Thanks to everyone who commented and provided me with some insight into how it was back in the day. Honestly I did not expect many of the things mentioned here.
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Stormwind used to have big, sometimes unplanned events.
One of these was an event where the Twilightâs Hammer handed out free ice cream (or cookies) to people having a big communal picnic in Cathedral Square. Those who ate the ice cream however, would become possessed by the Old Gods, and would begin to transform into monsters, screaming âShurânab, shurânab, Yogg Saron!â
Another instance was where a speech was given by the nobles of Stormwind where a whole crowd had gathered to listen, and responded by rioting. There were just under a hundred real players involved.
RP-PvP in the past, before the age of Sharding, was something anyone could show up to without signing up. The Highlands Campaign by Waywatcher was arguably the most legendary. At least one hundred player characters fought in a siege for Dragonmaw Hold, battling over the river delta. There were siege weapons, flying mounts, and back then, the only way you could deal with griefers was by hiring professional PvPers to protect the roleplayers.
It used to be thereâd be courts and trials for things that happened IC, such as wars that happened in Stromgarde. People roleplayed there even with the city in a ruined state, which produced a bleak atmosphere. The church and the one intact, unfurnished house proved to be hubs of activity.
Ages, and ages ago. Before Cataclysm, The Golden Keg was an empty, NPC-less tavern with no name. There was a guild on Alliance that ran the place, roleplaying serving drinks, cooking meals, and providing lodgings for people. One way or another, when Cataclysm revamped Stormwind City, the name ended up being applied to the new Dwarven District tavern. Ironically it proved the death-knell of that guild, as the kitchen and cellar were no longer accessible.
The Dwarf District was also briefly taken over by a rebellion of peasants, who attempted to turn the district, much like Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong, or the Paris Commune, into its own autonomous city, built according to egalitarian ideals. There was a street war between those who took the district over, and the city guard and watch.
For a long time, similar, Defias-inspired quasi-Revolutionary militia guilds would show up, often basing themselves in far flung parts of the world, such as Fray Island, which was once a semi-active hub of outlaw activity.
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I think what I most miss about that era was the lack of elitism. There was a lot of weird gubbins thrown to the wall, but it didnât really matter because there were so many roleplayers, and such variety of characters and inspirations, that if you werenât keen on what one person or group of people were offering, you could always move on to the next. You could always reign stuff in later without being shamed if it was too odd.
People didnât take anything half as seriously as they do now, and I feel somethingâs been lost with that. We have more consistency, but less creativity.
Azeroth once felt like a world where anything could happen, and you could meet -anyone-, everyone from jungle-dwelling tribals to chivalric knights to edgy assassins, clockwork doll people, corrupt nobles, and serious, serious Dwarves. There used to be so many more Dwarves, for example.
I wonât claim it was a rose garden. There was far less LGBTQIA+ tolerance than there is now, the drama that did happen was louder and a lot more public. The bullies, power-players and griefers would go to horrendous lengths to harass and ruin the experiences of people they didnât like. In a way, it was much as the internet at the time, an unsafe wild west filled with strangeness and brilliance, where you never quite knew what to expect.
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I have fond memories of that campaign.
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holy moly them there pixels is me from 2010
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Me too.
lol, I am in the crowd there, somewhere, as well. I actually recognize some of the characters in that clip, I think Iâve seen Thuy, Erahn, and probably Genevieve as well.
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Back in the day you had to be really careful about using any Gryphonheart Items given to you by a certain dwarfâŚ
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I second this, but only because of scarcity and relevance. No one cares to take things out of hand because it really does not matter to them all that much anymore. Ten, fifteen years ago it was all they cared about. AD RP was the best and biggest game theyâd ever played. People can say whatever they like nowadays, but who here roleplays their character for 8 hours a day seven days in a row in 2025? It made the world real-time. Something you did yesterday happened yesterday, not an indeterminate while ago. Did you hear what happened to those adventurers on the road to Lakeshire last night? Yeah, I heard it was bad. Oh, I was actually among them. Really? Is it true that the thing happened? Oh yes, et cetera.
Thatâs the biggest difference in my mind. RP used to be constant and consistent and personal.
Thatâs why gatekeeping emerged to begin with, even in its basest form of literacy. If you didnât type well, you were a lesser player. If your concept was out of whack you were segregated. God I miss it. People would actually whisper you about things your character did and you cared enough about your RP to argue with this stranger for hours.
To answer the question, it was like a youth culture of a city that never really existed.
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Sorry that this is off topic, but as a PvP enjoyer, I kinda like the idea of more PvP in RP, but I am also aware of why people moved away from it. Last time I was thinking about participating in actual duel tournament was sometime in shadowlands and if I am completely honest I even entertained the thought mostly because I had a chance to gear diff people.
But since I am washed these days (I usually just get elite sets I want and quit, but this season I havent even conquest capped because âlife, uh⌠Finds a wayâ), I was wondering how feasible would this actually be now.
Lets say having it be opened to players below lets day 1600 rating in the current expansion or within the past few expansions? You know, some line that any new player can reach, so it would be opened to non PvPers as well. But how would people feel about lets say visible check pvp requirements, gear checks or banning fury warriors from attending and other mandatory rules. And what about my fellow healers, is there something we could do for them gameplaywise?
What about team fights in warmode or one of the open world PvP arenas? People are always worried about griefers, but in my years of RP and usually making my name green during even emote fights, I have seen maybe 3 cases of someone tried to grief RP and they always got bodied instantly by the PvPers among the RPers.
I know this is not the thread for this, but then again I imagine not enough people care about PvP gameplay in RP to derail it, just curious about peopleâs thoughts about how it would look today, what would it need to be done, why it would or wouldnt work etc, you get it
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As I havenât seen this one yet;
In vanilla, the RP was much more LotR inspired. When GoT came out (during Cata iirc?), there was a sharp shift towards darker themes, and overall just a darker feel compared to the lighter, more poetic form that was with LotR as the primary source of popular inspiration.
I miss when a lot of people were trying to be Aragorn, rather than some morbidly edgy Lord of Housington.
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Legolis
Letgolas
Leagilas
Elven hunters. Elven hunters everywhere.
Tbh I think, much as Iâm not prone to âit was better thenâ notions, I do miss stuff like Senâjin being a thing on the regular, walking from tb to org just being a casual thing groups did etc.
Cataclysm has a lot to answer for in terms of how much it damaged the connected nature of the zones. I remember being part of a group that walked from the snow region in north Kalimdor right down to tanaris. Just a casual night of pure travel rp.
Itâs difficult to do that now, and tbh I doubt many have the patience for it anymore even if it was possible.
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The GoT phase soon died during Legion or was that after? But I do remember a total shifting of guild scenes being inspired by GoT. A lot of Guilds being a house guild or even a branch of said house guild of being some private military.
Iâve got to disagree with this, Elitism was rife back in the day, people would go out of their way to exclude other guilds/characters whoâs RP standards didnât meet their own, people would joke and make memes about other Roleplayers.
There was more general roleplay back then so if you werenât accepted by the wider community at the time it wasnât a huge issue because you could find other independent people who were most likely also on the fringes with you and just vibe, but the gate keeping over quality was very much alive and well.
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Iâve been thinking of this more than once lately, so you just gave me the excuse I needed to start a new thread about it where people can discuss the topic with reckless abandon:
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Guess youâre right. My bad.
I remember Dragon Age: Origins was a big influence too.
Before Chronicle, magic wasnât very well defined, so everyone started acting as though Azeroth needed paladins as a kindâve Templar analogue.
I donât miss everyone using âSerâ as a title. âSireâ sounds much more elegant.
I never really liked ASoIAF. Iâve made several attempts at getting into the books. It feels like fantasy for people who donât like fantasy.
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It was a mixed bag, as all things are.
There were the bad things.
Warlock licenses.
Mages were expected to be able to cast very few if any spells (this applied to most casters honestly), and had to take long rests to recover spell slots.
Shamans who wielded more than 1 element were considered poweremoters.
Warriors, hunters and rogues were treated as normal dandies with no superhuman abilities. If you used heroic leap in RP you were a bsd rper. If you used stealth in game, you were a bad rper. If you tamed any more exotic pet than a bird, cat, boar, raptor etc? You bet you were a bad rper.
Lots of race specific guilds with dirty laundry due to officers, rampant erp or something else. Huojin Guard, AHG and a few others come to mind.
The overall community was very, very judgemental and kept a tight leash on overall character concepts and ideas. Or tried to, at least. Pre Spine of Kalimdor and more importantly, the Red August, Horde as the smaller faction was treated by many Alliance players as a npc faction designed to lose.
But there were also good things.
Due to lack of Discord, the rp was not as bubbly and you could run into people rping even when RPing.
Due ro lack of cross rp, the faction divide was stronger and as such, there was a lot more conflict between factions. Campaigns happened like 4 times a year, now you are lucky if there is one. And there were loads of smaller skirmishers and events between those- Hell, sometimes (often) fighting between two guilds dragged in other guilds, until a small skirmish turned into a massive meatgrinder.
And very simply, WoW was better back then in just about any metric you looked at. That meant there was more people. Many of us were also youbg and passionate about the game, which made the RP feel alive.
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The playerbase was significantly younger, so secondary school tier drama was rife.
On this topic, Blizzard did something to their servers around the time they introduced phasing. So, generally, campaigns on the scale of the Borderlands or Ashes of Draenor are difficult to do these days (due to the decline in playerbase and server tech changing). You would have hundreds of roleplayers fighting in one zone and the lag was minor. Where as now, the servers struggle with anything with a large number of players.
I think the latter of those two campaigns got on the front mage of mmo-champion due to its sheer scale.
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I remember two being standard, same with death knight schools.
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And âRogue Death Knightsâ everywhere was completely normal. Still not sure how that started or why so many collectively called themselves that.
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I concur. I cannot speak for Classic to WotLk, but already around MoP there was plenty of toxicity, gatekeeping, and policing around acceptable role-play.
Elitism was massive.
If the depths of memory serve, I think people got very gatekeepy about âThere are no Deathknights outside the Ebon Blade!â
Same as back in MoP I got a few whispers confidently informing me that, gnah, ACKSHULLY, there was no Order of the Silver Hand left.
Legion made me very smug, and I donât mind admitting that 
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