I want to start off saying I’m new to wotlk classic. I have noticed ever since making my dk and leveling in the world that I hardly ever see other players. I was expecting to see a decent amount of players questing and running through dungeons. However my experience thus far has been occasionally seeing someone questing which is slightly disappointing to me. I was hoping for a huge alive world like what it used to be. Dragonflight drops today which I suppose could explain some of it the past few weeks since prepatch but Im sure there’s more to it than just that. Is it just my server or the way wotlk servers are set up? Iv read something about layers could someone give me the scoop on all of it?
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I imagine Dragonflight will have an impact on Classic’s activity, but you’re right, there’s more to it than that.
For many players, Classic has turned into Raid-log central.
Each server has layers - if you are on Layer #3, you won’t see players that are on Layer #1. This is done as a form of population control.
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“Huge alive world” on outdated dedicated hardware = wintergrasp aka lagfest. LFG for dungeon groups/quest, Bgs/WG for killing scrubs
When questing seeing LESS players is always better Shudder have you see how the Northrend quests are designed? more than five people trying to do the same quest and it turns into a frustrating mess of wasted time.
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TBC and Wrath out world died like 2-3 weeks after release
Classic out world was still healthy throughout all the phase and you could actually engage with others outside of cities
Everyone told us “GET OFF BENEDICTION! U SUCK! GO TO THE NEW SERVER” - and some of us said “NOPE.”
… because we knew what was coming. Now the “megaserver” is a normal server the way we remember it.
TBH. There should be no servers. The layers should all be linked + you’re either in or out. There should be full layers that we can’t access + raid groups pushed to an empty layer.
I beat on blizz all the time for the dev team … but ^ this thing above - it’s an expensive infrastrucutre build and something I bet the people in charge would love to do - but will never get the budget for. 
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Layers are just clones of the world on the same realm, depending on how busy your realm is, you could have anywhere between 2-8 people doing the same quest and no one could see eachother
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layers sucks
took me 7 min last night to get phased for a dumb enchant
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This is it IMO. The vast majority of players had their mains and alts at level 70 and ready to go before Wrath launched. They’ve done whatever they’re going to do over the past two months, and have no reason to be in the lower level zones anymore. At most you’ll see some people doing dailies in Stormpeaks and Icecrown.
You’re just a little late to the party OP.
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You had to be there when the game launched, now its dead
That makes sense, I figured the world would still be more active than it seems to be now though even with DF coming out what with Ulduar around the corner and all. Kinda stinks that layers are the way they are if thats the case. I see the pros and cons to both. Do these layers affect rare spawns by chance? Odd question but now it has me wondering. If something spawns in one layer does it count for all since its server specific?
The issue is that even with Ulduar coming out (Presumably in January) there’s not much to do right now - many people are in their Phase 1 BiS, and more are currently working their way through the raids, so there’s no real incentive to play outside that (With the exception of the heroic daily)
You can do what people call “layer hopping” to see if the rare spawn has indeed spawned on different layers.
Different layers, different spawns. The same applies for WG.
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You are in the calm before the storm…
The vast majority of dedicated classic players are raid logging and or playing with guilds in private discords. Yes some of us are out there like you leveling alts and yes some new players do exist. But as you figured out already many of the retail tourists have taken the bait and went to DF…
Your best bet is to find a guild on a modestly populated server and make friends… 
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Yeah thats my plan just find a good guild and go from there. Ill try df but it just isnt interesting to me atm. It’s the one xpac I didnt cave and buy off jump. I’ll probably stick Wotlk out all the way it feels more like WoW than retail does for me currently.
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Layers and transfers ruined the world. Sorry!
Multiple reasons for it…df coming out, raid logging, not alt friendly (as it originally was), and people leaving.
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How many layers is your server on?
Sarcastic dead horse beating . . . this is clearly because RDF has taken everyone out of the world.
Tbh I’m not sure, I’m on Whitemane. The main reason I was hoping to see more activity was world pvp but so far I have only seen 3 alliance players while questing from 55 to 79. I had read about layering here on the forums but wasn’t sure exactly what it was or the purpose behind it.
Worlds empty cuz RDF, we told them not to implement it.
Whitemane is something like 99% Horde. So that’s why you’re not seeing many Alliance in the world.
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