i’m such a nostalgia merchant man my goggles are as rosetinted as they come. skip to a random timestamp in that video, old WoW graphics and transmogs just make me go “hell yeah”
take me back to the silvered bronze boot/battle-worn gauntlets human male warrior combo
I am obviously “newer” than most of the roleplaying community but looking back now, I see that even back in WoD it was much different. Like I remember people taking the lore and canon much more seriously than nowadays. I remember how I was corrected about basically everything, including my transmog as it wasn’t “Kaldorei appropriate”.
This is why I’ve always thought the title was ironic.
I still keep a Master’s Hat around for when I’m feeling especially edgy. It’s kept in a “Break In Case Of An Emergency” box. So far, so good.
edit for answer to thread: it was better, it worse, some things never change etc., people need to touch grass
I 'member the OG Battlefield Barrens (RP-PvP) between Mok’lohn Command and Lionmaw Vanguard… That was like in what, '10? '11?
By the nine divines I’m old…
It was 2013, I remember that because I was in the Lionmaw Vanguard at the time
2013?! holy moly, i thought it was before Pandaria. Not only am I old I have the memory of a goldfish too 
Though it was a good time, I recall being in LMV around that time too, though no clue what character, i forgor
Indeed it did - and I am still chasing such heights some twelve (!) years later. Fond memories!
I think it was this video posted with some 70K views: WoW / Argent Dawn-EU Ashes of Draenor: The Overlook - YouTube
Absolute cinema.
Oh gosh I remember this too!!! The fighting was intense especially for its day, but it’s such a blurred memory.
I’d have to say my favourite campaign thus far has been Ogrepowered, I still look back upon it fondly!
I want to see more YouTube videos of campaigns. Watching them years later is the most nostalgic thing to watch next to listening to WoW vanilla music.
Thy request is mine command; some campaigns by other players that I’ve recorded:
It’s already 6-7 years since Drums of War? Time flies.
I have watched these so many times it isn’t even funny anymore.
Just the Frozen Heart 2 and Drums of War is something special.
In a different vein here’s a video Flinkz the leader of the Gnomish Territorial Army made about the time there were 50 guard guilds in Stormwind back in 2016?
Here is another campaign!
The Legacy of the Saurok: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6UZjsjx3ak
and for night elf vibes, the Starhost (which admittedly is a Legion thing): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L5Kqszg1FQ
I missed this comment, it has seriously been 6-7 years since Drums of War? Unbelievable, it feels like yesterday I was rushing home from work to catch the bus to log in on time for the main events.
Is there a video out there of Orras’ “The Rift” campaign from Mists of Pandaria (I believe) which took place in Dustwallow Marsh?
The granular roleplay wasn’t exactly better or worse, but people would more commonly roleplay out their conflicts since they lacked access to a cramped and bunkered Discord community to run off to where they could enjoy the play aspect of feeling affronted or superior or validated as they projected another type of character: themself.
Most roleplayers are genuinely not here to roleplay; they want to be part of a community. The RP is just a pretext that sustains this. And that’s not a condemnation. You wouldn’t have the same expectation of purity of interest in battle royales for a group of friends who played Fortnite together and nor should you.
But before Discord, people more commonly had to express their tribal spirit in the game and it would generally translate to actual roleplay instead of retreat. The form was usually passive aggressive ‘drama’, but there really was some good dramatic storytelling born this way as well. If nothing else it certainly cut through the sitcom-like stasis that the format of MMO roleplaying constantly wrestles with. These days, that stasis seems be gaining significant ground. Pretty soon all the roleplay is literally going to take place on sets. For all its warts, it’s hard to imagine something like the trial of Amarae de Lordamere taking place today.
We used to lack ‘lore bible’ material. History and mechanics were much less prescriptive and that encouraged a playful, creative spirit to invent stuff in the margins of the setting. In fact, there was an undercurrent of contempt for the setting that I very rarely notice anymore (but you may notice in this very post). There’s always been patronising bores who wield ‘lore’ as a weapon (like Arathyrion) but at some point there must have been a huge mood shift in their favour. The hall monitors patrol the streets for infractions like religious heterodoxy or deviation from the authoritarian daily schedule of the Stormwind peasant or some woo-woo nonsense about magical flow charts and everyone seems happy about it.
I see less improv in general too. Once you had janky forums that you couldn’t count on your guild members to use or the in-game calendar or the forums or AA or Skype as your imperfect organisational tools. Discord really changed the game. Now you can @everyone with your urgent 2AM thoughts as much as you like. Events are even more titrated, less ad-hoc. There were always markets and tournaments, but sometimes I feel like there’s now a sprawling calendar of casual wine mixers that don’t offer much dramatic prompting but plenty of scope for thirty-person Discord call royales.
So is it better or worse? I don’t know. It seems to me that Discord has been powerfully transformative for this community. And that’s had some real positives: there are cool multimedia powers you have to support your roleplay, ic-update channels are a fun new twist, and you can easily make sincere connections to new groups of friends that extend far beyond your roleplay, which is nothing to scoff at. On some level all of these changes represent a generational shift. ‘Accepts walk-ups’ is an idea people would have laughed at once—that was assumed to be the default position. I’ve been in guilds that had no guild chat and used no OOC communication. It’s so difficult to imagine today’s AD sustaining something like that, or indulging a problematic Stormguard. In many ways today is more similar than different to yesterday, but culture always changes and things have certainly changed.
Damn, Drums of War was that long ago already?
I remember that campaign well as it led to two pivotal changes for Des here.
He left the Argent Crusade and rejoined the Alliance.
He got an ( not entirely) irrational fear of goblins.