By combining the Classic and Retail subscription as one subscription, it significantly muddied the water in trying to assess the health of Retail by comparing it with Classic. A lot of people came back for Classic. A lot of people almost totally stopped playing Retail when they started playing Classic. And a lot of people ignored Classic and keep playing Retail. A lot of people check in on their characters in both games from time to time, but are clearly putting the bulk of their playtime into one or the other. Point is, with the waters this muddied, theyâre virtually useless as barometers of the health of each other.
Iâd assess the health of Retail a lot more by how many mythic raiding guilds are able to function on their various servers now vs. the past (and this would also probably involve breaking down the number of mythic raiding guilds clearing just a bit of the instance, a lot of the instance, or going all the way and getting âCutting Edgeâ by clearing it entirely).
The âfull popâ servers are probably doing the same as ever on their face, but the realms below âfull popâ are probably doing varying levels of âworseâ and âmuch worseâ (which actually tends to lead to more transfers to full pop servers, keeping them at their past level while other servers sink). The giant host of medium pop and low pop servers are probably mostly doing devastatingly worse.
you do understand classic servers can handle the load retail servers do and i believe the devs said retails medium pop servers are equal to classic high pop.
Wowâs population is fine. People just expect retail to have queues in the middle of the day on a Wednesday, thatâs not going to happen with the design model the current iteration of the game. In retail itâs doing 4 Wqs for the emissary and log off for the day, so while there might be a lot of players, those players arenât logging on very often, and when they do itâs for a short period of time.
well due to my playing schedule I see the server pops at all times of the day. I highly doubt those high and full pop servers are at that count at 3 am, 8 am, 1 pm, 5 pm, 9 pm, 2 am, and so on the whole time.
What if blizz changed the numbers so that the retail servers have âlowerâ levels need to reach medium/full?
Instead of medium being 5k and full being 10. Adjust it so medium needs 2k and full is 5. The amount of players hasnât changed but WOOHOO! REALMS ARE HOPPIN!
Frankly, just the fact that people are in doubt about which one is doing better is kind of damning to how Retail is doing. Modern WoW vs. a 15-year old re-release that will never have new content isnât a fight that should be remotely close, neither in reality nor even in perception.
If people are saying, âWell, Retailâs still doing better than Classicâ to make it sound successful, thatâs a good sign Retail is doing horribly.
Hereâs my tinfoil hat they mark them as high/full pop servers to push players creating new characters on low pop realms to make them not feel as dead
I bet you thought I wasnât going to show up, didnât you?
The classic hype is fading, and not very slowly. My guild in retail has 3 full raid teams, know what we started with before classic launched? One. We had one single team. Players are rushing back to retail whether you want to admit it or not. Perhaps you are just disillusioned right now, which is okay.
Retail servers are full of life, more than weâve seen in ages.
