It is extremely disappointing how Blizzard has completely mismanaged Classic Era with respect to population. Let me itemize the major screw-ups.
Cloning Fee
I was excited when Blizzard announced that you will have the opportunity to play both TBC and Classic with a soon to be announced service fee. Most players thought that this should be free but consensus was that a $5 fee/character would be reasonable.
Blizzard then announced an outlandish $35 fee/character that was universally mocked and players largely wrote off playing Classic Era.
Later, Blizzard relented and reduced the fee to $15 (still excessive) near TBC launch but the damage was done. The Classic Era population would be significantly limited by this financial hurdle.
Connections (and the lack thereof)
Most players wanted fresh content (TBC) and the Cloning Fee guaranteed that individual Classic Era servers would not have a sustainable population. Blizzard wisely decided to add connections but it was a bungled effort.
Some servers were not connected at all. For example, Deviate Delight was a low pop server at the end of Classic so it was quite obvious that Classic Era Deviate Delight would have negligible players. I left a character behind on Deviate Delight and can verify that no other players are active on the server.
When this was raised a few times n the forum, Blizzard simply ignored it.
Free Character Moves
After months of complaining about a situation that should have been resolved near TBC launch, Blizzard finally decided to address these dead servers by granting Free Character Moves (“FCM”). Seems like a good idea… but it’s Blizzard. Let’s see how they screwed this up.
All the PvP dead servers were offered a FCM to Whitemane server. Whitemane is already part of a connected cluster. For those who have Horde and Alliance characters on these dead PvP servers, you now have to choose which faction would be completely abandoned on your dead (can’t have both Alliance and Horde characters on the same PvP server).
What could have Blizzard done? Simply connect the dead realms to the Whitemane cluster. We can then play both our Alliance AND Horde characters AND maintained our character names.
As a less satisfactory option, they could have allowed a FCM to any realm within the Whitemane cluster. We can then move our Horde characters to one realm on the Whitemane cluster and Alliance characters to another realm on the Whitemane cluster (and we can pick the server where we can recover more of our character names).
I really don’t like complaining on Blizzard forums. It just adds to the negativity but when something has been this grossly mismanaged, I just need to vent a bit and hope they don’t royally screw things up for TBC Classic Era.
Those that agree, please let Holly Longdale (lead producer of Classic) know here: https://twitter.com/charaxs/status/1443983779224166403?s=21
Frankly, I think that’s a better way to get a message heard than this ignored forum.