“Because Vanilla is the better game and TBC is the beginning of the end” according to my friend Bill.
Tho I think the reasons are a lot more nuanced, and the private servers he detests do show a very strong trend for Vanilla but the other expansions are just not as popular for whatever reason.
Suspect the reasons for TBC being less popular while being a more refined game are the following.
Dungeons and raids play like early Vanilla and as a result a little harder, I think people like easy mode like 1.12 (dead serious)
Too much a focus on parsing and that nonsense was killing Vanilla Classic and also as a result TBC Classic. I can see this as a serious cancer in the game because meters and linking meters and ratings has always been a douche thing to do.
Arena is less approachable than just regular old BG, mostly because people seem to be afraid to do it, legit they will not Q no matter how much you beg and plead with them to do Arena for the first time ever in TBC Classic because they allegedly had a bad time of it in WoW history and don’t want Arena. As a result a major content component is kinda dead for a lot of people.
Like Vanilla Classic TBC is suffering the problems of unmanaged servers, no structure by blizzard, no management of faction stacking because of their hands off Charly Foxtrot approach to server and faction balance all in name of convenience (it’s really about selling transfers and boosts) has destroyed numerous servers now causing many people I played with to simply quit.
Blizzard using retail quality (that’s a joke about how bad it is in terms of bugs) servers to run this game on also Vanilla and claiming that it’s perfect when later on they always seem to come back to us with a weekly bug fix list of things they discovered were in need of repairs. There are so many more bugs in TBC, Vanilla Classic had plenty of bugs and it’s was kinda bad to be blunt, and as the game progression took place many were fixed, but then comes TBC and many of the old bugs are back and even some new ones. Players want quality and this just doesn’t deliver quality.
Lack of communication by Blizzard; this is a problem, and it’s easily the biggest frustration in their games now. This one thing makes all the above problems worse than they actually are.
The die hard classic fans who are never satisfied with anything are quite literally, the epitome of cringe, and one of the reasons I regret even knowing about these forums.
FWIW I’ve agreed with your points going back to Vanilla > TBC. I was massively into World PVP in Vanilla (more so than today) and made a name for myself on the server. World PVP did “die” on that server in TBC. It was talked about frequently on those forums and even was mentioned about that server on THIS forum about 6 months ago, 14 years later. The server also became increasingly toxic. It was bad.
I didn’t want to deal with it anymore and left and rerolled. That reroll really gave me a negative outlook on TBC in general and I have said many times that if the same thing happens with TBCC I’m out. It hasn’t happened to me yet but it is sad seeing it happen to Herod and other servers. This stuff brings back all the memories for me.
I agree that World PVP in Vanilla has more of a chance to happen.
As for people who say stuff like “World PVP never should have been in the game” well you know it’s like the old apples and oranges. I like oranges and you like apples and for some reason, you want to tell me I should only eat apples. Since you don’t like oranges at all your opinion on me liking mandarin oranges the best is irrelevant to the conversation.
Anyway sorry to hear about your server, I mean that.
Even the little things like mobs no longer being elite outside instances when leveling makes the game just feel more hollow.
Gold in general is 100x more easier to farm and feels less impressive when you make 100g. 100g is NOTHING in TBC, you can make that without thinking by doing 2 dungeons and vendoring a bunch of trash.
Flying mounts, and everything about them – although it convenient to zoom around in outlands – is lame af.
The original 2 continents and time it takes to travel actually made the world more immersive. Everything in TBC is too watered down, too convenient, too itemized, too small.
World pvp aside Halaa is dead. At least in phase 1, going into or approaching an enemy faction’s town or transportation was high risk, and fun. That doesn’t exist at all in outlands. No one is there, and the towns themselves are irrelevant. Everyone is in Shattrath.
I’d rather see a vanilla + reboot with TBC talents and level 60 normal cap than TBC itself.
Ironic you call TBC the “superior version of the game” when even you acknowledge its no where near as popular. There is a reason for that, being “more balanced or optimized” doesn’t make a game good.
Well Classic while vastly inferior in every way. Had so much nostalgia coming from it, it was a game done a hundred thousand times… but still for most it felt fresh, I even got caught up in it. Granted i quit after a month of it because it was so god awful to level through… also a lot of the whiny bunch staying in classic because they don’t like boosts and feel it, “ruins the game” but that’s my guess.
Pretty sure classic had way more advertising than tbc.
Add to that the people who tried classic and realized they dont like the old systems, there’s no way they are gonna try tbc since most of those things are still relevant.
Going by ironforge raid logs of tbc are still lower, but the number is still going up. A year into classic there was 800k different characters recorded on raid logs. It was down to 400k by spring of this year. Right now we are up to 330k for tbc.
No idea where the number of hardcore raiders will end up, but I doubt tbc or wrath will match classic’s numbers. I also would suspect the number of players not in raids would be higher in classic.
Why? Its the most different from modern WoW and its the first, so, its special.
It might not be dead, but it is probably at its weakest point since wod right now.
With the upcoming releases of lost ark, ashes of creation, and new world, it’s future has never been so uncertain. Throw ffxiv in the mix and wow could be losing alot of subscriptions within the next few months.
TBC is an improved version of Classic in terms of classes, design and QoL
But Classic IS Classic its a larger game filled with more nostalgia and more antiquated leveling which people remember fondly and horribly at the same time.
but that’s my guess.