Hello there! My name is Thyanel, and I’ve been playing World of Warcraft since 2007. In fact, the name I blog under is the name of my first serious character (a blood elf paladin). My hobbies in-game consist of roleplaying, a bit of dungeoneering, and mount collecting, although I have yet to make the 100 mount achievement. It’s a work in progress.

2. List some of your favorite toons.

My first real main back in the days of Burning Crusade was a paladin by the name of Thyanel. She was created back before I understood the concept of lore and applying it to my characters, so a lot of what went into the first iteration of Thyanel was definitely not lore-accurate. (We do not speak of that time. Ssh.) With Mists of Pandaria, however, she lives again. This time, she’s infinitely more lore-accurate and a priest instead of a paladin because I realized that was a better fit (for her and for me).

She’s on a Horse!

Once Wrath of the Lich King came out, my main became Adaret. Ada was a grumpy Forsaken shadow priest, and a lot of her personal story arc was wrapped up in Arthas and his destruction. Sadly, once Cataclysm came out, I realized Ada’s story was over, and I wasn’t really sure what to do with her. Her character has since been abandoned, but my love for my grumpy shadow priestess lives on.

Jinaki is also another one of mine, a troll who has gone through several profession changes before Cataclysm came out and she became a druid. It turned out that was pretty much where she was always destined to be; I just didn’t realize it at the time. She’s a little on the young side, and a bit loud, but I adore her. She tends to act first and think later, though, which gets her into trouble a bit. She also seems to lack a verbal filter.

Trolls can lift five times their own weight. That’s a fact!

I also play Eimhir Stonehaven (a little dwarf priest) on Feathermoon on occasion (who I have yet to completely figure out), and Eyota (a tauren druid) on Wyrmrest Accord.

3. Describe your philosophy of RP.

I’m not sure if there’s any real “philosophy” to my RP. I just try to have fun and play what interests me while trying to stay within the framework that Blizzard’s given us to play with. I mean, if I’m not going to have fun with my characters, then there’s really no point to playing them in the first place.

4. What was your favorite RP event? Why was it so good? Did you organize it?

I’ve been to a few large-ish RP events. On Thorium Brotherhood, one of the well-known troll roleplayers would host these troll-centric events that Jinaki would go to sometimes. It gave me a large appreciation for the troll culture as a result. They usually turned into parties by the end of them, though. You could argue that that’s how most troll events would end, especially on our server, but they really were a lot of fun. Sometimes, we’d even wind up dancing to show our appreciation for whatever loa we might be honoring at that particular event.

Capoeria or Step Up Vol’Jin Revolution?

I’ve also been to some organized tournaments, organized raids on the towns belonging to the opposing faction, and parties during the holidays of Azeroth. In spite of all that, though, nothing compares to tavern RP for me. It might seem like a strange choice, but in my experience, that’s when most characters tend to let their guards down and you learn more about them then than you ever would if they needed to be a soldier or a medic or what have you. They could be there with friends and swapping stories that you just happen to overhear, or they could need a drink to recover from the horrors of war. That’s the sort of RP I love. I love seeing little insights into what makes a character tick.

5. Have you organized RP before? How did it go? What did you learn from it?

Have I organized an RP event? Nope! I’m personally not cut out for event organization. I’m perfectly fine with poking someone in a channel and going “Hey, who wants to RP? I’m out here, but I can go anywhere”, but ask me to plan and organize an entire event? Yeah, not so much.

6. Talk about an A-ha moment for a Toon—a moment where all the RP clicked and you knew this was the story they were supposed to tell?

Adaret was my big one with this. Without meaning to, I fell in love with the character and her general look, but she had one huge flaw: she didn’t have a story. I had a general personality for her, but that was it. Some people I had spoken to were talking about trying to start up some Forsaken RP on my server, and I wanted to participate since these were awesome people. So, I started looking into the background of the race.

I remember reading about the grain and the curse, and there was a little snippet somewhere about how some of the priests had been involved in trying to find a cure for the curse of undeath, but they had failed, and just as I read that, things sort of fell into place. I realized that her hatred for Arthas came from having family in Stratholme. She was trying to help her family, and she ultimately got screwed over herself. That was why she was this grumpy little shadow priest. That was why she had embraced the teachings of the Cult of the Forgotten Shadow. She blamed the Light just as much as she blamed Arthas for what happened to her family and to her. That’s when I knew Arthas’ fall was a huge part of her story.

7. If you could ask any RPer one question, what would you ask? What is your answer to your question?

I think if I was going to ask an RPer a question, it would probably be “what inspires you as a roleplayer?” I know, it’s the question that everyone gets asks and the one that can have a thousand different answers, but I always think it’s fun to see where people get their inspiration from.

As for me, my inspiration tends to come from everywhere. I’ve pulled personality traits from people I know, or a piece of lore will catch my interest and I’ll build a character around that. The Wrathgate battle is a big one for me, for example. A lot of my characters seem to use that as a catalyst for starting over again or enacting a huge change in their class specialization. Thyanel as a priest, for example, started experimenting with the shadow after her husband died at the Wrathgate when he couldn’t be ressurrected. Adaret wasn’t directly involved in the Wrathgate battle, but she was one of the refugees outside of Orgrimmar once Varimathras and Putress took over.

Long story short, I tend to pull things from wherever I can. Sometimes it works out. Other times, it doesn’t. Either way, I’ve learned something, and hopefully had fun trying.

Accents are a fantastic way of communicating a character’s history and personality without telegraphing this information. They are by no means the only way of doing this; however, they are a popular method of RP on the server. Hell, there are even mods that will change your speech patterns in certain channels.

A couple of pointers on accents:

1) Stay consistent.
Remember Kevin Costner in Robin Hood? He could not maintain his English accent scene to scene. Try to stay consistent with your character’s accent when you RP. You may make changes to the accent–for instance, Bricu’s “You” turned into “Yeh”–and this is acceptable as long as it fits the characters overall voice.

2) Research
Anna researched Aely’s accent before RPing with her. I know of one character/Guild Leader who watches Trainspotting on a semi-regular basis to keep his accent fresh (I suspect he also reads some Irvine Welsh too).

One should also research what is the common accent within the context of ones regular RPers. Of course accents can vary between regions (Bricu, Aely and Tarq, while similar, have major differences in their speaking patters), there should be some consistency between all of them.

3) Be prepared to say it OOCly
Be ready to translate what you wrote in an OOC Channels. Reading all of your apostrophes and creatively spelled words does help develop your character’s voice; however, just as in real life, sometimes an accent makes communication difficult. Just accept the fact that some folks will not be able to read what you’re writing as easily as others.

Those are my Three Rules. I’m always looking for more ideas for improving accents–so share your ideas!