Yes, but that's also simply not what WoW is ever going to be about. You can't take social dynamics that might work well in a setting like Lineage 2 or EVE and import them into the WoW ruleset and expect anything good to come of it.

Ugh. The AQ war coincided with the Archimonde split (Mug'thol) and the transfer of most of the elite guilds, along with the Archi scepter. Mug'thol of course promptly turned into 5000 que land and some people came back, but most of the resources and the scepter - and most of the guilds capable of completing the scepter and organized enough to mass produce resources - were gone.

When the gates finally did open, the Kalimdor world server was still an unplayable mess, lag was massive in Silithus and WWIII in the sand prevented anyone from getting decent "war" progress on their Noz rep, as the word was out about the epic rings and the high value BoE purples by the point the gates opened on Archimonde. Said loot did a very good job of encouraging world PvP.

That's not even touching the infamous farm-a-thon, which felt so epic.

The other problem with this series of max-tier raid "events" was that Eranikus couldn't really be combated by anyone other than highly organized guild raids, and lag dictated not wanting more than two of those, three max.

While it least in theory it was an outdoor encounter that many people could fight against as part of this epic world conflict, in practice, you couldn't stay alive without dedicated healing and almost no one could observe it relative to a primetime server population because lag here would just kill everyone - and it did a few times.

IIRC (it's been a long time) there was also a mechanic where the nightmare shades strengthened as they scored kills, which made the influx of Level 10 druids and undergeared players even more undesireable from a perspective of actually completing the event.

Not to mention that anyone joining WoW since AQ launched has no idea of what I am talking about, which makes it further wasted content from a resource perspective. The questline is awesome, but far too resource demanding to complete on a whim.

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With all of that in mind, you can pretty much rule out a one-time server "war" event to take on Arthas. Too many negatives, too difficult to do in a fashion that would let most experience it. The Scourge Invasion was an attempt to make a more accessable, less disruptive world event, and it worked reasonably well. So Blizzard has learned.

In Burning Crusade, solo's and small group players *do* take action involving and foiling Illidan, so it's entirely possible that the same approach with more boss "face time" is what they mean by interaction with Arthas.

I highly doubt there will be any 5-man or solo confrontation with Arthas. It is true from a lore perspective, if you're not on his teir, you're an insect, so does it really make much of a difference if you have one, five, ten or twenty-five insects and it may well make MORE sense to have someone who is buffed to God-like levels by a Dragonflight confront him instead, but Blizzard seems happy with the 25-man raid model as content pinnacle.

What might be possible is to actually have Arthas visible and irritating in the world at the "overworld" Ice Crown, even though he wouldn't be killable or lootable. This has its own camping and ganking and general player jackass problems, but for the character, it's not inconceivable.

Unlike most other bosses and heavily dug-in Illidan in particular, Lich King Arthas seems to feel nothing to fear from anyone, and his tone in the cinematic trailer implies as much.

I think almost everyone would agree with something like
The Sceptor quest(minus Eranikus event lag) = good
The Farming linen to open the gates = Bad


Even though on some servers the top guilds did alot to make the farming better....(Rallying off epics and gold to people who turned shit in) overall it's just a bad idea since there will always be alot of servers full of people who will do everything in their power to grief the rest of the server.

If the content that could be opened up benefits all players from all playstyles - people like you describe will be the minority.

Imaging if an Arthas like AQ event (server wide effort) would result in a new 5 man, new 25 man, weakening arthas himself, new loot upgrades from heroic bosses, ability for primal vortexes a chance to drop in 5 man dungeons (in addition to nethers), ability to upgrade your blacksmithing weapons another tier, made your heroic badge purchases a couple badges cheaper, access to server-exlusive new alchemy/engineering/enchanting patterns, access to a new death knight secret city. etc

The list is endless - there are MANY ways blizzard could make 'the arthas war' something almost every player in the game will be dying to help out - and give them personal benefits for doing so, regardless of whether they solo/5 man/raid/rp etc.

Will there always be some people that 'lol im going to do everything I can to not help!!"? Yes of course, but if the list of benefits was something like I described - people like this would be few and far between.

People, generally, want to be a part of something big in the game. They just need to be given a reason (read: a big carrot saying 'look at the rewards you will get!") to join in. The AQ effort didnt give enough people that reason.