There are lots of people I’ve seen come and go on ED. There are old friends I haven’t seen in months or years that I miss, but I still continue to meet new people and the community is still there.
Sharding, warmode, and the removal of world defense have certainly hurt things, but I’m optimistic that the next expansion will address some of these issues and new stories and lands to explore always draws interest. It’s a shame BFA was such a step backwards, but so was WoD before Legion came along and fixed what WoD broke.
I agree, we’re lucky to have classic, and I do enjoy it, especially with the inclusion of RPPVP servers.
I’m not saying you’re one of the people who said it, but I’m just tired of people saying how dead ED is, because frankly it’s insulting to the people working really hard to keep it alive and create content for the community to enjoy. It won’t grow again without people working hard to foster that growth and it sucks that many “old EDers” who are doing literally nothing to help, while complaining that the community is in decline, don’t see they’re part of the problem.
You can absolutely still do large scale RP/PVP campaigns in retail. We’re still doing it and creating those storylines. Sharding only effects BFA zones, so you literally have everywhere except Zulduzar and Kul’tiras to WPVP without sharding to choose from, which is still more than double the options you have in classic. Discord serves as an effective replacement for world defense. Given the backlash against sharding, and the advent of layering in Classic, I don’t think it’ll even be an issue in future expansions. Finding solutions to these problems doesn’t take that much effort my dude. It’s about your attitude.