Recently, we’ve had several threads in this forum telling us, Argent Dawn, that we need Non-RPers/OOCers in order to have a server that isn’t a ghost town. They’re wrong, but this thread isn’t about that. This is a thread for people to talk about the RP servers they started on, Sha’tar, Defias Brotherhood, Earthen Ring and others, and how those servers died. This is because a lot of people don’t quite seem to grasp the damage that OOCers do to a server. Some of us, like myself, have only seen the slow decline on Argent Dawn, as it’s the only server we’ve RP’d on. Many others have seen the death of their first RP servers due to an influx of OOCers. So, without further ado, I ask those people who’ve had to flee to Argent Dawn, to tell their stories, so that others may learn and understand why it’s important to resist OOCers from flooding the last RP realm.
So, how do OOCers destroy servers? You didn’t post one argument towards that, and only made the claim they do so.
ER and MG all died because Argent Dawn has always been the most populated, succesfull RP realm. People simply migrated here because there was more RP to go around.
There isn’t a large enough RP community to sustain multiple realms.
It was just one thread, really.
How about parking mounts on top of people trying to RP and when the newbie asks you how often that happens, you have to be straight with him and tell him; “all the time”?
Come on, I’m RPing in Stormwind all the time, around the busiest spots and that doesn’t happen “all the time.” It happens occasionally and it is annoying, but I find it very, very hard to believe that this is how OOCers kill servers.
You sure it’s not just people wanting to have more RP available for them, and just leaving their desolate realms for the more populated ones? It’s kinda like urbanization, except for RP servers.
The same phenomenon happened to PvE and PvP realms. All the low and medium populated servers died out and everyone flocked to the few big realms like Kazzak, Draenor, Twisting Nether, Tarren Mill and Silvermoon.
Oh, I still remember the Mammoths.
Sweet Jesus, how I hated the Mammoths…
Yes i’m sure.
Also, this patronising, “oh it can’t be that bad” doesn’t help your cause.
Your in yet another griefing guild, so your opinion in this thread doesn’t matter.
Indeed, this is a thread for people from the realms we’ve lost to tell us what happened. Not for people who should 
to get pink faced all over again.
We already concluded I am not in Sephuz’s Secret, and I am not aware of anyone doing any grieving in Fruit Basket. If that happens I would love to hear about that.
I’m asking for any arguments towards that. Your post provides none, it’s just a claim.
Fruit Basket is as bad.
Now on topic, because i bookmarked the reply;
I came from Sha’tar, a little server that had a vibrant RP scene.
Until the day an Alliance guild called Dark Glare came. They saw that the server had no raid scene, so they thought they’d bring it, they had no intention of RPing, just getting server firsts.
That then attracted their far inferior Horde Mirror; Ambition and let me tell you (because I did not have an alliance at the time so cannot tell you how Dark Glare affected the server, but I can tell you how Ambition did).
Ambition liked to stand mammoths on top of RPers, they liked to revel in their glory of disrupting the RP on Horde side, they were a trash guild, they couldn’t get server first so their guild leader transferred to another server, got it there and then transferred back. They often stood around Valley of Honour being OOC (you know, the zone in Orgrimmar the RPers are relegated to?).
They sure as hell helped choke the life out of Sha’tar.
But you all know, I’m mainly preaching to the choir.
Well and the few people who need glass stomachs to see, but they won’t take heed anyway.
EDIT: Oh, before I forget. The Sha’tar had a raiding scene before them.
The Sha’tar did not die because of OOC’ers tbh. It died during Cataclysm due to immense migration to AD. A lot of the role-playing scene stopped playing WoW too.
Partially down to sh*t lore.
i didn’t say it was the sole reason, I said that it didn’t help having a 50% chance to get a mammoth pakred on your head when you tried to RP in Orgrimmar or Silvermoon.
I was also from The Sha’tar, its where I made my first character and its where I first learned to RP.
One of my first experiences with OOCers was witnessing a night elf ask in Local Defense, of all places, for someone who wanted to RP. I asked him why he asked in Local Defense, and he told me that he was shunned in General and Trade for wanting to RP, despite The Sha’tar being a RP realm. I went to check Trade, and sure enough, there were OOCers still making fun of him for wanting to rp and actually gloating that they had taken over the server and ruined the fun for the people who wanted to RP.
That guy and I had to RP outside of Stormwind and very often in less well known places because the moment we tried to RP in Stormwind, Dárksláyér and players with similar amounts of áéíóú would get onto a mammoth, stand on top of us, and follow us around Stormwind.
I ended up transferring to Argent Dawn because I knew, even at my young age at the time, that trying to RP on The Sha’tar was nearly impossible with the onslaught of OOCers who had joined the realm and bullied rpers out.
OOCers definitely played a part in why it died. They were not the only reason, but they were certainly a prominent reason. Most people on ER were perfectly fine with being on a smaller server, some even finding AD too big.
As I said, people migrated to AD, true, but we worked on trying to get RP back on its feet. Then Heritage of Hellscream came to Stormwind every single night to disrupt RP.
That was the final nail in the coffin.
I bet the gloaters were in either; Dark Glare or A Perfect Circle.
if i could remember i would absolutely tell you but this was a good 7-8 years ago
I don’t recall the exact time that the ‘exodus’ so-to-speak took place on The Sha’tar, but I do recall finally making the move to Argent Dawn myself very early on in Mists of Pandaria, so I can only assume that it began during the second half of Cataclysm.
The Sha’tar was my first taste of roleplay, and I loved every second of it the moment I had begun, even if I was horrid at it; even if I roleplayed a generic human rogue with the character name Poíson who ultimately amounted to little more than getting drunk with his death knight friend Zenth, also a human who often got drunk, cried, and we rode away together on his Mekgineer’s Chopper.
Yes, that did happen.
I sucked at it, but I made a lot of friends, many of which I’ve lost and a few of which I’ve kept. Most of the friends I had at the time eventually began to slowly trickle away from The Sha’tar, singing of greener pastures on Argent Dawn. I didn’t really understand why this was, but I was always met with a similar answer, one that essentially eluded to The Sha’tar and the community it had dying.
Was it? I didn’t see it, but I was much more oblivious to these things at the time, and I was far too enveloped in the world of roleplay that I had come to love; it was a great pastime after school when I still attended, and it was a fantastic distraction (perhaps a little too fantastic - I’d have probably had better grades if I spent a little less time on the game, but I did okay nonetheless).
As more time passed, I did eventually begin to see less and less people roleplaying in the Mage Quarter of Stormwind (this, from what I recall, had always been The Sha’tar’s Cathedral Square). It was confusing to begin with, but as some people continue to deny, I did begin to see more and more people without roleplaying profiles - people with silly, non-RP friendly names and guilds that had no interest in roleplaying whatsoever. More and more of my friends left, but I was stubborn for a very long time and refused to concede the realm to people that had come to it without engaging in a shred of RP.
Long story short, as I mentioned at the beginning of the post, I did move to Argent Dawn eventually - the community had dwindled so drastically that there essentially wasn’t a community left, and so it more or less became a matter of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’.
There’s not a doubt in my mind that I’ve had the best roleplay I’ve ever partaken in on Argent Dawn, and I’ve improved dramatically. That, however, does not mean I am or ever have been pleased about the fate that became The Sha’tar, and by association, the other roleplaying servers that exist. I would genuinely like the young people that have an interest in roleplaying to experience it in the same way as I did, but those younger people now only have one option left - Argent Dawn.
I don’t want to see the realm suffer the same fate as all the others, because if it does, that’s it - there are no more roleplaying realms EU side. World of Warcraft has the largest and most vibrant RP community I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing (maybe there are large RP communities in other games, but I don’t know of them - I’ve only experienced GW2, and that was very small and has only grown smaller), and I don’t want to see it dwindle like it has on every other realm.
I want people to experience it, and when one of the largest factors of realm death in the past has been due to an uncontrollable influx of OOC players that sends the roleplaying community into a downward spiral until it crashes and no longer exists, I am naturally going to oppose the notion and possibility of the same occurring on Argent Dawn.
TL;DR - My server died due to a massive influx of OOC players and the community ceased to exist and I don’t want that to happen to Argent Dawn as people interested in roleplay should be able to have the same experience I first did when I began roleplaying
Reading your post it sounds more like this:
It just sounds like people left and in the end, all that stayed behind was the OOCers who were already there, and probably increased in numbers as no new RPers were joining the server.
I mean to be honest, a bunch of community pillars left for AD, there was nobody to run events, etc. People generally just gave up on The Sha’tar altogether without putting up any kind of fight. It’s easy to blame all of the OOC mongering, but tbh, I am a firm believer in that I am responsible for my own immersion and when I’m role-playing, OOC characters are invisible to me.
I never integrated well into Argent Dawn’s brand of role-play, even prior to the death of The Sha’tar. Honestly not sure why to this day.
^exactly this. Most of the big guild leaders started jumping ship and then other people started doing the same thing. Nobody really cared about the realm in the end. Blaming OOC players was an ez excuse.
It also came down to the shrinking community in-general because Cataclysm was not a popular expansion by any means, especially in the latter half. As the PB got smaller, the smaller realms began to shrink - logically it makes sense for role-players to want to go to a realm that has more of a population on offer.
It had nothing to do with OOC players, imo.
naw, i know, it was a very long time ago.
I at least had the pleasure of front row seats as APC’s mirror guild on Horde imploded (called Imperfect Circle)