Just because some people are leaving other servers doesn’t mean it’s dying, it’s simply a choice that people take to find a community, big or small, to play with. There’s plenty of people on tons of servers, and just because more people have moved to megaservers doesn’t mean the game is dying either.
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Yes we know… I think the ones who are upset and making the most noise are people who personally couldn’t move for any number of possible reasons. For them it just makes sense for Blizzard to fix their problems. Your solution is the better one tho for sure.
Yes and no. While I think most people paid for transfers, plenty of people didn’t. For them it’s not about the $25, it’s the principle of the thing. Mega servers don’t really have the same sense of community and that’s really important to some players.
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I would like to introduce to you my friend ‘the trendline’. Apparently you two haven’t met before. When the total number of logs is dropping consistently week by week by a -significant- amount, then yes, the game is dying. The only place players are moving to is other games. I am sure everything is fine on one of the few mega servers.
Kek
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It’s a bit of both, people are paying to transfer, and others are just quitting the game entirely. Can’t blame them paying blizzard more money for an issue they caused sucks. So does being on a server where you can’t participate in all aspects of the game.
First off, I agree with what Pisaro said.
Secondly, servers died. Server communities have died or are dying. Especially when there were horde and alliance. A lot of the name recognition, bantering, inside jokes etc. Gone. Dead. Some people get mad when I talk about this and call me names but that’s the facts. Those people never really cared in the first place or didn’t look outside of their own bubble IMO.
Yes, there is a population shift. Did some servers groups transfer together where you’ll on occasion, but nowhere nearly as often as before, see the same guild and other names? Yes.
On the really large mega servers there are too many people for there to be the type of community that those of us who aren’t really happy now actually want. There are community pockets like guilds, PVP community, GDKP community, guilds that group together etc but it is not the same. The vibe is similar to Retail IMO but with a TBCC skin and most (although not all) who love it flat out say, on these forums, they want Retail with no power grind.
I’ve talked to a lot of people and only a few argue with me on this community stuff because they know I’m right. Most people just talk about how fast pug groups > all even if they will never see or talk to the same people again.
So is TBCC dying? I don’t think so but Blink may be correct.
Either way, people have varying opinions on if they love or hate the “population shift” as you put it.
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No, the pop overall is decreasing.
Happened about 6-7 months into classic (probably lessened due to nationwide lockdowns)
Happening now 4-6 months from release in TBC.
Classic being a product of nostalgia and FOMO for current wow players means that when people get bored there isn’t millions of players rushing to take their place like there was in 2007.
Is the game dead? no
Is it dying? not really
But the population is decreasing, it’s not due to boosts, bots or any of that. It’s plain and simple attrition. The population will crater about 3 months into Sunwell, spike for wrath launch and then drop after the 4-6 month mark again
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Just not important enough to them for them to spend time cultivating community on those servers. It’s the mentality that someone else should do something for them, which is why they blame Blizzard.
Part of the Classic experience is that it’s up to us to create and cultivate our communities.
Going forward though, perhaps having achievements will lead to guilds that are achievement-focused and pushing for server-firsts transfer to the currently dead servers to gain such notoriety.
I mean, for any such guild, having servers with no one logging raids to warcraftlogs must be like fresh snow.
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For all the figures of speech you used about providing evidence, you actually forgot to attach any links to trendlines, graphs or data about the things you’re speculating about.
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Yeah…but that’s sort of a tough thing to do on the big servers. I don’t think many guilds are going to transfer to dead servers for those kinds of achievements. Being the best guild on a server with 100 people on it isn’t that impressive.
Blizzard does share some of the blame here. They should have been managing server populations and faction balance over the summer.
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So you made this statement without doing any research yourself?
if.pro > demographics > all
404k to 314k in 3 months and 270k this week which I won’t count since it’s the holiday week. Almost 100k logs is a huge number no matter how you try to spin it
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Every game and MMO has a player drop off within a year of launch. Under your logic every new game is dying. Lol.
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I could be remembering incorrectly, but it was the first time around wasn’t it? I didn’t follow a lot of the stats and guilds, but pretty sure there were some guilds who did transfer on-purpose to near-dead realms, but were top 5 in the world raiding guilds. Does someone with a better recollection have some links that could corroborate maybe?
Do they? I figure this falls 100% into the “You think you do, but you don’t” category.
Possibly. I don’t think server transfers are an overall positive, but it’s pretty clear than people want them. They could just never allow free transfers. But, what’s that going to solve?
I suspect they have some reason to believe that some people (those who used free transfers to transfer to Bene, Faerlina, Whitemane) may have quit had they not been given that free option.
We could just blame those people.
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Windseeker being in the same state for 3 years.
So be consistent. Either people are leaving the game and you admit that or they are not leaving the game and simply shifting to other servers like your post says.
Leaving game =/= dying
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The players share some blame too, but there’s no reason for these mega servers to be so big. People that wanted to cultivate the sense of community, like you talked about, don’t want to play on a server so big. Then there’s the uncertainly about the transfers. I was on a medium pop server that went down to about 30ish players. Now I’m on Benediction, which is quite the culture shock lol, but it was too risky to go to another medium pop server.
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Sure, the principle can be part of it. But for me it’s a loss of confidence. If Blizzard can make a mistake, and the majority of previously healthy servers can go from healthy to totally empty, or from balanced to 95:5 in a month, followed by failure to recognize a problem even exists, failure to communicate, failure to address it for 3-6 months, as it compounds and festers… then how can you pay the ransom for a chance to continue playing. How can you put time into the game if they could easily just make another mistake, followed by another 3-6 months of failures?
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That’s fair. As it stands, there’s no reason to transfer to any server but the top 3. Any other server could collapse in a week and there’s a 90 day transfer cd. It was a hard decision for me too. Server population should have been a priority in like August.
It’s what the people who play on them want. You can blame people for having fun the way they want if you don’t find it fun, but if you’re not actively doing anything to support your own fun other than blaming others, then… maybe it’s not the most viable strategy (maybe it is, idk. It’s not mine though) 
You can have both, but yeah… I suppose it’s similar to people living in the country saying blaming people who move to the city (other players) or the government (Blizzard).
Ah yeah, I see. I suppose I can understand that. I tend to prefer larger servers, but did play main characters on 4 servers during WoW Classic, one of which was a pretty decent medium pop server, Kurinnaxx.
It was fun while it lasted, but in all fairness, I had only rolled that character there (and that account!) expected to transfer it to Faerlina (and my main account) once transfers opened up. I had started a character there at launch to play while waiting for server queues.
Anyway, I hope you’re enjoying life on Bene.
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