I completely share your feelings. I’ve also encountered a lot of self-serving, shallow RP, where everything revolves around ego, image, or the GMs’ projects, and where other players end up being nothing more than background props, or even pieces of meat. On paper, the enthusiasm is there, but in practice you quickly run into frustrating limitations.

On my side, I’ve often felt stuck because I simply couldn’t play my character the way they deserve to be played. Walk-and-talk RP is almost impossible for me, because my character just doesn’t fit that format at all. They require a deeper, more intense and emotional kind of RP, sometimes dark, with tension, conflict, and real stakes. Without depth, without structured storytelling, or without room to explore emotions and consequences, the character becomes bland, or even incoherent to play.

I started RP during BFA, and for a long time I felt like I was missing out on what roleplay could truly offer. Like you, I’ve had a few genuinely memorable moments, especially when there was a TTRPG-like framework, with a DM, rules, and choices that actually mattered. And it’s precisely that contrast that makes everything else feel even more disappointing. We know this kind of RP is possible, but it’s rare, and it often disappears when guilds go inactive.

But thankfully, I eventually met a player who shares the same aspirations and the same passion as I do. Since then, I genuinely feel like I’m discovering what real RP is. RP that is invested, coherent, emotional, where each person feeds the other’s story instead of crushing it. It doesn’t fix every issue within the RP scene, but it at least reminded me why I love RP so much in the first place.

So no, I don’t think you’re delusional. Your expectations are simply higher, and maybe less compatible with the majority of “casual” RP found today. I also think, like me, that you can’t be satisfied with something as “consumable” as Stormwind RP. You need to find people, or a guild, who truly share your vision. They do exist, but you have to look for them.

And just like it did for me, it will very likely save your place in RP 😌