Some folks have been asking me or in general about the current state of Earthen Ring, how merging might happen, what else we can do. Having been making efforts to keep the server afloat for years, I can say that I just don’t know. I’m burnt out on it. Maybe Dragonflight will breath some life into me again (with respect to WoW), but I doubt it. In trying to put together a healthy community on the server, really all I’ve done is just bring people under my guild’s umbrella because it’s was mostly all I could reliably offer. And, sure, our guild is active and lively, I am forced to draw conclusions from this.
Either Blizzard thinks what we’re doing is enough and server is fine, or Blizzard thinks the server was already fine as is. As I’ve told some folks, every once in a while, around expansion launches, the server spikes in pop and sometimes hit Medium pop. Additionally, there’s still lots of random players in old guild that they refuse to leave that still play their own way. RP may even happen, I just don’t see it ever. I don’t have access to the data, and Blizzard hasn’t ever contacted me despite my attempts.
There are some things I’m still willing to do. If @Blizzard wants to contact me, they still can. I’m always happy to chat about things and it’d feel great to work with people that maybe actually get some stuff done. Additionally, if DF brings a lot of people back, I may start to push for existing Communities to expand, so that people have more access to the kind of play they wanna do. Such as it is, I’ve put together a Discord for Earthen Ring that’s fairly quiet, and I have Valor, a guild that is very active, but can only home so many and definitely is intended toward people that want to do a lot of the game’s group play, or facilitate it, like through grinding out rare mounts, mog, or pets that we give away at in-game parties.
Ultimately, I wonder if the server isn’t so dead as much as it is chock full of isolated people and groups: Some clinging to an old guild that’s slowly lost players and can’t do much in terms of content or event organization. Some just in an “alt guild” that they made for themselves and moved all their toons into as whatever guild they were in died so they could have more storage space for their solo endeavors. Some refusing to join a guild because they haven’t have a positive experience in one yet, and just assume all guilds are somehow bad. Some just not caring enough either way and have gotten used to playing alone, or PuGing, or LFR/LFD since you can gain access to everything from them alone. There’s a ton of ways to be invisible in this game to everyone but Blizzard. If we haven’t been merged yet, I have to conclude that Blizz has a good reason for it. They’d merged other servers that were worse off than us. Perhaps we’re not that bad?
All I can offer is this: If you want to play the game, as long as it’s not RP, I can help you. And if their is some RPer or group of RPers that want to build something for themselves, I will also help as best as I can with that, as well, but I’m limited in that department. I can offer game play in terms of Raids, M+ and possibly PvP. Otherwise, we may have to accept the possibility that, for better or worse, in Blizzard’s eyes, we are fine.
