I was late to the Classic WoW party and for the most part I’ve been enjoying it, although today it started to feel like I was playing a Solo game, rather than a multiplayer game.
Spent more time spamming in General (approx. 20 people in the zone) for help with an Elite quest than I did running to the quest.
Feels like I’m alone in the world (except for the level 60 Alliance players that like to gank multiple times while I’m leveling, but that’s a whole other story)… Is this how Vanilla felt?
leveling sure, endgame though of course not
Since you got in late, the leveling zones are less populated. Getting into a decent guild can solve some of that issue, but finding partners in the wild will be harder than it was when the game first launched. It also depends on the server and the times you play.
no 10 char
Vanilla didn’t feel like a solo game to me and Classic also didn’t feel like a solo game to me. What did feel like a solo game to me was Retail so I stopped playing SLs after 3 weeks… but that’s my preference.
I do think a lot of it is because most people are at the end game at the point (as already mentioned). Especially for doing those elite quests. I actually made lasting friends doing those elite quests in Classic. They were already in the zone and we randomly grouped up… but this was when many people were still leveling.
If you plan to progress to TBC it should be much better there if you start early. People will still be wanting to group for quests etc.
I’m just futzing around with alts now, so I don’t much care about group quests or even dungeons. I just want to chill. Probably many others are the same.
If you weren’t playing at the first quarantine, you missed out. The servers exploded in popularity.
Obviously, this is going to vary greatly server to server and be faction-specific, but this is my personal experience. Original vanilla, I never had trouble finding groups for anything- it was always active every step of the way. In Classic, later on things slowed WAY down in terms of other people leveling. The popular instances- Deadmines, SM, for example- were still pretty easy to find groups for, but just about everything else died off as no one was really leveling any more. At 60, it’s usually been pretty easy to find 5-man groups, and even PuG slots into non-Naxx raids.
In terms of Classic going forward, if you’re planning on continuing on to TBC, prepatch and early TBC is going to create a massive wave of leveling characters to group with. From the hardcore power levelers to the casual slow and steady levelers, we’re going to have a lot of people running around leveling for at least the next six months.
WoW is always going to feel kinda empty if you join at the end of one of the expansions when compared to the start. I would bypass those epic quests unless you immediately find someone to join you. Time wasted hunting for someone is better spent questing and reaching the level cap.
Well we are in late game classic and there might be some people who still raid but most will go tbc, getting a group for mid level content might be a hard thing and without world buffs naxx might be bad. Less so for aq40. There still might be pugs but if you can get to lvl 60 before the prepatch interest in lower tier raids like mc/zg/aq20/ubrs might exist for characters made for tbc and the tbc races.
It depends on your realm and what time you play, but there is no denying there were more people in the world during the first year. The first character I leveled was a very social experience, especially as a healer. I would run into people randomly all the time to group up with to complete quests. Nowadays, unfortunately, a good chunk of the population spends their gold boosting and skipping the leveling process.
With my schedule and responsibilities, yeah… I mostly just play with myself.
The appeal of WoW was always that it could be played solo if you wanted, and passed the rush of the game being new the old world did slowly become more and more quiet even back in the “good ol’ days”.
WoW is more of a 2nd gen MMO with player choice being pretty paramount which made it appeal to the casual or newer player, but that also means that it can be lonely for someone picking it up at level 1 right now.
I feel like this is a problem with the server you are playing on rather than with Classic in general.
I’ve also returned to Classic recently, like maybe 2 months ago. I play Horde on Mankrik and the world feels very much alive. There’s always people asking for Elite quests, dungeon groups being formed, etc. My mage is level 58 now and I’ve played with a whole bunch of nice folks along the way.
If you want a high population feel, gotta pick a server and faction with a high population. If you just wanna level while watching Netflix undisturbed, pick one of the medium to low-pop servers.
There’s a definite uptick in people leveling out in the world with the announcement of tbc. I’ve noticed it for sure with my alts, Mulgore was filled with lowbie druids
At launch and for a bit more than the first year my server was packed. After the first few Naxx clears everyone kinda packed up and that was it (on my server)
As for the preset leveling experience, yeah it’s a bit sparse out there, I do still manage to get dungeons when I play, just no place near what was possible in phase 1 or 2, even phase3 leveling had plenty of activity.
Now with TBC on the way things are improving, but it’s still very quiet compared to early classic.
Probably a solo game while levelling but even then I’ve partied up with people while levelling just doesn’t happen that often.
I started late in Vanilla and yes, early leveling was pretty much either solo or with my friend. I found instance groups once and a while but the majority of my leveling was solo questing. TBC dropped before I had hit 60 and it got a lot better once I hit Outland.
In Classic, I started in phase 5. Again, I mostly leveled alone or with a buddy. Sometimes I’d group up with another player in the area killing the same stuff. Everyone likes a pocket priest. Most of my dungeon runs before Mara were guildies helping out. Once I got to my 40s in Desolace there were a lot more people in dungeons. I did a lot of non-boost mara runs, ZF, ST, and BRD.
The leveling did, ya, but even in my most hardcore of raiding days I always preferred to level solo. But this game now is past its time, there are some aspects to leveling that require more than a 2000 people on a server where 1800 of them are hyper focused on end game.
I just picked up marauders of darrowshire, a quest that recommends a raid. Perfect for 15 years ago, the comments on wowhead say they got 20 people together to do it (and sure, some of the comments say they 5 manned it), but you’re more likely to clear naxx than complete that quest now