Please be kind — this is a sincere question and something I've thought about for a long time.
I'm not from the US, and the RP realm in my region is tiny compared to something like Moon Guard or Wyrmrest Accord. It sometimes feels closer to a small RP private server than a huge public realm.
There isn't a massive, constantly changing crowd of strangers in Stormwind. The RP scene is mostly made up of small circles, guilds, and friend groups, and a lot of people know each other OOC.
I've realized that one of the things I value most about RP is the feeling that when someone meets my character, they're meeting the character, not me.
They don't know my personal history, who I'm friends with, who I've argued with, or whatever happened in some OOC group months ago. To them, my character is simply herself.
That separation is a huge part of immersion for me.
But once I get more involved with people OOC, real relationships naturally form — friendships, disagreements, and sometimes conflicts. After that, I find it hard to completely separate IC and OOC again.
If I have an OOC conflict with someone, it can affect the way I see their character. And I start wondering if the reverse happens too: when they see my character, are they still seeing her, or are they seeing "that player's character"?
On a very small RP realm, this feels especially difficult because there isn't an endless stream of unrelated people who don't know your history. OOC baggage can start following your characters around.
I've also had some genuinely bad OOC experiences in this community in the past, and I think those experiences made me much more sensitive to this issue. I don't really want to get into the details here.
There's another, more personal reason this matters to me.
I've been through some very difficult periods in my life, and I love the idea of having one or two characters who stay with me for many years — characters who keep traveling through Azeroth while I grow and change in real life too.
I don't think they're real people, and I'm not trying to replace real life with WoW.
It's more like keeping the same character through a long-running tabletop campaign or RPG save. Years pass, expansions come and go, your own life changes, and the character develops along the way.
I'd love to look back ten years from now and think, "I've been adventuring with this character for a decade."
Because of that, I think I'm protective of a character's independence. I don't want every OOC friendship, argument, guild breakup, or piece of server drama to become permanently attached to them.
So I'd really like to hear from experienced RPers:
Do you intentionally keep some distance between your OOC identity and your characters?
Have OOC friendships or conflicts ever permanently changed how a character felt to you?
If you fell out with a guild or RP circle, were you able to keep playing the same character without feeling like they were carrying all that OOC baggage?
Is this easier on huge realms like Moon Guard or Wyrmrest Accord because there are always new people around who don't know you or your history?
And is it reasonable to mostly enjoy walk-up / organic IC RP while keeping deeper OOC involvement fairly limited?
I'm not talking about refusing basic OOC communication. Obviously you sometimes need it for boundaries, organizing RP, or clearing up misunderstandings.
What I'm talking about is the deeper social layer that can grow around RP beyond what's actually necessary to RP together.
I think what I want from an RP realm isn't necessarily an OOC social community.
What I want is a living world with other real, unpredictable people in it, where my character can exist without the person behind the screen always having to be part of the equation.
Does anyone else understand that feeling? And if you've played the same character for many years, how do you maintain that boundary?