Beware Strange People Bearing Whispers

I've been on a bit of an exploration kick lately in Retail, where I just poke around areas looking for people while I'm on my lowbie Rogue. This is all within reason, of course, since she's roughly L13, but I did poke my nose into Northrend and all sorts of other areas on the Old World. 

Needless to say, it's all pretty empty.

Eh, I took the portal anyway.

I don't know where half of these portals go nowadays.

Ever had the feeling that you're lost in your hometown? Retail is like that to someone who hasn't played since Mists (and even then mainly BGs). Oh, I did recognize a few people around...

Wait, I thought Cardwyn was your only apprentice.
When did all this happen, and does Card know about this?

And I couldn't go more than a few feet without it being suggested that I check out various things...

*SIGH*

But I found some Honor Hold personnel at the bottom of the Mage Tower and I saw they could port me to the Dark Portal. 

"Aha! I can go to Outland. That'll work!"

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot...

What the hell is going on? You know what, I think it's smarter to just go back to the old Lion's Pride Inn and call it a day.

Ahh... Much better.

Still, there was one thing on my mind. After the roleplaying post from the other day, I was reminded that the old Moon Guard - US server was where most Alliance RP took place. And yes, I'm quite aware of Goldshire and the Lion's Pride Inn's reputation. Well, the last time I visited Goldshire on Moon Guard, I wasn't that impressed. This was back in 2013 or so, and some of the worst offenders of ERP back then had been purged from the server, so it wasn't what I'd call "busy". Still, I've seen enough YouTube videos that show an active RP scene, so I got curious and made a toon on Moon Guard just to see what's going on.

Sorry, but she's not named Cardwyn. I did check to see
if Deathwyn was available, but alas it was already taken.
It actually took me about 10-15 minutes of hunting for
available names that I liked before I got to this one.

I wasn't planning on doing any RP myself; I don't have any RP addons installed on Retail, and if anybody were to whisper me I'd politely decline. Hey, it's their world and it's the proper thing to do.

Well, at least this looks normal.
Full Disclosure: I ran back last night to get this
screencap, because I forgot to take one on Sunday.

I did find actual people questing in Northshire Abbey, so that's an improvement over what Livona experienced.

Instead of doing those initial quests, I figured it was safe to run straight to Goldshire and see what I could find.*

Remember the proverb "Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it?"

Yeah, about that...

Holy crap.

I got over to the inn, saw THAT, and immediately logged for the day.

That was a bit overwhelming. The inside if the Inn had to have the most people I've seen in one place in Retail since... early Cataclysm, maybe? It certainly wasn't in Mists, because Ysera-US was pretty empty, even with the server "merges"; on Area 52-US --a 10:1 Horde server-- I think everybody was either raid logging or just hanging out in the Horde Pandaria hub, but since I never leveled a Horde toon to max level that expansion I never made it there. 

So, I decided it couldn't have been that bad, and that I just happened to show up at a specific event or something, so I checked Goldshire and the Inn again tonight...

"Do I really want to know what your rates are
for a room, Sir?"

And stepping outside, there was this:

I ran back to Northshire Abbey, because it was a LOT quieter, and it was there that I discovered two things.

The first is that it's now a default that if someone whispers you it's put in a separate tab, and two... well...

I'm almost 100% certain that person wasn't
talking about Enterprise Resource Planning.

I didn't respond, because at first I wasn't sure how long that whisper had been there --it could have been about 10 minutes old for all I knew-- and I'll be honest in that I should have known that sort of whisper would happen. But... Did you see the size of that crowd? Given the mob inside I figured it would have been hard to pick me out, especially without me having installed any RP addons and only running out of the place, but a female toon still managed it in the minute or so I actually spent in Goldshire. This kind of puts a lie to the concept of "If there's a crowd, nobody is paying attention to you." If there's a way to make my anxiety spike while playing a video game, that was it.

Well, I guess you could say I finally found where the people are in Retail when they're not sitting around wherever the endgame area is: they're in Goldshire on an RP server.

*You have to be paying attention if you do this in Classic, because the Defias and hostile animals lurking near the road could kill you. In Retail, it's not very likely.

EtA: Added the comment on the last graphic because I can't not see the business version of ERP when I see that acronym.