WoW always used to be the huge world full of exploration and people anywhere you go in my opinion.
Now , sadly, it feels very limited to the new expansion/zone and old ,huge and awesome world is forgotten.
I would like to experience old zones with people in them , do old quests, visit huge World of Warcraft , instead I’m pretty much limited to new expansion where most of the people do the same content in the same zone , it used to be where you could see people all around the world and do all kinds of quests, now it’s all - Dragon Isles ? There is nothing for me personally to do there after one/two months, and when I go to visit the old world, it feels quite empty with all the layering added.
It’s quite sad, there is no other games like this one, yet this one does not feel like WoW to me no more like it used to be for 10 years straight …
New expansion really needs to focus on old zones and old content exploration across the whole previous universes , not just be limited to same new zone and having everything else forgotten.
Of course people tell me you can always go there, do Chromie timeline , visit old zones by yourself, but what is the point if I barely see any people anywhere in Azeroth or Kalimdor for example?
Quite sad.
I feel like tons of people feel the same, based on in-game and out of game discussions, but no response from Blizzard really to any of this. I really want this game to feel like huge world again, not something you log in for few hours once a week where you do same things all over again in same zone.
110 Likes
expansions don’t really expand, they replace. the game never grows.
100 Likes
“Always” would cover wow only up to cataclysm. We have current wow since MoP
6 Likes
You’re right, but overall I feel like every new expansion it is less and less people to be met in old zones and that the world exploration is disregarded especially with old content each time I go to visit older places.
Maybe because less people play the game while feeling just like me and see no changes to described above.
Feels more like a singleplayer now, rather than a “world” which changed mmo gaming for years
12 Likes
Of course it doesn’t, this current Dev team probably would turn WoW into a lobby based instanced game if they could. They would remove leveling, and have one city where you wait for your next instance group if they could. Ion and Co don’t give 2 craps about the world, they only care about eSports which is confined to instances.
81 Likes
We only play the expansion…not the world…there’s this concept of “World” quest but the only ones that matter are in the new zones. Each Holiday should have Worlquest around the world, we should have a reputation / renown with weely world quest on old zones…something casual that bring the player to old zones.
14 Likes
I would actually like to see this, WQ in other parts of the world. Even if they only did it during Time-walking, and for that events respective area.
13 Likes
The first expansion was 95% outside of the old world.
And is now basically useless since the second Xpac.
This is just how WoW always has been?
5 Likes
The main issue is that the game has so much area. If we had a more lateral expansion path, where we could play at max level everywhere, the game would feel utterly empty. The player base would be spread so thin across every expac, there wouldnt be enough concentration in any one area to feel like a living world. It would feel like logging into a dead game, even on a high pop server.
One of the main goals of playing the expansion not the game, is to concentrate the players into specific areas, in order to have the game feel populated. Now I dont necessarily like this, and I would love for the world to be playable, but there is just too much of it there for it to feel populated to any meaningful degree.
Everquest did a decent job of this, due to how long the level grind was. You could grind exp with people within 10 or so levels of yourself. And there were many areas where people posted up to grind exp. There were also many spawns to camp all over the world. So those concentrated players a bit. As the game grew, there were new grind spots, but largely they were as efficient as the older ones. They didnt nullify them.
That was a long time ago. WoW has never been good at spreading out players along the leveling range. Instead it is a direct funnel to max level. Which again, is their design philosophy. To concentrate the players, in order to have the game feel populated.
5 Likes
What happened is they switched from reporting sub numbers to MAU’s during wod. Back when they were reporting sub numbers, players who were subscribing but not playing end game counted. Now they don’t count.
4 Likes
I hear you, OP, but it’s basically due to the fact that WoW’s player population is declining. They can’t force people to play a bad game.
5 Likes
maybe it’s time for blizzard to start reducing the shardings… on so called “full” servers the world outside is almost empty I can’t imagine on low/medium realms these days…
13 Likes
A large part of that is everyone is max level. What do you expect them to do there? There are a handful of quests now that take you back to old world areas, the Blue Dragonflight quest line for example.
But the bottom line is most people still playing this game are max level doing endgame content. Most are tired of leveling alts and pay for a boost to play the new content with their friends. No one is playing that old content so you’re not going to see many people even if it isn’t layered.
You saw more people those first few expansions because Wrath was peak player numbers which means for 2 whole expansion packs you still had new players getting into the game because of friends, this is why you still saw people everywhere.
This isn’t a WoW problem it is a most MMOs problem… even EverQuest at one point had empty starter zones. The only games I’ve really seen do it differently are Guild Wars 2 because everything in every zone is required for completion of Legendaries. And FF14 which constantly brings people back to old areas for Story purposes.
It’s unfortunate but that’s just how a majority of these games are designed.
2 Likes
Not until they do some graphic upgrades in those old zones.
I tried visiting the old zone Un’Goro Crater and the graphics were abysmal. I’m not asking for Unreal 5 engine upgrades here. But for godsakes, at least upgrade the trees. They look horrible.
6 Likes
It’s insane to me that people can sit here and claim WoW is dying or the population is dwindling. As someone who’s spent more time on an actually dwindling MMO, I don’t know how you can genuinely think this.
1 Like
Idk. Been here since cata and it’s pretty clear the games current population isn’t even half of what it used to be.
16 Likes
We already have trouble with Zaralek Caverns. 
2 Likes
we’re too top-heavy. having everyone max level is a problem. the death of Goldshire for example is a tragedy. remember when low to mid levels would go there for dueling and such?
5 Likes
I really hope that the next expansion brings it all back full circle and revamps Azeroth while adding to it. Make all quests scale even up to max level. Have relevant reps even in the old world that makes those quests worth doing at max level… It’s such a shame to have this entire beautiful world and it’s a barren wasteland
11 Likes
Sure, but half of like 16 million is still 8 million. The game’s massive - so is its playerbase, whether or not there’s been relative decline. It has, what, one real competitor? Maybe two?
1 Like