Today, ladies and gentlemen of the internet, I would like to tell you a story. This happened after I had rolled a little dwarf hunter on the Feathermoon server in World of Warcraft. Why I rolled this dwarf is a story for another time, unfortunately. What is important to today’s story, however, is that Feathermoon is a roleplaying server.

Like many (if not all) of the roleplaying servers out there, Feathermoon has it’s share of people who have rolled on the server, but have no desire whatsoever to roleplay. I could see the majority of them in trade chat while I ran my little dwarf around Ironforge, loading things up onto the Auction House and training some new abilities. And, as is bound to happen, many of the people going on in trade chat had characters with names that violated the naming policy (as well as the roleplaying policies that Blizzard has in place specifically for roleplaying servers, but that’s neither here nor there). However, in the course of my running around and trying to ignore trade chat, someone spoke up with something that wasn’t the usual trade chat fare.

“Oh my God. There are people RPing in the Blue Recluse!”

This was, of course, inevitably followed by comments along the lines of “lol, people RP here?” and other such things, along with some questions as to where the Blue Recluse actually was. People were very polite and even gave those asking directions the exact location of the Blue Recluse in the Mage Quarter of Stormwind. But then the person who had made the initial observation about the roleplayers said something that promptly startled me and nearly made my jaw hit the floor:

“Please don’t troll them, guys. They’re nice.”

Now, you guys have to understand that I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with non-roleplayers who roll a character on an RP server. After all, I’ve convinced a friend who doesn’t roleplay to come join me on a roleplaying server before. However, when it comes to those who do not roleplay, I just have one main rule: respect me and I’ll respect you. Yes, this means do not troll the RPers, and not just because it will “mess up a little storyline”. You chose to roll a character on a roleplaying server. That means that many of us are there for the roleplaying. Believe me, we would all really appreciate it if you did not troll us.

So when this person who was very much a non-RPer begged those in trade chat not to troll the roleplayers, well, it warmed my little heart. I’m not just saying, either. Their name might not have been the sort of name one might expect to see on a roleplaying server, no, but that one individual understood the concept of respecting the environment in which you rolled your character. They did not troll. They simply observered, and then asked other people to be respectful of the roleplayers. Needless to say, this made my night, and it pleased me so much that I had to share it with everyone else.

I wish I could remember the name of this individual and I wish I had thought to send him a whisper thanking him for being respectful, but I am ashamed to admit that it didn’t occur to me until after I had logged off for the night. Instead, I say to all you respectful non-roleplayers out there? Thank you all so much. It really means a lot to me, especially after seeing how hard people can troll the roleplayers of Azeroth.