Looking to play classic again

Hey all, Looking to jump in to classic again for some casual play. Curious to what server has a healthy (decent) population of both factions. I’m sure some will say the game is dead, I understand not as many people are playing but still just trying to find something with a little active community that isn’t one faction ruling the entire server. Pref US East. Thanks!

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does not exist

For Classic Era:
Whitemane (PvP) cluster - West but people from all over play and is Eastern time friendly.
Mankrik (PvE) cluster - East

For Season of Mastery, which will end in a few months and you can transfer to Classic Era to continue:
Jom Gabbar (PvP) - East

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Come to Era. We are nice. We have cookies. And the blood of our enemies to drink.

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I recently replied to a similar thread asking about Classic Era realms. Below is a Copy/Paste of that response:

Classic Era are the realms you’re looking for. They are dedicated to not progressing down any of retail’s past expansions. Many of the Classic Era realms have been ‘connected’ (blizzard’s version of merging) according to timezone region/server type.

Additionally, blizzard has opened free transfers to Mankrik in the PvE East Cluster and Whitemane in the PvP West Cluster.

Those realms (and the ones they are connected to) are in all likelyhood the most populated for a given faction/server type. I play Horde on the PvP East Cluster holding together Benediction/Faerlina/Heartseeker/Incendius/Netherwind.

For clarity, playing on (For PvP) Whitemane or the realms it is connected to (Anathema, Arcanite Reaper, Bigglesworth, Blaumeux, Fairbanks, Kurinnaxx, Rattlegore, Smolderweb, or Thunderfury) will have the same result since those 10 realms are effectively merged.

Similarly, playing on (For PvE) Mankrik or Ashkandi, Pagle, Westfall, or Windseeker will be identical since those 5 realms are connected.

One more thing: Solely for the purposes of Instanced PvP/Battlegrounds (Alterac Valley, Arathi Basin, Warsong Gulch) ALL of the NA realm clusters are combined/Cross-Realmed (Idk if OCE is included or not). So no matter where you play Classic Era, everyone will play together and have the same queues for BGs.

Classic Era communities usually sync their queues for BGs around the fridays/weekends. There is a specific discord for that sorta thing. I don’t have the link but perhaps someone else can provide it.

Good Luck and if you have any questions, ask away!

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This is a subtle message saying, “Go here OR ELSE!”

Just go to Mankrik or Pagle for PvE. Whiemane and one other are the PvP hubs and I don’t know about the RP hub.

Seeing as how the free transfers have been left open indefinitely, is there really a downside to venturing in other locations first? What would be the ‘or else?’

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Back into Classic? Good Luck! Nothing was more haunting than the crawl from 50-60 in a dead server! Orgrimmar Empty, the Plaguelands Empty aside from the creatures…
I was gonna try WOTLK, but, if it’s releasing this year, i’m giving in, I wanted to experience all these great events like the Scarab Stuff, and the Undercity Siege (Wrathgate Stuff) but, I’ve already missed the Scarab War Twice now. I’m not meant for Classic I suppose, a real shame!

Or else no eventual character. If they’re nuking BC servers, Vanilla will be next.

Grobb on West if you want a healthy pvp/balanced server

In the case of realm closures, Blizz wouldn’t sneak up on us and do that. They’ve been fine on providing advanced notice for that sort of thing and making accommodations for it.

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US East Realm includes:
Mankrik (free transfers from other PvE servers to this one)
Westfall - good population
Ashkandi
Pagle
Windseeker
? (I may have forgotten some)

If you make a character on any of these servers, they will see players of the other servers. You can join guilds with these players regardless of server. PvP is cross-linked across all? servers.

Bloodsail Buccaneers is the RP-PvE server. The last combined guild “Unyielding” (Alliance) moved to Mankrik at the end of May 2022. We joined CRH and are currently raiding BWL and AQ40. There is still a Horde guild “Whispered” on Bloodsail. But the server is largely a frontier wilderness for Ironman challengers now or those looking to make machinima without random players in the background.

The few players who are there tend to be friendly because the community is sparse. Seeing another real player is an “event” in and of itself. There’s no “desensitization” of crowds, but rather the reverse. It’s a good server but not typical gameplay. Good for people who don’t mind solitude, solo lvling, or playing with a few friends.

I can name 5+ players that are still on Bloodsail but it’s essentially a “small town.” You get to know individual players not guilds. There’s no trolls. Because trolls need someone to troll and there’s no one to troll 99% of the time. There’s no bots because there’s no economy. Economy collapsed months ago before the cross-links in February. The RP servers were not cross-linked, and we had constant new players and veterans leaving to the combined realms. We couldn’t retain players as a cut-off server versus the combined realms.

If you roll here, I advise making a crafter for your armor class because there will be no green/blue drops on AH or community trade to help gear your new character. You start to see how one friend helps a lot here. It’s definitely not vanilla or Classic but it can be interesting if you want something different and challenging both socially and gamewise.

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Playing on a lower pop realm certainly hammers home the value of self-sufficiency and never throwing anything away. The ‘economy’ in my realm cluster is more of a bartering system with friends/guildmates.

bro wtf is wrong with ur dwarfs face

How dare you?
Classic dwarven beauty is wasted on you, sir.
GOOD DAY

i kinda like it…

It is called being beautiful.

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pvp west is full of the worst kind of gamers. they will control how you play and when you can play. you’re going to want to try pvp east. the bg’s are linked together for west/east. a typical pvp west raid is a group of 40 individuals that are scared to talk to each other for fwar of reprisal or fear of the filth that will cone out of their mouths. the west pvp’rs are just trading honor in the bg’s for their brackets. i believe the last grand marshal and high warlord to come out of those shenanigans were some of the worst pkayers ever produced with that system.

You have the anti classic+ folks to thank. Classic is dead because of them. We could have a WoW version of OSRS, with more players than retail, if the community was smart.

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Faction balance yeah faction belt is dead bro there’s literally one server with a decent faction balance maybe 1.

It’s either 99% of one or the other generally casual or generally casual play Ralph is the best 1 to do that in but honestly I would just find a server with the biggest population you can.

Then go from there if you want an absolute fresh experience there’s fresh servers coming out but I mean what’s your Idea of a decent population I mean I play on peggle for example about almost 10K.

Benediction and faralina are about almost 30K giver take And most other servers are well There’s 2 or 3 servers that are about 20K But most servers are about 5 to 6 and the rest are just well on elk dad honestly though before you pick a server I would wait till the 9th because their consolidating them.

I would check iron forge pro com though before you decide just to get an idea of how big the population is.