“You think you do, but you don’t” Part II: Top Responses for RP-PvP, in Players’ Own Words

[Baalthuzar-834727 (Baalthuzar)]

Each of these is a unique account, sharing their story and perspective defending the RP-PvP ruleset, in response to Blizzard’s decision, announced on The WoW Forever Podcast’s PvP episode, not to offer an RP-PvP ruleset at launch.

The ask: give us the same chance Grobbulus got, and let the players prove it. Give us the bottle, we’ll catch the lightning.

TLDR: Summarizing the main points and counterarguments made here:

“What is RP-PvP?”
A ruleset where roleplay naming and conduct rules apply and open-world PvP is always on, so the war between the factions becomes part of the story.

"Crusader Strike proves RP-PvP fails.”
It was a temporary seasonal server that streamers flooded as a meeting point, and Blizzard didn’t moderate it. Grobbulus and Deviate Delight, the only permanent fresh launches, thrived.

“RP-PvP always turns into a regular PvP realm.”
That’s a moderation problem, not a ruleset problem. Enforce RP names and conduct like on any RP realm. Launch it on day one and roleplayers fill it first.

“RP-PvP is too niche for its own ruleset.”
Grobbulus was so crowded that Blizzard opened Deviate Delight for the overflow. Emerald Dream thrived from Vanilla until War Mode. Realms emptied when free transfers and War Mode arrived, not because of the ruleset. Grobbulus kept more of its raiders than the biggest PvP realms. Popularity is who shows up on day one. Loyalty is who’s still there years later, and a game called Forever needs the second kind.

“Grobbulus was lightning in a bottle.”
There hasn’t been a permanent fresh launch since 2019 to catch it again. Forever is the first.

“It’ll split the RP population.”
RP-PvE and RP-PvP have lived on separate realms for 20 years. Leaving RP-PvP out is what splits a community, scattering it across the RP and PvP rulesets.

“Just flag on the RP realm.”
One flagged player is just prey: the unflagged choose when to fight, group up first, and unflag the moment they start losing. The constant threat is the whole point, and flagging can’t recreate it.

“Just play on a PvP realm.”
That means a megaserver full of troll names and streamer hubs. You can’t stay immersed there.

“Just add it later.”
By then everyone has put down roots, and a late “fresh server” fills with people who want a fresh start, not roleplay.

“It’s just a vocal minority.”
Most players never post, and the RP-PvP thread has more than twice the replies of any other thread on Forever’s forum. Players have already refunded over this, and the returners Forever won back are watching what Blizzard does next.

But first, a taste of what RP-PvP is like, from Vengy’s years of playing it: world PvP at its heart, and a living world around it.

@Vengy-emerald-dream

1. Thematic themes - Unique guilds generally Rp driven theme or concept with conditions like ONLY Dwarfs or Elfs Guild. Same goes for class theme guilds like Druid, priest or paladin only guilds. Notable names > Silver Covenant, Scarlet Crusade, Clan Battlehammer (all dwarf guild) The Pack ( All Worgen Guild) .
   (People love this and it’s always been something Unique I enjoy on Rp-pvp.)

2. Military Rp - I have witnessed a handful of times over the years of this game seeing stuff like Organized positioning of guild members. Think of a chess board and you see the leader of X guild and a 2-3 line group of dwarfs lined up in ironforge listening to guild meetings while the leader speaks out in normal chat talking about how or where they will be heading to contest and blockade the horde from entering.

3. Guild alliances - Rp-pvp servers you will at times see members of opposite guilds working together in fighting off the opposite faction and even hosting meetings together. I use to watch the guilds “Clan Battlehammer” and “The Pack” hosting joint operations in organized wpvp in the public eye. It’s super awesome to witness and very inspiring.

4. Friendly pass by rp. From hanging out in a inn or seeing someone rp walking in a city with random interactions…In pvp terms you witness a horde jumping a member of your faction and you go to help out and you would be surprised of the little rp remarks you might receive that usually is not seen on pvp only servers. Receive a /bow and a silly “May Elune light guide You” It might sound small but it’s still flavor.

5. Player ran events from markets, trading and even weddings. It’s a reality that happens and can be organized by certain passionate community members and does exist.

1. A PvP player who despises RP still fights for RP realms, because the tech already exists, choice costs no one anything, and streamers don’t speak for the players.

@Krad-stormscale

I’m a player who absolutely despises RP and PvE. PvP is the only thing I enjoy. So, with that in mind, let me make one thing clear: there is absolutely no good reason not to give the RP community its own RP phases, just as PvE and PvP players have their respective phases.

Forever is already using layered hardware and software architecture to connect these environments and place players in the appropriate phases. We can see this in action with PvE and PvP players sharing the same auction house. The technology and infrastructure are already there to support this kind of interaction.

So why not offer both PvP-RP and PvE-RP rule sets? Let players choose the experience they want without taking anything away from the rest of us. Just because RP isn’t my thing doesn’t mean I can’t recognize that other players enjoy it. Let them have their fun! Giving players more choices is a good thing, not a threat to anyone else’s experience.

And while we’re at it, Blizzard/Microsoft needs to stop treating content creators and streamers as though they represent the entire player base. They don’t. Their opinions are not necessarily representative of the majority of players, and their priorities don’t always align with ours. They have their own audiences, interests, and incentives.

Listen to the community as a whole, not just the loudest voices with the biggest platforms. The average player deserves to have their preferences heard, too.

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2. A 20-year veteran who has never played RP-PvP defends it anyway, because community means recognizing the same 50 faces, layering erases them, and Blizzard found room for a streamer dueling arena but not for RP-PvP.

@Cvi-wild-growth

I do not normally post more than a few sentences and I doubt this will be read by anybody willing or able to make a decision but, I think there’s a fundamental disconnect between what you’re describing as a healthy community and what actually makes a community meaningful in Classic WoW, and your attention to the whims of streamers and inability to understand the deeper parts of what made vanilla and classic such meaningful games in people’s lives, will ultimately lead to the failure of forever.

You talk about needing a critical mass of players to encourage social interactions and emergent behavior. But those things aren’t simply products of population size. They’re products of familiarity, consistency, and shared experiences. Your sharding or layering contribute to these problems on a fundamental level of misunderstanding of a simple concept. The world that people talk about, when they talk fondly about the game, includes community.

One of the defining features of the original WoW experience was repeatedly encountering the same people. You recognized the warrior who helped you finish a quest three levels ago. You remembered the rogue who killed you in Stranglethorn Vale. You knew which guilds controlled certain areas, which players could be trusted, and which ones had reputations that preceded them, you knew the people you were buying from at the ah or saw on the Ironforge bridge.

Those relationships developed organically because you inhabited a persistent world with a recognizable population.

Now compare that with the feedback about Forever’s layering system. Players describe being moved between layers when joining or leaving groups, disappearing from one another at zone boundaries, and being unable to reliably participate in ongoing world PvP encounters.

I understand that layering is being adjusted and improved. But technical improvements to population distribution aren’t necessarily improvements to community formation, and it seems like you have failed to actually understand the heart of that.

There’s a meaningful difference between a system designed to ensure you encounter enough people and one that ensures you repeatedly encounter the same people.

And that distinction is particularly important for RP-PvP. The entire appeal of that environment is the persistent relationships, rivalries, reputations, and player-created stories that develop over time.

You cite Grobbulus as an exception and point to other RP-PvP servers as evidence that the community isn’t sustainable. But have you examined whether those servers failed because players rejected RP-PvP, or because the conditions necessary to sustain those communities disappeared?

Crusader Strike is a great example of the “unintended consequences” of a decision y’all made without actually understanding the decisions you’re making. When you force a bunch of people (streamers and their communities) to pre-choose where to meet, without an alternative they choose the path of least resistance…. And somehow that is the RP-PVP rulesets fault. Then to fix that mistake you hurriedly make a new server to split a community on a seasonal realm. This is serious flaw, in your explanation.

I did not play on grobbulus. I have never played on an rp-pvp server before really. But, I have played this game off and on for 20+ years. I played the game that made most of the people here fall in love with it… before it became the mess that retail is. The lesson you should take from retail… the failure that retail had that ended the beauty of vanilla was removing community. Dungeon finder, raid finder, sharding, layers. All of it flies in the face of the one value you say you want to uphold and I have no faith at this point that you will be able to actually understand what that means. The world is the main character… only if there is community in it.

Finally, there’s also an apparent inconsistency in how different communities’ requests are being treated.

When prominent streamers want features that support their preferred way of playing, including a dedicated arena for their dueling tournaments, those requests seem to receive serious consideration and accommodation.

Yet when the RP-PvP community asks for an environment that supports its preferred way of playing, suddenly the conversation becomes about population statistics, fragmentation, and whether the community is large enough to justify it.

Why is accommodating a streamer-driven event worth the development effort, while accommodating an entire community’s preferred style of play is treated as an unreasonable risk?

I’m not suggesting streamers shouldn’t have their events or that their communities don’t matter. I’m asking why the same willingness to accommodate different playstyles doesn’t appear to extend to RP-PvP players.They don’t drive views? Did you make the game so that a bunch of visitors can sign up for a month or two and then not play, and you hope that they forget they are paying the subscription?.

If the philosophy behind Forever is to preserve and celebrate what made Classic special, shouldn’t that include the communities that made their own stories rather than simply the ones with the largest audiences?

I don’t dispute that population matters. An empty server cannot sustain a community. But neither can an enormous population that never develops a shared identity.

The magic of Classic wasn’t walking into Stormwind and seeing 500 strangers.

It was walking into Stormwind and recognizing 50 people.

And frankly, it’s difficult to accept that there’s room to accommodate a streamer’s dueling tournament but not room to seriously explore preserving one of the most distinctive communities Classic ever produced. It doesn’t give me hope you all have this figured out. I hope you do. This game, like many people here, has been a part of my life for more than half of my life… listening to people that love it, instead of love the money they make from it my actually benefit your design.

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3. A longtime roleplayer calls a later RP-PvP realm the final nail, because RPers build characters for years, won’t uproot, and neither the RP nor the PvP realm gives them a real home.

@Priestchromi-crusader-strike

Blizzard,

1. Thank you for acknowledging the topic, that is better than nothing.
2. Introducing an RPPVP ruleset down the road is awful. So right now people are forced to plant their roots somewhere because they don’t have the home they want and deserve, just to uproot and move over? Would it be a fresh start server or start everyone at level 1 with however many months of post-release content and new raids added?
3. From Aggrend’s statement I strongly disagree with using Anniversary and SoD as a sample for Forever. They are incompatible.

• Many RPers invest a tremendous amount of time into their characters bringing them to life. RP progression in many cases takes years of development. SoD and Anniversary had the perception of not being permanent. SoD was opened as a seasonal experience. Anniversary was opened as another cycle of rapid expansions with more and more people quitting with each new content update and the exact same treadmill as Classic.
• So yes, of course a lot of RPers didn’t want to start, level, write and develop a character that has a short expiration date.
• Forever is advertised literally as forever, eternal, with continuously new content added and active development. A fresh start that isn’t the same treadmill and doesn’t have an expiration date will attract far more RPers than any prior iteration of the game.

4. There is clearly a large community that wants RPPVP, and right now they are truly homeless when they should be moving into their forever home. No offered ruleset will realistically give them the experience so many people want.

• RPPVPers trying to RP on a PvP realm will have to deal with every toxic part of WoW. Ridiculous immersion breaking names and behavior. Anyone trying to RP on a PvP megaserver will be harassed, trolled and griefed endlessly by “{name removed}” and “{name removed}”. They’ll receive this behavior from same-faction players in safe hubs, and if they leave those hubs they’ll receive that behavior from the opposing faction. Behavior like this even still happens from non-RP communities in retail coming to RP servers and griefing. The behavior will be exasperated by it being a megaserver with everyone on Azeroth where the hubs are packed full of non-RPers and streaming communities.
• RPPVPers on the RP ruleset will have to deal with the impossibility of having a dangerous and fair world. The immersion breaking sight of countless enemy faction characters running through what SHOULD realistically be a contested area. And they can definitely elect to remain flagged at all times, but 90% of any world fights they have will be at a severe disadvantage. What most often than not will happen is people will only flag when they have the numbers, and since they’re not flagged they will always have the ability to group up, position, coordinate and always have the opener on people that are already flagged. Ultimately the experience will lack what they desire, and the cheap imitation they try to force into it will be needlessly frustrating and devoid of any real immersion. Nothing like a fierce Warrior of the Horde having to ignore all the enemy players in Horde territory, and to just… stand there and let several Alliance group up and buff up to 3v1 him.

It took 22 years to get a Classic+/fresh launch of World of Warcraft with new experiences in the game. This is likely the ONLY opportunity these communities will have to make a permanent home in the game that appeals to them without all the baggage of retail. Saying no to RPPVP on LAUNCH is hammering in the final nail in the coffin of this entire community of your game.

Forever is completely unprecedented for World of Warcraft, if ever there was a time to give us an honest chance of making RPPVP our home, the time is now. Not 6 months from now. And if it fails? If somehow your perceptions of SoD and Anniversary apply to Forever, then we made the beds we begged for ourselves.

Please just give us a chance. If it doesn’t work now, it never will, and we can put the topic to rest. Don’t pull the plug on a passionate community that has existed since 2005. If it’s no for now, it’s no Forever.

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4. An RP-PvE roleplayer stands up for RP-PvP, because the two philosophies of roleplay clash and forcing them together breeds reports and hostility.

@Owaeran-moon-guard

I have risen from slumber to continue my dayshift of trying to help the developers and the community understand RP-PVE and RP-PVP are two fundamentally distinct different communities.

There are two distinctly different philosophies on what roleplay is between the two communities and while some of us can play nice with the philosophies, others will report people for griefing and trolling when it’s just…RP-PVP and then you’ll be forced to take actions on people accounts. Or if you don’t, you’ll force the other group to start becoming more increasingly hostile and you’re going to just have created a terrible environment all because you’re being lazy and not doing the simple thing and giving RP-PVPers their space.

Listen to them. They can tell you how well they’ve been received in the other communities over the years that you’re trying to force them to go into outside of the fact that you’re forcing them to split their communities in half to go to one or the other.

I would go so far as to say that whomever crafted this decision should just resign because it feels like it’s going completely against the spirit of what Forever is supposed to be.

Signed - An RP-PVEr who wants his RP-PVP Counterparts to have their Forever Home too.

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5. A Grobbulus player who spent seven years on private servers lays out the social contract between players and Blizzard: break their trust and they leave. Refusing RP-PvP is breaking it again.

@Khalthul-grobbulus

TLDR: It was never about the game, it was always about the community. The game is just a vessel, which can build community if it’s designed to. There was a chance for me to reunite with the RP-PvP community after several years, but that was recently taken away from me.

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The fight between players and devs is perhaps as old and as heated as the war between Horde and Alliance. It’s perfectly reasonable that a concerted understanding should be struck between the two for an optimal PvB (Player vs Blizzard) experience. When this balance is broken, players leave. Who is to blame is not the issue at hand, but should be a point where real communication should occur. When it’s effective, it’s a win-win. When it’s not, everyone loses.

So I want what you want Blizzard: for WoW Forever to be as successful as possible, but it is important for us to understand each other in order to keep not only the integrity of the game (and the Warcraft IP) as we know and love alive, but also the integrity of the communities that have formed inside of it.

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I never played the original World of Warcraft from 2004, but I have always loved Warcraft from afar through private servers that return to that time since 2012 well before Nostalrius came alive to inspire what would eventually be Classic WoW.

So my official start was in 2019, on the RP-PvP realm of Grobbulus. When TBC Classic rolled around, Blizzard added purchasable Level 58 boosts and the world of Azeroth was mostly abandoned for Outland. Many still stayed after that, but I didn’t.

For many others, it was the WoW Token and the move to Cata which many consider the breaking point between Classic WoW and Retail since 2011, just repeated in Classic.

When players can’t experience the game they know and love, they don’t have much of a choice - private servers fill in the gap that Blizzard left behind.

So, inevitably, I became fluent in the private server scene. The seven years of my absence exists outside of what Blizzard could provide. Turtle WoW, Project Epoch, Project Ascension. All of these projects gave the world of Azeroth an unfelt love that Blizzard could not give to their own game at that time, and this is the primary reason why private servers became so popular.

(Now, should these private servers have made money off of Blizzard’s IP? Probably not, but that’s a whole other issue.)

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The heart of it is still the aforementioned. If we do not have a home, we go somewhere else. The love for Warcraft will always be there, but Blizzard has not always been there for us. And I hate to see it happen again with refusing to give RP-PvP players a Forever home, since that is where I live when it comes to this game.

I can forgive Blizzard for 15 years of transgressions for abandoning the integrity and spirit of their original game, I can forgive them for making the same mistakes for what they did to WoW Classic, I can forgive them for ripping apart these beloved private servers with their C&D letters and lawsuits, and I can forgive the lore whiplash I received with the announcement of the Skyborne instead of Belves and High Elves, but ONLY IF they give the game I love, and the community I love, the attention and respect we all deserve.

I don’t care if they took the best of Turtle, Epoch, or Ascension (which by my eyes they did to some degree) to build WoW Forever, as long as they restore the game that we have all come to know and love.

I am only here because I believe WoW Forever is going in the right direction, by committing to stay on Azeroth, expanding it from there, and focusing on the journey rather than the destination through the philosophy of horizontal progression.

This change is the reason I’m coming back, but not having RP-PvP as a ruleset is weighing heavy on me on whether I have given Blizzard too much grace far too soon, since they are choosing to break our trust yet again. Many of us cannot and will not support that. The amount of refunds that I have heard about should be a sign that this choice matters.

I think for whatever it’s worth, even if symbolic in scale, long-term loyalty may be worth more than the savings that come with a community’s exodus and fragmentation. The most successful games are the ones where love is simply baked into it - and it comes from both devs and players. So refusing a whole community’s dedication and love for the game is just bad business. The magic is there. Capture it.

I want WoW Forever to be my Forever home, and we are not looking to experience another “you think you do, but you don’t.” At the very least, retest your assumptions, communicate with us, and let’s bring this whole thing to the finish line together, Forever.

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6. A longtime RP-PvP player refunded Forever, because cutting the ruleset splits a community that never overlapped with RP-PvE in 20 years.

@Rabbit-blackrock

This change does not prevent fracturing a community, it actively fractures a community that’s been a cornerstone of the game since its launch. RPPVE and RPPVP communities do not overlap as we have been on different servers for over 20 years, instead RPPVP gets torn apart and distributed amongst RP and PVP rulesets. I can only hope that they come to their senses and have it as an option on launch because adding it down the line is a surefire way to ensure that the ruleset does not thrive. I’ve been super excited about this for a long time and RPPVP has been a HUGE aspect of that, the removal of the entire ruleset is honestly enough to refund, which I have done.

Crusader strike is not representative of the rppvp community as a whole and to use that as an example of a server going sideways while in the same breath talking about how incredible Grobbulus was just feels like they are approaching the entire idea in bad faith. Why only consider the possibility where things go wrong rather than the possibility of things being amazing? I would much rather they have RPPVP on launch and if after a few months it isnt what they want - to shut down the server than have them start with NO rppvp option and add it later.

Bad change. Please reconsider.

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7. A player who cancelled and refunded says Blizzard used a seasonal server it failed to moderate to erase everything Grobbulus proved.

@Nerzhell-wyrmrest-accord

It is asinine they can acknowledge the success of Grobbulus, but entirely ignore it because of what happened on TEMPORARY SEASONAL and highly experimental servers which Blizzard also failed miserably to moderate as reason to not give RP-PvP. So many servers tanked during SoD’s lifespan, but they focus on the RP-PvP servers to create a narrative. They even acknowledged the streamers flocking to Crusader Strike, but ignore their lack of moderation of the streamers and their fans being the reason Crusader Strike needed to be changed from an RP-PvP server to a PvP server.

I was so excited for Forever, but hearing their reasoning for no RP-PvP on the latest podcast, and the ways they’ve been talking about numerous other things in the game has honestly killed so much of my excitement. I personally cancelled my sub and refunded my Forever Collection purchase. I just can’t forsee myself enjoying the game long-term without an RP-PvP ruleset. They are forcing me and many others to make a choice we shouldn’t have to make, and splitting a long standing dedicated community.

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8. A Grobbulus fan calls “lightning in a bottle” disingenuous, because no permanent fresh launch has existed since 2019 to bottle it again, and an RP community can only take root and flourish in a home that isn’t temporary.

@Zurpzurp-arcanite-reaper

Using a seasonal server to influence the decisions of a “forever” game is incredibly shortsighted and honestly makes me worry about their philosophies as a whole.

RPPvP has a place and should be an option. The experience on Grobbulus was incredible, but for them to say things to the effect that it was lightning in a bottle and was never replicated is disingenuous.

There hasn’t been a release of a “new” game since Classic 2019 that could provide the framework that would allow for another Grobb experience to flourish. Rereleases of old anniversary content or seasonal servers that are never meant to stick around for the long run aren’t the same thing as what Forever promises.

RP servers have a spirit that isn’t apparent in the other server types, and that spirit isn’t easily replicable in anniversary / seasonal content. That spirit needs a home to flourish, so when that home is temporary, it doesn’t set in. RPPvP servers have that spirit but more, with the danger and tension of a world at war always in front of you with world pvp. And the beauty of it too is that not everyone actively participates in WPvP even on PvP servers, you can still find yourself walking right past opposing faction players while neither of you engage, but if you do want to participate, there is no barrier to do so. Either way, the tensions of a world at war are never far off while you are out in the wild.

Not to mention, without an RPPvP option, if you ever want to do a PvP open world experience, you better lock into a single faction forever or pony up for a second sub if you want to see the open world from either faction’s perspective. Also, if there’s any imbalance, you’ll get forced to one side or the other.

Forever.

This whole server philosophy is the biggest sore spot for me. We have 3 servers to choose from, 4 if we want to do any Hardcore. And one of those servers, PvP, locks you into a single faction forever, effectively barring you from half of the game if you decide to play there.

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9. A PvP player who wanted to try RP refuses to roll on a PvE realm, and guarantees that an RP-PvP realm would embody what Forever is meant to be: community and war between the factions, for years to come.

@Slyx-grobbulus

Your answer on RP-PVP doesn’t make sense…

First of all, it’s not a big topic right now, It’s literally the BIGGEST topic right now.

Grobbulus was successful because of the community that rolled on it from day one. It was a fresh new game and there was no other place for RP-PVPers as retail moved to warmode. We are seeing that same excitement from RP-PVPers for Wow: F as they showed for classic and Grobbulus.

Crusader Strike failed from an RP sense because many of the RP-PVPers still had Grobbulus to play on when SOD released and didn’t make the move or played extremely casually. There wasn’t the same excitement for SOD that we saw for classic and Grobbulus, thus the community was split.

Streamers rolling on Crusader Strike was not a good thing. But if they were the reason Crusader Strike trended away from RP, then that means moderation of the ruleset was done poorly by blizzard. Regardless, we aren’t seeing any excitement from any major streamers about wanting/rolling on an RP-PVP ruleset.

I was planning to dip my toes alittle further into the RP side of things but I refuse to roll on a PVE (RP) server. I guess I’ll just roll normal PVP and not bother with RP stuff.

Last thought: If blizzard changes it’s mind on RP-PVP, I guarantee that ruleset will embody what WoW Forever is meant to be about; Community and War between the factions… and for many years to come.

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10. A player since 2004 accuses Aggrend of cherry-picking Crusader Strike and ignoring Emerald Dream, and is fed up with Blizzard blaming the ruleset for communities it neglected.

@Rathia-whitemane

I agree that Aggrend cherry picked Crusader Strike to support a position he wanted to take (No RP-PVP server).

I cannot view his rational given on that Podcast as arguing in good faith.

Aggrend ignores Emerald Dream (which was an OG RP-PVP server). Doesn’t even mention it actually despite it being a large and successful server from Vanilla WoW (original WoW on release) up through at least Cataclysm. It was a large and vibrant community for years.

Emerald Dream also existed at the same time Moonguard did. It was simply not the case that all the RP only happened on one server. Dividing the RP community which is albeit a niche community across servers was not as harmful to RP servers as failing to moderate and actively manage servers.

Blizzard has been very poor at game moderation for many years now. It’s so evident in many aspects of how they don’t moderate and manage their server communities.

With the 2019 launch, they did not initially limit or regulation faction balance on servers. Failing to open a sufficient number of servers on launch in 2019, then not throtteling how many people could play Horde or Alliance on a PVP server resulted in lopsided faction balance and bad PVP experience.

You guys were told in advance of launch in 2019 you needed to regulate faction pop /character creation to prevent server imbalance and did not do it initially. You belated did it (later) after the problem the community earned you about ballooned and resulted in servers with horrific pop splits like 70/30 and 80/20 etc.

Aggrend pretends Grobb was some special/mystical case ‘due to the kind of people that were on Grobb’. That is basically not true and someone of his faculties knows better or should.

Aggrend omits that the faction population on Grobb was very close to 50/50 on launch and remained that way for much of the servers life cycle. It was not the case on other servers, and that is often a recipe for a poor PVP experience.l (when one side is grossly out-numbered).

He conveniently ommitted that during the podcast segment.

Grobbulus was successful in spite of Blizzard, not because of Blizzard. It was announced as RP-PVP server quite close.to launch and there was immediately a lot of hype. It got it’s own ‘Welcome to Grobb’ video that made the rounds on YouTube and discords. That was not common / not true of many servers that launched.

Grobb was an awesome server full of great people, but on launch it also had an infamous/racist guild on it which largely went unaddressed by Blizzard until it’s conduct became so publicly egregious that a U.S. congressman (from CA no less) started criticizing the Blizzard publicly.

Grobb was so popular that Deviate Delight had to be created to handle the excess population that were having a hard time making a character or Grobb or didnt want to ultimately play in a Mega Server. While Deviate Delight never approached Grobb mega server status, it was likewise a successful RP-PVP community.

I will tell you as someone who played on both servers…farming Black Lotus (or even just less or desired herbs) while on Grobb vs Deviate Delight was an entirely different experience in terms of the intensity of competition and overall player culture.

Grobb and Deviate delight (like Crusader Strike ironically) illustrated that Blizzard has not been (and apparently remains) a poor judge of how many servers it will need to house it’s community.

Nightslayer (PVP) was frankly a woefully overcrowded Mega Server with a toxic atmosphere that was created by ramming so many people into such a small space with so few resources.

Blizzard didn’t do that to preserve community; it was done as a cost saving measure for the company. It’s a wild thing to argue/say considering how profitable WoW as a franchise is.

Is nobody on the WoW Development Team familiar with the Judge Dredd Universe and the concept of the Mega Cities of the future, including Judge Dredd’s own Mega City 1?

What exactly did the Dev Team think was going to happen?

Do not tell us you can’t extrapolate out what’s likely to happen when you overcrowd a PVP server.

Does this crew believe their broken sharding system that randomly phases you (forcibly) onto a different layer/shard is good gameplay or creates a coherent experience for people interacting with one another in the open world?

Week 1 of Beta I invite a guy to party with me while he was killing a Silver Elite mob. He looked like he need.dome help, so I invited him to try and be helpful. A lot of people in today’s time might have declined the group invite thinking I was trying to take their green item /loot…but.not this guy.

He accepted my group invite in about 2-3 second to be friendly and inclusive. He was rewarded for being a social player / inclusive person by having the Rare Elite he was fighting forcibly phased away from him…MID COMBAT…onto a other layer.
The guy tells me…

“I hate this phasing stuff”, then leaves group.

That’s YOUR FAULT Dev Team. That’s YOUR design.

You guys should try talking to Kevin Jordan sometime. I’m sure he had his limitations as a developer, but he clearly understood the value of creating environments within the servers where you could choose to have different types of social experiences instead of having them forcibly engineered as afflictions upon the player base.

For the Dev Team to act like server communities are a thing you have fostered and paid attention to for years is pretty rich.

I have played this game since 2004 and it has been many…many years since I felt like the Dev Team cared about server communities…

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11. A self-described data nerd on RP-PvP since day one asks how a streamer-overrun seasonal server became Blizzard’s gold standard.

@Ghazal-wild-growth

I played on RP-PvP servers from the moment they released until the state of retail led me to stop playing a few years ago. I’m a data nerd and of course respect the importance of making decisions like this based on good data. But I’m shaking my head over the fact that they actually claim that an experimental, seasonal/temporary server that was overrun by streamers is somehow their gold standard for deciding not to include an RP-PvP ruleset.

Yes, Grobbulus in many ways was lightning in a bottle. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen again. Hell, Blizzard, YOU CAPTURED LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE WHEN YOU RELEASED WOW. Where’s your belief in what this game can be?

Between this and the fact that somehow they feel fine about providing a private arena for the upcoming PvP tournament, I’m feeling like they are more out of touch with regular players and more entranced with streamer culture than they want to admit. I won’t pretend I am going to cancel Forever over this - I am a returning player and Forever is bringing me back. But I have to admit I am disappointed and even a bit disgusted. This whole thing has echos of the Blizzard that pushed me away from the game in the first place.

I sincerely hope they reconsider and give RP-PvP a real chance.

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12. A player who started as a teen on Emerald Dream insists RP-PvP IS the World of Warcraft, and vows not to stop until Blizzard changes its mind.

@Cryptheart-wyrmrest-accord

My first character in World of Warcraft was a worgen rogue named Harwil, all the way back on Emerald Dream during Cataclysm. I was a teenager at the time, and I had no time, patience, or interest in many of the more “game-ified” metrics that I do admittedly enjoy today.

I ran around, questing erratically, and spent my time split pretty evenly 3 ways between roleplaying/engaging in community events, questing/exploring, and getting caught up I world PvP.

I played this character for a full year without ever breaking level 50, because SO MUCH of what made the game fun—what made this game the game that it is, to me—were those experiences. I wouldn’t enter a raid the first time for four more years, because this game was HUGE, and it was just not needed for me to have fun when I could march on enemy territories with my guild, spend hours skirmishing on the roads of the Blasted Lands, or prove to my guild that I was worthy of a promotion by infiltrating the Undercity.

This was in Cataclysm—a far cry from the peak or the “glory days” of RP-PvP environments, but not even close to the level of fragmented worlds and servers that we’d see by the time of, say, Warlords of Draenor.

RP-PvP IS the World of Warcraft. That’s why I’m so shocked and taken aback that they said they don’t plan to support it, and I won’t shut up until they change their minds.

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13. A player whose Classic PvP-realm run ended over boost spam and bots says RP-PvP was their way to dodge the memelords, and alt-heavy realms still need a home for mains.

@Bernz-fairbanks

Reacting to the awful news of Blizzard omitting the inclusion of an RP-PvP ruleset on launch, I gotta say it really iced out my enthusiasm and hype for the Forever release.

I played during the Classic release of 2019 on a regular PvP server but didn’t get hooked past the initial honeymoon phase of getting to 60 and clearing MC because I couldn’t stand the min-max culture, the non stop boost slop in trade chat, the rampant bot activity, the messed up economy due to said bots and RMT.

And here comes WoW Forever, the perfect opportunity to get a truly new and fresh start as well as the opportunity to really take it slow, to enjoy the game like when it just came out in 2004 and make memories that you will look back at fondly. However, what has been demonstrated to me in the beta is that there’s an absolutely immature and loud part of the playerbase that ruin it for me.

I was really hoping for a RP-PvP ruleset so that I could avoid the memelords and trolls while looking forward to the more immersive experience that comes from the RP community and their creativity as well as taking part in it.

There’s this argument that often comes around saying that a RP-PvP ruleset is doomed because that’s just where the PvP ruleset playerbase are gonna make their opposite faction alts and to that I say: so what, they are still mostly going to be alts! We need a ruleset for our mains!! The people who main on RP-PvP because they wanna be immersed by experiencing this new Classic+ through their character and with other like-minded people. Those who wanna express their creativity and love of the game through in-character interactions and even those who don’t RP but join the ruleset because it expects a certain mindset.

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14. An Emerald Dream and Grobbulus player warns Blizzard not to screw this up, because leaving RP-PvP out at launch shatters a community welcomed since 2005.

@Vengy-emerald-dream

You either add Rp-pvp at launch or disappoint and tarnish trust and respect from your Rp-pvp community as you shatter and split us apart.

We have been welcomed since 2005 so why change it now?

This is the make or break as it involves our unique community of players…I want to see familiar names, guild names and like minded individuals that care about this.

If you can’t respect such an easy concept and request how can I respect to pay a sub to just be tossed aside to a lane I didn’t want to pick.

Sure I can just play a Pvp or Rp server but the point is you’re fracturing our community by not even giving us a choice if you go about the “No Rp-pvp decision”.

It’s bad enough there are multiple game versions to pick from but what gave me hope for Wow forever was making Azeroth the main character and any Rp-pvp player can probably agree it feels right. Less competitive play and more focus on the world. We flourish in that atmosphere and especially the wpvp players enganged in the replay ability for years. In Grobbulus we did and even in Emerald Dream in till BFA and warmode was forced on us.

Don’t screw this up Blizzard, I’m over talking about it.

Ask Normal or pvp players if they would just like to choose RP or Hardcore instead of their preferred type. I’m sure that would go real well..

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15. A lore fan drawn in by Grobbulus stories agonizes over which permanent ruleset to pick, after being ready to return to PvP with RP.

@Aerythlea-area-52

I’m one of the few who never fully got into Classic back in 2019 and didn’t even play on Grobbulus, but I’ve been playing on and off since 2007. I was really hoping RP-PvP would be an option, based on all the Grobbulus and Emerald Dream stories I’ve read over the years.

The last time I took PvP seriously was back in Cata, but this time I’m really considering diving into it again, with RP in the mix. I’m not a super heavy roleplayer, but I do love the lore of WoW, and seeing others actively participate is a big motivator. I try to use lore-accurate names and do my best to fit in, at the very least.

Now, I really have no idea whether rolling RP or PvP is going to be the right answer. Classic gives off the vibe that PvP is the answer, and flagging just doesn’t seem to fit that style. I’m definitely confused at this point, and we’re just a few weeks away from making a decision that sounds like it has some permanence behind it, where changing would be quite a setback.

If there’s a miracle in the works before release, I hope putting my word in helps make it happen!

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16. An RP-PvP guild member scoffs at streamer raids as a novelty, while RP-PvP guilds are the ones who keep world PvP alive for zero reward.

@Valacar-crusader-strike

The irony of the podcast is watching the devs and streamers hype up “organic, player made World PvP events” right after killing the only ruleset where that culture actually survives past month three.

Streamers like Savix or Shobek marching on the Crossroads or Lakeshire is a fun novelty for 2 or 3 videos during launch hype. After that, normal PvP servers always devolve into raid logging, honor per hour spreadsheets, and degenerate flight path griefing.

RP PvP is not just tavern RP with PvP turned on. It is a social contract and a sweat filter. It separates players who treat the opposing faction like a math problem from players who care about faction pride, guild rivalries, and defending territory for zero in game reward.

On normal RP servers, people just unflag the second they start losing. On mega PvP servers, min max efficiency kills the RPG. RP PvP isn’t some niche subgenre. It is literally how World PvP was meant to be played, and our guilds are the only ones who actually fill in the gaps and keep the world alive during content droughts.

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17. An RP-PvP player argues RP-PvP needs its own realm more than RP-PvE does, because RP-PvE can roleplay on a normal realm, but flagging can’t recreate the constant threat that is RP-PvP’s core.

@Degnominatus-moon-guard

Not to step on any RP-PvE toes either, I want us all to have a place, but it is quite insane to me that they decided RP should be a ruleset for them but none for RP PvP, when I believe we actually need it more for concrete reasons:

1. These are different, distinct communities who will not necessarily roll together. They seem concerned about population numbers, but as it stands right now RP PvP VASTLY outnumbers normal RP in terms of population. So why did they deem it that RP were the ones in need of their own realm?
2. The needs of a separate ruleset for RP PvP is inherently more pronounced for any kind of playstyle involving PvP due to the possibility of griefing. RP-PvE can (suboptimally) RP on the normal realm while mainting most of their experience intact. The same cannot be said for RP PvP. Flagging does not work, as is blatantly obvious to any PvPer, RP or not. The constant threat of PvP is the CORE of RP PvP.

Blizzard is so clearly misguided in this. And again, much love to our PvE RP counterparts, I don’t mean to encroach, but right now it seems as though they have our needs backwards and misunderstand our communities.

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18. A Horde roleplayer demands the RP ruleset itself become RP-PvP, because unflagging yourself in the World of Warcraft isn’t playing your role. A rebuttal against this is provided below.

@Phibonacci-whitemane

Just watched the youtube video: **
The PvP Episode ft. ‪@TipsOutBaby‬ & ‪@Savixirl‬ | Episode 4 - The WoW: Forever Podcast**

Where Aggrend addresses the RP(PVP) ruleset.

Basically, it was a huge success on Grobbulus . They “brought the war back to warcraft” inadvertently with Grobbulus with that “RP PVP” tag. Never before seen levels of faction war and comradery. When Orgrimmar was attacked, the horde responded, FOR THE HORDE. And likewise, I’m sure our alliance counterparts would agree.

Aggrend used Crusader Strike (a Season of Discovery server) as another example of when the server population of an RP(PVP) server had declined. I almost spit out my coffee listening to this. OF COURSE the population of Season of Discovery declined, it was SEASONAL. It’s in the name. It should have been obvious.

He goes on to say that the RP community is a very small part of the overall population. I agree. And that they don’t want to take away further from the RP ruleset population-wise with the addition of RP(PVP) ruleset. But if that’s what would happen, then that is truly representative of the will of the players.

I think it’s time the RP community be held accountable, and the RP ruleset BECOMES the RP(PVP) ruleset. There is nothing Role Play about unflagging yourself in the WORLD of WARCRAFT. You choose your faction, you fight for your faction, you die for your faction. That is playing your role. FOR THE HORDE / FOR THE ALLIANCE. It is because of the RP ruleset that the very real RP(PVP) community is in the same way being fragmented.

Aggrend also alluded to “it’s something that sometime maybe down the line we might be able to figure out a solution for”…Let me stop you right there, we don’t want WARMODE. We want a PROPER RP SERVER/RULESET (AKA RP(PVP)).

HOLD THE RP COMMUNITY ACCOUNTABLE. The RP Ruleset MUST BE RP(PVP).
If you want to RP unflagged, GO TO BRILL / GOLDSHIRE.
If you want to RP in Blackrock Mountain, GO TO PVE Ruleset.

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19. A PvP-realm player replies to the above comment that converting the RP realm isn’t fair to RP-PvE players, and insists Blizzard can afford a separate RP-PvP realm, since War Mode already killed world PvP.

@Foutered-whitemane

When they got rid of PvP servers on retail and made it a toggle world PvP fell off a cliff. The reality is that the friction caused by a PvP server rule set often leads to a lot more world PvP. People had to make counter raids to hold off aggression which escalated and turned into Southshore vs Tarren Mill battles etc.

I like playing on a PvP server because I like the fact that the unpredictability and danger of it adds something to the game. I also understand its not for everyone. Hell one of the best thing about RP-PvP servers is that they are smaller, and you generally get to know people on the server. These megaservers kind of destroy the feel of the game at times, and the constant layering really screws with the big pvp battles, because it becomes less about who is winning, and more about who has half the raid suddenly vanish because of unexpected layering.

Also by forcing RP-PvP players into RP-PvE realms, thats not really fair to the PvE players, because they don’t really want the PvP aspect the PvP players want.

If they can afford to have RP servers, they can definitely afford to have RP-PvP servers. If I’m wrong they can just merge it like they did before. I mean its such an easy win for them to give the community what they want and if it fails they get to say “I told you so” and walk away.

Look how many dead retail and classic servers they are maintaining, I refuse to believe this is that unsupportable.

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20. A 22-year veteran says RP-PvP is the only ruleset true to a PvP roleplaying game, and begs Blizzard, in the voidwalkers’ words, to send them back.

@Mooncalf-hyjal

Blizz, RP-PVP is the only ruleset that matters and the only ruleset that’s appropriate for the game in the first place. That was true in 2004 and it’s true now. The game is a PVP roleplaying game!

PVP servers are for the sort of person whose first attempt at naming a character involve ruder variations of Tbagurface, PVE servers are for people whose intestines liquify in any confrontational context, but RP-PVP servers are for the sort of people who want to move in to Azeroth and live there, well, FOREVER.

Your stated goal is to keep people in world as long as possible, yet you’re gonna release the best version of WoW we’ve ever seen without the ruleset that most naturally works towards this goal. The goal is TOTAL IMMERSION in WARCRAFT.

I’ve played your game for 22 years. I was there at the beginning and I’m here at the end. I started on RP-PVP because THAT is the actual hardcore mode in warcraft, and when (many expansions later) I branched out, I regretted it. With the voidwalkers I say:

SEND. ME. BACK.

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21. An RP-PvP player resigned to flagging on the RP realm says a delayed launch fulfills Blizzard’s own prophecy, because a late “fresh server” fills with people who don’t roleplay.

@Talespinner-grobbulus

The problem with not releasing RP-PvP on launch is that any eventual release only makes it increasingly more susceptible to its RP tag becoming vestigial. If Blizzard does release an RP-PvP later down the line, then it becomes incredibly vulnerable to people who don’t care about RP but instead just want to play on a “fresh server” - which would be theoretically in high demand once Forever has been out for awhile, due to the serverless nature of Forever. The decision to not release RP-PvP on launch merely fulfills Blizzard’s own prophecy about how RP-PvP tends to become PvP-RP (or to put it another way, just another PvP ruleset with a different community).

I think the only way RP-PvP could survive if it arrives months after launch is to add in additional features inherent to an RP-PvP that further prohibit and otherwise gatekeep RP-PvP, more than just moderation (because if the majority of the population aren’t actual roleplayers, it becomes unjust to act against non-RP). Things like auction house and leveling rate restrictions that both make it inconvenient for regular players to play but contributes to the deep and dynamic social environment RP-PvPers seek; and otherwise encourage the few non-RPers, who persist despite the systems of inconvenience, to actually engage with RP because of those very systems.

As it stands now, I’ll probably be /pvp on RP.

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22. A player writes to Blizzard demanding it prove it has changed, because the returners Forever won back are watching it listen to streamers and repeat the mistakes that drove them away.

@Moorbin-moon-guard

@Zurpzurp-arcanite-reaper

Using a seasonal server to influence the decisions of a “forever” game is incredibly shortsighted and honestly makes me worry about their philosophies as a whole.

This. I know so many people who have only come back to play Forever because it appeared that Blizzard had somewhat changed its direction and was owning up to leaving some players behind with Forever. And now this.

Blizzard is literally repeating historical mistakes here that are absolutely going to spoil the goodwill that the Forever announcement made in the first place.

---

Blizzard, if you are reading this, you need to prove to these players that you have actually changed your ways or you are going to lose the people you have captured with Forever. It is unfathomable that you are making so many poor choices and listening to all the wrong people (streamers) right off the bat.

Your community is trying to tell you something. Players you absolutely lost are back to tell you something, and you’re not listening. You think you know what is best, and you are squandering it. It is maddening to watch.

You don’t understand your own community and you are sending all the wrong messages. The way you are talking about these things makes your company look like you are not even trying to understand RP communities.

You haven’t even addressed any of the very obvious problems that layering is going to present to roleplayers. People are going to be extremely upset when everything starts unraveling because of how half-baked this game is and most of the reasons they are here turn out to be lies.

The asmongold/olympus nonsense was already enough of a problem that you already showed you would back peddle on your own stances over, and now we have this. You are not seeing the right picture in your office, you are misreading your own success and misunderstanding your own community.

You have no idea how much fracturing of a community you have caused with this single statement from Aggrend. It really shows that you guys are not in touch with what is actually happening in your communities.

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23. An RP-PvP fan tells the cause as a comic fable, in which an old orc in the Valley of Trials tries to explain to a young warrior what he’s still waiting for.

@Blownaparté-mankrik

An old Orc sat alone in the Valley of Trials, staring at the horizon.

A young warrior approached him. “Elder, why do you sit here every day?”

The Orc sighed. “I await the return of RP-PvP realms.”

“What are those?”

The elder dropped his tankard.

“REALMS WHERE YOUR ENEMIES HAVE NAMES! WHERE A HUMAN PALADIN CAN BECOME YOUR BLOOD FEUD! WHERE A SIMPLE TRIP TO THE AUCTION HOUSE CAN END IN A THREE-HOUR WAR!”

The young warrior trembled. “But… what if I just want to level peacefully?”

The elder grabbed him by the shoulders.

“THEN YOU HAVE CHOSEN THE WRONG CONTINENT, BOY!”

Just then, a messenger arrived.

“Elder! The developers have announced another discussion about server populations!”

The Orc stared blankly into the distance.

“Another discussion… and still no realm.”

He mounted his wolf and rode toward the Barrens, where a thousand adventurers were killing boars without a single enemy in sight.

And so the prophecy remained unfulfilled.

Bring back RP-PvP. Azeroth wasn’t built for everyone to be friends…

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24. An officer of an LGBT guild says RP-PvP was the one place they could be themselves, because the same guild would be targeted on a PvP megaserver.

@Isair-faerlina

Let me share another story.

On Deviate Delight, I was an officer in a LGBT guild.

I think it’s fair to say that there is a substantial amount of players in Classic WoW who are actively hostile to LGBT people. If you don’t believe, just read trade chat for 10 minutes. The chat channels in the PVP beta server are foul.

The community on RP-PVP was substantially more friendly towards our guild.

After playing on Nightslayer in Anniversary, I would never in a million years try to create a LGBT guild on that server. I have a very strong conviction that we would have been targeted almost immediately.

Removing RP-PVP removes a space where LGBT people can truly be themselves.

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25. The last guild leader remaining on Chaos Bolt accuses Blizzard of lying about Crusader Strike, after their guild cleared all of Season of Discovery with under 40 players on a server Blizzard had locked.

@Sargiel-chaos-bolt

Blizzard is lying. Shocking, right? I know.

But let’s talk about the first 12 minutes of their podcast:

At 5:18 was probably the most superfluous way I have ever heard a dev self congratulate themselves while essentially telling you: “If your friends won’t play on the game mode you want to play on, leave them behind, make new ones! Nevermind we are the ones who will not make a standard game mode (rp-pvp) for you to play on.”

They claim Grobbulus worked for classic rp-pvp, and it did.

Then they claim Crusader Strike Rp-Pvp didn’t work, and they don’t elaborate as to why.

Blizzard’s issues with Crusader Strike were of their own creation:

At the start of SOD, there were a few rp-pvp realms, on NA there was Crusader Strike and Chaos Bolt. Streamers chose Crusader Strike early on as their hub for content and playing, this would have considerably consequences later, as blizzard decided not to enforce the TOS/EULA or server rules as a result.

As time went on, Crusader strike started having population imbalances from streamer influence and associated followers being weaponized to impact resource availability and faction demographics. A problem of blizzard’s own creation since they refuse to this day of addressing gameplay sabotage and the impact of streamer personalities and their fandoms.

Within months, Blizzard’s solution was to offer free transfers off Chaos Bolt to Crusader strike and completely close any new character creation on Chaos bolt by accounts who did not already have characters there. In short order, pretty much the entire playerbase of Chaos Bolt left and Crusader Strike became the go to SOD Mega Server, no longer even listed as an RP-PVP realm, leaving Chaos Bolt to become an empty and all but dead server.

And yes, many of you may ask why I am uniquely posed to speak on this particular matter of history and the reason is quite simple. I am the single Guild leader who remained on Chaos Bolt during Season of Discovery.

My guild stayed behind on Chaos Bolt and picked up the pieces after Blizzard quarantined our server making it impossible for new players to even make a character on Chaos Bolt.

We Managed to persevere despite blizzard’s best efforts to kill us. We had no AH, we helped the few straggling horde get their items as best we could. We even managed to down every piece of content on SOD with a mere active player base on the entire server of less than 40 people for over two thirds of the entire SOD game season. We couldn’t even get new players to join us because Blizzard had ensured that would be impossible, but we managed anyway.

And for the Devs or whoever was actively keeping tabs on us, screw you for lying about what Crusader Strike and Chaos Bolt were.

Make an RP-PVP server, and don’t lie about the reasons why you claim Crusader Strike failed: You made it fail, it was your fault, You created the situation on Crusader strike, not the player base.

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26. An Emerald Dream guild founder who grew a military-RP company to over 200 members says the battles they fought could only have happened under the RP-PvP ruleset.

@Luscient-emerald-dream

I first started playing WoW in earnest on Emerald Dream as the Paladin Tnsumi, with a guild I and some friends put together called the Sanguine Knights, an RP-oriented guild meant to foster the ideals of knighthood and protecting those who could not protect themselves. It was never anything spectacular and more or less meandered along for a few months.

Eventually I rerolled as the Paladin Luscient and found myself within the guild Kingship of the East, which was a significantly larger guild with players who were thoroughly invested in generating RP content, as well as responding to the calls of PvP. I’ve no doubt the names Heimdal, Hinik, etc are well remembered - for better or worse - from original Emerald Dream players.

Around the time of Wrath of the Lich King I chose to branch out on my own and started The Loyal Company, a guild with a vested interest in military RP, with a focus on PvP, specifically (again) protecting those who could not, and basing ourselves out of Theramore as an expeditionary branch of the Theramore Guard. We captured lightning in a bottle ourselves this time, and the guild grew to over 200 members at its peak, working closely with other guilds such as Clan Battlehammer, Kingship of the East, and House Blackstone to answer the calls of LocalDefense. Characters such as Morttis were known far and wide as threats that needed to be carefully dealt with, specifically because of the PvP part of the RP-PvP ruleset.

This emergent gameplay could not have been fostered in an RP-PvE environment, and the immersion of the world could not have been fostered in a PvP environment. It was the merging of both into a unique ruleset that crafted the world we explored, lived in, and fought for.

The Loyal Company initially survived into Cataclysm, but interest waned and the guild became a shadow of its former self as players moved on to other interests and other games. Simply put, the world was not lived in as much as it had been. I myself stopped playing near the tail end of Mists of Pandaria, moving on to games such as Rift and Darkfall.

When Classic was announced I was very excited, and even moreso when an RP-PvP server was announced in Grobbulus. While I didn’t actively participate in the RP-side as much as I had in my younger years, I still fully appreciated being in and sharing the same world with those who were. I focused much more on PvP this time around and got into the Rank 14 grind, making it to Commander in the bracketing community before I burned out. I also became far more invested in the PvE side and actively raided as a Holy Paladin PUG, managing to acquire my entire Judgement set.

I think at least part of what impacted Grobbulus was the same reason I ultimately stopped playing the second time as well: the community discussion about Classic+, #nochanges, and the expansion treadmill. Many of us wanted a forever home that Classic+ would engender, or at least a forever home that would stay persistent in what it already was, but the idea of going through the same expansions over and over again was not what I had signed up for. I can’t speak from any significant set of data, but I believe this fractured the community.

I had some changes in real life around the same time, but had Classic+ indeed been the road we were going down, I would have much more likely stuck around. So it comes as no surprise when they announced WoW: Forever that I was instantly hooked… you can only imagine my disappointment with the podcast yesterday.

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27. A day-one roleplayer from EU Defias Brotherhood, who started a server war that ran for years, insists RP-PvP be judged by 2005, not by 2019 or Season of Discovery.

@Maaliss-nightslayer

I think some need to remember what RP is. We dont just have a toon on a screen that we move around but in RP we “become” that character. We feel what they would feel if we were in that situation. Say what they would say. Develop motivations and bias’ for that character as if we were that character. And a RP-PVP server is the only rules etc we can fully express that.

I remember my first entry into contested territory while levelling on EU-Defias Brotherhood. I was hyper aware of any horde even taking alternate routes to my quest spot. There was a sense of danger.

I also remember my first solo world pvp win in Duskwood.

Both were thrilling. Not just for me behind the screen but also for the “me” in the screen.

I dont get that in a pvp only server and Ill never get it in a Rp-PVE server.

Aggrand et al need to look further back that 2019. RP-PvP cant be judged just by those experiences.

One of the main thrusts of WoW:Forever has been to take us back, or allow newer lovers of WoW to experience WoW from 2005 and that should include RP-PvP because that is when it started and thrived.

I began my WoW journey on EU-Earthen Ring, but as soon as the RP-PVP servers were announced I was keen to join. I was there on Day1 of EU-Defias Brotherhood along with my fellow NElf Starseeker Sentinels led by Eain. ( I was Shari Evenstar). From day 1 we had RP based PvP and it brought the RP to life.

I remember that man guilds set there hearthstones to designated areas for quick return to defend their homelands. (The Starseekers set Astranaar as theirs and zealously defended it).

I proposed the Anniversary War on Defias Brotherhood, an event thst continued for many years on the server.

I disagree that RP-PVP server/rulesets would split the RP community. I for one cant RP on WoW without the conflict and find blueshields break my immersion and I know there are others who feel similarly.

An RP-PvP ruleset attracts 2 types of players and it isn’t those who would pick an RP- PvE rules etc over PvE and PvP. An RP-PvP rules etc attracts people like me who want to RP-PvP and PvPers who want to enjoy a PvP server that is likely to be a little more respectful and contain less corpsecamping.

Ganking lowbies etc is RP.

Patrolling your hometurf and 5vs1ing a leveller/resource farmer on your turf is RP

And the above can often spawn some of the great WorldPvP we saw in the opening days of BETA before the trash tourny took over.

RP-PVP servers should not be judged on SOD or 2019 experiences. They should be judged on the same thing Forever has been built on… the hype, the feels of WoW2005

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28. A player who never reached max level until they found The Venture Company resigns themselves to a PvP realm, because cutting RP-PvP split their community, not the RP one.

@Halcade-moon-guard

You say you dont want to split the RP community, but RP and RP-PvP are two seperate communities. What you really just did was split up the RP-PvP community. I know i love to RP but WoW isnt WoW without PvP so ill be rolling on a PvP server now and just have to be resigned to not roleplaying in forever. I never made it to max level in OG WoW until i found my community on the RP-PvP realm “The Venture company” so ill play Forever as long as it holds my interest and hopefully make it to max level, but im a tad worried that without my community it just wont be the same. Thank you for atleast responding to the RP-PvP community, but i completely disagree with your reasoning here.

Source

29. A player shares an explanation as to why Crusader Strike was doomed from the start: with server names hidden, everyone piled onto the one realm that wasn’t a coin flip.

@Flyhn-defias-pillager

bit of history for those who don’t remember.

For SoD, Blizzard announced two PVP servers and one RP-PVP. Blizzard deliberately announced they were not announcing the names of the servers ahead of time.

The reason for this decision was that Blizzard wanted to avoid the player base declaring one server to be “Everyone plays here.” and the other server to be “Dead on arrival. Don’t waste your time playing here.”

This turned server selection into a coordination game. Every player wanted to end up in the server where everybody else would be.

Without server names, players couldn’t commit to a particular server, so they coordinated on the one variable they could see: server type.

The asymmetry is important. The two PVP servers were completely interchangeable, so choosing PVP became a coin flip that risked landing on the less popular server.

The RP-PVP server was unique, so it became a natural focal point.

Blizzard didn’t eliminate coordination. Coordination moved onto the one choice that couldn’t be split into a coin toss.

Esfand, to my knowledge, was the streamer who announced he was going to roll there. That caused a cascade effect that lead to Crusader Strike becoming the most popular server in SoD.

This whole situation played out the way it did because Blizzard made an incorrect decision on how to direct server choice.

I’m dumbfounded that Aggrend has now decided to base the future of RP-PVP in Forever based on how Crusader Strike turned out.

Let’s also not forget that SoD was seasonal. Crusader Strike was a seasonal server. I won’t get into the weeds about how that changes players’ calculus.

Crusader Strike turned out the way it did because of the choice to obfuscate server names until launch. That abnormality was the deciding factor. It shouldn’t be the basis of such an important decision.

Aggrend, please reconsider. I don’t agree with the means by which you arrived at the RP-PVP decision.

Actually think this through instead of just “you think you do but you don’t”-ing us for the millionth time. Please.

Source

30. A former player says RP-PvP is the only reason they’d come back, because the war and the stories players make, not new raids, are what make it Warcraft.

@Krovnihar-elune

Blizzard, RP-PvP is the ONLY reason I’d come back to WoW and play Forever.

New raids, classes, dungeons, rewards, horizontal system, and all that stuff is great, but none of it means much to me without the right community. What would get me playing again is the chance to experience Azeroth alongside ppl who enjoy the game the same way I do. RP PvP offers something that neither a regular PvP ruleset nor an RP ruleset can recreate on its own.

PvP is inherent to WARcraft (imo), and RP gives it meaning and life. Some of my favorite WoW experiences weren’t quests, boss fights, or anything Blizz designed for us to do. They were the random encounters, spontaneous WPvP, and dope situations that happened because of other players. That’s what makes RP PvP so frickin fun. Sometimes you never know what direction your adventure’s gonna take when you log in!

I think Blizz is overlooking two things super important about our Warcraft universe, that at least Metzen understood. Warcraft’s entire identity has been shaped by war and player stories. The conflict between the Alliance & Horde and the stories players create in the world are the defining parts of the game, since the beginning.

What makes RP PvP different is that we’re not just playing in Blizz’s world. We’re playing in a world our community is makes, and it’s bloody magical. RP isn’t limited to organized events or ppl staying in character. There’s an underlying atmosphere of RP across the entire server, and you become part of it whether you’re trying to or not. I believe RP-PvP gives players a kind of freedom that goes way beyond everything else in the game, and it’d be a damn shame to leave that out of Forever at launch.

Telling us to just flag for PvP on an RP ruleset doesn’t solve anything. On an RP-PvP ruleset, everyone knows what they’re signing up for. The opposing faction is always a potential threat, and that changes how you explore, quest, travel, and interact with the world. Likewise, telling us to roll on a normal PvP ruleset misses the other half of the equation. The RP community brings a completely different vibe. Ppl care about their characters, guilds, reputations, and the world they’re playing in. It’s the combination of RP and PvP that makes it magical.

Grobbulus is a solid example of the awesomeness that can come out of a community like this. There’s a reason why so many of us are asking for RP PvP. Those of us posting are just a fraction of the ones willing to take the time to speak up. Give players the right environment and they’ll create years of content for themselves without Blizz having to do much of anything.

Please, give us RP-PvP at launch. Ppl are gonna pick their rulesets, join guilds, make friends, lvl characters, and sink hundreds of hours into them. Adding RP-PvP later and expecting those interested to just reroll is straight up bad game design. I want Blizz to include us in Forever too, and show us that our community is important too.

Chris Metzen and the OG Warcraft devs created an incredible universe, but whats made WoW special isn’t just the world they built. It was everything that happened when lots of us got thrown into that world together.

Without RP-PvP, I won’t be coming back or resubbing long-term. With it, Blizz would have me back in a heartbeat, and Forever.

Please give us a dedicated RP-PvP ruleset from day one. Don’t forget the WAR in WARcraft!

Source

31. An EU roleplayer who watched merges and War Mode drive RP-PvP players off their realms explains why Forever, built to last, is the first game that can give them a home again.

@Hialeah-nazjatar

“Why did retail RP-PvP die?”

Sometime between 2013-2014, MoP/WoD, (unsure when this hit NA) EU RP-PvP realms were forcibly, irreversibly merged with other realms who had no part of, nor care for, the communities of those merged with. The ‘RP’ in RP-PvP became completely unenforced, with the established player base swarmed now by the bad actors, griefers and RP-harassers.

Where roleplayers could once unite together to protect the ruleset they cherished and nurtured, now they became the minority in their own servers. RP groups of 10 players would have full 40 player raids swoop in and corpse camp them. Call for more guilds to help you, and these griefers would swarm even more, assuming that other gankers were not already griefing the groups you called to help.

“PvP happened on a PvP server.” - No, PvP happened on an RP-PvP server. They were created, and up until that point, maintained, for a reason. As opposed to the wild west of PvP, RP-PvP had (and should have) strict rules on naming, and anti RP-disruption enforcement, to where unfaithfully, excessively sabotaging any attempt for RP’ers to roleplay the game was actionable. This is all mentioned above but repeated here as emphasis.

As roleplayers were relentlessly hunted and griefed off their own servers, many people sought out Argent Dawn, the largest EU RP-PvE server. Not out of a desire or willingness to drop RP-PvP, but as a necessity as the RP in RP-PvP was now obliterated.

Any lingering RP-PvP remnants that attempted to limp on found their efforts ‘rewarded’ with again, the forced change of warmode. The final nail in the coffin that now annihilated any attempts at salvaging any RP-PvP with anyone left there. Your default PvP server was now made PvE, as opting into warmode would phase characters into completely unrelated communities once more, another crowd of anonymous players you’d never seen nor played with. Any sense of realm identity that remained for RP-PvP had stomped out by Blizzard themselves with the introduction of warmode.

“Why now, why this time? What’s different?”

..Deluding myself if there’s any RP-PvP opposers asking this, but I hope so And in this case, very simple!! No doubt the same as most anyone excited for Forever:

• WoW:Forever offers players an unprecedented, fresh experience based on the original version of WoW that we all so fondly love, cherish and remember.
• The players that are disillusioned with retail’s gameplay or story direction can dive back into a world of faction conflict and an Azeroth-focused game world.
• Where those of us that choose to delve into transmog and collection, HD models (or absolutely no transmog, and SD models) both have a viable home - Or would, were we given the RP-PvP option.
• I have encountered some new players in the beta alone, no doubt more are interested in the full launch. Why should we deny them RP-PvP as an option because one absolutely flawed, terrible example of an ultimately niche, mishandled server failed just because it had an unenforced RP-PvP tag attached?
• The introduction of items such as the night’s watch torch, campfires, new zones combined with a toy collection into much more solid faction identity offers a never seen before opportunity for roleplay ventures.
• No flying is a golden opportunity to return organic travelling into face to face, tooth and nail RP-PvP encounters.
• A big emphasis is returning to our roots to experience Azeroth again (with the Forever twist). How can we have that without a core, fundamental feature for a specific playstyle that catered to us back then, but does not exist now? It has no viable alternative.
• New gameplay content offers a viable alternative for current, or former RP-PvP classic players to transition over to WoW:Forever, where they will be able to enjoy a game that is having updates as well as keeping their preferred RP-PvP home that retail lacks.

We know this version of WoW is designed with longevity and permanence in mind. There is no uncertainty of it switching to different expansion servers, of being temporary, content updates will exist. Reasons that dwindled the Classic RP-PvP playerbase will not be present here. Similarly, the rulesets will remove the killing factor of server merges for the retail versions of RP-PvP that stood the test of time for years.

If multiple RP-PvP servers across regions could thrive for years, on versions of the game where the playerbase was split across countless server options, the RP-PvP community can come together and thrive on a singular RP-PvP ruleset option for each WoW:Forever region.

Source

I’ll let Isair close this one out. They said it better than I could:

@Isair-faerlina

Blizzard’s choice regarding RP-PVP is the biggest single blunder in the Classic space since the infamous “You think you do, but you don’t” incident.

The reason that incident is still brought up to this day reflects the playerbase’s deep distrust of Blizzard.

When Forever was announced, I felt like I was walking on air. The magic was back!

Then I saw the ruleset screen and immediately noticed the lack of RP-PVP. A pit in my stomach grew. “Surely we can convince Blizzard to give us RP-PVP if we make a little noise”, I thought.

We’ve made more noise than anybody. Nobody have been more effective and organized than us. We are your most loyal players. We make our own fun during content droughts.

This is the single biggest demand.

Even if you have no interest in RP-PVP, this is the canary in the coal mine. Our section of the player base has organized the most impressive display of passion over a subject in years.

Will Blizzard listen to the players or will they ignore them?

[Duncan325-1580193 (Duncan325)]

Appreciate the effort to put this together.

Feel like there were so many insulting things said by Aggrend in that short statement he made. The thought that they could claim to be “with us” when by definition they’re against us in this situation is just silly.

[KazuHiashi-1992682 (KazuHiashi)]

Incredible. I’ve been on these forums so much the past few days that I remember seeing almost all of these as they were posted. Amazing job compiling some of the best posts I’ve seen in the last 2 days.

[Beleth-3454771 (Beleth)]

If there us no RP-PvP server at launch I will be holding off until one is launched. The other rulesets really don’t appeal to me. I started this game during the Original Vanilla Stress test and won a beta slot as a Hunter. When the game launched I played on an RP-PvP server and never looked back. I’d like to start my time in Forever on an RP-PvP server and if I can’t I’ll wait until it’s available.

[Boatermilk-22899 (Boatermilk)]

trying to do the server after launch would genuinely be sabotaging the server’s potential

[Wedgie-357295 (Wedgie)]

Just /pvp when you enter game. you are RPing a PvP realm now. just need one person to start the snowball fight. Raid the Opps Fraction, kill their flight masters. START the war.

[ZombiChromie-2849033 (ZombiChromie)]

I’m still on cooldown for liking posts because, ya’ know, 22 year long players of every Blizzard game surely aren’t trustworthy and I have yet to earn the right to .. like more posts?

But absolutely phenomenal work!! thank you for centralizing all of this, I don’t expect Blizzard to read through the mega threads for RPPVP, considering the reasons they gave against it are literally disproven 30 times in the initial thread they claim to have read and then still used SoD and Anniversary as datasets (so absurd)

[ZombiChromie-2849033 (ZombiChromie)]

Again this has been said a thousand times now, but with the same logic they can just delete the PvP ruleset altogether. You can just /pvp on the Normal PvE server, same difference, right?

[Wedgie-357295 (Wedgie)]

People are able to make a choice for PvE or PvP servers. RPers dont have that choice atm.

if you go PvE, and try to RP, ppl will break that RP and same with PvP. /pvp on a PvE server wont have the same impact as if you do it on RP server.

in RP, you have now declared war.

I want there to be a RP-PvP realm, but until then, /pvp is better than going to a PvP server that’s full of streamers.

[Cuddleshanks-2793655 (Cuddleshanks)]

I’d like to add as an OG Venture Co player back in the day, RP-PvP servers are always my favorite.

The thrill of world PvP, a smaller crowd so it feels more personal, and the RP tag keeps some of the less mature, more troll-y types out.

The smaller communities on RP-PvP servers helped foster a more social atmosphere. Same faces (both enemy and ally) around quite often.

Made some great friends and memories on those servers. Not something you can really find on an RP server, and the general communities on straight PvP servers are awful and immature.

[CDOT-2968309 (CDOT)]

This is well done, but it’s not that deep. RP-PVP died in anniversary so fast they had to do something about it.

They have the infrastructure to just have 1 mega pvp server. They don’t want to fragment the player base.

It’s not happening. Sorry.

[Baalthuzar-834727 (Baalthuzar)]

@Priestchromi-crusader-strike

But absolutely phenomenal work!! thank you for centralizing all of this, I don’t expect Blizzard to read through the mega threads for RPPVP, considering the reasons they gave against it are literally disproven 30 times in the initial thread they claim to have read and then still used SoD and Anniversary as datasets (so absurd)

Thank you. I was certainly tempted to bring up a couple more of your comments, but in the spirit of “it’s the same people talking over and over,” I opted for the best arguments and stories per player that was worthy of a shoutout. Obviously, I may have missed a few folks, but this should cover all the bases for now. I may add more over time if it adds to the defense of RP-PvP.

[EightBitBomb-3458006 (EightBitBomb)]

Anniversary didn’t have an RP server.

[demlo-3317431 (demlo)]

yeah there hasn’t been an RP PVP server provided on non-seasonal realms since 2019

[EightBitBomb-3458006 (EightBitBomb)]

Yeah Aggrend made it seem like they’ve had many failed RP-PvP servers, but only talked about one example from a seasonal gamemode. All of the actual RP-PvP realms have been wildly successful to my understanding.

[ZombiChromie-2849033 (ZombiChromie)]

@Aeraeliah-wyrmrest-accord

yeah there hasn’t been an RP PVP server provided on non-seasonal realms since 2019

Classic 2019 is the closest dataset applicable to RPPVP for Forever, but even that pales in comparison since many people didn’t know if it’d continue beyond vanilla, or if it’d progress into Classic+, many people didn’t want to just do a bland redo, and DEFINITELY didn’t want to invest the time and effort of making an RP character in it.

Forever is completely different from all of that because it is permanent, so if anything it will perform BETTER than even their “lightning in a bottle” fluke Grobbulous did.

[EightBitBomb-3458006 (EightBitBomb)]

It’s crazy to me that a major goal with WoW Forever seems to be to recapture the magical experiences people had in Vanilla and Classic WoW, but RP-PvP is for some reason lightning in a bottle that cannot be recaptured.

Seems to me like roleplayers brought the lightning, but Blizzard didn’t bring the bottle. I’m new to WoW and so badly want to play RP-PvP. It would easily be my favorite ruleset by far.

[Zellmerz-2551772 (Zellmerz)]

Blizzard is missing on a great opportunity to foster a community who will promote the “pillars” they constantly talk about organically

[Sim-536108 (Sim)]

@Priestchromi-crusader-strike

Forever is completely different from all of that because it is permanent, so if anything it will perform BETTER than even their “lightning in a bottle” fluke Grobbulous did.

Do it Blizz, launch the RPPVP ruleset. Let’s all dare to see if lightning can strike twice. You threw down to launch this whole new fresh - move the needle one little bit further and release RPPVP for name res day.

Your awaiting player base will shock you, apparently.

[Wedgie-357295 (Wedgie)]

A Ele shaman can make lightning strike twice.