Quite honestly the server has quite a history. Most the people here now don’t know of the players and guilds that paved the way for the WPvP server Emerald Dream was known for which caused quite the influx of players. The history I see referred to now is Cata and beyond, or later. The server used to be super guarded by the RP/WPvP community, and were able to control it really well because A) you couldn’t have characters on both factions on the same server, unless you had two accounts which most didn’t and B) you could only come to a RP/PvP server if you came from an RP or RP/PvP realm for a the longest time. So if you wanted to come from a PvP or PvE server, you had to re-roll. Once Blizzard opened that up the community that was here that was already thriving with many rivalries and RP in nature WPvP, had a very hard time controlling the community. Because of how healthy the WPvP was on Emerald Dream and the very public rivalries on the forums there was a big influx of players from PvP servers only coming for the WPvP, and some of course “LOL RP SERVER” so they made some of the RP guilds and events targets. So there are 2 or 3 versions of Emerald Dream. Pre-Cata, Cata to Legion, and current Emerald Dream.
Best to leave the past behind and keep it in the history books.
Should focus on the realm for what it is and how it has changed rather than looking back on what it used to be. Y’know, just like with people.
Warmode killed a lot of the world pvp here sadly.
Warmode, phasing, LFG/LFD/CRZ etc… Blizzard just broke realm communities with all of this nonsense.
This is the one huge benefit Classic has over Retail.
Y’know all I ever see is people whining about wpvp being dead.
Imagine if all those people actively wpvpd… Hmmst makes you think.
I know the few of us that actually do go out, have no trouble finding fights.
Are they 80 v 80 lagfests? No. Were those ever fun? No.
Scabber #1, actually
Pretty much this. I remember when I’d go out into the world and see familiar faces. Now, whenever I go out into the world I see a bunch of people from a different realm that I’m never going to see again.
With warmode splitting the population up between those who enjoy WPvP and those who don’t makes for even less interaction with the same people unless I avidly seek them out.
Then you have phasing added ontop of that which further splits the already split population up even more, thus decreasing the chances of seeing familiar faces even more.
Then there’s the LFG tools that allow players to bring in other players from obscure realms that aren’t connected to that shard. There have been countless times where Im with 10 or so guildmates and then out of nowhere 30 Alliance players just phase in, all of which are from a multitude of different realms that I never knew even existed, with the party leader being the only person from the same realm as me and my group.
All of these things have slowly killed the large community ED once had. Gone are the days of rivalries and the huge realm-wide RP-PvP events and just rp-pvp in general, which was one of the main reasons I came to ED. And now with Classic being thing EDs already dwindling RP-PvP/Normal RP populations even further. Most of the main roleplayers I would rp with on a weekly basis moved to Classic and do their RP/RP-PvP there since communities are much easier to build over there where everybody is from the same realm and where off-realmers can’t pop up out of nowhere.
I’m sure some people will tell me the rp scene on ED isn’t dead, but all public, non-guild, community building events for the past few months have been nothing but the same, at least on Horde side(the discords been pretty dead).
And when it comes to WPvP it’s pretty bad too. Yeah, with warmode you can find fights pretty easily, but it’s never with anyone from the realm you’re on. It’s, unless you get lucky, a bunch off-realmers that you will most likely never see again. I don’t know about others, nor will I try to speak for them, but I dislike seeing off-realmers in WPvP. Some of my best WPvP memories are from fighting people on my realm, such as the time when me and 4 of my guildmates got our Alliance Slayer titles fighting 5v10 against Kill Order and winning. Or those times where Clan Battlehammer would raid the Orgrimmar portal room, or the times where SSC would raid the Stormwind portal room, or the various RP-PvP warfronts we had going on this expansion with the multiple Horde and Alliance guilds of ED.
These WPvP encounters and events were a large reason of why I put up with an awful expansion like BfA, and now that the community is pretty much on its last legs with little hope of a recovery there’s pretty much no reason to play anymore outside of keeping up to date on my dailies and transmog hunting. I’ve made a lot of friends on this realm in the last 2 years of BfA. I’ve lost a lot of friends in the last 2 years of BfA. I’ve made allies. I’ve made enemies. This isn’t how I wanted to end this post, but I felt like I had to say how I felt about the community of ED and how it’s changed, especially since the community was a large portion of why I even played.
This isn’t the issue. The issue is the quality. 3/4 of the people you see are from different servers. Even when there are people from your server there, they’re just slapped on a different shard for no reason. My guildies and I have litteraly tried to set up small skims with our horde/alliance characters and can’t see each other.
Uhhhh this still happens… Have you been in nazjatar or some of the capitals? Sharding did not fix this.
So much this. Blizzard did a spotlight on Ed and it’s community driven wpvp. It’s why I came to Ed (I had a few friends here too). Then instead of blizzard trying to bring everyone to our level they brought us down to the gutter where everyone else is.
Lol I hate the gearing and the sheer number of people that spend entirely too much on grenades and stuff… But man the community and wpvp is solid.
When me and my guild tried to do WPvP half of our group would be stuck on a different shard and we’d have to spend a few mins trying to get everyone on the same shard.
I have no issue running across Ed players and guilds. I see plenty of the same people enough to have rivalries.
If you wpvp enough you would too.
I never said lag didn’t exist. I said the large 80v80 fights aren’t frequent.
Phasing and lag is another issue.
The community is still very much there.
Way too many do nothing “remember the good ole days” people running around not doing anything tho.
Don’t enjoy the game anymore? Ok leave.
Want more roleplay? Go roleplay, create that community…
Want more wpvp? Go wpvp, build that community…
This game is what you make it and if ya wanna be miserable and whine, the game is going to oblige ya.
Eh well I’d have to agree to disagree here.
Our set up stuff still works alright. The natural occuring stuff is nowhere near what it used to be.
Lol what? Why are you getting your back so hard up man? You know it’s okay to criticize things you like right? Did I say Ed is the worst now? No I didn’t. Ed is still the best out there. I just don’t think it holds a glimmer to it’s past self. Why are you defending blizzards choices that have directly caused it? It has nothing to do with the community and everything to do with blizzard.
Holy man, you need to chill… We get it… You let the game. Some of us liked it more before and have every right to criticize blizzard for bad game design choices. Nothing’s perfect, it wasn’t perfect before either. Criticism is gonna happen, you need to learn to take it better.
Sorry, I’m lumping you in with the others constant barrage of whining/complaining.
Gets really old, when a majority of the community is just doing that instead of being proactive.
I’m gonna 100% agree with Lluagor. The lack of RP outside of events is fully a community thing and not due to “bad game design”. It’s easy and convenient to blame Blizzard for the lack of walk-up RP due to War Mode and sharding, but the fact is when you go to Moon Guard or Wyrmrest Accord, they have that in spades. Most of the walk-up crown ditched ED for WRA and MG because they didn’t want to stand up against the trolls and griefers, which is their choice but it sure did put a big dent in the community here on ED.
Yeah, it was better before the great migration. Yeah, it was cool going to a tavern and being able to have hours on hours of cool interactions. Yeah, it sucks these days, but blaming Blizzard for something that just isn’t true is empty whining. You wanna see more walk-up? Support people like me and Lluagor who host regular walk-up events. Go hang out at the taverns. I do all the time and while walk-ups aren’t regular, they are so wonderful when they happen!
Yes the players can do more, 100%. Still, you can’t take away what blizzard has done to us. Game design and decisions have done a lot to dismantle it.
Warmode/phasing and sharding aside there’s also the endless grind. We’ve always had competitive pvpers on this server. Main difference was before we had downtime to make things happen.
Rp is one of the things I enjoy a lot. I also enjoy PvP a lot, probably slightly more than rp. The problem for me is the amount of time I have for this game is consumed by the massive ENDLESS grind that blizzard insists on giving us. What little time I have left I do rp with the guild.
I still love ed, I still think it’s the best server out there. I get why you want to put some of it back on the community, which is fair. Still though, people have a right to be upset with blizzard for doing their damndest to dismantle what we had for how many expansions? If we don’t complain and let blizzard know they fd up, things will only continue to get worse.
Of course it’s important to hold Blizzard accountable. It’s also important to compartmentalize each problem and figure out what kinds of solutions there are. The war mode/sharding issue is a wPvP issue, and something that people have managed to get around with some creativity. Just look at the Raven War going on right now. The problems I was specifically addressing are a community problem. I have done what I can to address that, and it feels good. It feels really good to create something that lasts.
For sure… WOD was an expansion that blizzard purposely abandoned. The community however pulled together and made it awesome despite the massive content drought.
Still I’d appreciate it if blizzard stopped messing with us 
I agree with this.
I have come back to forum hopping cause someone said the salt was gone? I guess not 
I never understand folks like Garrotex who whine, complain and rage about how trash of a server it is yet still remain here. I guess that’s the original definition of troll 
. Good to still see some names here I recognize though.
He realm swapped a while ago.
Point still stands.
Stayed here too long trying to spread his own personal misery. Never proactive. Constantly negative.
Would try to be nice, work with him, would always instantly start complaining. No one wants to be around that.
Hope he is happier on WrA.