I’m looking for an active RP server besides Moon Guard. So far I’ve tried WRA, Emerald Dream and Argent Dawn - all listed as Medium or High pop. They seem dead, if Stormwind is any indication - nary a soul in sight on a Friday night.
Where are my people hiding?
It’s died down on the others. Your observation is correct.
Let’s be real too High pop is like ‘low’ and medium feels dead. 
Might have more luck with a guild or RP community that has organised activity hours if you’re wanting to avoid MG.
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OK thanks.
It’s not so much I’m trying to “avoid” MG, it’s just that the server is so busy that major cities like Stormwind are unplayable, as much as I enjoy the business of seeing people milling about. I used to play on WRA back in the day and it was a great server, almost as busy as MG!
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WrA is only busy for Horde. As one could guess, all the Alliance moved to MG a few expansions ago.
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OK thanks, I appreciate you chiming in.
Well that’s sad. Is RP dying?
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Not dying, just less public, the biggest conglomerates have closed themselves off and formed gated communities, which have their own issues that I pray no-one ever has to deal with, but there are lots of smaller more public and open guilds and events.
What characters do you usually RP? We’ve got a mostly Hunter and Druid guild that does outdoor zone events, but the Druid or Hunter thing isn’t a requisite, we’ve taken Paladins and DKs and Monks… pretty much anybody who makes sort of sense. Currently we’re keeping a tavern going and expanding for 11.1.
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There really are none. MG is the last one left standing at a decent population. WrA only has small bits of RP left and us low pop servers are just a guild here and there that still RP.
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I mean, that’s sort of the tradeoff. Everyone wants to be where the people are, (they wanna see, wanna see ‘em dancin’) so they’ve all migrated from other places to Stormwind MG over time. So now you’ve got a situation where it’s either MEGACRUSH or empty and very little in between.
The hope is that joined player housing will take a little bit of the load off the server hamsters, but it only really gets bad on the first few days of a Stormwind-based event.
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Keeping this thread alive just because I’d like more information myself. It’s been forever since I did any WoW RP.
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I’m not an RP’er, but I imagine a lot of them migrated to a singular realm to keep populations at a decent level.
Most of the realms I play on are ex-PvP realms and are dead, but cross-realm keeps activities alive.
Can’t say that for RP, since those realms are among the few that stay non-cross-realm.
Also, apparently RP servers in Classic are doing fine. I guess there’s a healthy amount of old school RP going on.
Was surprised there even was an RP realm for classic, but there must be an audience there if it exists.
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We are near the end of a season. Wait about a month.
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This, they’ve also concentrated themselves on fewer servers so there are less options to move around.
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WRA is only for people who are die-hard Horde RP’ers who won’t give MG a shot. But for alliance RP, there’s no real other scene other than MG as far as I know. Emerald Dream died when warmode became a thing because people couldn’t have their spontaneous RPPvP anymore.
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WRA is mostly Horde.
Yes.
Someone else said “no it’s just gone more private”.
That’s exactly what RP Looks like on any server where RP has already died.
All that’s left is organized stuff within and between guilds, walkups don’t exist.
A sign of a healthy RP population is being able to FIND IT just by walking around (at least in the usual hubs - it’s understandable that most people don’t want to be the guy standing around alone in a random leveling zone hoping someone stumbles upon them 4 hours deep).
Moon Guard is the only remaining RP Server for Alliance, and it’s less active than it used to be - more condensed in the areas walkup RP happens, and WAY fewer guilds advertising and public RP events happening. It’s still pretty healthy for now, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not moving in a positive direction. Some of it IS because a lot of the more active RP Guilds keep to themselves more than they tended to in the past, but again, that’s not a neutral thing - that’s a negative thing that hurts RP as a whole.
WRA is the only remaining RP Server for Horde, and it’s nothing compared to Moon Guard - Alliance. It’s activity comes and goes bigtime.
All other RP Servers are entirely dead as far as RP is concerned. Most could be renamed “Normal” realms and no one would bat an eye because it’s just what they are now. Low Pop Normal Realms.
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You can RP on any realm. I do it all the time.
You know very well what they mean.
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This is only my perception after my own experience, so please understand the following assertion from that perspective. I cannot and am not attempting to speak for anyone else but me.
Moon Guard is an old server
with guilds and inter-guild relationships so long-established that I came to feel there really isn’t room made for new people. The clique culture is super hard to penetrate in several RP genres/areas of interest. I felt very isolated, even as part of a large and very active guild there. I tried very hard to get involved and get to know people both IC and OOC, but it just wasn’t happening. The regular players there have their own things and their own events, and while I could tell that they wanted to be welcoming, I don’t think they quite knew how.
There is a lack of OOC communication
that I found surprising and off-putting. The larger guilds in my favored area of interest for RP have huge wiki-type websites and complex Discord setups for sharing fics, discussing mog and other topics, but the glaring absence was regular voice chat or any kind of relationship building OOC between guild mates. I found it stifling and it reinforced the feeling that I was just hanging around a clique’s favored lunch table. They allowed me to eat my lunch there, but nobody was gonna include me in the group or respond to my attempts to know them, either as characters or as people.
The Drama is UNREAL
Because a lot of these groups have a monopoly on their respective areas of interest, the groups tend to feel ownership over that area of interest; and because so many of these groups have a decade-long history, there is so much drama and there are so many old resentments and gossipy backstories. I stepped on a few toes without realizing it simply by socializing with characters ingame who were apparently part of an out group due to years-old arguments and drama between this guild officer and that other guild leader and some other guy who used to run a guild but doesn’t play anymore.
It. Was. Exhausting.
(and I graduated from high school more than 30 years ago…mama ain’t got time for that mess)
Now. As I said at the start, this was my experience and how I felt about it, having tried to dive into RP in a single area of interest. I do not believe that my experience is universal or that people who RP in other areas of interest will experience the same things. My takeaway, however, was that MG is not a place that accommodates new people well, and I felt like I was just alone all the time, which–I mean, if I’m gonna be a solo player in RP, I can just write fanfics by myself at my desktop and have the same experience.
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If it’s any consolation, you’ll really only see this issue in Stormwind. And luckily, you don’t really need to be in Stormwind too much unless you’re looking for walk-up RP—in which case, lag isn’t really too much of an issue since you’re just standing/walking around.
But yeah, as others have said, Moon Guard really is the place for walk-up RP if you’re Alliance. If an active public RP community is what you’re looking for, your answer is probably just to lower your graphics settings in SW and grit your teeth through the lag. Imo it’s worth the aggravation to be able to feel like you’re surrounded by a large population.
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Mind if I send you a Discord invite? Only drama involved is what we do on a stage!
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