New, have questions

Hello, DBers. First of all, sorry if this is the wrong section for this kind of thing. Wasn't really sure where to post it!

I come from the dreaded land of Argent Dawn, and am considering a poke at/move to this server (server group, now?). As an ardent night elf roleplayer, I was a little dismayed to find northern Kalimdor seemingly totally deserted. I'll admit, I've had a little bit of a look around, but not too much. Enough to get impressions, but certainly not enough to know anything. But, if there isn't any RP around those parts, maybe I'd try to create some. Maybe there's people out there in the forest, hiding? Anyway, hopefully some of you will take a few minutes to answer my previously 100% PvE-realm butt's questions.

1) What level of activity is world-PvP at? I expect to get killed, but does it take 4 hours to do an emissary quest/Broken Isle round because you can't do a world quest without getting murdered? Thrilling as it is to have that "what if someone's watching/comes by to gank me?" feel while leveling, I expect it grows old if it's near-impossible to do content due to fighting.

2) What impact does the PvP part of RP-PvP have on non-fighty RP? Over the years of immigrants from DB to AD, I've seen people who sigh wistfully at the thought of RP-PvP, and people who count themselves lucky to have escaped the "prison" of starting zones, as if they could not have non-fighty RP events outside of them without getting ganked. What's the real skinny? Is RP mostly "stuck" in the main cities and starter zones?

3) Population. It had to come up at some point, right? I understand that, at least in terms of RPers, DB's population can't measure up to AD. As mentioned, I've had a look around the server, and even then it was hard for me to find more than 20-30 RPers. And that was with me just having a brief peek at a Stormwind... Council? It was on a Tuesday. I've RPed on a Neverwinter Nights server that probably had an active population of 250-500 people at its peak, which meant something like 60-80 people online most nights, and that was amazing! Still, there has to be a decent number of people around for RP to flourish in some way, and while it may be a blunt question... is there?

4) Community. Possibly connected to the above question? I have played on AD since... 2005. The server has undergone a lot of changes, and while nostalgia plays a part, it feels to me as if focus has gone away from RP and interesting characters/stories, and more towards a rather toxic, ever-present OOC popularity competition. There were times where guilds worked together, where people largely tried to find reasons to RP with and include others rather than reasons to shut them out, and I'd really like to find that kind of friendly community again. Is DB like that? What's it like, if you were to try to describe it?

5) It seems to me that random RP is almost non-existent. I totally grant that this may be due to me being new to the server and just not knowing where to look, but still, is it? Is RP mostly inside guilds, or not?

Thank you in advance for any replies!

Welcome

I try to answer your questions best as I can:

1) Most people will focus on their quests, so I've not experienced as a problem, with that said you might be killed now and then but I've both levelled and done lot of world quests on several characters without much problem.

2) This was more of a problem before I would say, it happens that an event is disturbed now and then, such as the Stormwind Council but in general that is not an issue. When it happens it's annoying for sure and people will have different approaches, some won't blue shield, some will, it's down to personal preference. To me these kind of attacks are never IC, so I just ignore them. Outside of Alliance territory you find ways to handle it but I would say it's rare in these days that it occurs unless it's some really big event.

3 and 4) I bundle these together as they kind of tie together. Community is for sure smaller here than on AD, it's more focused on guilds and events, so random RP is not that frequent. With that said there are a number of guilds around of various concepts, I never have trouble finding RP myself and there are plenty of public events where everyone can join in.

As for the Community goes, I've been here since the start 2005 and Defias has taken the opposite run I dare to say, there were more players around before but also a lot more drama and ooc conflicts. I dare to say that the community here in these days is more mature, friendly and working together, I think it's one of the benefits with a smaller community.

5) As mentioned RP is mostly focused on Guilds and events, so yes there is not that much random RP around but that doesn't mean there is not RP around, often you can just ask in our chat channel and people will gladly join in for some casual RP!

I'll just mention the questions about wpvp, rp-pvp and ganking. You don't really see people ganking rp events outside of starting zones a lot anymore, of course it happens occasionally but nothing going on continuously. even if it happens asking for help in lfrp or so will sometimes garner enough support to get them to sod off or at the very least get a very interesting fight. As for the time of emissary quests, it again depends if you want to ask for help or not(if you get ganked).

Generally when I do wquests it takes an hour and a half because I do them in chunks, gankers is usually not too much of a problem but if you play melee expect to die a lot due to cleave.

I've experienced ganking to be more of an issue on my Horde character so for Alliance I'd say you're pretty safe.

Thanks for the responses, both! I appreciate the time taken.

Next, and more specific, question: Is there much in the way of night elf RP going on? I became more aware of DB when Nature's Grasp transferred to AD, but I can't say that I know anyone in the guild, so I don't really know why they decided to leave. And, as I mentioned, northern Kalimdor seemed deserted at a brief glance, but I could simply have missed any night elf guild that hangs around.

No nelf specific guilds around, no Alliance activity in Kalimdor as a whole. Most of the action seems to be in EK and the only real permanent hub is Stormwind.

No current Night elf only guilds that I know of at this time, sorry to say. Would be fun to have some again, but I reckon one issue is that we Alliance roleplayers are rather centered around Eastern Kingdoms, we are not visiting Darnassus or Exodar much, thus it might be a tad hard to get roleplay with others going there.

I miss Nature's Grasp and Winterblades quite a bit, they did make some nice events when here.

While there are no nelf guilds around there are plenty of nelf characters, so any RP there about would for sure be welcome. With patience and dedication a guild could work too but maybe best is to get some RP going to see what the interest looks like?

Also having some interest in Kalimdor. The thing is, there is neither Horde Kalimdor based rp guilds, like orc guilds or tauren. That is a blank page currently. As some sort of events would be nice to have there also a bit with developed stories and guilds being part based at Kalimdor.

So I wish that some people who would like to take up the task of setting up Kalimdor based orders, just go ahead, it's a ship travel away from Eastern Kingdoms so one can take part in the general ongoing things on both continents fairly easily in ic manner.

The scenery is different on the continents, so that makes sense.