Invading Org harder in Vanilla Classic than Vanilla and BG problems

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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Back in 2005 - 2006 during Original Vanilla, I used to invade Orgrimmar with my Alliance characters to mess around. It was hard but very fun to see if I could kill any unsuspecting Horde players who were flagged for PvP. I even made some friends that way in those days. My gear wasn’t the best, but you didn’t have a ton of Marshalls / Warlord hanging out in Orgrimmar in those days, so that was not a problem. That’s when each faction could only have ONE Grand Marshall per realm in any given week. Even back in those days, I worked 9 - 5 on weekdays so even though I couldn’t put in the time investment needed for the higher ranks and gear, it wasn’t really a problem because neither could most Horde at the time.

So fairly recently (due to my busy work schedule), I got a Classic Vanilla Alliance character to 60 and tried to invade Orgrimmar the same way as I did back in 2005 - 2006. And I’ve run into certain problems that were not present in Original Vanilla because of changes Blizzard made for Classic Vanilla.

First of all, there’s Warlords everywhere in Orgrimmar. They just stomp me even harder than I got stomped in 2005 - 2006. So I know what you’re all thinking: I should just get higher ranks so I can get better gear, right? Something I didn’t need to do in 2006, but surely with the changes, I should be able to do this, right?

Here’s the problem: Currently I’m at rank 8, and I need to get 110,000 honor all between one Tuesday and the next in order to get to rank 9 and get two more pieces. So that’s about 15,714 honor per day on average if I play every night. Never had to do this in 2006 because 90% of Horde chilling in Orgrimmar weren’t that geared back then.

I work a 9 - 5 job and I’m typically kind of exhausted when I get home; I’d rather not be spending so much of my time just grinding honor before going to sleep only to wake up the next morning to go to work; just so I can get 110,000 honor within that one week time window. That’s no way to spend a life. I never had to do anything like that in 2006 to have fun invading Orgrimmar.

Now this would maybe be doable if Alterac Valley was popping like before. Problem is that in recent weeks, for whatever reasons, Horde have not been queueing for AV. I speculate that a lot of Horde have determined that Arathi Basin is yielding better honor per hour on average for them than AV due to classic AV probably being too Alliance sided. But for Alliance, the HPH for AB is way lower than AV and it’s just too slow for me with my limited schedule.

And to top it all off, in Arathi Basin, it feels like the HPH is faster if we (Alliance) just farm kills instead of trying to win the game. I don’t know if that’s actually true, but it sure feels like it.

The thing that really gets me is that I’m sure for a lot of the Warlords and Marshals that run around Orgrimmar and Stormwind: I bet many of them don’t have exhausting 9 - 5 jobs like I do and have way more time per week to be grinding honor from these BGs and that’s how they are able to be Marshals. And I’m sure there’s people with 9 - 5 jobs who have hit Grand Marshal but they went through consecutive hours of misery of grinding to get there.

The thing is, I didn’t have to deal with any of this back in 2005 - 2006 because the rules at the time made it so that there weren’t Warlords running around everywhere in Orgrimmar when I invaded it.

So already Classic Vanilla is different than Original Vanilla in that respect. So given that it’s already different anyway, why not change the rules so that you don’t have to earn all that honor within that specific one week window? Why can’t we earn partial rank if we don’t hit the threshold instead of this all or nothing business? Why should people who work long hours be at a disadvantage compared to those who don’t have a job in being able to obtain Grand Marshal?

I just would love to invade Orgrimmar in Vanilla Classic the same way I did in Original Vanilla back in 2005 - 2006.

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One does not simply walk into Mordor.

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Go level on Deviate Delight. Go help them get this fresh movement going while at the same time solving your own problem of running into too many geared players in a horde city.

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im level 7 and the grind is unbearable. i agree with you. btw when did the quest come out to invade and kill some elites where you get the warbear?

av and wsg alliance on whitemane win 1 in 20 matches.

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In the context of your experiences here, there’s two main issues with WoW right now…

  1. Too many people on one layer.
    In an effort to keep server costs low Blizzard has put so many more people on a server than we used to have back in 2004-2006. Even the two main populated clusters which are listed as “low” have more active raiders than my entire week 1 Vanilla server had players. Blizzard tried to address this with layers but they did a somewhat poor job of its implementation causing the player base to form an extremely hard and negative reaction to it. Blizzard could do something here to better separate the player base into meaningful, yet non-rigid divisions. Until they do, you’re going to have a lot of people sitting around in the main capital cities which will make it difficult to assassinate in the way you’re trying to now.
  2. Players min/max extremely hard.
    Let’s be real here, it’s a 20 year old game. There are guides and BiS lists aplenty and given that Era is now 5ish years running, you’re well behind. Vanilla only ran for 2 years so we’re beyond double that. It’s absolutely not a great system but the recent PvP ranking changes should actually help a bit. You don’t really have much choice except to go through it yourself. Blizzard can’t really do anything here without completely changing the game and that goes very much against the very reason people want to play Era in the first place. It’s not a healthy outlook for the general playerbase to have on the game, not at all, but I just don’t think Blizzard can do anything to change it and still keep to the core concepts of what Era represents. Even the changes they have made so far change the experience. Of course, so do the aforementioned player behaviours. There’s really no winning here.

With all that said, if your goal is to assassinate people in the capital cities, you might try off hours or out of the way places. You might also try a rogue since you can stealth around to find a target, do the deed, and then vanish in hopes of keeping the element of surprise. As a solo non-stealth class, your options are extremely limited.

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do you have stats on server numbers 2004-2006?
what we know is they did not phase back then.

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I don’t have any stats. I did some googling but finding those numbers for 18-20 years ago is challenging. What I can tell you though is this…

My server had three end-game guilds (ie, Naxx), two on Alliance and one on Horde. We had maybe no more than 10 other active guilds who were raiding anything else. If I just call it 15 active raiding guilds and assume 45 active raiders per guild, that’s approximately 700 players. My server is not what I would have called the most populated, but we did have queues once upon a time so at a minimum I would describe us as having been “medium pop”.

If I go over to ironforge.pro and look up server populations (which are based on active players logging to warcraftlogs), I see ~6300 for the Whitemane cluster and 2400 for the Mankrik cluster (at the time of writing). So taking things based solely on those stats alone, that’s a significant increase.

Moving more into the realm of speculation now, we can also make some reasonable assertions:

  • Due to the general accessibility and knowledge base of Era, the number of non-raiders today should not be less than the number of non-raiders in Vanilla WoW.
  • Due to the generally accepted nature of modern WoW’s monetization (not speaking RMT here), the number of active farmers (bots or otherwise) should be significantly higher than in Vanilla WoW.

So what I’m saying is, there are a lot more people, per server (and/or cluster) in WoW today relative to the server count than there was in the past.

I think “layers” is the appropriate term and no, they didn’t have that back then, they had more servers. Now they have more people on a server but they also put more people on a layer (likely in part due to the negative community reaction to it).

The result is that you just see more people in game than you would have seen in the past, especially in cities. All of this is in support of the OP’s experiences.

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i read your last reply. in addition, i don’t think servers on Era have more people on servers (including layers) than 04-06. i agree we don’t really have numbers for 2004-06 . i will add i wish there were more ppl on Era servers, i like more ppl playing and it makes the whole “real” mmorpg experience valid.

I notice when ppl post about server numbers, they always inevitably start talking about raiders and guilds. that is another subj. entirely.

I think ppl who like low pop servers are actually playing another game entirely. low pop servers are more clicky and not playing the game, in spirit, that was conceived and intended in 04-06

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In numbers of players the HC realms - at least the EU ones - feel much more like the Vanilla servers I knew back in 2006-07. Even those are more populated, sure, but people play less - or more carefully, with the effect that the number of people hanging around is roughly the same as in 2007. Maybe OP should try invading Orgrimmar in HC :slight_smile:

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9-5 still leaves nights and weekends. And if you have other responsibilities in life that is great, as do most of us. But I don’t think that justifies changing the game. Now the fact that BG’s do not pop at all because there are just not enough people queuing does. Didn’t they make it so same factions could face off, maybe it is time for that? Or even mix, I cant get into an AV. (I assume there will be some this weekend)

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Let’s set aside whether or not there are more active players per server or not and focus on this. I don’t disagree… connecting with other players is a large part of why we play MMOs. Dungeons are one of my favourite activities in the game and that’s very challenging to do on my current main server. More people playing the game means more opportunity to do dungeons and more fun for me.

However, the problem lies in the fact that the game’s systems were just not designed for that many people. A good example of this is the number of resource nodes that exist out in the world. Even excluding bots, there’s just too many people wanting a thing that is made much more scarce by virtue of population. It’s small wonder prices of raid consumables have risen to the point they’re at now.

Please understand, it’s not my intention to turn this thread into yet another discussion on WoW and montetization. It is my intention to impress upon you the idea that Vanilla WoW was designed for hardware available in the early to mid 2000’s, which means that said design had an intended target population. Since those days WoW has undergone refactor and now supports many more players per instance with evolved systems that alleviate many of the pain points Era players are feeling now. One example of this is that on retail, resource nodes stick around for 5 minutes (I think) after being harvested, allowing other players to harvest them too before they despawn. There are downsides, but it does mean players are much more able to farm the resources they need for the game’s various professions. However, this system is (intentionally) not available for Era.

So the desire for more people is not necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn’t really fit with the design of the game we’re playing.

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i think we are playing on the same server. tell me more what you mean by not enough nodes ( as i am not experiencing that). so you go out to farm… are there people out there grabbing up mats or killing stuff that you wanted?

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I don’t think we are on the same server. I used to main on Pagle (Mankrik) but have since left to join one of the lower populated servers. When I was still on the Mankrik cluster, yes, quite often there would just be no resource nodes available for extended periods of time and several other characters clearly attempting to do the same thing.

I still quest on that server on characters I level twice a week with a friend. There’s also been a few times where we’ve had to pause doing quests or go to another zone because a high level character was farming them en masse, making us unable to progress on the quest.

Some contention is to be expected, this is the nature of an MMO in the style that WoW was designed for, but not this much. I’m actually finding the empty server gameplay experience to be much more enjoyable. I can actually go out and farm the materials I want for raids and coordinate with my guildmates for things that I can’t make. The downside is that I can’t just up and do a dungeon run by posting in LFG.

It would be nice if these experiences could be blended, but I don’t think that’s possible right now, due to both the expectations of the player community and by the lack of interest on Blizzard’s part to engage with Era.

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i am on mankrik on a mage. and i use to run people thru instances, often for free, but they have nerfed mage dps and aoe so badly, yesterday i tried to run a friend thru sm cathedral for whitemane’s chapeau, and i couldnt kill her, and i’m level 58, with several epics and enchants. i feel the op’s pain, as modern changes have made the game unenjoyable for me

as the population in lower levels struggle to find groups for midrange content, like sm, i wont be able to help, and they’ll either have to just quest thru those levels or find a naxx geared mage to help (and that may be expensive). i can handle library, rather slow by comparison to pre-nerf, and gy is easy, but it ramps up to ridiculous in cathedral

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OP here. You made me smile when I read that! Thank you.

Besides the obvious: Horde players wouldn’t be flagged for PvP because they will have not come out of a BG since those are disabled on HC. So I wouldn’t be able to get the surprise jump on them; they’d have to attack me first. I’d certainly be recording this video of what would likely be a one-time experience, as I’d likely be deciding which non-HC realm to transfer my deceased character to. :smile:

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im assuming ur playing on Era. i’m seriously asking this question. how can they Nerf the mage? i thought no changes in Era.

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before it rolled over to classic tbc, mages were spamming dungeon level boosts for gold. players who wanted to just make a normal group, couldnt find one because everyone was opting for boosts. so they complained about mage aoe being too good, cause they were pulling huge groups of mobs and aoe-ing them down when boosting. forget how bad we were nerfed but it was pretty hefty.

they still are boosting, but likely need naxx geared mage for cathedral or higher. naxx gear is best in slot for most of tbc lol. my mage who boosted others back then, took the portal to tbc and now shes 80 mage in classic wotlk. so i made a new mage on era, and levelled her to 58, only to remember she was nerfed