What happened?
Grobbulus saw a huge culture shift since it’s inception from merges and transfers. If you’ve ever seen the 2019 guild location map, only 1 of the 47 guilds shown still exists on the server. It’s also dropped into life support population: From roughly 11,000 Horde and 11,000 Alliance on January 1st, 2023 to a stagnant total of about 2800 from both factions combined.
Meanwhile, the dead-icated RP-PVE server has less than 500 total active characters on it.
Where did everyone go? I was always attracted to the idea of RP communities in Classic because the more open-ended world-story and general ‘mood’ of Warcraft was undiluted and fertile ground for many different ideas. There was a strong presence in the original iteration of Grobbulus - people probably remember seeing GMs actively enforcing the naming policy (https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/135764) - the kind of presence that builds a living world with events, complex storylines, and all the usual suspects.
Whenever people discuss this, there will inevitably be someone who can link a Discord with a few dozen active members for ‘roleplay’ in their server - but anyone who played on primetime (2008-2014) Moon Guard or Wyrmrest Accord, even Emerald Dream can tell you that it isn’t sitting around in a bar once a month that makes a roleplay server. It’s the guilds, the prime movers, the people you remember.