I was amused to find out earlier this week that my WoW guild is one of the oldest in Europe. I’m not sure how they knew, but it sounds plausible. It was a day 1 guild (ie. formed on the first day the server went live) on a day 1 server (opened on the day the game went live in Europe), and it’s still going strong. Credit for this goes mostly to a variety of guild leaders and officers but also to all the players who have ever been part of ARC.
(‘grats to us, and now we just have to sabotage the others.)
I hadn’t really thought much about Argent Dawn as a server until some friends of mine transferred over a couple of months ago. They were astounded by the differences they found – partly because of moving to a RP server and partly due to the server having an older community.
– They felt as though everyone knew each other, all the guild leaders did too. It’s not that we don’t have a lot of new guilds too, but some people have been around the block a few times 😉
– They felt as though the server had a very specific need/greed custom in groups. Which is true, it drives me nuts but people on AD like it if everyone passes on loot and then rolls on it later. Dates back to original WoW, before need/greed was implemented.
– They were amazed at how many raid groups we had. ie. raid groups which included players from more than one guild. This is a common trend in the day 1 RP servers, I’ve no idea if other servers with older communities do this also. It dates back to 40 man raids, and people wanting to stay in their friendly RP guilds whilst still raiding. And a few very talented organisers.
– They found the standard of PUGs to be higher than they were used to (again, this is plausible to me, I don’t see any of the real horror players I hear about)
I’m not sure at what point a server becomes ‘mature’, it would be interesting to compare notes or figure out some way to study server communities changing with age. But there is definitely a different feel to an older server than to the manic jostling for status in a new server. On a newer server, the whole game can feel like an extended PUG. Sometimes that’s fun, it’s a chance to get to know new people and make your mark. Sometimes it is a nightmare. Older servers feel more settled. But does that make it harder to fit in if you don’t know anyone?
Do you notice the difference?
Welcome to Spinksville! 
If you are paying below five gold for a stack of copper, your server is not mature.
Ah yes. Nothing quite like inflation.
Yeah, I have noticed the same thing on my server (Scarlet Crusade, another RP server). My sister recently transfered here from a PvP server where Alliance was out numbered about 7-1. She talked about how hard it was to run anything and that she basically got stuck running battlegrounds all the time.
I moved to my server a couple of years ago, and it was one of the first RP servers here in the US. It felt like a lot of people knew each other, and I was just a bystander.
But you’re right, it’s definitely easy to get PuG groups together. I actually raid with a group that’s made of people from all different guilds, and we pretty reliably clear all of Naxx in an afternoon, even getting achievements on occasion. When I tell people who play on different servers that, they’re amazed that I can do such a thing without a guild.
I used to play on a server that was about 1 year old in BC. I had a couple of level 70s and was constantly amazed at how difficult running instances and forming groups was.
I would politely whisper people of appropriate levels to see if they’d be interested in a run, and they wouldn’t ever respond unlike my current day-1 RP server. Once, someone even cussed me out at the audacity for offering him a spot in a run with a tank&healer and then put me on ignore
I left that place like a bad relationship.
Suffice it to say, I’m never leaving my day-1 server.