I agree. It’s why I play on Grobbulus. It feels like I’m playing the game I remember from 2004-2006. One where people had fun, didn’t have to minmax every aspect, were okay with less optimization, and most importantly… felt like you were part of a fun group of friends playing your favorite game.
I know it’s not perfect on Grobb — we have 100 players, no AH, we don’t have on demand content, etc. but despite that, it’s felt amazing. We clear Naxx (takes us 3 hours to clear 4 wings about) but I’d rather have that and have fun during raids than be miserable in this hyper optimized, gdkp, instant gratification, antisocial hellscape i often hear about.
Anyways, a little off topic, but I believe megaclusters are the reason much of this has happened. I hope one day players will gravitate away from them. The server culture shifts towards this bad attitude when it’s the center of gravity. And when it’s the center of gravity it becomes normal. It becomes the only option.
It’s funny because it seems exclusive to Whitemane on era. If you read sentiment of players on Mankirk it isn’t happening. It surely isn’t like this on Grobb.
And further, if you look at SoM, SoD, or 2019 Classic run, we saw the same type of stuff happening on mega servers. I believe they are extremely unhealthy for the game. Back when vanilla had dozens of servers with 3k-5k players on them… that was the sweet spot. Plenty of people still, more than enough to get things done, and each server had an identity. If you wanted the try hard server go for it. If you didn’t there were dozens of other high/medium/low pop servers with their own unique cultures.
Instead with mega servers, players feel forced to join or be left out without ability to play. There’s little room for alternative views. Gravity pulls it to the group think mentality, and suddenly you “can’t play the game” unless you join the “only active server” and you’re forced to swipe to play, no one is having fun, diminished social aspects, one single way to play.
There’s other options out there. I hope players realize this over the next years to come of WoW. Mega servers are harming our community. There are other places to play and still have a vibrant, fun, and social experience.