World of Warcraft®

What's everyones thoughts on this? Is it acceptable to insert your character into one of the major royal lines or even create your own based from a castle or a zone? I'm curious because I've been trying to develop a character and I'd like to make them royal but I am hesitant due to it being possibly irritating and unable to maintain with other characters.

Stay away from major lore characters... never go as far as royalty.
Other nobility? People RP as Knights all the time, which are all plucked from noble lines. Even minor ones.
I would stick to something like that... nothing more than, at the very most, a Baronet. Which holds very little land and is only just above a Knight. (I believe... I may have mixed that up with something else.)

I suppose it'd depend on how close the relationship is to the royal lines. Heirs and successors would make things tricky. But there is no reason to suggest you can't be a noble of some sort.

Azeroth itself is portrayed as a much larger world in the fiction. There is bound to be hundreds of other noble families/lines out there. Making one up would be no problem. Infact a lot of the lines from fallen kingdoms such as Stromgarde and Alterac leave plenty of room.

If you're a Night Elf, goblin, gnome, orc, tauren, troll, or draenei, I hope you are laughed at and mocked.

They don't have royalty ot nobility.

Otherwise, as above. I've RPed characters of noble blood but they were noble in their own memory foremost and held absolutely no power, land, and little gold.

I prefer wealthy landowners. You're not a noble but pretty close.

Wrong on that aspect. Highborne were Night Elven nobility. It's entirely possible to RP as a still-living Highborne Night Elven noble.

Example: "Hello, good sir. I am the king of a country you never heard of, which is on no map and in no history book."

If you want to go the first route, you could go with being a very minor courtmember, the sort of "royalty" who would conceivably not be wealthy or noteworthy, to explain why no one in the entire kingdom has ever mentioned you in the context of the royal family. But at that point, you kind of lose the cachet of being royalty.

Rule of Thumb: Your character exists within the storyline of a pre-existing world. Try to work within that storyline, rather than changing it.

Except if you read the Warcraft novels and RPG rulebooks there are mentions of heaps of families, towns and blood lines that are not even hinted at ingame such Arthas' sister or the town of Hasic in Southern Lordaeron. There is no physical evidence of that town in game. No ruins, nothing.

Stormwind has a much larger population than presented ingame. For example Goldshire is estimated to have a population of 7,000 people. That is no-where near possible in the scaled world.

Claiming to be of a noble family from these towns doesn't violate the lore. There is plenty of room for that without changing anything.

Fair point, but where do you draw the line?

I suppose where it cannot be contradicted by current lore, future lore or another player using the same idea.

For example claiming to be of a noble family from Stromgarde. That's quite possible because being a large city there'd have been many of them. The current lore doesn't really discuss them, other than they are pretty much wiped out and barely survive. Future lore is never going to list each family one by one. And if another player says "I'm of a noble family from Stromgarde" they aren't going to ruin the experience for others or themselves.

In the case of the Lich King example, that's where it's gone way beyond the line. As soon as someone says "I'm the next Lich King" it ruins the gameplay for others who don't believe, or others who had the same goal in mind. This is similar to the whole "discussing raid boss adventures" with other players. We can't all have killed Ragnaros...

We can't all have killed Ragnaros...

Actually, he's an eternal... He can't really be killed by anything a player does right now.
He can have the tar beaten out of him several times. Then again, I'm splitting hairs.

If you're a Night Elf, goblin, gnome, orc, tauren, troll, or draenei, I hope you are laughed at and mocked.

They don't have royalty ot nobility.

Otherwise, as above. I've RPed characters of noble blood but they were noble in their own memory foremost and held absolutely no power, land, and little gold.

I prefer wealthy landowners. You're not a noble but pretty close.

Wrong on that aspect. Highborne were Night Elven nobility. It's entirely possible to RP as a still-living Highborne Night Elven noble.

And you'll still be mocked... at least by "proper" Kaldorei who told their nobility just what to do with themselves if they put on airs again.

If you're a Night Elf, goblin, gnome, orc, tauren, troll, or draenei, I hope you are laughed at and mocked.

They don't have royalty ot nobility.

Otherwise, as above. I've RPed characters of noble blood but they were noble in their own memory foremost and held absolutely no power, land, and little gold.

I prefer wealthy landowners. You're not a noble but pretty close.

Wrong on that aspect. Highborne were Night Elven nobility. It's entirely possible to RP as a still-living Highborne Night Elven noble.

And you'll still be mocked... at least by "proper" Kaldorei who told their nobility just what to do with themselves if they put on airs again.

Well thank you all for your input. It is genuinely interesting to see what peoples opinions on these matters are, defiantly another reason RP community is so cool. I did for quite awhile try to do what Davin was suggesting and insert myself into a family line that is not prominently featured in WoW. The main thing that stopped me from considering using such a character in game was that it would just be incompatible with other players really, it would be a largely static back story unless I found a group of subservient people to RP with and that'd be no fun.

We can't all have killed Ragnaros...

Actually, he's an eternal... He can't really be killed by anything a player does right now.
He can have the tar beaten out of him several times. Then again, I'm splitting hairs.

Fair enough and that's actually a good point. I suppose Arthas would be a better example. But even then I guess you'd mention that it was one particular character, not the player party.

If you can do it well, go for it.
Thats's where a lot of the aversion comes from for powerful, important characters I think.

People make noble, royal, and/or powerful characters not to make a good character and story but to basically do whatever the heck they want.

If you're a Night Elf, goblin, gnome, orc, tauren, troll, or draenei, I hope you are laughed at and mocked.

They don't have royalty ot nobility.

Otherwise, as above. I've RPed characters of noble blood but they were noble in their own memory foremost and held absolutely no power, land, and little gold.

I prefer wealthy landowners. You're not a noble but pretty close.

Wrong on that aspect. Highborne were Night Elven nobility. It's entirely possible to RP as a still-living Highborne Night Elven noble.

The Kaldorei eliminated nobility after the WotA to avoid another Queen Azshara and her Highbourne incident. Highbourne were elven Nobility. "Were" being the key word. They aren't Night Elves culturally and now that they are trying to rejoin, their titles or claims are utterly meaningless.

What's the point of even calling them Night Elven nobility, then?

They still consider themselves nobility, and would most likely have the attitude to match.

You live for who-knows-how-long as a noble, the ruling class. And then the lowbie little peons come along, tell you to scoot, and that you're not noble any more. I think you'd be inclined to say something along the lines of "I'm noble and there's nothing you can do about it", though probably a bit more eloquently.

They still believe themselves to be "noble" and better than most. That's part of their downfall. Pride and arrogance are character traits of highborne.

Actually Eugen here was nobility. What happened was that he was a member of one of the minor Noble families of Lordaeron. But he left the noble life and made a family with a farmer named Julia. His entire family except his two Brothers Richard (Sentinel Hill Captain), and Theodore (Left for Gilneas at 15 and joined his mother's side of the family there). He became a Scarlet, left, joined with a few Military groups until he found one, got possessed by a Lich back during the Scarlet days, died, became a DK, killed the Lich, here I am now :P. But overall, my story was generally accepted seeing as A: they were minor and overall not TOO powerful. B: He left the family and was stripped of power. C: His family died except for Theo who enters as a Worgen in Cataclysm.