Returning player looking for realm

Guides Returning Player Help & Discussions
1

I recently resubscribed, along with my teenage son, and am hoping to introduce him to WoW. From TBC through Legion, I played on Ghostlands. This was due to a friend of mine who introduced me to the game having been part of a guild that was on that server. Most of my characters, wealth, and saved BOE items (recipes, etc.) are on Ghostlands. However, having just played through the BfA questlines on Ghostlands to unlock zandalari for me and vulpera for my son, it doesn’t look terribly populated.

I am considering us starting on a new server. We are East Coast US and would be Horde obviously. I have read that Area 52 is one of the best servers for Horde players due to a robust population and other factors. However, when I just looked at statistics on the wowrealmpopulation site, it shows about 800 active characters total on Area 52 compared with nearly 50000 for Thrall. This is at 7 AM ET. Even Ghostlands is showing a higher population than Area 52, and logging into Ghostlands I see no one in Org. I suspect something must be off with the population website.

I’d appreciate others’ thoughts on a good starting server. Once my son gets a hang of things, I’d like for us to join a casual guild. We both have busy lives, but some raiding and battlegrounds could be fun. Would Area 52 (or Thrall) be a good choice? Is Ghostlands as dead as it seems?

2

That site is showing Earthen Ring as more populated than Area52 which is just hilariously wrong. I tend to look at the wowprogress numbers. They aren’t perfect, but it’s generally a good idea to see how active a server is in raiding. (So, it’s a good metric when you can judge server activity by raid activity, but less useful to see how active an RP servers RP community is.)

It’s very hard to judge server population out in the world these days due to a couple of factors.

First, with the ability to level up in any expansion with Chromie Time, leveling characters tend to be more spread out. Add in the fact that it’s pretty quick to level, and people aren’t spending a lot of time when they are leveling. (Also, Chromie Time and non Chromie Time are in separate phases, so if you aren’t in Chromie Time, you won’t see most levelers at all.)

Second, sharding means that you aren’t always seeing everyone on your server or that you’re seeing lots of people not on your server. Generally, if a zone is fairly empty, it’s probably pretty empty on all servers.

With that having been said, people have generally been consolidating. The two big Horde realms are Illidan and Area52. These are where you’ll find the people who are interested in pushing the hardest content the fastest.

After that, there are several servers that are still very big, just not at the “mega server” level. Thrall is one of those, and the only one I have personal experience with. It’s got a healthy population, but the population in general feels less competitive that something like Area52 or Illidan. I find that a plus for Thrall, but I’m super casual.

So, if you want the most options for guilds, pick either one of the two mega servers, or one of the big servers like Thrall. (Tichondrious, Mal’Ganis, and Zul’jin would be the others I’d put in that category Horde-side.)

3

Thanks for the reply! Some further digging and research (i.e., performing “/who” across all levels in Org for GL, Thrall, and A52) confirmed what you wrote. I may set my son and me up on Thrall or Area-52 to maximize our ability to find an appropriate guild. Definitely not looking for cutting-edge play but also want to avoid joining a dead guild or one that is poorly organized or just starting up.