Blizzard has given us a great basis to start our characters back story, whether it’s a Night Elf fighting at Hyjal to keep from it burning down. To a Blood Elf (High Elf then), who fought to protect the sunwell from succumbing to the scourge. Or perhaps it’s a Draenei who escaped from Outlands leaving behind all they once loved and cherished. Regardless of what or who it is it’s up to us to do the rest.

Recently Goblins have been making headline news with their lack of Roleplaying uniqueness. Due to the fact that every Goblin starts the same way: a high-up at the company based in Kezan turned slave. The same could be said for the Worgen experience. You have no choice when it comes to how you were first infected with the Worgen plague. While these things may have already been decided for you it is up to you to how your Goblin worked its way through the company to reach the top. What was your Worgen (Human then) doing when the feral Worgen first attacked Gilneas City? Did they have any family that died to the Worgen? Did you Draenei leave behind any family or loved ones back on Tempest Keep to be slaughtered? Did your Gnome have to do something that regretted to escape Gnomeregan? It’s all up to you to come up with the back story for your character.

Why Back Story Matters?

Back story can determine many things about your character:
• Values
• Ambitions
• Motivations / Drives
• Goals
• And ultimately personality

These are the “Why” of your character.

Values: Truths that your character holds above all else. The list goes on and on. Such things as: equality for all. The Horde doesn’t belong in Azeroth. Money is the most important thing. The list is endless. Your character might not have a reason for these values at all. That’s what makes them so driving, they have to fulfil or stay true to these values, just because. These can be chosen based upon what race or class your character is. A paladin would hold the light in all esteem and such would fight for equality for all. A rogue on the other hand can be self-centered and the only value they have is no regrets, no love, and all fun.

You want to aim for inconsistencies! Contradictions are your friend. A shaman who has a value of: The elements of Azeroth need to be respected. With another value is Azeroth needs to be protected above all else. You can see where the conflict will occur. Somewhere along the line of the shaman protecting Azeroth they will run into an elemental problem which involves subduing elementals. This leads to an interesting story twist. Which will they choose? Will they save the elementals or end them? What kind of outcome will this lead to for your character? How will this affect your characters relationship with others?

Now lets say we have a shaman and his values go something like:

1. Respect the Elements

2. Protect Azeroth from elemental devastation

Ambition: The one abstract thing a character wants in life. This can be any number of things. To find love. To have children. To save the world. To destroy the ring. To kill the dark lord, to name just a few. They have to be believable! While a few ambitions can be stretched in Azeroth (actually more than a few) a few of them can’t. A Draenei striving to master the dark shadowy powers of the arcane won’t work because then they would be considered Eredar and they would be part of the burning legion not part of the Draenei who want to protect and save their new home that is Azeroth. If you have a self-loathing Undead striving to find away to bring themselves to life, while this is hard and probably impossible it would make for an interesting story line. Again picking upon Class and Race would be an easy choice, but if you made a sober Dwarf, a ‘slow’ Gnome, or a generous Goblin these too would be interesting ambitions to have.

And their ambition runs along the line of:

Saving Azeroth from elemental devastation during Cataclysm

Then you can see where conflict would occur. It would come down to which one was more important to your character and every time they were saving Azeroth from the elemental devastation they would feel the anguish from their decision.

Motivations / Drives: Why your character does what they do. There may not necessarily be a long thought out reason for why they do what they do. Hell it might even be because the hero board told them to go there and do this. Was it a vision that told the shaman if they didn’t go off, then the end of the world would be imminent? Did the Cenarion Circle tell the druid to go and heal the plague lands? Was it the higher-ups that told the warrior to go and kill as many bad guys as was humanly possible? Thankfully in Azeroth it doesn’t take much for a character to do what the quest text wants.

Goal: The one sure fire thing a character thinks will enable them to achieve their ambition. These might be easy to achieve but no one likes a simple quest. If the shaman’s goal is to defeat Deathwing. Will that not save the citizens of Azeroth? But will that include slaying the elementals Deathwing employs?

Personality: With all these previous things figured out do you not have a pretty secure blueprint made for your characters personality?

Blizzard gives us the where and the when. These steps give you the Who and then Why. Now all that’s left is the what. As in what are you still doing here reading this and get to the role-playing! Unfortunately that part isn’t something you can read in a guide. It’s up to you to take the first step and click on that (PVP)RP realm and make a new character.

(I did have a bunch of pictures to go along with this post but for some reason only the first on showed up. I posted a thread about it in the general forums but oh well.)

-Anslym