There is a shortage of skilled players, but not to the extent you would think. But there is a severe drought of /competitive/, skilled players, the kind who want to put in the extra time to learn an encounter and make that final push for the kill. RP servers seem to attract a more mature audience, but also one that gives WoW raiding a lower priority in their lives.
It’s the same reason PvP servers generally have a more active raiding population, the most competitive players tend towards the most competitive servers.
QFT. I'm on Feathermoon Horde now, after moving from Silver Hand Alliance (ex-Morgantis). As much as it pains me to say this, I wish my friends and I had originally rolled on a PVP server. As it was, Morgantis' competitive players all jumped ship to Silence (three separate times). /wave Balance, Ysoac, Fintan, Jaydangel, etc. That created severe heartburn on other people in Morgantis, who rerolled as Horde on Feathermoon. Three raid alliances later (hate hate HATE raid alliances), I rerolled on Feathermoon myself. My previous guild is up to Chromaggus after about 8 months of dedicated raiding and I'm really just hanging around waiting for tBC to come out and a bunch of people to reroll as Blood Elfs, having resigned myself to the fact that I will never see Nefarion, AQ40, or Naxx as they were designed to be played.
Man, that's a lot of drama wrapped up in about six sentences...
I'd be interested to know how the RP-PvP servers are doing. We didn't have that option at release (or else I would've rolled there goddamnit!), but I'd be interested to see what kind of player that brings in. On the one hand PvP servers tend to have competitive players and great progression, on the other hand you see in this thread that RP servers tend to have worse progression overall. Supposedly. How are the rp-pvp servers doing?
The Venture Co was one of the first pair of RP-PVP servers in the EU. We're one of the most progressed Horde guilds, having taken down the Twin Emps and Razuvious (with two other guilds at roughly the same point - one of them has Anub as well as Razu, and has got C'thun to phase 2, the other at pretty much exactly the same stage of progression as us). Alliance side, one guild has killed C'thun, cleared the spider wing, and killed Razuvious, Noth, Patchwerk and Grobbulus, and the next guild is at C'thun phase 2 and has killed Razuvious.
There are 10 Nef-killing guilds now, split evenly Alliance/Horde, and 6 guilds killing the Twin Emps, again split evenly Alliance/Horde.
The server opened in September last year (just celebrated the 1y anniversary a few weeks ago), and it took until late December/early January for a decent number of people to hit 60, which is roughly when serious raiding started for most of us (there were a couple of exceptions - one Horde guild which since disbanded, and the most progressed Alliance guild mentioned above). My guild in particular started running ZG in mid-December, iirc, and finally had enough people for our first MC raid to happen on January 1st.
I'd say the comments about the "casualness" of players on RP servers is pretty true about RP-PVP as well, to an extent (possibly not quite as much, but still somewhat compared to PVP servers). We have fixed raid cutoff times, and when we hit them we pretty much just stop - we just don't have enough people who are hardcore enough to stay up until things die, no matter how much some of us officers wish we did ;) (i'm not sure if this is true for the other guilds, though - we've always had a fairly casual attitude in general; i know at least one person from one of the other guilds at our level of progression posts here, so i'm sure he can comment on them). Also, even with a relatively casual raiding schedule, finding recruits who can commit to put enough time in is challenging (in fact, a few of our recent recruits have actually been raiders from pvp servers transferring here and looking for a slightly more casual raiding environment). Luckily TVC has always been fairly well-balanced, so at least we're not dealing with a ridiculously shallow pool of potential recruits as most Horde guilds on the release RP servers will be.
Edit: and yes, i think the comments about average age on RP servers is quite probably accurate - one of the things that forces us to limit our raiding hours is the fact that a majority of our members work full time, and hence can't start before certain times, and have to get to sleep at some point. Combine that with time zone complications, and we're generally stuck raiding from 20:30 server time (which is 19:30 uk time - most of our raidleaders are from the UK, and don't get back from work until about 19:00), to 00:30 server time, by which point our Eastern European guys really need to be getting to sleep for work the next day, as it's 01:30 for them.
Just a few points further to what Kharen has said. There are definately humerous misconceptions surrounding RP servers. In our case specifically, a number of PvP servers thought it was hilarious they'd been battlegrouped with 2 RPPVP servers and that we wouldn't know what hit us, when in reality I know that both alliance and horde premades from our server are rarely defeated and that i've never lost a WSG playing in a guild premade. I firmly believe the general quality of players is higher than on PvP servers i've previously played on.
PvE wise I guess it's quite hard to measure our progression as a server because we are post release server but I don't think we are slow by any stretch. Our personal guild progression is Lucifron first down 05/02/06 and Emps first down 17/09/06 with almost all having no prior raid experience (especially BWL and above) and I know that the single Alliance guild on our server that have killed C'Thun got world number 50 something, which is pretty damn good for a guild on a server almost a year newer than US release servers. However, we do have a reasonably small pool of players to choose from. One of the main reasons for this is that almost all of the horde guilds are really solid (with good leaderships), and it's very rare people move around the top guilds (and when they do it's often due to joining friends). I personally never attmept to 'poach' members and have never actively gone after someone in another guild and I havent seen that kind of thing happening often either. I believe there have only been 2 significant disbandings of Horde raiding guilds since realm raiding began, and that's pretty impressive in my opinion. When I go back to my PvP server alts it's quite a shock to the system.
As a side note being elitist I get a chuckle from inspecting people and seeing them with silly enchants and gear choices (sad i know) and I get far more laughs when i'm on my alt on Stormreaver than on my main, It's not often you find AQ geared dps warriors with 8 agility on legs/helm and 15 agility on their offhand in RP land. Then again my alt is alliance so make of that what you will :P
What I did notice while near and later at the forefront of Horde CC raiding is that every encounter, every class, and every guild was constantly being carried by a few really on-the-ball individuals. The one incredible tank, the one great healer, the rogue with jaw-dropping DPS, so on, so forth. Progress would be driven forwards by these few individuals. Most of the rest of the guild would be of fine quality, and then there would be 3-5 screwups who would constantly blunder around, wrecking encounters and being confused.
In the (frequent) event that one of the excellent individuals burnt out and left the game, left the guild, or left the server, guilds would open recruiting and find a replacement. But the recruiting pool was very shallow and tended to be filled with the same journeymen, skipping from raid guild to raid guild as each one lost its edge and dropped its standards far enough to accomodate them. Good players did not become excellent players and bad players did not become good players at the same rate that excellent players left the game.
Sounds like Shattered Hand (PvP) Horde. Probably a ton of other servers, too. I think that's just the nature of the game. You just have to be either very focused or very lucky to get a group of more than 10 great players and 30 (total, including "great") good players. You fill the rest of the raid with either "passable" or "need a warm body" players. I thought being on a PvE server now (although it was never my reason for joining Dalaran) I would see more players that were focused on raiding. So far, from what I've seen, I was wrong. It's basically the same setup, just with far less players interested in PvP.
Im playing on EU moonglade myself (cant select in the in profile screen) and there are currently 2 alliance guilds who are raiding seriously. (edit- fixed profile, moonglade eu is now available)
Were having AQ on farm (minus ouro/viscidus) and just started doing naxx killing just anub and faerlina soon probably.
Another guild is at fankriss right now with 0 bosses down in naxx.
Horde has 1 serious guild which is trying cthun right now.
Problems we face is that when a player leaves the guild (usually quits/rerolls) were having hard to to replace it with someone who's gear is equal. Most of the people from the second alliance guild dont leave there guilds forcing us to take transfers (sometimes good, sometimes bad) or people with a few MC pieces. Severely killing our progress.
Second thing I noticed is that our guild was WAY ahead of everyone else which made us slacking. We took like a month and a half for twin emps while we raid 5 days a week. Once the horde guild killed twin emps a week after us we started doing some insane progression on cthun doing phase 2 in 2 nights.
Conclusion on our server is not enough dedicated raiders to fill up spots once people leave (starting to get better though)
second more competition between guilds, usually means better progress
To be honest, anybody who calls The Venture Co. a rolplaying realm is off their rocker. ye olde goone squade, redrum inc, the azuresong circle (all three alliance guilds, although azuresong circle disbanded) did not have strong roleplaying intentions. Again, like all roleplaying servers, TVC was hit by some people rolling there only "to avoid l33t idiots" or to play on a realm with a very low population. This shows in the make-up of the top raiding alliance guilds there at least, (I don't think i need to go into details of the ahn'qiraj opening but from what i have heard wasn'tthe smartest thing to do on a realm where people innately like to talk and backstab).
I think the biggest problem is the lack of experianced players, committed players and (unfortunately) skill on the realms due mainly in part to the lower numbers. I play on ravenholdt-eu, RP-PvP server, and am one of the three guildmasters of the only guild left on the server that has been together from day one, but admittedly we originally only planed to try every aspect of the game out, although today what most would consider an RP-PvE guild (although we consider our approach unique, at least within Europe). The same three guild leaders for well over five months now (three way system, works well if you've known each other for years like we have), i'd originally retired my rogue from a c'thun killing guild a few weeks before and had taken a break from WoW completely mainly to get my revision for my exams back on track. In the past two weeks, we've managed to successfully kill Ragnaros, admitedly not a huge thing anymore, but it's one of those game memories you take with you. It was a raid of 37 people who had never seen UBRS before they'd joined the guild,and three others including myself with heavy raid experiance. So, of course, we fill MC raids every week now, not a problem. Problem is getting people together for BWL. On Monday, our core 25 turned up (except myself as I had unfortunately forgotten i had committed myself to cooking for the girl that night), guys whose average gear is well into Tier 1 on nearly every slot (thanks mainly to lots of Zul'Gurub raids before Molten Core). Since we killed Rag, these are the guys who would form the core for most average guilds and even demonstrate the skill and determination demonstrated by more famous guilds such as EJ, D+T, Curse, Forte, Risen etc etc (coming from a C'thun guild i feel well placed to judge how well people can play their class and even i am pleasantly surprised by the skill level), but we're now being held back by not a lack of numbers (124 active 60s in the guild) but people not wanting to wipe continuosly or only after free purples. Whilst obviously we do not have the experiance i think is manatory to really hit the level 70 raid instances running (again ony 4-5 people with any BWL and therefore proper tactical experiance), although these guys will learn incredibly quickly we might not be able to fully compete as we would like to for a while.
On the plus side, we have 20 beta keys already and are hoping to secure the 25 from the photo competition tonight, so we will at least have first hand experiance (and hopefully some boss ability experiance) before TBC goes live.
Argent Dawn server has been around since release and is the 6th highest US RP realm population-wise; 38th overall US. The most progressed Alliance guild killed Ragnaros in July 2005, Nefarian in December 2005, C'Thun in May and is currently on Thaddius. Nothing groundbreaking to be sure, but it's pretty good for the time invested (20 hours over 6 nights/week).
Many people I know chose an RP server because of the additional public chat rules that have gotten most bnetters banned within an hour. There's maybe a handful of people who RP, but it's never in guild, raid or Ventrilo.
I play on (EU) Earthen Ring, it's one of the two original RP servers in EU (the other being Argent Dawn).
Raid progress has been quite slow for us, there's afaik only one group(*) that has killed C'thun, but that's alliance side so I'm not 100% sure it's still accurate. Being horde I generally don't care that much how they're doing.
Horde side there's currently 4 groups that have killed Nefarian, and one more (the one I'm in working on it). Alliance side I don't know. I don't know about Naxx, I think the top two alliance guild/groups have killed a few bosses there, and 2 of the horde guild/groups have killed Razuvious, but I'm not 100% sure.
(*): One quite big difference is the guild affiliations, on RP servers this is more of an in character tie for a lot of people than on a non-RP server where the concept IC/OOC doesn't exist. :) Most of the raiding is done in groups, collection of guilds, rather than all having one guild tag. There are pure raid guilds too, but to a much smaller degree than PvE/PvP where guilds are pretty much the only option.
I don't think RP players are generally worse players than those in PvE/PvP servers, there are bad players everywhere. The big difference is that RP servers are sort of the black sheep of servers. I think people when they select server to play on go "hmm.. PvP or PvE?" and ignore the RP servers. That and also being the smaller faction (horde) limits our recruitment options. There are some really strange people in our group. Keyboardwalkers and the-I-don't-really-care-I-just-want-shinies... I'm pretty sure they are everywhere but the more you have to chose from, the more likely you are to find good people. :)
I'm by no means a hardcore RP:er, sure I do it sometimes, but most of the time I raid with my char or prepare for it. I chose RP server mostly so that I could get away from the annoying angst filled teenagers that type like their fingers were 30 cm thick (to match their skulls). Of course there are people like that on RP servers too, but they're much fewer. Sadly blizzard doesn't really care about the RP servers (and looking at the number of RP servers compared to others, I sorta understand why) so they are becoming more and more frequent, along with their "cool" names.
All the raid group/guilds on the server I know of use voice com and "normal" /raid chat. There's no place for RP inside instances. Most seem to use the use the guideline that RP happens in /say and emote outside instances. Party/raid/guild/etc are purely ooc, and you don't RP around something that happens inside an instance. For example, you don't RP and say "I'm the best dragonslayer ever! I killed Onyxia!" because killing someone means they are dead (duh), and then they can't come back, when everyone knows that they reset and multiple groups can kill Onyxia in a given week. It just doesn't make good RP, so it's avoided.
Also, someone mentioned gear that looks good. There are many who RP who runs around with several sets of clothing that just looks good. I myself have a warrior alt that always runs around in a cloth hat when not tanking, simply because it looks pimp on him. Whenever I enter an instance I just turn of head graphics and put on my normal plate helmet.
While many of the thesises of the op are imho correct, I might want to add a different perspective to this discussion. At least in the German community, first kill lists and progression is dominated by PVP server raids.
EU-Perenolde was launched mere days after the EU release. Yet we have only one raid that regularly kills cthun (the other guild that accomplished this, failed to replicate the kill after the zanza nerf), that has killed ouro. Naxx progression is spider wing clear, raz, noth and patch/grob/gluth. Our structure is pretty unique in having depending on individual players rather than guilds. Some people would call it an organized PUG :)
The progression of a server depends on the availability of hardcore, progression minded players. If the atmosphere on the server is more casual oriented, progression cannot be archieved since the pool of progression minded players is too small. This is especially true for the minority side (our horde companions have three guilds that have BWL on farm and are progressing in naxx/aq). It is pretty difficult to recruit players who are able and willing to join a progression raid. Quite a lot of folks who would be candidate material will leave the server for a more hardcore environment.
Therefore: PVP servers tend to attract the more hardcore players. PVE and RP server will have a much more casual atmosphere which results in slower progression.
After my experience with Cenarion Circle, I think the only real difference that RP servers offer is there is a tendency to have fewer names like "Cathumper". I think that was part of my original motivation for rolling on CC.
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Part of what I've noticed about the launch servers in general is there's this legacy population of people who were around more or less from day one, or at least fairly early on. Some of these players are incredibly skilled, some aren't. However folks generally aren't apt to leave simply because they have a considerable social investment in a realm, and they'd rather not abandon all their friends that for potentially greener pastures from a gameplay perspective. People would rather muddle around in game content since to a fair number of people, content progression is secondary to hanging around with friends. You see this behavior in the real world as well.
Actually, when people do leave a realm, they rarely do it on their own. One thing I've noticed with applicants is they always cite knowing so-and-so -- whether from a previous realm, or someone they became acquainted with early on in the server's life. I'm guilty of it myself as I bagged some talent from CC when I went forth with my plans.
MMOs have that social aspect to them, and it's a powerful draw and one of the many reasons some folks have trouble quitting. It's a $15/mo chat room to a lot of folks, with a lot of monsters, items and interesting encounters that just happen to be there.
Just to add to what Solmina said above (I'm one of the other two leaders of TRC), some thoughts on Ravenholdt particularly.
Regarding PvP:
Anyone thinking "lol rpers cnt pvp KEK" is just being plain silly. I've played in a few premades from our realm since crossrealms, one known as the "Dreamteam" - the remnants of a hardcore PvP guild that broke up and split across various of the top raid guilds on the realm - and as part of Redrum Inc.'s guild premade. Both times we steamed through just about anything that bothered to show up, although Tarren Mill/Vek'nilash/Kazzak (two transfer servers, one server with incredible raid progression for the server age) premades tend to be "lol, Trollbane and let them win" occurrences due to the sheer gear disparity.
Regarding raiding:
It's a sad situation. Even on Alliance side on a server with something like a 2:1 advantage in our favour, finding -good- recruits is very, very hard. For those who don't know(/care enough to check) our progression, we've been open since April 6th. Three guilds have killed Nef - two Alliance, one Horde (Exodus), although the first Alliance guild to do so have collapsed now and are in the process of being cannibalised by TRC and the second Nef killing guild. A few more have taken Rag, and one guild (Exodus on Horde) have taken a tentative step into Naxx with a Razuvious kill.
The main problem is somewhat multi-faceted.
1) Disparity in maturity/time. Often the "best" candidates for raiding in terms of skill, willingness to learn, and commitment to reaching some basic level of gear and choosing an efficient spec are the absolute worst in terms of availability - as some have commented in this thread already, they tend to be older people who have real lives to worry about. At the other end the "best" in terms of time available are the absolute worst candidates for raiding - arrogant, ignorant, refuse to learn or work or even bother showing up if it's not in their own interest. The same challenge that all guilds face, admittedly, but exarcebated by the particular conditions of RP servers - Ravenholdt is still not above 10,000 population (at my last check) and a lot of that population is made up of slow-levellers or lvlonealtlols.
2) Willingness to wipe/competetiveness. To give an example, TRC tried Razorgore for the first time a couple of weeks back. We wiped horribly. Over and over. The next week we got a raid together and wiped horribly again, over and over - we didn't even get as far as phase 2. On the next attempt all of 15 people signed in on time. People are often MUCH less prepared to compete and to take the wipes as part of a learning experience, and you simply do not have the skilled population to draw from to replace them.
As an additional note, gear is not so important on RH at least. In an atmosphere where the third most progressed guild (us) has killed Ragnaros, Dire Maul level gear is really all that's required - although few enough people even bother with that.
The third and most important point, IMO, is drama.
Most servers suffer it, I'm sure, but from what I can see the problem is exarcebated on RP servers if you try and run a guild that contains RPing members - not as in hardcore Shakespearean RP, but abides by the rules and RPs on offnights etc.
The simple fact is that most RPers are people who like to perform. That's fine. Most even like to get deep into their character, that's cool too, just don't bring it to raids.
The problem is expounded by a very high level of drama-sensitive people. We've had the usual people who think they're the centre of the universe, and any criticism of them is evil and hurtful, etc. but we seem to have very high levels of it. If you tell people that they -really- should spec better you get OMG ITS RP GUILD I DO WHAT I LIKE. If you try and enforce basic rules while raiding you get emo rages - not just from drama-whore members, but even from the relatively normal guys. Compounding this problem are the people who have it in their heads that hardcore raiding is the Great Scourge of RP and that you cannot possibly enjoy both.
Oh, and one other amusement - the priest who didn't want to join a raid because her RP character was at odds with another priest's RP character. Both perfectly nice people, both happy with the guild, but one of them had an OOC thing against the other because of an IC action.
I'm sure I've written far too much and in far too illogical an order. :/
Oh, an addendum regarding "wipe lots = no" - people who think they have some kind of right to be in a raid just because they're 60. Very few understand even basic gear requirements - especially "alternative" gear such as FR gear - and even fewer understand that just because they logged in at start time they don't automatically get an invite. We use a fairly loose system, what with struggling to fill raids at all, but still. We have people logging on an hour after raid time starts and crying over "never getting a spot", we have people d/cing for over half an hour then wondering why we replace them and do /care when they cry OMG MY COMPUTER BLEW UP INNA MY FACE.
I can\'t find any excitement killing the virtual equivalent of a quadriplegic in his own bedroom. It\'s not sporting. - Bekah
As someone who DID join CC to RP initially, I can tell you that while there's a strong RP community, it tends to feel embattled (and in most cases, I think, wrongly so) by raiders. There's a lot of "raid =! RP" babble that happens--and as someone who transitioned to raiding from RP, I never held with that, as did most of us who rerolled to Da Kine. While turnover to casual lootwhores who wanted epix to strut around Org with was a problem, my main reason with being so disenchanted with the server was how ostracized I felt by RPers, many of whom had been my friends before I started raiding.
As someone who DID join CC to RP initially, I can tell you that while there's a strong RP community, it tends to feel embattled (and in most cases, I think, wrongly so) by raiders. There's a lot of "raid =! RP" babble that happens--and as someone who transitioned to raiding from RP, I never held with that, as did most of us who rerolled to Da Kine. While turnover to casual lootwhores who wanted epix to strut around Org with was a problem, my main reason with being so disenchanted with the server was how ostracized I felt by RPers, many of whom had been my friends before I started raiding.
Sorry for spamming here, but I agree with this totally. Often hardcore RPers seem to despise the entire concept of raiding, and anyone who posts anything remotely raid related is flamed to death. It's amusing to spot the ones in pathetic 5man guilds who spend all their time rolling lowbie alts or on the forums busily flaming away - and trying to RP with them and getting no response. :)
I can\'t find any excitement killing the virtual equivalent of a quadriplegic in his own bedroom. It\'s not sporting. - Bekah
Yes a lot of people do seem to view raiding and RPing as two extremes, but a lot of the more avid 'hardcore' RPers I know of spend a lot of time in battlegrounds. Personally i fail to see how doing battlegrounds can be more 'RP' than raiding but whatever, i think its more the mentality of the players and what they percieve raiding as.
There was 1 very strict RP guild that raided, they made it to Chromaggus before disbanding due to some bizarre leadership (guild leader often raided with one of the top guilds over his guild - I said it was bizarre), and we took on quite a few of their members.
Anecdotally though when I have played on a pvp or normal server I think the general tone of public chat channels seems to be a lot more immature. This is not to say that “barrens chat…nbsp; does not have its bad moments on Silver Hand, but in general it is not the constant 14 year old spam I have found on other servers. I suspect the average age level on an RP server is higher and thus a higher percentage of people have jobs and kids and the like that makes it more difficult to do the high end raids. There are a few key people who seem to pull it off, but many more who just don’t seem to be able to find the time.
This was my original reasoning for choosing RP, and I'm sure it's very common among raiding folks on RP servers. I'm also within this jobs/kids demographic myself.
Regarding RP servers in cross-realm BG's, one AB match stands out in my memory. It was a PuG alliance side with about half Ergo Bibamus, and the other half being a mix from a few other servers in our cluster. The horde opposition was a full-15 HWL-grinding team from Hyjal, according to one of our Hyjal pickup members. In the end, our lowly half-RP server team lost, but went 1950/2000 against this "juggernaut" team from the main PvP server in our tiny 5-server cluster. Not a bad showing. Much <3 to Rylorn for the healing that let me stabbity-stab people to death in repeated fashion.
An on that last note, I'll pass along the sentiment to Karu/Ry, Nurru. But I have to ask: You said you were -in- Ergo at some point? What name did you use at the time? Or should I just ask them... ;)
Sorry for spamming here, but I agree with this totally. Often hardcore RPers seem to despise the entire concept of raiding, and anyone who posts anything remotely raid related is flamed to death. It's amusing to spot the ones in pathetic 5man guilds who spend all their time rolling lowbie alts or on the forums busily flaming away - and trying to RP with them and getting no response. :)
In my experience these people tend to have an inferiority complex because they refuse to really learn game mechanics and require the validation of their RP buddies to keep their self esteem afloat. So what happens is you end up doing, say, Stratholme with one of them and you are trying to give them basic advice like how to LoS pull things and crowd control to use, but they consider this an insult because afterall, they are a highly respected member of the community and how dare you insinuate they don't know how to play you filthy raider!
In order to reconcile the idea that they are incompetent players, but highly valued roleplayers they disparage activities which require knowing game mechanics. I'm specifically thinking about an experience I had with a horde guild leader on Earthen Ring. We went into Scholomance, and I was informed that even though she didn't like the idea, she would talk OOC for the duration of the dungeon. Then she invited her level 56 or so hunter buddy. I must have said something to offend her, because I remember her angrily rebuking me that her hardcore RP guild was doing ZG. Then we went into Scholomance and got creamed. Ugh, it was awful. We ended up stopping at the gargoyle boss just because it was taking so unbelievably long.
In my experience, hardcore RP'ers tend to have very poor gameplay etiquette. They show up late, they chat and wait around slowing down the group, and get offended when you suggest that they should hurry up. And finally, they tend to be very poor min-maxers and their characters tend to be artifically weak because of poor item choices or understanding of game mechanics. This is a generalization, and most normal RP'ers are fine, but the elitist "hardcore" RP'ers are really a quite toxic subculture within RP servers. The worst part is the sense of entitlement and superiority... "If you didn't want to roleplay exactly how am I roleplaying and respect my roleplaying and roleplaying why did you roll on a roleplaying server? HMMM." On the realm forums, I've seen posts suggesting that raiding guilds should be banned from RP servers.
No sense of quality either - all they care is that you follow their completely arbitrary set of rules and they'll accept you. It's really a great example of where the most visible and vocal part of the community isn't really representative of the majority. So what I'm saying is that RP servers are like Islam and Hardcore RP'ers are like terrorists. I've met some of the best players on RP servers and some of the most insane. RP servers are basically a mix of the totally laid back chill players and a small number of crazy RP zealots, and then a really small number of people who actually want to seriously raid. It's just not a very good playerbase for recruiting raiding guilds.
I think there is an easy explanation that most people are fogetting, its not the only explanation but its a big factor.
RP servers is an extremely small portion of the server base.
What this means is that the chance of a high profile raidguild being from a PvP server is much, much higher than it being from a RP server even if they contained equally skilled players.
To illustrate my point ill take the example of my own server Argent Dawn (EU,RP) and my servers battlegroup (2). Before the 1.12 patch I completely expected AD to be mutilated by PvP uberguilds but it didnt turn out that way.
When I found out which servers were part of our battlegroup (7-8 servers) and did some research on them it turned out only 1 server had better progression. It couldnt have been because the PvP servers spent all their time refining their PvP skills because the best AD premade teams dominated most other teams in the BGs as well.
Of course we also have less hardcore players than what can be found on certain other servers, but thats not the entire truth.
Steelclad, maybe I just noticed exceptions, but most of the RPer-type 5- and 10-mans I joined were not ludicrously incompetent. Were they the most brilliant players ever, no, but I generally found I had less to fear instance-wise from RPer guildmates than I did from non-RP PuGs. My problem only related to raiding because curiously enough, RPers didn't mind farming Baron for Tier 0 pants OOC--but our MC raid, which was initially fully in character, was somehow bad mojo.
I don't understand how people can say pvp servers are more progression and hardcore based.
I've raided high end on both a pve and a pvp server, and found that the pve server was way more dedicated to the pve progression than the pvp server.
Pvp servers tend to have alot of jackasses, and alot of slack offs, people only interested in pvp, or those that get into guilds and get geared only to leave to try for GM.
On my pve server there is by far more guilds in Naxx (especially those past patchwerk) than exists on the pvp server, horde and alliance alike.
I find most pve server people and guilds are strictly based around this. There is no time to fool around, and because everyone is of the same mind you don't often find people just out scouting for the lone priest who might be flagged and away from their flag group, like what often happens on pvp servers. They have a goal and they go straight to it, but I've seen many raid nights waylaid by opposite faction guilds who figure they'll just grief for the hell of it.
Pvp is no more hardcore than Pve, in terms of people, progression and guilds. The one difference is that it takes a different type of player to put up with the constant BS surrounding those who exist only on pvp servers to grief others. In short, you need a high tolerance for jerks.
I thought I'd chime in on this topic, as it is one I've struggled with for a long time.
I originally rolled on Cenarion Circle as a Priest before Molten Core was the big thing to do (Sometime in April of 2005). I rolled there because 3 of my brothers (and their wives as well) played on Cenarion Circle. I joined their then-small guild, Ergo Bibamus, at level 4 or 5, racing to 60 as fast as possible. When I reached 60, I began to explore the options of further gameplay available at that level. At that time, Ergo was only able to ever field about 20 people or so at any given time. Many of our members were casual, and many had poor gear choices, poor talent choices, or poor amounts of attendance in general.
Then one day Ergo wanted to raid. This was started by the officers of course, but I also started pushing heavily for it. I constantly sought out raiders by going through 5 mans with people to test their skills. I met Tenge along the way (/wavefromDalaran2u), and snagged him an invite. I had met Saf, another Rogue, early on in my leveling and grabbed him. Others have come and gone that I got invited, but to this day there are people who remain in Ergo that I worked to get into the guild.
So anyway, we work up to enough people that we can do co-op raids with other guilds. We do a few co-op raids, at best getting through Magmadar (usually just wiping to him a LOT), maybe Gehennas once or twice. Finally, we get enough people that we can make our own raids and stop doing co-op raids.
Now, to explain a little bit, here is where some RP server conflict comes in, and of course the whole loyalty thing. One of my sister-in-laws is the guild master. Another was our DKP and website manager, and was Hunter leader as well for a time. Two of my brothers were also officers. Then there were people my brothers had known before WoW, all the way back from Everquest. Many of these people were half-decent players. Some weren't all that great, although some did improve greatly with some helpful guidance. Many didn't however. Also, as we started recruiting, we opened up our recruiting standards by a good bit, and started taking people of questionable skill and/or personality. Many people were promoted to certain positions or had certain things granted to them because they were friends with certain officers. Cliques formed within the guild.
Back to MC. We make blazingly fast progress through MC on our own, most especially after we pick up Antik, a Warrior who is the most amazing tank I've ever seen anywhere. He carried the guild through the majority of MC. Then we got stuck on Ragnaros. Why? Low DPS. Guess why we had low DPS? Because people hadn't cared to make their characters better. There were Rogues in the bottom 15-20, or even lower than that. There were some Warlocks under healers. It was a very big problem compounded by poor attendance to wipe attempts on Ragnaros and people unwilling to farm a lot of the time.
I finally started taking screenshots of my DamageMeters and sending them to officers in the guild, pointing out who needed to improve if we were ever to go anywhere. After a while, the officers started realizing that changes would have to be made, and started helping these people improve. Some improved. Others were kicked. It was a time of drama for all involved.
Finally, we take down Ragnaros after a massive amount of DPS improvement. We move into BWL, where we face a new challenge. Being on the ball is not something a lot of RPers do well. I don't care what anyone says, it's just a nature of the people drawn to such a server. We had problems with kiting, with the mages being killed, and overall keeping people up because they made stupid mistakes. Took us a couple weeks, but we get Razorgore down.
Moving to Vael, we get stuck again because of DPS. We start using the UBRS buff to counteract our low DPS by allowing us to last longer. After a lot of wiping and a lot of guild drama, we finally get past him and move on through BWL.
Firemaw happens. We wipe and wipe and wipe and wipe. Finally, we get a solid healing setup down and take him down. Then we wipe and wipe and wipe all over again because the officers decided to change the healing setup. Finally, I get fed up with it and say, "Why don't we use last week's setup? Move me back onto MT healing." So we do. One shot.
The rest of BWL is mostly normal and easy until Nefarian. Guild stalls due to poor attendance to wipe attempts again. I quit the game around this time for personal reasons.
Back to why a lot of these problems happened and why I attribute it to an RP server. People on RP servers are on an average less skilled and less caring about progression than people on other servers. The mentality is just different. On top of that, RP servers attract whiners, drama queens, and elitist assholes who think they're right no matter how extremely fucking wrong they are. You can't talk to any of these people. You correct the whiner, and he comes up with something new to whine about. You argue with the drama queen, and your guild's progress is fucked for the week because the drama queen will somehow make sure that their issue becomes the guild's issue and will somehow make the raid unable to form until the problem is absolved. Elitist assholes will spout off stupid advice during the raid, yell at people, and in general are not correctable because they are "right." They've never touched the math behind the game, ever, but guess what? They are so right about everything, because they said so.
Attendance was always a huge problem. People would quit early in the night because they needed sleep. People would come and go from the raid as they pleased, for any reason they desired. People showed up late. People didn't show at all. Only the people who really wanted loot ever showed up on time and ready to go. The way the guild was, I preferred the loot whores over anyone else. At least they wanted the guild to succeed. Most everyone else had their thumbs up their asses half the time wondering when the next free loot handout was.
The other problem is that not everyone gets along on RP servers. Cliques are *always* formed, even among guilds. These cliques usually involve an officer of some sort, and if you become good enough buddies, you can manipulate guild policy however you see fit. Loot policies were changed constantly because of the bitching and moaning by certain people about "blah blah I didn't get blah even though it benefits X class better blah whine blah". Eventually, the loot system became FFA DKP. If you had the DKP and wanted it, you got it. No matter what system was tried, drama ensued. Stupid item decisions were made. People left the guild over stupid crap like that, generally some of our better players. Other people held in silent resentment over the way they were being jerked around by policy changes and arguments between the officers, and performed worse because of it.
Of course, every time someone left, it severely hurt the raiding structure if they were any bit a strong presence in the guild before that. When key players who were carrying their class left, progress would fall short. The recruit was never on the same level as their predecessor. Casuals were recruited as backups for raids. People were invited just because they were friends of others, not because they had any real skill. People were accepted if they were even "okay." People were booted from the guild for extremely stupid reasons, some of them being some of our best raiders. Other people left because they just got tired of dealing with the day-in-day-out idiocy of it all.
After coming back to the game, I realized I didn't want in on any more of the crap I had to deal with before. Other guilds on the server faced similar problems, drama and idiots infesting them all. The only guild that faced less of these problems is the one I am with now. Their only problem was and still is a smaller playerbase, even if the overall skill level and general character of the person is much higher than the average. As well, I came back not as a Priest, but as a Rogue. Ergo had no place for another at this point, and as I said before, I didn't want to deal with all of that again. A good number of the problems were started or inflamed by the officers, and I couldn't stand being subjected to any of it anymore.
So, I transferred to Dalaran, a PvE server. I noticed a few things right off the bat. Less drama. Skilled players were far more common. There was more RP on the server than there had been on CC, the supposed RP server. The people were much nicer and have remained so thus far. The economy was better. There is a much larger pool of people to pull from. People actually listen to advice.
I don't have to deal with drama much anymore. Decisions in the guild are made reasonably and fairly. There aren't any whiners, drama queens, and few elitist jerks (Although those few can actually play the game). People are also much more helpful than before.
Sure, you might say, "Well, everything's different just because you moved to this new guild." My response is yes, partially. However, it's the server as a whole. There's just a much better and more stable pool of people to pull from.
To sum up, RP servers face their problems because of the generally dramatic and less "skill-inclined" individuals who are drawn to that type of server. Eventually, the people who actually want to get anywhere leave such servers because the situation never gets better. The ratio of skilled vs. unskilled always remains pretty much the same, and there are a lot of complete tools who, while skilled, have severe problems interacting with people, no matter how 1337 their RPing/writing skills are. I'm now enjoying logging in each night instead of dreading what new piece of drama or whose bitching I'm going to have to listen to, or whether or not we're going to be able to raid on a given day because people just didn't feel like showing up.
Oh yeah, and we had a somewhat decent number of CC hordies transfer/roll with us. They got tired of the poor raiding and stupid drama on RP servers as well. Leaving the elitist RPers, the poor players, the "I'm just here to have fun" people, the drama, the casuals, the whiners all behind was the best $25 I've ever spent.
I don't understand how people can say pvp servers are more progression and hardcore based.
[ . . . ]
Pvp is no more hardcore than Pve, in terms of people, progression and guilds.
Of the 19 guilds who have killed Kel'Thuzad, 18 are on PvP servers.
Tangent from a few pages ago:
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.
It never gets intractable. Some dude's annoying voice does not convey anything that text can't, and bossmods do most of the relevant work either way. Since joining my current guild I have never pined for the time during which I used voice communication, and this is coming from a former raid leader.
I don't understand how people can say pvp servers are more progression and hardcore based.
[ . . . ]
Pvp is no more hardcore than Pve, in terms of people, progression and guilds.
Of the 19 guilds who have killed Kel'Thuzad, 18 are on PvP servers.
Tangent from a few pages ago:
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.
It never gets intractable. Some dude's annoying voice does not convey anything that text can't, and bossmods do most of the relevant work either way. Since joining my current guild I have never pined for the time during which I used voice communication, and this is coming from a former raid leader.
Of the guilds who have killed KT, they exhibit a behavior more dominant in guilds who reside on PVE servers, that is, a fairly focused and singularly oriented goal to kill the hardest bosses the fastest.
It's a notable point that those having killed KT are on pvp servers, but it's also worth noting that the ratio of guilds actually stomping through Naxx appears to be tilted in favor of PVE servers, so the common conclusion would be that PVE servers have either a similar or higher concentration of focused players.
I've kicked around on several servers, both PVE and PVP, and always found those on PVE servers to be more oriented to that goal, that's generally why people roll PVE, while those on PVP tend to at least focus a bit of their time on pvp. Then again, some people just like getting Ashjre'thuls and rolling the rogue who tries to gank them in Felwood. (<------)
Anyways, my point was that I don't find PVE servers to be any less hardcore than PVP; it's a common misconception, the same way this thread seems to throw around alot of commonly, albeit misplaced theories on what goes on other servers. I don't make any remarks about RP because I've never actually rolled a character on one, as for the others, a couple of servers and it's coincidence. A few more and it's more practice.
Oddly enough, I'd think RP servers would actually not suffer from slower progression, for the mere fact that fights would appear to be more "exciting" and "rewarding" than those on other servers. While other servers are focused on date of kills and shiny purples, RP servers I would *think* would look at every boss kill as ridding the world of some major baddie.
That's how I saw it, LadyVex. I loved RP raiding and loved the rush of RP-turning in Ony's head for the first time, for example. I think a lot of it is sour grapes and an unwillingness to master the skillsets necessary to succeed in raiding.
Then, too, there's the reset problem. "Rejoice, my brethren, for we have slain the Elemental Lord Ragnaros in his very lair! We have ridden Azeroth of a threat beyond all telling. Meet back here next week, same time, for the second kill. Hope he doesn't drop more Stormrage and Nemesis." In a world where players can respawn within minutes, I had no particular problem with minor gods and powerful dragons doing similar, but YMMV.
10/04/06, 1:47 AM
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