World of Warcraft Roleplaying Guide Book: Servers – Which One to Join

NOTE: This guide on servers is mostly in relation to US Servers, as I don’t know European or other Area Roleplay servers. So I apologize for that in advance!

Part 1 – Introduction

Previously I just talked about Roleplaying itself, and what it is, and I went as basic as I could to give you an idea of what you’d be getting yourself into when you log on to Roleplay. Now, you might be asking yourself where you can go to find all of this exciting Roleplaying that I mentioned.

Well, here’s the thing. You can’t just log onto any random server, walk into a bar/tavern/building and go “How do you do fellow Rpers” and expect a response. Even though World of Warcraft is billed as an “MMORPG” (Emphasis on the RPG) there are only a few places you can go for Roleplay in the game.

Luckily it’s not tied to just a few, small, specific areas in the game. There are no spots that go “Roleplay here” when you log in. Instead – thankfully – you’ll find that there are entire servers dedicated to Roleplay.

For people who haven’t played the game before, and might want to give it a try, you’ll first see the below screenshot on a list of servers that you could possibly join.

What you’ll see is the following:

• Name
• Type
• Character
• Population

For the purposes of finding Roleplay, we can just ignore the “Characters” and “Population” right now because those aren’t going to be important. After all, Characters just denote how many characters you own on that server, and Population just denotes how many people are typically on the server at the moment. Those two designators are pretty explanatory.

Instead, the tab you’ll want to pay attention to is server “type”, because it explains what the server is known for. The type that we’ll want to find, and focus on, is “RP” because what that means is that those servers are specifically designed for Roleplayers in mind.

So what, does that mean that it’s designed for Roleplay? Well, presently there are only a few differences between an Rp server and a Normal server type. It used to be a long while ago that there were specific rules on Rp servers you had to follow, such as no griefing Roleplay, having a Roleplay style name (Meaning no ‘xXSephirothXx’ style names), and following certain roleplaying conventions on the server when it came to how you interacted with members of the opposite faction.

Of course, a lot of these rules are either relaxed, or done away with right now since it’s both impossible to manually screen every single player for rule-breaking, and the fact that some are antithetical to the fun of the game itself. Right now you can have any sort of designated name you want, but griefing roleplay is still considered harassment.

Still, the fact that the servers are still designated as “RP” signals to people looking for Roleplay on where to go, and what servers it’s happening on.

Now, there are several different RP servers that you’ll see but, but we’re going to mainly focus on two right now for beginners because of how large and varied the communities are.

Wyrmrest Accord, and Moon Guard

Those two are the most populated RP servers on Warcraft right now. They often see thousands of different players logging on to roleplay each day to play and engage one another in a multitude of different ways. They might be heavily populated enough that they sometimes require a queue to get in, but they’re perfect for beginners simply because – as I said – there’s so MUCH that goes on at any single one time that you’ll find roleplay almost immediately, and at all hours of the day.

Differences

So, is there a difference between each of the servers?

At its core: No.

Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing really different between Moon Guard and Wyrmrest Accord on a fundamental level. Each server has the same ruleset (as lax as it can be now), are the same designated type, and generally follow the same basic guidelines when it comes to Roleplay. The only real difference between each is that they take place in different time zones from one another, which makes it harder to coordinate Roleplay between servers.

But other than that, there’s no difference.

So, which one is better?

Short and honest answer: None of them.

Each server has its own culture that’s separate from the other one, but that’s mostly because each server has its own different groups of people who do different things to develop that server’s culture. If you were to go to one of the Capital Cities on Moon Guard, you wouldn’t see the same group of people from each different server if you logged onto them. If you logged onto Moon Guard, you’d see an entirely different group of people and vice versa from Wyrmrest Accord

This means that a lot of things ARE different, but it’s all superficial as each server is made up of different players who have their own dynamics when it comes to inter-guild politics, organizations, event makeup, personal plotlines, names, places, well-known personalities and everything else.

Listing all of the superficial differences between the servers is a guide unto itself, and even then would quickly become outdated as each server Community is constantly evolving and changing.

For beginners though, none of this is important. After all, you’re coming in not knowing who these people are, their personal histories, or anything like that. So it’s all cosmetic differences that in the end don’t really impact you in any way starting out.

So you can safely choose one or the other. Heck, you can even choose both. In fact, players who roleplay for an extended amount of time might have a character on both servers due to the flexibility it affords them in being able to switch from different groups of people whenever they want to experience different roleplay types.

So you’re not bound to one or the other by your choice. While a lot of players on either will act like there’s some sort of intense rivalry between each server, the truth of the matter is the majority of players just see them as different places to often hang out – and often do depending on their mood.

Heck, I’ve got a character on each server myself.

Conclusion

With all of that said, simply choose either Moon Guard or Wyrmrest Accord and make your character as you see fit. Starting out, don’t worry too much about what you intend to play just yet. A lot of people starting out make a throwaway character to get out of the starting zones and head to the Capital Cities (Orgrimmar and Stormwind respectively) to see what the RP is about and go from there.

Next, though, we’ll be talking about Addons, and how they can further help and enhance your immersion into any given Roleplay scene, and help you experience whatever Roleplay you’re involved in on a more fundamental level that can enrichen your time there.

See you then!