Loretastic: An Overview
Every server has its own culture. Some of this culture is documented on WoW Wiki’s Realms List or on Blizzards Official Realm Forum. Most of the culture will be documented on the Raid and Guild forums–the semi-private places where guildies gather and talk about the game we obsesses over. Over time, part of this guild culture becomes “server specific lore.”
By, “Server Specific” I mean those incidents/sessions/RP Events that are ingrained in the memory of a number of individuals and guilds. These are the events that get mentioned over and over again. The ones that old timers remember and that new players may feel resentful toward.
On Feathermoon, we’ve had the Tri-City Raid, Uthas’ Storyline and Fells’ Sham Trial to name a few (only two of which I participated in). WoW Wiki doesn’t have a single entry on any of these events, but they’re talked about with some regularity on the forums I frequent. These additions to our server’s lore, which occurred yeasr ago, have fleshed out my RP experience. The stories we’re currently working on a still impacted by these events.
In short, they are Loretastic (all credit goes to Falconesse for this new word).
Loretastic events are brilliant in that they help define our servers. They provide a degree of structure for future RP Events. They set the bar for RP on a sever.
The problems of Loretastic, however, are just as powerful People use the Loretastic events as excuses and reasons to bemoan the current state of RP on a server. A few of the more common statements are:
Why can’t RP be like it was in the good old days?
or
Remember when the server was awesome and we did…
or
RP Is dead because no one runs a story like SO and SO.
Worse still are the attempts to recreate a Loretastic event. Botched RP Events–ones where everyone walks away feeling like they wasted their time and energy–scare people away from RP as fast as anything else.*
Loretastic events do not just happen people. They are meticulously and carefully planned. They are long term commitments to planning, storytelling and working with people. Loretastic events typically don’t start as efforts to beat other RP experiences. They are events, or a series of events, that are designed to evoke as much participation as possible while staying withing the plot.
Before WTT:RP can delve deeply into this topic, we need to hear from you. What are the Loretastic events from your server’s history? What, in your opinion, makes an RP event Loretastic?
*One day, I’ll talk about the “psychic battle” RP session I attended in my first few months of WoW. I damn near canceled my account then…
Filed in Alliance,Factions,Horde,Lore,Loretastic,Open Thread,RP,World of Warcraft 11 Comments so far
Cerinne on 30 Apr 2009 at 2:44 pm #
Hah. On Shadow Council there was to be an epic RP wedding in the front courtyard of the Undercity, between my undead lady and her fiancee, who’d been secretly fighting a losing battle to retain his free will from the Scourge for some time. I was quite a vocal member of the RP community, and had ran a number of other successful events with my shaman main, and the wedding had literally hundreds of people in attendance. Alliance and Horde–everyone agreed to throw down their weapons for the night. But what people didn’t know was what we’d coordinated OOC with a deranged power-hungry human mage, one who was becoming more and more crazed in his studies of necromancy and his hatred of the Scourge. Just as the two undeads were up on stage, saying their vows, the mage unleashed a whopper of a pyroblast and killed the groom instantly. All chaos broke out, people ran screaming, Horde fought Alliance, people screamed accusations, and it all set up beautifully a nice RP tribunal of the mage’s actions under the Argent Dawn that drove him further insane. It was beautiful, and we’d all kept the secret so well
I was getting tells for WEEKS after that from Horde and Alliance both proclaiming how awesome it was.
Kansin on 30 Apr 2009 at 4:31 pm #
I wish I could get into scripting of RP.
I keep hearing of this epic “loretastic” throw down thats gonna happen between WFR and POL/Nox, but because I never hear about it in character, I have not asked about it.
WTB RP of future RP plz
Bricu on 30 Apr 2009 at 4:59 pm #
Kansin: shoot me an email and we’ll start planning.
Cerinne: brilliant!
Kansin on 30 Apr 2009 at 4:59 pm #
Oh, to answer your questions. Loretastic. I can’t remember anything I would call epic. There are many small events that I remember fondly, all the way back to my leveling my first character years ago. The RP events that I have enjoyed the most has been where someone injects “life” into a scripted RP event.
A recent fond example was when Destril and Then’liath’s wedding.
It was a wedding, with all the normal stuff you would think a wedding might have. About half way through the ceremony, I caused a scene. I chose the middle of their ceremony to bring to closure some RP that Bika and I had been having fun.
Some time before that, at one of the weekly gatherings, Bika informed me she was “late”, and I had no idea what that meant.
In the middle of their vows, Bika informed me she wasn’t late and I celebrated like a fool. After the wedding was over, lots of discussion occurred regarding my outburst. We had a great discussion regarding future children, quantities of offspring, and qualities of tauren raising them.
I asked before the wedding occurred if it would be OK if I caused a short interruption. While Bika and I kinda stole the show for a bit, the event still went through and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.
Epic, however? Not really. But I enjoyed the hell out of it, and based on the OOC messages I got, so did many others.
Itanya Blade on 30 Apr 2009 at 5:14 pm #
I have never been to a real wedding that went smoothly. it made no sense for Then and Des’ wedding to go smoothly, not with the motley bunch that are their friends. Honestly, Kansin whooping it up and dashing around like a mad man was only one of the fantastic moments of the wedding.
Certainly Azunma’s blessing over the happy couple was some of the gems. Their wedding was one of my favorite WoW happy moments.
And part of the reason you haven’t heard anything in Character about the WFR/PoL thing yet is that technically it hasn’t happened yet. We’re kinda resetting Wrathgate a little since the WFRs are just going throught it now.
So, I know I mentioned it months ago, but it is just getting underway.
Elyjinda on 30 Apr 2009 at 6:25 pm #
I have no clue how I didn’t know about this blog. Must be my utter detachment from everything with all of our troubles lately.
I think I was only involved in one loretastic event over the three or four years I’ve played this. That was at the end of the Belly of the Beast storyline with the epic freaking duel between Pathis and Tarq. In screenshots, I’m the mismatched Night elf looking out of place >.>
Bricu on 01 May 2009 at 11:53 am #
Pill: It’s taken us a while to get everything rolling and the framework posted–but I think the wait is well worth it. Everyone is working so hard on their stories and keeping them within the frame work–it is a testimony to the creativity of these folks.
I am waiting for my fellow guildies books and short story collections with baited breath.
Yva/jezebelxiii on 03 May 2009 at 11:13 am #
The most epic storyline I’ve written/organized was Yva going crazy and stealing Shai & Chel’s kids. Post that, I’ve had 2 others that teeter on Epic Feel: Fedwyn & Azka’s Hearthglen escape. Each took a ton of writing and organization outside of game, but I think people had fun and that made it worth it.
falconesse on 04 May 2009 at 9:47 am #
I’m trying to think of a better word than “scripted,” but even “choreographed” sounds a bit too rigid. Yva said “organized” and I think I like that better.
This might be because there was someone on our server once upon a time who (from what I hear tell) really did script stuff, and if you deviated from it, you were in huge trouble.
Often, when I’m planning something out, I have a list of Things That Need to Happen*. The asterisk is there because of the very dynamic nature of RP. Something another character does or says might completely change a turn of events, and that’s okay. I go where the story goes, but try to keep in mind any important plot points that might need to be revisited later.
Feathermoon is wonderfully full of lore. Most of the stories I’m aware of are from the circles I RP in. I’d love to see more from the other RP guilds whose paths either don’t cross with mine or who have stopped posting stories on the Feathermoon forums. Our server’s wiki is very much out of date.
Arrens on 04 May 2009 at 11:22 am #
Cenarion Circle has a lot of epic storylines. From guilds battling it out over the course of years to one particularly crazed, maggot-covered Forsaken warrior with a penchant for shaving unsuspecting Tauren.
While I’ve personally been involved with a few of these stories that are central to the server, the one thing I’ve learned is that they take time, cooperation and patience to evolve. And they’re seldom set out to be epic, they just become such from community involvement. The more people that take part in the story, the bigger likelihood that they’ll remember it long after the story has reached its conclusion.
Itanya Blade on 04 May 2009 at 4:38 pm #
No worries, Bric. I agree that the wait will be better for all parties and not just because there is some nice writing coming out of that thread. It’s given me time to wrap up a large story arc for Dorri as well.
I’m still looking forward to it.
But now, to have an undead mage lighting things on fire.