My experience is that I can go weeks without seeing an RPer. It was a cool idea, but RP policies weren't enforced, so RP degraded over time. You really have to find an RP group if you're into it these days. I'd be very interested to see opinions of people that swapped servers.

In premades?

Sometimes we'll deliberately do it just to mess with people.

There's a Horde guild on our server that likes to leave 1-2 spots open when they're doing premade AB/WSG groups. Then when they get into a match and pick up puggers for the empty slots, they all speak in elaborate RP-talk (Shakespearean dialogue, that kind of thing).

I'm from EU Argent Dawn. Also a server that's been around since the start. Your theory seems pretty much dead-on from what I've experienced. Like you, I've been at the forefront of raiding on my server, though I have done so on Alliance-side.

I am the leader of the most advanced Horde raiding guild on the Argent Dawn roleplaying server and I have found most things in regards to being Horde and on a roleplaying to be frustrating to an extreme.

Our current server progression:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Argent_Dawn_Guild_Progression

Our progress has been stunted since our original group quit the game or left to form another guild mostly due to the fact that is extremely difficult to recruit high quality players in the numbers required to fill a 40 man raid. Having your MT leave or your best geared priest has left us hurting at varying points and there have been several periods of 3 months to a few weeks where our wheels were spinning in place due to these logistics problems. Just trying to find people to put in these slots can be extremely painful to keep the guild going and progressing.

Sadly, especially with the very small Horde population on Argent Dawn - we operate like vampires for recruits. I know when another guild is experiencing drama or are hitting a roadblock their leadership cannot figure out as we get a slew of applications from them. I am sure this a problem across all servers with people guild hopping and changing loyalties but it is my belief that the smaller population further exacerbates the recruiting situation. Even if we don't take the person - we get to hear the story, recently another Horde guild has killed the Twin Emperors and there were a whole slew of reactionary applicants as they threw their heads at the wall and were learning. Frustrated, fed up, tired masses, wanting to do something else and the problem I see is that even if we take them then we are robbing Peter to pay Paul in order to just have the proper class balance to advance through content. It is a very bad feeling to have especially when you have no grudge or axe to grind with the other guilds - they are mostly friendly and very nice fellows. The problem is when your server balance is typically 3:1 or 2.5:1 in favor of the Alliance it is difficult especially on an RP server to find the guys you need without drama involved.

Another issue specifically in regards to advancement was that our progress was retarded behing on finishing up MC due to lack of recruits or key people leaving and we were slow to get into BWL and start the learning curve there. Our first Razorgore kill was a week after our first Ragnaros kill in early October last year after summoning Ragnaros for the first time at the end of April of '05. I just felt that due to equipment issues, recruitment problems that we could not start BWL until we finally downed Ragnaros.

Our AQ progress came steadily after first Nefarian kill in February but once again we were behind the curve and by the time that Naxx had came out we were within another couple of practice attempts of killing the Twin Emperors. Instead I made a decision to change gears and solely focus on Naxx instead of rounding out AQ and with the summer came the departure of a dozen members who had been with the guild all over a year. It took the guild officers two months to recruit back to the pre-June levels as I was on an extended vacation due to stress of keeping things together and never having missed a raid in a year. Now though we are doing quite well on Patchwerk attempts and should have him down in a few weeks without having ever killed the Twin Emperors.

I guess to sum it up I believe there are two problems with slow RP server progression:

1) Not enough people serious about raiding due to a more casual RP server playstyle.
2) Population imbalance for (especially for Horde) increases the frustration with recruiting.

RP servers might also feature smaller guilds and higher guild loyalty. People choose an RP server for a reason, and if that reason is to join a closely-knit group of friends, then the recruitment pool is going to be much smaller than the averafe server. Just, in general, I'd think that the average person on an RP server has a higher sense of guild loyalty than the typical group. If their 10-20 man guild regurally holds guild RP events, then they would find it harder to jump ship to the group that is there to raid MC.

I'm going to have to agree with Cathela - many of us rolled on RP servers in an attempt to avoid the leet-speak. Personally, I don't arr-pee but I respect the choice of those who do.

To echo other above posts, many who play want to stay in their small 'friends-and-family' guilds. This leads to the necessity of guild alliances, which can be trouble. The Rugged Individualism(tm) that many exhibit also lead folks to think 'Oh, we can do this our own way', effectively constricting an already small raiding pool on RP servers. (Go Horde!)

At what point does this get intractable? I was able to captain a raid through MC, but it took all of my available macros just for MC, ZG and Onyxia - I was at a loss on how to effectively communicate via text (In-character or not) for BWL content.

In the case of Cenarion Circle, Horde-side, a lot of people had no desire at all to learn how to play, as lame as that sounds. Before you joined DFP Blackpatch, it was painful to tell someone that they could do more damage if the specced differently. Not a demand, just a suggestion would cause people to flip out. The big thing to me was that people wouldn't spec or gear in a way to benefit themselves and wouldn't even except constructive criticism.

Of course, Cenarion Circle is the compost heap of WoW servers.

Hoowah Shaduclan!

That guild was always a little weird, what with guild rank indicating whether or not you could wear shoulders/helm graphic/ride a mount. The only thing good I ever saw come out of Shadowclan was the opportunity to jump in during the Warboss "elections" and kill everyone.

My guild, Silence, used to be on the RP server SilverHand until a few weeks ago, and we have 12 bosses in Naxx down (working on 4H now).

We're in Battlegroup 9, and we've never seen any Horde team that has given our guild groups even close to a challenge. Beyond that, the Alliance premade teams (not guilds casually grouping but real pvp teams) back on SH have also seen 95% wins in BGs.

My experiences are not proof of anything, but they are counter examples to the BS people believe about RP servers. Granted, there are people who *gasp* RP, but it's not like players are inherently worse at WoW or cannot push progression if they so choose.

On thing I will say now that I've played on an RP and a PvE server is that I wish names were policed on my PvE server because some of this stuff is insanely stupid.

We had an applicant transfering servers who had never raided with voice coms- they were at C'thun and having much difficulty with it when he left.

Personally I can't imagine trying to raid without voice coms and ooc text, but that's probably because that's all I've ever known. I find utterly silent vent kinda creepy unless we're in the middle of something super intense and we're all in the groove. Call outs to start buffs, finish buffs, move forward, stance dance, spread out, gather up, go north, spawn south... all of that is strangely soothing. If you've ever seen A Chorus Line on stage, the scene with all the people dancing in perfect coordination while different voices are highlighted in something of a monotone rythmn telling themselves to turn left, turn right, step back, step forward.... that's what vent/text spam is like for me in raids. It's like the ticking of a clock marking time.