Gonna sit on all these chairs we have over here on the Alliance. Ah so nice having all these chairs.
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Part of me has started to genuinely wonder if the reason why people are still trying to claim WrA is dead despite resurgence is because anything would look dead when compared to the absolute juggernaut MG-A is. And I feel like it’s only gotten worse when every RP resource I see is actively spotlighting MG and ignoring WrA, it wasn’t like that back in 2015 when I first got into things.
I still remember the guides I read and forum posts talking about how you choose a server based on server culture and what MG has more of and what WrA has more of, you don’t see that anymore.
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Yeah, I’ve noticed that 
If people keep actively saying that on the forums that WrA is dead, or saying in articles and streams about MG being the RP server, it’ll become a self fulfilling prophecy just like when people kept claiming MG was for Alliance RPers and we lost our Alliance RPers because they believed it, while so many of MG’s Horde RPers came here. The rumors wrecked faction walk up RP on 2 different servers.
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Huh.
Is it because of our cattiness or our moral self-certainty?
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i think one of the server imbalances resulted from fallout in some noble rp? logged in over the course of a week watching the server population plummet as everyone migrated to WRA to avoid each other
Part of this from what I’ve seen is because there’s been a bigger push to banish the notoriety MG has because of goldshire.
But we also lost a lot of events and performance spotlights that were home to WrA when shadowlands caused people to fall out of love with the game, and then the lawsuits happened. I know that’s not every rper’s thing, but it does give people a reason to stick around when the game is not all that fun or they’ve done their PvE/PvP push.
I think in that WrA also lost at least two organizers that kept up calendars and alerts for tracking what events were happening where on the server.
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I feel like the server has gone through a definite change since 2020. A lot of the people I knew who played wow then and quit haven’t come back. The new xpac brought people back, this is true! I’m delighted to see more people around. But the pessimist in me thinks it won’t be long before we see another decline in players. Then again, everyone is idling in Valdrakken these days. 
There is still RP to be had in org, but you have to be willing to approach others to make it happen. I read that most RP happens in guilds rather than in org, but I’m not sure what guilds they’re referring to when I can only recall 5 active ones. 
I am the first to admit, though I’ve been out of the rp loop for a very long time.
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I would think gauging guild activity isn’t that easy unless you’re in all of them to say, not a dig for clarification, just an observation I’ve made from idling about since bfa. Some keep to themselves much more than others do, and don’t necessarily recruit openly or frequent the main hang out. Some also aren’t meeting for rp more than a week or two at a time due to other activities in wow(pve/pvp) or outside of wow.
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I returned to WrA recently.
It looks like Horde RP is thriving.
Wyrmrest is my main server!
My life is more condusive to the “weekly D&D session” style of scheduled RP, and I’ve found the guild I found on this server fits my schedule really well. Walk-up RP is something I’ve never personally been interested in as I’d rather be out in the world doing stuff than standing around taverns!
I transferred here between WoD and Legion from Earthen Ring. It took me a long while to find a guild that was a good fit, but I’ve been RPing every week for the last year and a half! From my perspective, WrA is active with roleplayers! 
And I echo the sentiment about joining the WrA community project, lots of RP coordination here seems to happen out-of-game in Discord. I like visiting the events players on our server (and Moon Guard) put on throughout the months! I have a better experience with ‘walk-up’ style RP at those.
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Statistics, please. You’re talking numbers, so please give us the numbers, and the source. If you’ve got good data that would help us analyze the situation and take action then please share it.
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There really aren’t accurate population numbers anymore–as far as I know, blizz broke the mods powering sites that did a decent job taking a census of us like realmpop. WoWProgress exists but I don’t think it is effective at counting people who aren’t killing raid bosses.
I have no idea if Tammy’s claim is true, but I played on MG for a little while after DF launched and Stormwind is just… hectic there. If you do a TRP scan and try to tally up people in Stormwind on a busy night it was probably over 200 on a regular basis, just for rando walk up stuff.
It really is just sort of crazy how crowded it was. I am not playing right now so idk if that was just a “start of DF” thing or what, but I could believe that MG Alliance outnumbers WrA Horde and Alliance and then some. Exploring WM makes it seem that way too.
I don’t mean to bash WrA, I might come back if I resub because after the novelty of seeing ridiculous things happening in SW wore off I remembered that I don’t really do walk up RP anyway so playing on MG just means less stable servers and more annoying trade chat and the inability to use the name I’m used to, but the difference was really striking. I playing on MG before I came to WrA and always had alts there and I never really felt like the population numbers were all that significant pre-Shadowlands, things changed a lot while we were in the afterlife
I’ve always felt like the guilds here should do a little more public RP. I think this would be a substitute for the lack of walk up availability.
For all the talk of the differences between the two servers, I haven’t seen much mention of server cannon. Although I think that would be a whole other topic to discuss. The pros and cons and all.
WrA has never really ‘done’ server canon. I can’t really speak for BfA-DF because I haven’t been playing much during that time, but at least before that, server canon was generally regarded as something really terrible and a “MG/ED thing” that most people generally did not want. At least, that was the consensus among public/tavern RP at the time. I can’t speak for guilds and people who RP mostly within them.
E: I should say I can only read speak for my experience on WrA-A, as I have never really played on WrA-H.
I think the only server cannon that existed on WrA were the Korkron antics from a decade ago.
But I can’t talk about it because I wasn’t there, so I don’t know if that even counts.
In the past two years as Moonguard has morphed into this massive fungal colony of an almost overpoweringly large walkup RP scene I’ve started to wonder if WrA being allergic to server canon and organized scenes is really more of a detriment than anything. I mean clearly there’s a reason that MG-SW is practically carpeted with casual RPers, right?
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Ah… yes. Them. I can’t say the Kor’kron guild was particularly widely liked, partially due to their enforcement of server canon that put them in a theoretical position of power, and partially due to other reasons. There have been a few guilds trying to enforce server canon that amounts to them being an authority figure in some way. WrA-A had its share of those too a long time ago, but they usually were Stormwind Guard guilds (which, in a way, are arguably server canon, I think?) and then guilds claiming ownership over taverns.
E:
I have to say it’s been a plethora of things and I don’t think the lack of server canon is one of them. I know a few people who moved to MG-A, and they largely dislike server canon and the ‘clique’ behavior it enforces. They moved because they were told that’s where non-guild casual RP is/was where WrA has ‘guild/Horde RP only’ and they wanted to nothing to do with either.
People will get absolutely flabbergasted when I get immediately irritated at people saying Moonguard is the Alliance scene but the entire reason I do that is because I genuinely believe a large portion of MG RPers would be way happier on WRA, but they were told our server is dead over and over and so much that they can’t work up the motivation to try it.
I do think you have a point that a large reason behind why the population started swinging was because of a guerilla sentiment that spread from late-BFA to Shadowlands about how MG is the Alliance RP server to be. And quite frankly, I hate it lmao
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You’re not alone in that sentiment, really. I know before BfA the idea of MG = casual, WrA = guilds was already spreading, mostly out of good-intention even when it wasn’t wholly true at the time. Unfortunately, I think the only thing that can start to get the ball rolling in the other direction is guild-hosted public events on WrA that do not focus on recruitment and instead focus on providing a means of networking, as well as the events being cross-realm. It’ll come down to drawing in a trickle of interested people that will eventually even out the population through word-of-mouth. It’ll just take quite some time and be a lot of work, as well as be vulnerable to Blizzard policies and expansion plots. Shadowlands was not good for RP no matter where you were.
It also means that guilds who have the focus and means to do so need to start cropping up- looking at my calendar right now is a plethora of guild RP events out in the Dragon Isles, PVE nights, mog runs, and more. Our entire guild concept is one focused on campaign style settings and militant stuff, and I’ve even shot down a few suggestions to like, run bar nights in Stormwind.
Because as hilarious as it would be, having your drinks served by a gaggle of extremely violent paladins would make about as much sense as the entire plot of Slands.
It’s something I’ve missed, Noble guilds, guard guilds, crime guilds, bar guilds, trading guilds. I’ve even started suggesting to some MG RPers that WrA is a good place to set up if you’re looking for a niche without much competition.
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