It is THE BEST time there’s ever been to get back into era. Here is why:
- Established long term communities exist. Very populated server clusters exist.
- Niche communities exist (fresh rerolls, micro servers)
- Population is growing. People are tired of Season of Flavor of the Week and CataMistsOfBattleForBlah.
- OG vanilla was always the best game (my opinion) and Era has the happiest players. It’s such a community oriented game!
- The game never ends or “moves on” to TBC! Play at your pace.
Now to your point, GDKPs and meta chasing. Ugh. I hate it too. I play on Grobbulus ([Era] Join Legacy of Grobbulus: Forge Your Legend Today!) where we remain unclustered. We have no GDKPs, and run a single guild on each faction.
The alliance guild, Legacy, raids M/F 9pm to 12am Central time. We just got our first KT kill a month or so ago, and would love some new friends to join our crazy band.
The horde guild, Requiem, raids Saturdays as the same time I believe and is progressing in MC and BWL.
Neither of our guilds will ever run a GDKP, nor do they exist on our server.
Alternatively, if you’re looking for a more “fresh” experience, a group of folks started up a fresh re-roll on Deviate Delight. You can’t transfer there by virtue of it being a fresh campaign, but it’s a great time to start if that’s your thing: https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/1chne2i/phases_and_faq_fresh_server_movement_on_deviate/
Last, Mankirk and Whitemane remain the most populated servers. However, they are rampant with GDKP and well inflated economies. I’m not trying to speak to the pros and cons of GDKP here (both exist), but I’m with you, and it’s not my cup of tea. That being said, I’m told you can find non GDKP guilds there too!
Hope this helps you and anyone else looking for alternatives to the primary clusters.