Sorry for the late response
What were the moments of action like? Were they disruptive? Random? Did they spark more passive roleplay? Were they bloodthirsty?
Action was much more sporadic than previous iterations. In past versions you would guarantee that you when you went out on patrol, you were going to encounter the opposite faction and engage in S2K. Patrols were a lot more meaningful with no direct task of finding enemies and gunning them down for that score. I think they were disruptive in a good sense. Action was a lot more impactful and unpredictable in the same light you would expect real skirmishes to be disruptive to everyday life, or in our case passive rp. It did definitely stimulate passive roleplay, whether that was on the battlefield or afterwards. At the time and even now, I compare it a lot to past versions and there I noticed a lot more passive roleplay, even whilst being showered with bullets. Due to the server having such a small yet dedicated population, it was very likely that RP was more meaningful and more frequent whilst engaging in a skirmish.
I can't remember detailed examples of this, but there was a significantly lot more communication in game as opposed to teamspeak or discord, something that I've always preferred because 1. It is serious RP not CS GO and 2. Because my internet and computer used to be so bad in the days of the old WW3RP that my game would crash if I had anything open other than GMod. Off topic, I remember in the old WW3RP I was using a laptop and it's touchpad to play the game for quite a while, most of the time on the snowy Korea map. The amount of times I had to say "void misclick" or "my dog jumped up on me" because I was playing with a laptop touchpad still gives me nightmares.
MedRP was a lot more detailed as opposed to just slapping a wet paper towel on and joining the next patrol. I would even go as far as to say MedRP was an enjoyable part of playing on the server, something which I never thought I would say. There was definitely a lot more passive rp during patrols like building IC friendships, etc. Me and
@Rondal would go out often in a stasi car and talk a lot IC, something which you wouldn't really expect on patrols. The biggest pain about this though was trying to drive whilst typing. If I wasn't driving, I would talk more IC just to get the other person to struggle typing and driving and eventually/usually causing us to crash
Did the experience evolve over the year before it ended? Did the pandemic have an impact? Should anything have been handled differently in hindsight?
I only joined when the pandemic was in full force, late March/early April I think. During the time that I spent on the server, things definitely changed, mostly for the better. I think changing Stasi from an administrative entity to the NVA, a more armed and able faction as well as a clandestine Stasi was a great decision. Although hindsight is a wonderful thing, to counter this, merging the SAF and NVA was absolutely a mistake by the community, something which I was skeptical about before it happened. ICly, it didn't make a lot of sense and it was very noticeable that after this change occured it was extremely rare to see NVA mains come on. I remember resigning from NCO in SAF to help keep the NVA afloat but it just wasn't enjoyable having the factions merged and no others NVA around so I mostly played my civ character and eventually rejoined the Soviets, the faction which I believe improved the most over the time that I was on the server, given how painful it was to take a patrol out when I first joined the faction. The faults of past versions were very much still present in Soviet patrols, including unnecessary sprinting around, completely ignoring your NCO whilst on patrol and just doing what you wanted basically.
RP definitely stagnated on the final map. It wasn't a great map but you can't fault the staff for trying after being pestered to change this, go to this map or that one, only to be shut down when they did it. I pushed for introducing NATO, expecting it to help the playerbase issues but if anything it was the final nail in the coffin.
The pandemic did have a noticeable impact. As most have mentioned above, abandoning the routine of work/school, no longer booting the server up at 5pm but whenever you felt like it really butchered the regularity in playerbase activity. Although I joined when the pandemic started, I think for most people who stay up to early hours in the morning and stay in bed until the afternoon, it hindered the playerbase.
Were there any long term storylines? What was fun about the server, and do any particular highlights come to mind?
Most people that did commit to the server will agree that it was more roleplay rich than other severs. When it did have a good number of people on, it was probably one of the best servers I have played. It's biggest fault was how niche it was. Not a lot of people think to themselves "Oh, you know what? What could be more thrilling than jumping on a 16 year old, declining game to roleplay in an alternative timeline based in communist Germany?". Not many. To those that did think like that, most enjoyed it, but it just wasn't sustainable to last longer than it did. I think the days of creating whatever server you want on GMod are long gone. You have to appeal to a large audience. If there is ever another WW3RP, whether in the unlikely event it is in this community, or more possibly another, I think it would have to be your classic "red vs blue" to attract enough people.
There were definitely a lot of long term storylines.
@Mesa and his doings were the hub of a lot of RP I was part of, both as my NVA char and my journalist. The firemen were great to RP with as well, particularly gunning most of them down whilst building an NVA FOB, because communist war crimes are fun.
Most memorable moments have already been stated above but there were definitely a plethora of great times, particularly when enough people were on.
In hindsight one of my greatest regrets was not creating as much RP as I could of and I think this was a common problem for a lot of the server. I think the main cause for this was that the server and it's backstory was so niche and particular that people, myself included, didn't have the absolute understanding of what RP to create on a regular basis for others to enjoy. Others did though, so maybe that is an easy excuse. I was happy with my contribution to the server with my journalist character though. I think that was worthwhile, but I doubt I could have maintained that if the server remained, as it can become dull writing articles, dull for others to read, and work takes up a lot of the free time I had.
