The Stormwind Guard Interaction Guidelines

Guidelines for interacting with the Guard
The Stormwind Guard only wishes to enhance the roleplay atmosphere of Stormwind, not to harass anyone. If you wish to interact with us, we ask that you follow this set of guidelines. If you do not care to have anyone roleplaying any sort of authority, please just tell us in a whisper and we will not bother you.

This is a set of guidelines that should be upheld in game at all times to ensure the best experience possible. Constant breaking of these guidelines will result in the guards growing tired of you and will request to have you ignored. This only applies to 1% of the populace. Sadly that 1% seems to love coming to us. Therefore please use these guidelines.

Don’t be godly. If you are playing a character that is so powerful that he can come to a guard and blatantly tell the guard that he has or will commit a crime, and that there is nothing we can do to stop him, then we will have to stop our interaction with your character. If your character simply cannot be arrested or stopped even when surrounded by six guards, we will have to stop our interaction with you. We roleplay common guards, none of us have deity-like powers, none of us shoot lightning bolts from our butts. It is pointless, and not much fun, for us to interact with those that are so powerful that we become inconsequential.

Be aware of your surroundings. We only have about 20 players in The Stormwind Guard, and I have frozen recruitment. It is impossible for us to be everywhere all the time. However, take in consideration that there are plenty of NPC guards around. If you think your character can go to the palace and slap the king around with nothing happening to your character, you are godmoding and ignoring the 12 or so elite guards around the King. So please don’t go around committing crimes right in front of NPC guards. Also, the jail cells are to be considered as guarded, whether we are there or not, since we do have to get some sleep sometime.

No power emoting. If you are to hit someone in the face: Write /e tries to hit Fordwel in the face. Not /e hits Fordwel in the face. If the other person is smart enough he will reply with /e falls over and holds his hands to his bleeding nose. All guards are strongly encouraged to play along with any emotes like these. Do not regard yourself far to cool to be pickpocketed, defeated in arm wrestling or thrown rotten tomatoes at. Its a part of the patrol...

Think about your actions! The Guard is fed up with gnomes bombing the office. Similarly we see no reason why anyone would want to return to the crime scene after their evil deeds. Surely to see the result, but if there is no crowd to hide in, it is a rather stupid idea. Especially if you come to throw another bomb. And we understand that the criminal organizations have some wish to spy on us (which is pretty boring since we are only drinking coffee and doing drills), but at least TRY to sneak into the office. Getting yourself discovered because you sneak up right behind us is annoying over time. Keep to the shadows and corners like a real spy. Please use a fraction of wit if you are a rogue and decide to sneak around. If you stand directly in front of someone with nothing between the two of you: You will get noticed, however high lvl rogue you are. If you are hiding behind boxes, keeping behind the watchers as well as a certain distance: You will not get noticed, even if you are lvl 1.

If you are a spy, assassin or a criminal of some sort, why would you tell us this? Aren't such people supposed to be clever and cunning? Strike from the shadows, leave without a trace etc? Putting "Spy and Master Assassin" in your FlagRSP description just does not cut it.

There are consequences to your actions. If you have a criminal character with a long list of crimes you should expect that eventually your character may be arrested and may be punished in some manner. We try to be accommodating and do not execute characters or chop off their limbs without the player’s consent, but at the very least you should expect that the character may be caned or publicly humiliated in some form. If you don’t care to ever have your character arrested or punished, just whisper us and we will not bother your character again.

It’s a give and take situation. We don’t mind if you manage to resist arrest or escape our custody while in transit to a jail. But if you do so every single time, then it becomes a predictable waste of time and not much fun for us. If this becomes a constant, we will likely cease to interact with your character.

The jail is not made of cheesecloth. Please consider that we have been around in some form or another for more than four years. Your character is not the first one to be jailed. There have been dozens of guests to the jail and at least a hundred breakouts. Safety measures at the jail have increased after each breakout. By this time, the jail door is made of the hardest metal possible, warded by every enchantment possible, and the walls have likewise been reinforced and warded. To escape you will need to talk your way out, escape while the door is open (if you are not chained) or somehow obtain the key from a guard.

Sadly, due to exhaustion and tiredness, we have to warn you all that we will put a mass ignore on anyone that does not follow the above guidelines for an extended amount of time (after several pleas in whisper). This is not a flame, anti-noob thing or something we wish to do, but in some instances we have been forced to. We whisper any that we feel are acting outside the guidelines, and we politely explain why we can't spend more time with them. This has worked fine so far, except for a few very rude ooc whispers back. The ignore is removed after a week if the behavior improves, except for those who have proven to be far too insulting OOCly. Thank you for your understanding in this.

A few other things that we ourselves use, we would love it if you considered it to:
 * You dont know anyones name untill they introduce themselves. (Means: There are no floating names!)
 * You dont know their guild untill they tell it to you. (Unless they have their tabard all over their body.)
 * You will judge them from their clothes and attitude, not their level when you interact with them.
 * Use Capital letters and punctuations as often as possible. Punctuation and commas are a must. This makes things a lot clearer. If you’re having a problem with the capitals, practice. We have the patience, no worries.
 * You don’t know a players class unless he specifically tells you his class. It will be a very boring setting if the 8 classes are the only occupations out there. Nath is a hunter of class, but he is a rat catcher of occupation. Address him accordingly.

I know I’m harsh, but the Guard has worked hard lately to try to add something to Stormwind. The Guard wants to interact with everyone, but our hope is to see more interaction between the guilds out there. And not necessarily just robberies and assassinations.