Drama and lots of it ~

[Rosekitten]

So I am not new to MMO's to say the least, nor is this really my first time on a RP server in a game. But from my experience with the community of this game as a whole and from my experiences with the RP'ers as far as the Balmung server goes it has been almost nothing but drama, one thing after another. To admit I have never bothered being in or running a RP based guild. So this is my first experience with that, I am not new to guild leading though. So I know drama happens. 

 

But man... this mess I got a hold of was just ... wow. Is it normal to find people who are irrational and go from being good friends with you to just hating you with a sudden flip of a coin? I've been told by others I did nothing wrong but seeing as my tally of people I seem to be hated by is up to three I am starting to question that. My husband even informed me if we switch games at some point that he ill not be playing on a RP server due to the drama that we have dealt with here already. So his first time experience on a RP server is very poor to say the least.

 

So I just wanted to ask the community here... is it common to find people who are so judgmental and one sided that if you tell them something and they disagree with you that they just turn to hate you? My husband seems to think it is a RP'er thing, I keep trying to tell him I don't think it is that. >__<; (I hope this was the right forum)

 

---------

updated:

 

Here is another question then...

 

If someone bashed, harassed or went as far as personal attacks on you should you worry about helping them get a out for their character as far as a FC or some other story is concerned?

 

Pretty much just want to see what people will say to that, personally I said no I refused to RP with someone who wanted to personally attack me ooc. A RP is suppose to be something you enjoy, if I had to force myself to RP with someone who wanted to bash me and burn the bridges before they left I doubt (no I'm pretty sure) I would not have fun doing that RP.

 

(Granted this issue is resolved more or less as well, I just wanted to see if I could get feedback on it, like personal thoughts on if OOC bashing had a effect on if I should or should not help someone IC'ly. There were a number of other ways the character could have taken a out of the story he was in without the route that was taken...)

[Taeh Niumoenwyn]

Roleplayers can sadly get grief occasionally from non-roleplayers, as discussed this thread. However if I understand you correctly you're saying the hate is from other roleplayers, could you clarify?

 

Also, without asking you to go into too much specific or name people, I think we'd need to understand in more detail exactly what occurred. In my experience the vast majority of roleplayers are friendly and welcoming, especially to new roleplayers.

[Rosekitten]

Oh no i have had 0 issues with non-rp'ers actually o-o; no this was hate from other RP'ers. Ones that were once friends of mine until.. well I'm still trying to figure out what exactly happened. Though odds are I'll never have that answer. 

 

I had read on this site how friendly and welcoming everyone seemed to be so the last thing I thought I'd have to deal with was hate from fellow rp'ers. In and OOC the people here seemed fantastic. Though I guess granted the ones I seemed to run into issues with were not members of this site but ones that I met through other people and from a FC that I never even passed the application process of due to one of the people I am having a issue with now heh...

 

As far as what happened.. A small group of us started a FC to play together ya know? Friends wanted to play together and expand a bit and open our rp idea to others. Though somewhere that went sour to say the least so one left and never spoke to me after that. More or less bashing me to the others who they still spoke with. This in turn lead to two others causing issues in the FC. 

 

Issues that sprang up from a story told by the first one that ditched us. But to ask the three of them I am the worse person on the planet to be around ^^; to be quite honest I have never had people just hate me and not be able to give me a reason as to what made them hate me... actually I'm very easy to get along with >.<;

[SessionZero]

Some people are just vindictive and we happened to get a big group of them all at once. I've been RPing for a long while now, across several MMO's, and I can say with some certainty that while what happened with us is not unheard of, it is pretty uncommon, at least in my experience. Best thing to do is just put it behind you and move on. And tell Moxie that he shouldn't be too concerned about playing other MMO's on RP servers. Normally they're fairly inviting and friendly.

[Dravus]

I'm probably going to get a lot of criticism for this post, but I feel it needs to be said as it's pretty important:

 

Drama is very common within role-playing communities. I've yet to play an MMO that didn't have ridiculous amounts of it lurking beneath the surface ready to strike unsuspecting - and even seasoned - role-players the moment something goes awry, though in many cases the chaos can manifest with very little in the way of valid reasoning.

 

Now for the controversial part! Simply put, more people need to realise that a lot of role-players are way too invested in role-play and are effectively using it as a form of escapism. This isn't always a bad thing, but I've seen individuals get up in arms at the smallest perceived slight and view it as the most horrendous personal attack they've ever encountered in their lives. Others seek to manipulate those around them to get something that they want, usually playing the 'nice guy/nice girl' act or even flirting with another role-player. Then there's the horror stories...though I'm not going to go into too much detail regarding my own personal encounters with drama in other MMO's.

 

At the end of the day, though...drama is an inevitable part of role-playing communities. Even on this site I see individuals doing their best to coat their words in sugar and put across a positive image only to turn out to be incredibly nasty when encountered in the game itself to anyone who happens to disagree with something that they say or do. That's the sort of thing that made me very wary back in WoW, though I'm better prepared for it this time around.

 

Thankfully there's still plenty of shining gems that make it all worth it, though I tend to keep most role-players at a distance these days and focus on picking out a handful that prove to be reliable and capable of indulging in role-play without bringing unwanted drama and other nasty baggage to the table.

[ArmachiA]

Drama happened everywhere, the most likely times it happens are RP communities and Endgame communities. I know RPers hate to admit that, but it is the truth.

 

That being said, people are going to leave your FC for whatever reason. We have had, to date, two people leave in the Night Blades - one said they were being ignored and the other... I actually don't know. The NB has been around for 10 years and has seen A LOT of drama, hell the original NB was formed because of a split (I ran the Crimson Pirates and Ellion ran set up the Night Blades and took half the CP with him), we split in WoW once over stating that the main healer of our guild needed to practice more (This was not an RP incident, we were not on an RP server at the time) - she didn't take it well and took all her friends with her. In Aion, the Night Blades didn't form till about 3 months in because we were in another guild and that didn't go well.

 

Drama is natural in any community, and in a guild - where feelings can run high because you know people - this is doubly so. You just have to learn, as a guild leader, that if they don't want to talk it out (It happens sometimes) that you need to just brush your shoulders off and ignore it. People will ask you about it and you can tell your side, but always be respectful and calm about it. You don't want to prove your "haters" right after all .

 

I get into trouble a lot because of Loki's personality, she is really haughty and speaks her mind and she is (truth be told) kind of a bitch about it. I have gotten in a lot of trouble over that, even though it wasn't me, and Ellion had to tell me to reign her in till people get used to her.

 

Oh and this is not an RP thing, here's some drama that happened to endgame guild:

 

1. One guild we were friends with disbanded because after a week of doing "Wrath of the lich king" some of the raiders thought others weren't leveling fast enough and there was a HUGE fight about it.

 

2. Another guild we were friends with split because their officer (Who was supposed to be their leader but took a break and had recently came back) asked to be made leader again. It wasn't the fact she had asked, it was the fact she had asked during an instance that made them leave. Yeah... just an instance.

 

3. FFXI's endgame was notorious for drama. LS's against LS's, American vs Japanese, claims of botting, MKing other players, all kinds of stuff. Our little drama was nothing compared to what they pulled out their hat

[Rosekitten]

Well To admit to back what you said J'hared I do RP to sort of get away from life. Not because I have a bad one but because it's my form of creative expression when I go through art dry spots (often). But I can see what you mean about striking over the smallest thing.. I'm fairly certain thats what happened here.

 

I know I have met a few gems and thus far most that I have met on here have been great to just chat with. *nods* But yeah... I think that whole playing 'nice' is sorta what happened here and when I refused to cave to their will they lashed out in other ways. Just my thoughts on it I could be wrong but that is certainly what it feels like to me. 

 

Session - Yeah i know.. ii keep telling him that. I use to be on a WoW RP server and it was fun ^^ I didn't rp but it was fun to read the creative minds at work. Here's hopeful that we have all these issues behind us eh?  I just have this uneasy feeling we've sadly not yet herd the end of it.

 

edit:

Armi - it just really bothered me that out of the blue 3 people hated not really the FC but what I 'turned' it into even though the goals of the FC never changed in the slightest... =/ It rather hurt the moral as a whole to lose like three founding members.

[Adolar]

Really sorry to hear about your troubles with your FC. In my personal experience so far, I've not encountered much drama at all in Gilgamesh, at least in my FC. In fact, it's probably the best guild I've been a part of in any MMO ever. I agree with the poster above that you should probably just forget and move on. It's not worth getting wound up over some drama that you apparently can't even figure out the cause of.

[Kylin]

Unfortunately, I have to agree with Armachia and J'hared. RP communities are known for two things: Maturity and drama. Sounds a bit odd seeing those two terms together. But both are true in some way or another.

 

As a RP linkshell/company leader, you have to automatically understand people will hate you. I guarantee every single RP leader on this site is hated by at least one person, even if they don't know it. Heck, that extends to any leader really. I've made numerous enemies in the RP community over the years spanning all the way back to FFXI. At first, it bothered me like it seems to be bothering you. But eventually, you just shrug your shoulders and move on. Because sadly, you can't MAKE someone like you or agree with you.

 

The biggest thing you have to remember is to not "run away" every time you see drama. The best course of action is to simply face it head on, deal with it, and move on. Too many times, I see people (even in our RP community) see the slightest hint of drama and run for the hills. All I can think is "Really? You can't handle this? How do you make friends in this community if you're always running from the community? Especially when drama happens -everywhere-" So just soldier on and don't worry so much about what others think. You're entitled to run your group however you see fit. You're also entitled to your own opinions and Rp style. If people want to cut you off entirely for that, that's their loss and they'll have to live with the long term consequences moreso than you.

[Rosekitten]

I never ran from it, just a bit confused by where it actually came from honestly. In fact as of last night I think I took care of any loose ends that might have been left otherwise... I wasn't about to leave someone in the FC that could potentially start drama later once we do get more members. Especially over something that was long handled.

 

I know drama happens everywhere... normally there is some logical reason behind it though. But so far I can only gather that I didn't agree with them so they all three turned and decided to cut off all ties as friends. A pretty poor reason if you ask me but hey as I said I think this is all taken care of.. so long as they keep their hate to themselves and don't go harassing the FC members I'm not sure I really care what they think. Not after trying to reason with all three.

[Magellan]

Rosekit; I actually had a very similar thing happen recently in an old FC, in which people I had trusted suddenly turned on me, a massive weekend of drama ensued, and I was suddenly on the outside without a single word of explanation as to why.

 

Like you, I was trying to uphold the original vision of the FC and was being fought tooth and nail over it >_>

 

Obviously I was upset, but what really made it hard to simply move on was that my characters rp and storylines had been completely destroyed, making her hard to play. Additionally, a few close friends of mine ended up in the same boat with their characters. And these were all beloved characters that a lot of time had been put into.

 

Thankfully, I started a new char and found a new group, and am back to just enjoying the game and enjoying rp again =)

 

Unfortunately these things happen. The RP community is filled with passionate people who will often quibble over a lot of things. But there are a lot of decent folk, and a lot of fun to be had, this is just a case of having to take the bad with the good.

[Rosekitten]

Ah yes.. the RP part.. yeah it's messed our story/ group up a bit as our only medic just up and high tailed on us as well as a experienced fighter. But I think... we can recover still. We've been trying to keep things so we can roll with the punches till things are better settled =/

 

I still feel a bit on the outside and I'm one of the two leading the FC xP

[Magellan]

Ah yes.. the RP part.. yeah it's messed our story/ group up a bit as our only medic just up and high tailed on us as well as a experienced fighter. But I think... we can recover still. We've been trying to keep things so we can roll with the punches till things are better settled =/

 

I still feel a bit on the outside and I'm one of the two leading the FC xP

 

Its terible right? I ended up leaving my group (which I was officer of) even though all the problematic people had left,, simply cause I couldn't throw myself into the story or my character anymore.

 

Thankfully, I've fallen completely in love with my new char . My old one will be backburnered for now.

 

Send me a tell in game sometime! We can compare notes, or just rp together!

[Vito]

There's no doubt that RP communities have tons of drama, from IC to OOC.

 

It's safe to say that the drama, also contributes to the herd mentality so many RPers have. If someone doesn't like your real personality, they simply won't want to roleplay with you. That causes cliques and separation. 

 

Though what's even more ridiculous, is the fact that if someone doesn't like your character, they won't like you as a person. That's assuming that everyone is roleplaying themselves (like ArmachiA mentioned, I also tend to play really judgmental characters that are hard to get along with). Maybe because it gets too personal with some people. They put themselves in it way too much. It just goes overboard. IC and OOC merge into some primal abomination.

 

Roleplaying is a form of expression and creativity. Nothing more, or nothing less. People get personally offended over something a character has said to their character..... IC. They see it as an attack to their very being. The community will always have drama because we, as RPers are very dramatic. This is also the reason why I don't RP any romance. I don't care what anyone tells me. It just gets crazy. I've had a lot of bad experiences with it, people take it too personally. I'M NOT MY CHARACTERS. They are a SEPARATE and VIRTUAL entity. 

 

Having to even type that out is depressing. Basically, some people are easily influenced and very resentful. Screw that noise and find people you enjoy RPing with and don't give up on doing the whole public RP stuff to find new friends. Do what makes you happy. Hopefully we can run into each other IC.

[Rosekitten]

Magellan - I shall if i catch you on in game :3 either sounds fantastic to me.

 

But yes.. its .. I hope it just evens out. Not sure what i'll do with as much work as i put into this characters back story. I don't really feel like making a new character just to make up for it being destroyed if it happens. >.<; I also refuse to leave just yet. I want to work things out so we'll see. The FC is still new so bumps are bound to happen.

 

edit:

 

Vito - i dont think it even had to do with my character o-O they just suddenly out of the blue hated me as a person. We were all good friends till.. um yeah something happened? I mean there are characters i dislike but i woulnt hate the person.. I thought that was common sense >.>; Heck i might go as far if i dislike the person i might still enjoy the character xP

[Magellan]

@ Vito: I agree! OOC/IC lines can be really problematic. My character Claire last night came across a tribal male Miqo she haaaaaateeed. But OOCly I absolutely loved it . So much 'grrr' between the two of them! Rivals can be so much fun!

 

But in my case, it was like Rose's: a fundamental difference of opinion that I feel people were unable to keep an open mind about. Just because you don't always agree on everything, doesn't men you suddenly treat them like they don't exist.

 

@Rose: hang in there! I bet your char and your FC will do great things!

[Rosekitten]

 Magellan - I hope ^^; i mean i have met some great people through it.. so i hope all bumps in the road are smoothed out for a while at the least.

[FreelanceWizard]

The IC/OOC thing is part of the reason why, if one of my characters is being especially unpleasant, I always let the person know OOC that it's nothing against them -- it's just my character.

 

I'll be frank: there's always going to be drama. Sometimes, as an FC leader, you can defuse it, sometimes it blows up in your face, and sometimes you have to take disciplinary steps (especially if said drama turns into godmoding, metagaming, or OOC harassment). It sucks, and it'll make enemies of people -- even more so than being an outspoken person on these forums (my usual way of making enemies, you see ). It's just the way of things, unfortunately. The only advice I can give is to be the better person and just let it go. If they're going to be two-faced jerks, you probably don't want to interact with them anyway. There's always more RPers about, after all.

[Asyria]

I'll echo what others have said and say that yes drama is 100% normal.

Not just on Balmung but on Gilgamesh as well, and on every server in every game, on every corner of the internet and hey even in real life.

Wars are waged over drama.

I'm not even kidding.

 

The real question is... what can you do about it?

[Vito]

edit: 

 

Vito - i dont think it even had to do with my character o-O they just suddenly out of the blue hated me as a person. We were all good friends till.. um yeah something happened? I mean there are characters i dislike but i woulnt  hate the person.. I thought that was common sense >.>; Heck i might go as far if i dislike the person i might still enjoy the character xP

Yeah, I guess I got a little overboard with my own rant, but there's no denying it. People will find any excuse not to socialize or confront you, either it be over IC or OOC stuff, or perhaps leadership choices you've made. I can't explain to you what caused them to leave your FC because I really have no clue why and I'm not going to assume why. I've just made my own observations about people who just.. leave, or run away. They will never explain themselves to you. They won't even give you the option to repair it. They just talk about you in a negative light, not wanting to fix the situation. They simply want to complain and bash. 

 

BUT! Don't ever give up on your character because of how immature people can be. You put a lot of effort and emotions into your little dude, so I don't want to see any of that negative shite about trashing him/her. They are an extension of you that requires a lot of responsibility and nurturing. There's tons of new friends to be made with your cool character.

[YesGood]

I think I've found this issue arises in games when I try to lead a group -and- try to stay on top of issues with my guild members. I have a tendency to care about their real life situations and the more you know someone OOCly, the more issues can arise when you realize you're not of the same mindset. The closest thing I've experienced to drama lately was two of my members having an issue with their combat (which always arises and is one of the primary reasons people hate IC text-based fights) and it took until our second actual event for this to even happen once. Pretty proud of that. The situation was settled, so far as I knew, but was brought -back- up by someone who wasn't involved. A good point was raised which I need to bear in mind, by this person, but nevertheless, the result was losing one of the members I most cherished and enjoyed.

 

I tend to do my best to be tactful and to let each person see the other person's side. That's what arbitrating is. It's very difficult to do when one or both people involved think that you are biased towards the other person. I talk to my members OOCly, I try to make sure none of them feel neglected, and I want them, most importantly, to communicate -with each other-. All of these things tend to help circumvent issues.

 

So far as I know, I'm not hated. I don't know if I'm respected by any means but my LS people make me feel at least a little appreciated. The problem in RP communities is that people, even very good people, tend to separate into cliques. When your friend has a problem with someone else and they're having a negative emotional reaction, whether it's sadness at not being understood or anger or anything, people tend to want to step in and say something in that person's defense.

 

So many people throw around that they don't want to sugar coat things or they don't want to be pretentious and the issue therein is that they're confusing 'sugar coated' and 'pretentious' for empathy and tact. When you cut right to the chase, you leave out a lot of the details that would make what you're saying sound vastly different than you intend.

 

The issue, again with cliques is that if one person in the clique thinks you are saying something that you don't intend whatsoever, the rest of the clique uses it to fuel their proverbial flames against you. You can't know what they're saying about you or how they're taking your words, intentionally or unintentionally, and presenting them to others. Communication breaks down and you'll end up looking like the bad guy. The best thing to do is to nip those situations in the bud, dragging everyone involved into a group and cutting through the BS to get to the heart of the problem. The more you wait and watch to see if something bad will get worse, the harder it gets and the worse you look. I've seen it happen where someone has a bad opinion of someone else and they seek out others they think also have a problem with that person, feeding them junk that is unrelated to their issue out of spite to make things worse for their target. This is... I can't put it any other way... a rather bitchy high school mentality that too many people have.

 

So, basically.

 

1. Cliques are the bane of RP existence because when a problem arises, it's 'you're with me or you're against me'.

 

2. Communication is key. Being empathetic and understanding doesn't make you weak. Being straight forward and refusing to compromise doesn't make you strong. Flexibility is far better trait than rigidity-- but there's a vast difference between being flexible and wishy-washy.

 

3. The better you know someone, the harder it is for you to be unbiased. A lot of people who you don't know you might judge much like you would in real life-- on what you see from them and what you can relate it to in your past. Learning from past experiences are great and all but giving someone the benefit of the doubt as their leader is a necessity, not a frivolous option.

 

4. Respecting people and trying to see their side of a situation instead of using your own to judge them will get you a lot farther.

 

5. As a leader, you do NOT need other people to validate your points to your members. Don't have conversations where everyone can see them, take the people involved or the people who will inevitably be involved and take them into a group or something to discuss whatever it is that needs discussing. Just because 90% of your friends agree with you doesn't mean they're being unbiased or objective.

 

A lot of people, not just RPers, are way too willing to cut people loose because they tell themselves over and over 'well I'm paying for this game and I want to enjoy it so I don't need to deal with this'. That's fine, I mean it makes sense. But when you do it about everyone and you've got no desire to try to understand others, you'll eventually run out of people to talk to and if you're RPing alone, that's not really RPing.

 

"Haters gonna hate" should be the mentality only after you've done everything in your power to prevent or remove the problems.

[Rosekitten]

Pretty much after dealing with and trying to talk to each of the three people it has come down to haters going to hate. There is nothing more I can do in my power to settle things back to where the group of us are friends as they seemed to have already made their minds up. 

 

As a leader I do listen to everyone's side of things and I keep a close tab on the skype chat my group is in. As well as the FC and LS chats. I ask people to come to me or a officer or the other leader if something, anything bothers them. This issue I had could have been avoided ages ago and maybe solved in another way altogether if they had followed that one simple request...

 

Pretty much now from the members I still have I get told that I can't please everyone no matter how hard I try. It is true and I know it is but it still stung a bit that this was just so suddenly and seemed to be something that could have been taken care of easily if someone had spoken up sooner instead of letting it bottle up and explode. 

 

As far as cutting yourself off from people, that was one of the members who left issue. They seemed upset at the thought that our FC might get new members... Riddle me that on why someone would be upset to make new friends but they flat out told me that they would not get along with anyone new due to past experiences. O-o;

[erosskye]

Have had no issues on Gilgamesh with this yet.

[Mateo]

Coming from a non-RP background there are a lot of dramatics that go on in the RP community, way more then other servers. People are so deeply invested in their characters that if they get sideswiped they go all "Christian Bale" on people. It's interesting.

[Asyria]

Coming from a non-RP background there are a lot of dramatics that go on in the RP community, way more then other servers. People are so deeply invested in their characters that if they get sideswiped they go all "Christian Bale" on people. It's interesting.

 

Yeah, we know.

It's all because for RPers a character is more than just an avatar in the game world, it's a creation we use to channel our creativity and share an interactive storytelling experience!

It's like going Christian Bale if Christian Bale also wrote his own character on top of playing him. o_O