil and built Darnassus.

•           We then have a 15 or so year-long period after the Second War where the orcs were imprisoned, Thrall was raised as a gladiator, escaped, became a shaman, meet Doomhammer, eventually freed the other orcs and became Warchief with Doomhammer’s death.

•           Before this was the Second War, over 25 years ago, the original Alliance formed by the seven human kingdoms, plus high elves and dwarves, fighting the horde in Lordaeron, Lothar dying, Gul’dan dying and the Old Horde losing and being imprisoned. This is also when the Alliance Expedition chased the horde back to Outland and got stuck.  It was right after these events that Gilneas flipped the rest of the Alliance the bird and built that lovely wall.

•           About 35 years ago, and some 6 or so years before the Second War, we had the events of the First War, the opening of the Dark Portal, the original fall of Stormwind and a few years of 16-bit Orc vs Human action. Before all this, everything was pretty cool for the humans.

•           But over in Outland, then still a lovely spherical world called Draenor, we had a fairly lengthy 50-ish year period of increasing demonic corruption, Draenei genocide etc, from the orcs, starting around 80 years before the present day.

•           History deeper than this exists, but aside from three big events, the War of the Three Hammers at maybe 300 years ago for the dwarves, along with the War of the Shifting Sands around 1,000 years ago and the War of the Ancients about 10,000 years ago, which were both very big deal for the night elves, it’s moot when it comes to the basics.

-Basic Character Design-

Now that the mess is out of the way, some general pointers that can apply to any race.

  

•       Different races age differently. We don’t have exact numbers, but dwarves and gnomes live longer than humans, elves tend to have very long lives, the night elves were technically immortal for 10,000 years and draenei don’t seem to have a set lifespan at all. All other player races live on a similar timescale to humans.

•         Find your place in the world. What could this character have seen in their lifetime? How new are the things they are experiencing? Night elves just got over 10,000 years of isolation, most young orcs today were probably born or raised in a prison camp, many adult humans could have literally seen their kingdom burned to the ground.

•          Where are you from? This is a big concern for humans, what with 7 kingdoms and all, but also applies to other races. Someone from Lordaeron saw things in a different light than someone from Stormwind, a Bronzebeard dwarf is not a Wildhammer dwarf, and different clans of orcs have different traditions.

After the who and where are taken care of the last question is the what. There are lots of possible people to be, soldiers, scholars, treasure hunters, a grizzled vet, a green recruit, a fighter, a healer, an explorer, really just about anything works. It helps to keep it simple in the beginning and staying apart from major lore figures and not giving yourself a big role in events almost always helps to smooth the way. That’s not to say you can’t have served under the command Anduin Lothar himself back in the day, but you probably aren’t his long lost child or favorite squire. Be open, be aware, do a little digging on the race you choose and try to stay to the general outline of things. You’ll get along fine and get better with time.