It was the same with Maelstrom(rp-pvp), until the middle of Cata…
On Maelstrom, we raided the horde cities almost every other day for two whole expansions…Wrath and Cata.
I didn’t play on RPvP realm but I remember raiding major cities when bosses were boosted to wrath level in bc.
It was very fun, cata didn’t have many raids on major cities when I was playing it.
Server I was on was destroyed server transfers and faction transfers blew it to the point where one faction became like 10% or less in population while the other was 90%.
I played on Lightninghoof from ICC to Throne of Thunder. As a guild we did a lot of “defending our own” PVP. Basically, anything that someone in guild observed being attacked by hordies. Our guild also raids. The server population go low enough that the economy wasn’t good and we couldn’t recruit if anyone left for real life reasons. We had to server transfer.
We ended up with a pvp rather than an rppvp server. Because the economic considerations, server population, and community, all had to be considered. It isn’t just people from the current Emerald Dream who would role on a classic RPPvP server.
I don’t do a lot of “pvp for the sake of pvp”. However, I’m pretty much always down for “pvp for the sake of kicking the dirty horde out of our town… and then let’s go show them by killing their leader”.