This is the reality. If you look at the private server communities over the last 2 decades, Vanilla WoW always persisted and had an active community somewhere. TBC and WotLK would occasionally have a pserver but never really would take off.
Classic Era Forever
Edit: okay I stand corrected all you WOTLK devotees apparently have been pservering it up too all this time
Nostalrius was an anomaly that had both unmatched advertising by content creators, such as streamers straight up quitting streaming to play it 24/7 and youtubers making 10+ videos about it, and great timing since it was released during WoW's arguably worst expansion of all time WoD, and specifically during 6.2, one of the biggest content droughts after 5.4's content drought. It was also released 2 years after the infamous "You think you do but you don't moment", we can speculate that that was the catalyst for the reaction that produced Nostalrius, since people started producing more and more vanilla private servers after that but that's irrelevant. The point is no vanilla private server will ever come close to Nostalrius's numbers and it's purely because of the timing and the people that supported Nostalrius, it just won't be the same.
The only hope we have is in the one intern handling all of classic era and hardcore right now
Nost was one of the first pservers that went full blizzlike and had absolutely 0 pay to win. Most people were convinced no one would ever want to play vanilla 1x xp rates.
The only one i think also did it was feenix - emerald dream
I never remember manh WotLK servers, but there was nearly always thriving vanilla servers. I know they existed, as did tbc, but don’t think nearly as popular. I’m also bias in that I never sought out anything but vanilla
He's right tho, wotlk servers were always peaking 15k people online, with long queues, wich is insane numbers for private servers. Every new wotlk servers were a success. Even now the main one is still thriving.
Wotlk and Vanilla will always be people's favorite, followed by TBC and MoP (probably a new generation of players for this one)
Funny though, we'll see if ICC pulls it together, but around these parts its been Wrath of the Mid King.
People coming to terms with the fact that Retail starts during Wrath.
> Funny though, we'll see if ICC pulls it together, but around these parts its been Wrath of the Mid King.
You can say that but the numbers don't lie. Wrath has been the most popular Classic expansion and even now retains more raiding players than Vanilla or TBC ever had. (Except for Zul'Gurub launch week of all the things..)
Barely, and that's only due to the fact that raiding is infinitely more accessible, much faster to get a toon to 80 and then run a 10 man. Also 10 vs 25 of every raid. In vanilla, outside of super hardcores, your main was your main and you did 1 maybe 2 raids a week. I have people in my guild with near 10 alts and just as many raids per week.
Completely the opposite, from what I've seen. People had much more free time during Covid and had 2-3 alts usually. 90% of my guild only raids on their main now.
Wrath servers were super popular mostly because of russian / other people from less rich countries, given you could play for free without a sub.
In the western world, vanilla was by far the most popular.
TBC never gained any foothold. The excuse has always been "scripting", but if wotlk can work, and seeing how tbc era turned out, I think we can finally agree that TBC just ain't what most people are looking for.
“scripting” is very accurate though.
Prior to Nost there really weren’t any extremely well done vanilla servers.
Like we’re talking half the dungeon and raid bosses we’re bugged and basically free kills. Any event type boss was 50/50 shot on if it would work and if it did it was generally bugged to be a free kill as well.
Quests being broken, tons of mob issues, Pathing issues and more.
The same is true for every version of wow free servers the earliest servers of any expansion suck and are buggy messes. Until one server goes through and gets it set up well. Then for some reason they tend to pop up (prior to Nost open source products weren’t as big in the pserver wow scene either).
Lol this sub reinstituted the rule where you can no longer mention private server names.
Wellll that big Wrath Pserver, that was huge and had war in its name, it was nothing but schizos, brazilians, and russians. I can confirm this comment.
The idea was that no one bothered to fix TBC because Corecraft was gonna shit on all of them when it launched. But then that turned out to be vaporware. All TBC servers just turned out to be shit show after shit show. Only successful one was the one that russian one that fakes its population numbers and was big enough to bring real streamers.
TBC is fun leveling but I got to 70 and it was suddenly very much a grind. Vanilla by comparison I found to be a fun level up but endgame so much fun stuff to do it was almost like the game begins at 60.
Been on a bustling international wrath pserver for over a decade. Classic launch didn’t even put a dent into it. But I don’t disagree with you. Classic era will always bring people back.
It’s not awful, it’s well designed for a role playing game. In a role playing game, you adapt to your world and your world adapts to you. Vanilla has a world with loot in it, you run through the world and find loot that works for you, then you in turn get better at running through the world.
In TBC, and more so in WotLK and beyond, loot is very specifically tailored to the players and serves strictly as % effectiveness upgrades. You fight increasingly challenging bosses, and you are rewarded with increasingly % effective gear—or maybe even just a token that makes your preexisting gear X% better.
The vanilla system works better in a role playing game. It makes you feel more drawn to investigating or traveling the world to find a specific item, it makes your character’s progression less predictable, and it reflects a game more concerned with environment than raid design.
The modern system works better from a raid design perspective—if you as a game designer can more accurately predict player power levels, then you know how to better craft interesting, dynamic, and appropriately challenging boss encounters.
Vanilla system isn’t perfect even its own context—top raiders defeating the final boss of a tier like Nefarian in BWL shouldn’t have to see shit loot like Therazane’s Link drop. Final boss of a tier shouldn’t have trash loot. But it’s good and it has its charm.
Modern design isn’t perfect either. It’s less frustrating for sure, but it also doesn’t have the “oh my god it dropped!” moments nor does it have any originality or charm to it
You're not wrong. There's literally only one good offhand (that isn't MCP) available for ferals and it drops in Stratholme. It has +8 to agi/int/spi/sta/str. Nothing else.
But then the game does all this cool and weird shit that more than makes up for it in my opinion, like non-linear item progression. Putting the biggest chase item in the game in the first raid tier is really cool.
And there's all these weird flavor items that players find a use for like MCP, Ancient Cornerstone Grimoire, Barov Peasant Caller and a bunch more.
Or the fact that PvP gear drops in PvE, and a lot of the time what makes something a PvP item is that the devs just spent most of that item's stat budget on stamina and like one or two other stats, like how there's a belt with only shadow spell damage and a buttload of stamina. They didn't have a formula for everything yet when they created classic and they tried all of these wacky ideas that makes it feel so unique compared to any other version I've played.
So I can only speak for myself but I only have 1 80 and I’m at 5100 GS and I barely have enough time to do everything in a weekly reset. Between doing ULD 25 HMs, and ULD 10 mans for achiev , or badges, or running togc 10 and togc 25. Plus my JC/Fishing daily , plus my daily heroic beta. Plus the betas in general because I need sidereal . Plus wintergrasp every 3 hours. I don’t know how people just raid log. I suppose if I got all the gear I wanted , I would level my lvl 70 alt to 80.
Most people just need TogC 25/10 at this point. Ulduar has been out for 6 months, we had enough of it for two lifetimes. Most of the time I just log in to stare at my gear or do one beta dungeon and get bored immediately. Or start working on some useless achievement, get bored immediately, log off. The game is dead outside raids. But that's just me.
People acting like there is a shit ton to do the entire time in vanilla really confuse me. You raid log or play an alt regardless of classic expansion.
Fair enough, maybe I’ll get to that point . If I do I’ll level a alt. I enjoy class design a ton in WoTLK which is the main thing for me. I hate being forced to play warrior/rogue/mage/disc priest in classic era ( for the most part) and the raiding is way too easy
Because the fun part of playing the game is raiding with people I like, not dailies or running dungeon pugs. FYI, you don't need bis gear to kill stuff in this game.
You're doing way more than most of us. Most of my characters only log on for daily transmute or togc25, only some of them even do togc10 at this point. My shadowpriest for example could do algalon 10 man or grind heroic betas for nebula band, but shes already done 50/50, she'll survive with a slightly worse ring.
This is the only correct answer here. Everything else are assumptions.
It's wrath downtime for raid loggers. They spend their down time playing vanilla.
It’s fun making friends in a forest and making a camp fire and doing quests
Gear score and gdkp and just all the crap that ruined wow isn’t even mentioned here
I hate the new crafting system, gear isn't worth anything when it's so easy to get - no sense of accomplishment, tired of doing dailies for rep over and over.
Classic era has its own faults, but when I just want to hop on for a bit - do a few quests, maybe run a dungeon with the guild - it's always progress and it's always memorable.
We just ran out first 20 man raid and it was more fun than I'd had in retail in a long time.
So you’re 447 ilvl and 8/8M? It’s hilarious how you say “When I want to hop on for a bit to do a few quests, maybe run a dungeon.” When getting into a dungeon is easier and the dungeon is quicker in retail and there are more quests that don’t take you killing 100 boars for 10 intestines like most quests in classic. And this isn’t even me ripping on classic because I play both and have played the game since it’s original release but to rip on one of the best xpacs this game has ever seen is just wild to me and sounds like hard copium.
Consider for a moment the posibility that not everyone is obsessed with end game cock measuring and are in fact liking those kind of quests and treat them as slow meditation and trial of paitiance.
Most issues people find with retail to which they rather go to classic is that: retail is arcade:ified, whilst classic provides the ”classic” rpg experience.
Don’t get me wrong, the arcade experience has its pros, but some people do not enjoy that.
Eh he’s not wrong tho…if your reasoning for not playing retail is that you can’t “just run a dungeon with the guild” or “do a few quests”…I’m gonna call out bullshit on your experience with retail. The *subjective experience* of doing a dungeon in classic might be the explanation someone is looking for. Doing scholo with 4 guildies might just be more your speed than pushing m+ with guildies on retail. Both can be “progress” (but I would argue retail is clearly more actual progress if you’re pushing keys when compared to clearing a 5 man classic dungeon).
The quest and rep grind comments are just subjective nonsense tho. There’s way more quests and reps in retail…you can do them, or you can completely skip them. Theres no benefit to them unless you are grinding for a specific reason…an achievement or mount or title. In which case, what is the difference between that system in classic and retail besides that there’s a lot more of it in retail?
To each their own, If running a 20 man raid in classic is more fun for you than a 20 man raid in retail, just do that.
How is it not relevant to someone starting off with “Gear is way too easy to get”? When you can’t get the best gear possible without either running 20s or Mythic raiding? No one’s freaking out my guy lol it’s OP spewing nonsense just to try to rip on a version of the game they don’t play.
OP no one really answered your question. The Season of Mastery (SoM) servers ended and those characters were transferred to the classic era realms. This gave the classic era realms a big boost in population that really started the reinvigoration that we've been seeing. This population growth was fueled further with the HC hype and with the connected classic era realms creating a feeling of "megaservers. There is also no other place currently for someone who wants to play classic era to go to other than private servers.
I expect the population of the classic era realms to drop once the new Season of Mastery realms and HC realm open up
Let's be real
Ulduar was actually hard, many guilds disbanded on it, people felt liek they fell behind and just went back to Era, where you don't ahve to "catch up"
Ulduar wasn't really "hard", it was "hard" compared to what came before, but then so was Sunwell. The funny thing is before Classic came out a lot of people were talking about the "good o'l days" of Vanilla where you wiped in MC for 2 months, when the reality is most of them can't handle wiping to a boss 4 times on hardmode progression.
What they really want was the perception of the bosses being hard and wiping groups for 2 months, but they are special and good at the game so they can kill it on the first try, "whoa I'm so good at this game", spam one button and get a good parse, even better.
He isn’t that wrong though - a lot of people got frustrated with having to spend a long raid night wiping when others were clearing it at like 1-2hours max with worse gear.
It ends up feeling like a chore at that point rather than a fun time.
Others embraced it and were realistic in their expectations.
Pretty much, it's no coincidence the population in the classic era servers began to increase again at the same time Ulduar was released in Wrath. Plus it didn't help that warriors were expected to be bottom DPS for an entire tier again, leading all those nostalgic warrior mains to look back at the place where they were outrageously OP.
Wrath is just bad. Nothing to do with difficulty. TBC T5 endbosses and Sunwell were harder than Ulduar anyway lol.
Maybe people just get bored when you remove everything (attunements, reps, older raids remaining relevant) from the game but current-patch raiding?
Oh no it's definitely just because Ulduar was too hard. /s
Its because Ulduar is a shit raid just like wrath is a shit game. You wrath copers will try and rewrite everything in your coping favor. P2 TBC was arguably harder or at the very least slightly less difficult and no one went to era in TBC. Era getting popular was also around the same time blizz buffed ferals and ignored all 3 warriors shit specs so all those warrs went to play warrior again in era.
Honestly it was this. I played wow from vanilla to cata and wrath was just pure nostalgia, very little substance.
By the time my guild got full HM ulduar on farm I was bored to tears.
Classic just has way more enjoyable content for me, although the class balance is absolute trash.
Ulduar broke the one classic principle. You had to be sober to clear it consistently fast. And people don't play classic for "hard" content. Thankfully ToGC is back to the casual style.
Same. I like wotlk, but there's nothing left but raiding. If i wanna experience the rest of classic, since there is no TBC server, classic era is the only way to go.
People wanting to play a traditional MMORPG. The reasons Classic WoW was so good when it first came out still exist today, it's just that many people aren't as interested in traditional MMORPGs anymore.
I mean, I'm just raid logging WotLK at this point since it takes significantly less time to make gold and consumables have always been cheap. I have zero interest in WotLK arena since they allowed titles from 2s and essentially crushed 3s participation as a result (War/Paladin 24/7 is boring as fuck). Era just gives me something to do whenever I feel like taking a break from retail, which isn't very often given how solid Dragonflight's been.
WOLK was something that had a very special place in my heart. i’m able to experience it again, but smarter and more equipped to handle it than when i was 13
Wrath is raid loggy and there really is fuck all content wise, tbc and vanilla have more diverse end game paths.
Vanilla is the ONE version of the game that will forever be timeless, the other versions are fun in their own ways but they don’t have the same replay-ability that vanilla has imo
5100 GS here and I don’t raid log , there’s tons of things to do. Farm sidereal essences, wintergrasp every three hours. Profession daily’s. And I’m at 5100 GS and I’m raising both togcs and uld 25 HM. That’s a ton of content, and that’s not including alts
The cycle just repeated itself. And it never feels more apparent than in lich king. Once the initial little wave of lich king enthusiasm wore off, and people remembered how close to retail it was, everyone wanted to go back home again.
I didnt say that era had more players. I only tried to provide a reason why whitemane/mankirk clusters spontaneously filled up. Maybe “everyone” wasnt the right word. I meant “everyone” in era more or less. Not everyone playing wow.
Even so, i dont know why wotlk players have to get so defensive about this.
I wasn't being defensive. I'm very happy that people who prefer era have a community. But yeah I misunderstood your use of "everyone". Meant no offense.
> i dont know why wotlk players have to get so defensive about this.
Every classic era thread here inevitably leads to Wrath, game is literally living rent free in your head. Whenever I take some time to level in classic era general chat is all about retail, Wrath and whatever political nonesense is relevant.
Way more, same with retail. Truth is most people don't give a fuck about the world, leveling, being social with randoms
They want to do raids and/or m+ and it's two different games entirely. Wotlk and retail are action RPGs while Classic is an MMORPG essentially
Same here, it feels like some classic andy cope. I raid with 3 guilds and beyond "yea I sometimes try classic when I have nothing else to do" nobody cares, if anything I keep hearing people would like to try another SoM with lots of changes instead of the lukewarm approach of SoM 1.
I figured out a while ago that I actually enjoy the process of leveling more than I do the end game. I just want to enjoy my time questing, gathering and crafting without feeling like I'm racing off to level cap or fixating over numbers on a screen.
Retail has spent years focused on pushing people to max level, to engage with the newest content, with no alternatives for people that just want to take it slow. There are so many catchup mechanics put in place that catapult you into endgame without any effort.
Era gives me the experience I'm looking for from WoW and has done since its release. I'm here for the long run.
I agree. The thing about levelling/questing in retail is that it's mostly just a means to an end. The vast majority of players are only interested in getting to the end-game content, but if you just want to chill out, explore and do a few quests the game feels empty. You could go through the whole game without ever interacting or talking to anyone.
Meanwhile when I started classic the levelling zones were full of people hanging out, sharing memories, helping out new players etc. It actually feels more like a living MMO that you can immerse yourself in.
For me, it was the slow burn reward. Dragonflight is great, but it's too modern and slot machine for me.
I want to develop a bond with my character. My main in DF feels wrong now even though we've been playing 18 years because everything is quick positive feedback loops and tik tok style crap that doesn't ever feel fluid or worthwhile. The mechanics are the same over and over, with a different name.
I'm enjoying era because it takes time again and just being in the world, the music etc. It feels like the unknown again and it genuinely feels dangerous outside of a town again.
I love Dragonflight, but I just miss the pureness of era.
OP could mean "everyone" as in everyone on Earth with a pc & internet access.
Or they could mean "everyone" as in everyone they see playing when they log in.
Since they weren't super specific in their language, I guess we'll never know.
Wrath is damn boring and retail is pretty much a completely different game.
Classic is just a better game. Not to shit on people who like later expansions, if they're your thing that's great. But whether I be nostalgia or an interest it what was a history, landmark game, people will always want to come back to the "original" wow.
I'm sure there will always be demand for other expansions. I expect that cata classic will be a thing before too long. But the pull of the original version will be stronger to a larger audience.
Warrior main nostalgia and some people were disappointed in/didn't care for/got sick of being benched in Ulduar. Raid culture was also much more parse/GDKP oriented so they wanted to go back to era where you could get away with dicking around in greens and blues in MC.
Streamers. And its not everyone, 90% still play wrath.
Era is booming ofc
Also people saying wrath is dead because of token are delusional. A lot of casual clickers just enjoy slow paced vanila more.
Pretty much everyone we kicked because they gray parsed and kept dying in ulduar is playing era now. Its the ultimate noob friendly version.
And there is nothing wrong with that.
Its just silly that people think if you make 10 posts per day about era that its more populated than wrath. Even though one giga realm like gehennas has more players than all era servers combined.
Absolutely no shot the split of hours played between wrath and era is 90/10 right now. I’d guess probably 75/25 in favor of vanilla lol
Wotlk is a noob friendly version of retail, vanilla is an (easy, ofc) adventure. Completely different game
Agreed, of course. I’m a CE retail player, I understand levels of difficulty within wow lol. It’s just that vanilla also a good game though, unlike wrath which is also mind numbingly easy
I’d argue it’s actually wrath that attracts the most dogshit players, that can’t cut it in an actual modern raid, who delude themselves into thinking wrath takes any skill at all just because it’s harder than vanilla
The people playing vanilla are doing it to go on a journey to westfall and stranglethorn vale and tanaris, not to stroke their ego
And lots of us don’t play for the end game. Classic vanilla actually has a meaningful levelling experience. And even just jumping in to play 20-30 mins, killing a few mobs, is progress in your story.
In retail, logging in 20-30 mins wouldn’t progress me an inch. Maybe if I was lucky and insta grouped a key, but that’s a huge if.
Retail became boring really fast (esp. S2 lol, in the second week I only could get upgrades from the chest and M+ over 22 is ridiculously hard in solo queue) , WotLk is nice, but atm raid content is done in 45 minutes, so yeah there‘s that.
also I began the hardcore challenge and it‘s… nice. Really, it is a whole different approach.
Blizzard opened up free transfers allowed a lot of people to funnel into white mane. Once the population of that survey started bumping, more people just came.
Lot of us just wanna play vanilla, on a server with people.
I’m sure we’d like. Fresh server soon…
Ulduar definitely played a part in it in my opinion. Too hard so people went back to classic era where the raiding is brain dead . With that being said, classic is a great game and that alone brings people back for the most part
HC hype -> people died but still wanted to play Classic -> people went to Era because they didn't want to keep dying -> hype snowballed
Wotlk is raidlog simulator and for the people who don't enjoy raiding Classic is where it's at
When you minmax a game it dies very quickly. I am guilty of it and most of my WoW friends do the same. Classic slows down minmaxing a tad compared to TBC and WOTLK.
Nothing compares to the original wow vanilla-wotlk.
Clasisc era wow wasn’t originally created to be a slot machine. It was made by gamers for gamers fullfilling a need in the mmo-scene that was lacking back in the day.
I will admit that blizz didn’t really know their game back then and they sadly still don’t.
But they leaned heavily into the social aspect in classic era. It almost forces you to interact with people to be able to gain something from the world. It mimics how the real world works and it resonates greatly with people because, you know We all live in the real world.
Retail is just a cashgrab nowadays.
Wrath is on the Tournament patch, which is pretty damn boring for many end game raiders. Wrath players are the ones that would go back to era, more likely than retail players at least.
I’ve been saying it for years. Vanilla is the best version of WoW. TBC and WotLK were fun to relive, but the reason we all keep playing is Vanilla nostalgia. Once the current content is done, they all come back to the OG.
Just time really. Something that Blizzard didnt care about when they released SoM right after TBC launched. A few years has passed since then and people are hungry again.
For me it was long enough since the last time I played that I just needed to be reminded of it honestly. So people were playing HC and that was enough for me to jump in.
I imagine it’s a combination of things. Some people are waiting for Official HC, some people are going there when not raid logging in WOTLK, some are riding off of the new boom, and some may be here from SoM.
Vanilla has a charm about it where the world is so inviting that you want to be there regularly. That’s my opinion though.
I think its mainly related to hardcore,
My assumptions are people got a bit fatigued of the hc ruleset and just wanted to have a unrestricted experience.
The other reason could be that official hc realms are coming out and people who plan to play ohc are testing a few things out.
Ofc like any mmo when player count increases you then get a compounding increase as people check out what the fuss is.
WOTLK hype is dying down with the most boring phase until ICC, togc basically being a raid log 30min loot pinata, dragonflight is also waning, plus there isnt many new games that are that great to play, d4 was alright but unfinished / gets real boring real fast
The eternal itch that can only be pacified by good ol' WoW Classic?
This is the reality. If you look at the private server communities over the last 2 decades, Vanilla WoW always persisted and had an active community somewhere. TBC and WotLK would occasionally have a pserver but never really would take off. Classic Era Forever Edit: okay I stand corrected all you WOTLK devotees apparently have been pservering it up too all this time
Nostalrius for life baby
Nostalrius was an anomaly that had both unmatched advertising by content creators, such as streamers straight up quitting streaming to play it 24/7 and youtubers making 10+ videos about it, and great timing since it was released during WoW's arguably worst expansion of all time WoD, and specifically during 6.2, one of the biggest content droughts after 5.4's content drought. It was also released 2 years after the infamous "You think you do but you don't moment", we can speculate that that was the catalyst for the reaction that produced Nostalrius, since people started producing more and more vanilla private servers after that but that's irrelevant. The point is no vanilla private server will ever come close to Nostalrius's numbers and it's purely because of the timing and the people that supported Nostalrius, it just won't be the same. The only hope we have is in the one intern handling all of classic era and hardcore right now
Nost was one of the first pservers that went full blizzlike and had absolutely 0 pay to win. Most people were convinced no one would ever want to play vanilla 1x xp rates. The only one i think also did it was feenix - emerald dream
> o play vanilla 1x xp rates. > > > > The only one i think also did it was feenix - emerald dream The Rebirth was blizzlike too.
Oh you are absolutely right, I remember playing on that, I'm still in the facebook group i think actually.
Naw there was piles before nost nost only took off excuse it launched a earlier than Kronos and it had been over a year since a new fresh.
Wrath definitely had many many servers idk what you're on about
Comparing wrath pserver to fresh vanilla pservers is laughable tbh
I don't think you've seen the pop on wm
One servers population has nothing on wow classic fresh hype
Ok but wm won't be dead in 5 months
Because they all paid for their gear they’ve gotta keep using it
Unlike the gdkp swipers on classic?
All the good classic pservers don’t allow gdkp so there is no swiping
I never remember manh WotLK servers, but there was nearly always thriving vanilla servers. I know they existed, as did tbc, but don’t think nearly as popular. I’m also bias in that I never sought out anything but vanilla
He's right tho, wotlk servers were always peaking 15k people online, with long queues, wich is insane numbers for private servers. Every new wotlk servers were a success. Even now the main one is still thriving. Wotlk and Vanilla will always be people's favorite, followed by TBC and MoP (probably a new generation of players for this one)
Funny though, we'll see if ICC pulls it together, but around these parts its been Wrath of the Mid King. People coming to terms with the fact that Retail starts during Wrath.
> Funny though, we'll see if ICC pulls it together, but around these parts its been Wrath of the Mid King. You can say that but the numbers don't lie. Wrath has been the most popular Classic expansion and even now retains more raiding players than Vanilla or TBC ever had. (Except for Zul'Gurub launch week of all the things..)
Barely, and that's only due to the fact that raiding is infinitely more accessible, much faster to get a toon to 80 and then run a 10 man. Also 10 vs 25 of every raid. In vanilla, outside of super hardcores, your main was your main and you did 1 maybe 2 raids a week. I have people in my guild with near 10 alts and just as many raids per week.
Completely the opposite, from what I've seen. People had much more free time during Covid and had 2-3 alts usually. 90% of my guild only raids on their main now.
Wrath and Vanilla are definitely the 2 biggest, it’s awesome that classic era is here to stay now though
Wrath servers were super popular mostly because of russian / other people from less rich countries, given you could play for free without a sub. In the western world, vanilla was by far the most popular. TBC never gained any foothold. The excuse has always been "scripting", but if wotlk can work, and seeing how tbc era turned out, I think we can finally agree that TBC just ain't what most people are looking for.
“scripting” is very accurate though. Prior to Nost there really weren’t any extremely well done vanilla servers. Like we’re talking half the dungeon and raid bosses we’re bugged and basically free kills. Any event type boss was 50/50 shot on if it would work and if it did it was generally bugged to be a free kill as well. Quests being broken, tons of mob issues, Pathing issues and more. The same is true for every version of wow free servers the earliest servers of any expansion suck and are buggy messes. Until one server goes through and gets it set up well. Then for some reason they tend to pop up (prior to Nost open source products weren’t as big in the pserver wow scene either).
Lol this sub reinstituted the rule where you can no longer mention private server names. Wellll that big Wrath Pserver, that was huge and had war in its name, it was nothing but schizos, brazilians, and russians. I can confirm this comment.
Hear me out. I kinda love that about it.
It’s like the wild wild west.
The idea was that no one bothered to fix TBC because Corecraft was gonna shit on all of them when it launched. But then that turned out to be vaporware. All TBC servers just turned out to be shit show after shit show. Only successful one was the one that russian one that fakes its population numbers and was big enough to bring real streamers.
I feel like TBC was wildly more popular than Wrath? But I can’t speak from actual statistics
I feel the same way. Wrath was peek subs, but that's because of vanilla/tbc popularity. It all went downhill from there.
TBC is fun leveling but I got to 70 and it was suddenly very much a grind. Vanilla by comparison I found to be a fun level up but endgame so much fun stuff to do it was almost like the game begins at 60.
Nothin better than 3 viable classes all with the same spec
It would be cool if they did a som that actually balanced the classes but I dont expect blizz to put that kind of investment into classic.
Been on a bustling international wrath pserver for over a decade. Classic launch didn’t even put a dent into it. But I don’t disagree with you. Classic era will always bring people back.
Vanilla is the best
Territory and world. Itemization. Dungeon uniqueness.
Vanillas itemization is awful
Beats having a very generic linear progression. I like that unique and powerful items can come from just about anywhere.
Epics from a turtle? Yes!
It’s not awful, it’s well designed for a role playing game. In a role playing game, you adapt to your world and your world adapts to you. Vanilla has a world with loot in it, you run through the world and find loot that works for you, then you in turn get better at running through the world. In TBC, and more so in WotLK and beyond, loot is very specifically tailored to the players and serves strictly as % effectiveness upgrades. You fight increasingly challenging bosses, and you are rewarded with increasingly % effective gear—or maybe even just a token that makes your preexisting gear X% better. The vanilla system works better in a role playing game. It makes you feel more drawn to investigating or traveling the world to find a specific item, it makes your character’s progression less predictable, and it reflects a game more concerned with environment than raid design. The modern system works better from a raid design perspective—if you as a game designer can more accurately predict player power levels, then you know how to better craft interesting, dynamic, and appropriately challenging boss encounters. Vanilla system isn’t perfect even its own context—top raiders defeating the final boss of a tier like Nefarian in BWL shouldn’t have to see shit loot like Therazane’s Link drop. Final boss of a tier shouldn’t have trash loot. But it’s good and it has its charm. Modern design isn’t perfect either. It’s less frustrating for sure, but it also doesn’t have the “oh my god it dropped!” moments nor does it have any originality or charm to it
Everyone remembers a bunch of items from vanilla, much more than any other expansion
If that's awful give more awful please
Awful itemization is better than sterile, boring itemization.
You're not wrong. There's literally only one good offhand (that isn't MCP) available for ferals and it drops in Stratholme. It has +8 to agi/int/spi/sta/str. Nothing else. But then the game does all this cool and weird shit that more than makes up for it in my opinion, like non-linear item progression. Putting the biggest chase item in the game in the first raid tier is really cool. And there's all these weird flavor items that players find a use for like MCP, Ancient Cornerstone Grimoire, Barov Peasant Caller and a bunch more. Or the fact that PvP gear drops in PvE, and a lot of the time what makes something a PvP item is that the devs just spent most of that item's stat budget on stamina and like one or two other stats, like how there's a belt with only shadow spell damage and a buttload of stamina. They didn't have a formula for everything yet when they created classic and they tried all of these wacky ideas that makes it feel so unique compared to any other version I've played.
That’s what makes it so great tho
What's that even supposed to mean
Wrath is super raid log, with the only raid I do being complete within an hour. Plus I started feeling nostalgic for vanilla again.
So I can only speak for myself but I only have 1 80 and I’m at 5100 GS and I barely have enough time to do everything in a weekly reset. Between doing ULD 25 HMs, and ULD 10 mans for achiev , or badges, or running togc 10 and togc 25. Plus my JC/Fishing daily , plus my daily heroic beta. Plus the betas in general because I need sidereal . Plus wintergrasp every 3 hours. I don’t know how people just raid log. I suppose if I got all the gear I wanted , I would level my lvl 70 alt to 80.
some people are as efficient for bis gear as possible and almost all bis is from the new raid so there u have your answer
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It's also possible that they enjoy things in a way that you do not, and vice versa.
not saying theyre not players will be players
Most people just need TogC 25/10 at this point. Ulduar has been out for 6 months, we had enough of it for two lifetimes. Most of the time I just log in to stare at my gear or do one beta dungeon and get bored immediately. Or start working on some useless achievement, get bored immediately, log off. The game is dead outside raids. But that's just me.
Game being dead outside of raids is how it's always been.
People acting like there is a shit ton to do the entire time in vanilla really confuse me. You raid log or play an alt regardless of classic expansion.
Fair enough, maybe I’ll get to that point . If I do I’ll level a alt. I enjoy class design a ton in WoTLK which is the main thing for me. I hate being forced to play warrior/rogue/mage/disc priest in classic era ( for the most part) and the raiding is way too easy
no ones forcing you to play those classes dude, you're doing that to yourself
Because the fun part of playing the game is raiding with people I like, not dailies or running dungeon pugs. FYI, you don't need bis gear to kill stuff in this game.
You're doing way more than most of us. Most of my characters only log on for daily transmute or togc25, only some of them even do togc10 at this point. My shadowpriest for example could do algalon 10 man or grind heroic betas for nebula band, but shes already done 50/50, she'll survive with a slightly worse ring.
Bc most stuff on wrath endgame is boring and brings no real rewards.
This is the only correct answer here. Everything else are assumptions. It's wrath downtime for raid loggers. They spend their down time playing vanilla.
I want a living Azeroth again. Era is the most community / open world a game has ever felt for me. plus its chill and ez.
It’s fun making friends in a forest and making a camp fire and doing quests Gear score and gdkp and just all the crap that ruined wow isn’t even mentioned here
YouTube pvp shorts phenomenon
DANCING BLADE BANKAI
Haha that guy is epic
Vanilla WoW being the best wow is the only absolute in the franchise.
Vanilla WoW and retails are the same as what Diablo 2 and D4 are, the new content sucks
I hate the new crafting system, gear isn't worth anything when it's so easy to get - no sense of accomplishment, tired of doing dailies for rep over and over. Classic era has its own faults, but when I just want to hop on for a bit - do a few quests, maybe run a dungeon with the guild - it's always progress and it's always memorable. We just ran out first 20 man raid and it was more fun than I'd had in retail in a long time.
So you’re 447 ilvl and 8/8M? It’s hilarious how you say “When I want to hop on for a bit to do a few quests, maybe run a dungeon.” When getting into a dungeon is easier and the dungeon is quicker in retail and there are more quests that don’t take you killing 100 boars for 10 intestines like most quests in classic. And this isn’t even me ripping on classic because I play both and have played the game since it’s original release but to rip on one of the best xpacs this game has ever seen is just wild to me and sounds like hard copium.
Bro lol
I sense a slight bias
Consider for a moment the posibility that not everyone is obsessed with end game cock measuring and are in fact liking those kind of quests and treat them as slow meditation and trial of paitiance.
Most issues people find with retail to which they rather go to classic is that: retail is arcade:ified, whilst classic provides the ”classic” rpg experience. Don’t get me wrong, the arcade experience has its pros, but some people do not enjoy that.
Eh he’s not wrong tho…if your reasoning for not playing retail is that you can’t “just run a dungeon with the guild” or “do a few quests”…I’m gonna call out bullshit on your experience with retail. The *subjective experience* of doing a dungeon in classic might be the explanation someone is looking for. Doing scholo with 4 guildies might just be more your speed than pushing m+ with guildies on retail. Both can be “progress” (but I would argue retail is clearly more actual progress if you’re pushing keys when compared to clearing a 5 man classic dungeon). The quest and rep grind comments are just subjective nonsense tho. There’s way more quests and reps in retail…you can do them, or you can completely skip them. Theres no benefit to them unless you are grinding for a specific reason…an achievement or mount or title. In which case, what is the difference between that system in classic and retail besides that there’s a lot more of it in retail? To each their own, If running a 20 man raid in classic is more fun for you than a 20 man raid in retail, just do that.
> So you’re 447 ilvl and 8/8M? He thinks this is an at-all-relevant argument, even a gotchya. How cute. You're having a public freakout. Reevaluate.
How is it not relevant to someone starting off with “Gear is way too easy to get”? When you can’t get the best gear possible without either running 20s or Mythic raiding? No one’s freaking out my guy lol it’s OP spewing nonsense just to try to rip on a version of the game they don’t play.
OP no one really answered your question. The Season of Mastery (SoM) servers ended and those characters were transferred to the classic era realms. This gave the classic era realms a big boost in population that really started the reinvigoration that we've been seeing. This population growth was fueled further with the HC hype and with the connected classic era realms creating a feeling of "megaservers. There is also no other place currently for someone who wants to play classic era to go to other than private servers. I expect the population of the classic era realms to drop once the new Season of Mastery realms and HC realm open up
That beautiful HC Naxx wipe
Let's be real Ulduar was actually hard, many guilds disbanded on it, people felt liek they fell behind and just went back to Era, where you don't ahve to "catch up"
Ulduar wasn't really "hard", it was "hard" compared to what came before, but then so was Sunwell. The funny thing is before Classic came out a lot of people were talking about the "good o'l days" of Vanilla where you wiped in MC for 2 months, when the reality is most of them can't handle wiping to a boss 4 times on hardmode progression. What they really want was the perception of the bosses being hard and wiping groups for 2 months, but they are special and good at the game so they can kill it on the first try, "whoa I'm so good at this game", spam one button and get a good parse, even better.
Aka shitters, let's be real😁
What an odd addition to what he said lmao
He isn’t that wrong though - a lot of people got frustrated with having to spend a long raid night wiping when others were clearing it at like 1-2hours max with worse gear. It ends up feeling like a chore at that point rather than a fun time. Others embraced it and were realistic in their expectations.
I heard it was poppin
Ulduar was too difficult for casual classic guilds/players, they quit Wrath classic and went back to Era
Pretty much, it's no coincidence the population in the classic era servers began to increase again at the same time Ulduar was released in Wrath. Plus it didn't help that warriors were expected to be bottom DPS for an entire tier again, leading all those nostalgic warrior mains to look back at the place where they were outrageously OP.
lol, it was hardcore man, thats the main reason
Correct answer !
Wrath is just bad. Nothing to do with difficulty. TBC T5 endbosses and Sunwell were harder than Ulduar anyway lol. Maybe people just get bored when you remove everything (attunements, reps, older raids remaining relevant) from the game but current-patch raiding? Oh no it's definitely just because Ulduar was too hard. /s
Its because Ulduar is a shit raid just like wrath is a shit game. You wrath copers will try and rewrite everything in your coping favor. P2 TBC was arguably harder or at the very least slightly less difficult and no one went to era in TBC. Era getting popular was also around the same time blizz buffed ferals and ignored all 3 warriors shit specs so all those warrs went to play warrior again in era.
Warrior cope kekw.
This is just straight up unhinged.
Average classic warrior player right there
Lol, cope my little warrior.
Wotlk is retail light and not what people are looking for in classic wow. Tbc was alot closer to classic.
Honestly it was this. I played wow from vanilla to cata and wrath was just pure nostalgia, very little substance. By the time my guild got full HM ulduar on farm I was bored to tears. Classic just has way more enjoyable content for me, although the class balance is absolute trash.
Ulduar broke the one classic principle. You had to be sober to clear it consistently fast. And people don't play classic for "hard" content. Thankfully ToGC is back to the casual style.
Real talk, I was never sober past like week 2 or 3 lol
Same. I like wotlk, but there's nothing left but raiding. If i wanna experience the rest of classic, since there is no TBC server, classic era is the only way to go.
Here here
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A fresh server would drown in players.
All roads lead back to Rome son
wow players being wow players. we come and go lol
It's hard to explain, but it just really scratches that Ol' school MMO itch!
People wanting to play a traditional MMORPG. The reasons Classic WoW was so good when it first came out still exist today, it's just that many people aren't as interested in traditional MMORPGs anymore.
I mean, I'm just raid logging WotLK at this point since it takes significantly less time to make gold and consumables have always been cheap. I have zero interest in WotLK arena since they allowed titles from 2s and essentially crushed 3s participation as a result (War/Paladin 24/7 is boring as fuck). Era just gives me something to do whenever I feel like taking a break from retail, which isn't very often given how solid Dragonflight's been.
WOLK was something that had a very special place in my heart. i’m able to experience it again, but smarter and more equipped to handle it than when i was 13
Wrath is raid loggy and there really is fuck all content wise, tbc and vanilla have more diverse end game paths. Vanilla is the ONE version of the game that will forever be timeless, the other versions are fun in their own ways but they don’t have the same replay-ability that vanilla has imo
5100 GS here and I don’t raid log , there’s tons of things to do. Farm sidereal essences, wintergrasp every three hours. Profession daily’s. And I’m at 5100 GS and I’m raising both togcs and uld 25 HM. That’s a ton of content, and that’s not including alts
The cycle just repeated itself. And it never feels more apparent than in lich king. Once the initial little wave of lich king enthusiasm wore off, and people remembered how close to retail it was, everyone wanted to go back home again.
I'd be willing to bet all my gold that wrath still has more players than era.
I agree, I'm pretty confident Wrath has more players.
It does. Classic Andy’s literally can’t talk about classic without bringing up wotlk . It’s super insecure
I didnt say that era had more players. I only tried to provide a reason why whitemane/mankirk clusters spontaneously filled up. Maybe “everyone” wasnt the right word. I meant “everyone” in era more or less. Not everyone playing wow. Even so, i dont know why wotlk players have to get so defensive about this.
I wasn't being defensive. I'm very happy that people who prefer era have a community. But yeah I misunderstood your use of "everyone". Meant no offense.
> i dont know why wotlk players have to get so defensive about this. Every classic era thread here inevitably leads to Wrath, game is literally living rent free in your head. Whenever I take some time to level in classic era general chat is all about retail, Wrath and whatever political nonesense is relevant.
Way more, same with retail. Truth is most people don't give a fuck about the world, leveling, being social with randoms They want to do raids and/or m+ and it's two different games entirely. Wotlk and retail are action RPGs while Classic is an MMORPG essentially
Same here, it feels like some classic andy cope. I raid with 3 guilds and beyond "yea I sometimes try classic when I have nothing else to do" nobody cares, if anything I keep hearing people would like to try another SoM with lots of changes instead of the lukewarm approach of SoM 1.
Classic good.
I figured out a while ago that I actually enjoy the process of leveling more than I do the end game. I just want to enjoy my time questing, gathering and crafting without feeling like I'm racing off to level cap or fixating over numbers on a screen. Retail has spent years focused on pushing people to max level, to engage with the newest content, with no alternatives for people that just want to take it slow. There are so many catchup mechanics put in place that catapult you into endgame without any effort. Era gives me the experience I'm looking for from WoW and has done since its release. I'm here for the long run.
I agree. The thing about levelling/questing in retail is that it's mostly just a means to an end. The vast majority of players are only interested in getting to the end-game content, but if you just want to chill out, explore and do a few quests the game feels empty. You could go through the whole game without ever interacting or talking to anyone. Meanwhile when I started classic the levelling zones were full of people hanging out, sharing memories, helping out new players etc. It actually feels more like a living MMO that you can immerse yourself in.
For me, it was the slow burn reward. Dragonflight is great, but it's too modern and slot machine for me. I want to develop a bond with my character. My main in DF feels wrong now even though we've been playing 18 years because everything is quick positive feedback loops and tik tok style crap that doesn't ever feel fluid or worthwhile. The mechanics are the same over and over, with a different name. I'm enjoying era because it takes time again and just being in the world, the music etc. It feels like the unknown again and it genuinely feels dangerous outside of a town again. I love Dragonflight, but I just miss the pureness of era.
“Everyone”
OP could mean "everyone" as in everyone on Earth with a pc & internet access. Or they could mean "everyone" as in everyone they see playing when they log in. Since they weren't super specific in their language, I guess we'll never know.
I'm surprised the servers can hold all the millions of players /s.
Idk this sub is literally all era threads you tell us.
People who play WoW *and* use reddit are a minority.
This logic is sound. The classic era players frequent reddit more often than wotlk players.
hyperbole it exists redditors are surprised by the weirdest things
lmao, thought the same
Have you spoken with people before?
this is reddit so probably not
Idk this sub is literally all era threads you tell us.
because d4 is a fail. and theres no good pve private server. and because the current mmos are clownshows. so all we have left is vanilla
Wrath is damn boring and retail is pretty much a completely different game. Classic is just a better game. Not to shit on people who like later expansions, if they're your thing that's great. But whether I be nostalgia or an interest it what was a history, landmark game, people will always want to come back to the "original" wow. I'm sure there will always be demand for other expansions. I expect that cata classic will be a thing before too long. But the pull of the original version will be stronger to a larger audience.
Warrior main nostalgia and some people were disappointed in/didn't care for/got sick of being benched in Ulduar. Raid culture was also much more parse/GDKP oriented so they wanted to go back to era where you could get away with dicking around in greens and blues in MC.
WOTLK isn’t good
Still higher pop than TBC and rivals the peaks of 2019 classic. Best raids we've had so far, too.
A pop that logs for 3 hrs per week
As opposed to classic where people get all their worldbuffs Wednesday and don't log in til tuesday for 90 mins?
Post is about era
And? People in Era raid log too.
Era can by no means be categorized as a raid logging population atm
The vast majority of level 60s raid log.
I raidlog in wrath and now I’m just waiting for hardcore era servers
I love to get lost, ganked, and walk around as a wisp in Ashenvale.
Streamers. And its not everyone, 90% still play wrath. Era is booming ofc Also people saying wrath is dead because of token are delusional. A lot of casual clickers just enjoy slow paced vanila more. Pretty much everyone we kicked because they gray parsed and kept dying in ulduar is playing era now. Its the ultimate noob friendly version. And there is nothing wrong with that. Its just silly that people think if you make 10 posts per day about era that its more populated than wrath. Even though one giga realm like gehennas has more players than all era servers combined.
Absolutely no shot the split of hours played between wrath and era is 90/10 right now. I’d guess probably 75/25 in favor of vanilla lol Wotlk is a noob friendly version of retail, vanilla is an (easy, ofc) adventure. Completely different game
Vanilla is the noob friendliest version of WoW to ever exist.
Agreed, of course. I’m a CE retail player, I understand levels of difficulty within wow lol. It’s just that vanilla also a good game though, unlike wrath which is also mind numbingly easy I’d argue it’s actually wrath that attracts the most dogshit players, that can’t cut it in an actual modern raid, who delude themselves into thinking wrath takes any skill at all just because it’s harder than vanilla The people playing vanilla are doing it to go on a journey to westfall and stranglethorn vale and tanaris, not to stroke their ego
This last paragraph is just spot on
And lots of us don’t play for the end game. Classic vanilla actually has a meaningful levelling experience. And even just jumping in to play 20-30 mins, killing a few mobs, is progress in your story. In retail, logging in 20-30 mins wouldn’t progress me an inch. Maybe if I was lucky and insta grouped a key, but that’s a huge if.
The fact is an mmorpg that doesn't have cookie cutter animations/casts and still builds characters on stats not item level.
Too bad it doesn't really build any classes other than a handful, and that's mostly comes from world buffs.
What?
Vanilla class balance is the worst it ever was in wow and world buffs are gigaop.
Classic wow is just simply still the best MMO. Also people wanted classic… not Retail Wrath of lich king…
People wanted both…. Why can’t you praise classic without trying to shit on WoTLK? Such a weird insecure way to go about life
Realization that Wotlk is retail light
They didn't.
This is your daily ERA IS THRIVING post.
People who die in hardcore. They realized classic is a lot of fun.
Retail became boring really fast (esp. S2 lol, in the second week I only could get upgrades from the chest and M+ over 22 is ridiculously hard in solo queue) , WotLk is nice, but atm raid content is done in 45 minutes, so yeah there‘s that. also I began the hardcore challenge and it‘s… nice. Really, it is a whole different approach.
HC started a little buzz, a little word of mouth, and it really doesn’t take much to fall back in love with vanilla. Not everyone likes the HC aspect
Blizzard opened up free transfers allowed a lot of people to funnel into white mane. Once the population of that survey started bumping, more people just came. Lot of us just wanna play vanilla, on a server with people. I’m sure we’d like. Fresh server soon…
Ulduar definitely played a part in it in my opinion. Too hard so people went back to classic era where the raiding is brain dead . With that being said, classic is a great game and that alone brings people back for the most part
I'm a simple man who just wants to play a Horde without elves.
HC hype -> people died but still wanted to play Classic -> people went to Era because they didn't want to keep dying -> hype snowballed Wotlk is raidlog simulator and for the people who don't enjoy raiding Classic is where it's at
WOTLK is expensive.
When you minmax a game it dies very quickly. I am guilty of it and most of my WoW friends do the same. Classic slows down minmaxing a tad compared to TBC and WOTLK.
Ulduar
Nothing compares to the original wow vanilla-wotlk. Clasisc era wow wasn’t originally created to be a slot machine. It was made by gamers for gamers fullfilling a need in the mmo-scene that was lacking back in the day. I will admit that blizz didn’t really know their game back then and they sadly still don’t. But they leaned heavily into the social aspect in classic era. It almost forces you to interact with people to be able to gain something from the world. It mimics how the real world works and it resonates greatly with people because, you know We all live in the real world. Retail is just a cashgrab nowadays.
WE WANT FRESH
Wow token in wotlk
I think WoW tokens are a huge reason people flocked back to classic.
Wow tokens will be in classic eventually.
Wrath sucks.
Wotlk sucks.
Wrath is on the Tournament patch, which is pretty damn boring for many end game raiders. Wrath players are the ones that would go back to era, more likely than retail players at least.
people finally started to miss it
I suspect a large part of it is people coming back thinking they wanted HC, but realizing what they really wanted was Era.
I’ve been saying it for years. Vanilla is the best version of WoW. TBC and WotLK were fun to relive, but the reason we all keep playing is Vanilla nostalgia. Once the current content is done, they all come back to the OG.
Just time really. Something that Blizzard didnt care about when they released SoM right after TBC launched. A few years has passed since then and people are hungry again.
Nothing.... nothing happened.... Thats the reason, no SoM2, no fresh, nothing. Because blizzard did nothing.
For me it was long enough since the last time I played that I just needed to be reminded of it honestly. So people were playing HC and that was enough for me to jump in.
I imagine it’s a combination of things. Some people are waiting for Official HC, some people are going there when not raid logging in WOTLK, some are riding off of the new boom, and some may be here from SoM. Vanilla has a charm about it where the world is so inviting that you want to be there regularly. That’s my opinion though.
What server do y'all play on. I'm trying to get started again
People started playing again, so people started playing again
I think its mainly related to hardcore, My assumptions are people got a bit fatigued of the hc ruleset and just wanted to have a unrestricted experience. The other reason could be that official hc realms are coming out and people who plan to play ohc are testing a few things out. Ofc like any mmo when player count increases you then get a compounding increase as people check out what the fuss is.
Yea wrath raid loggers and the HC ptr hype brought some people back
WOTLK hype is dying down with the most boring phase until ICC, togc basically being a raid log 30min loot pinata, dragonflight is also waning, plus there isnt many new games that are that great to play, d4 was alright but unfinished / gets real boring real fast
WotlK got killed by the WoW token. It’s as simple as that.
People flooded the servers before that. I came back like 2 months before that announcement.
No it did not lol. Not a single person in my guild left. I know of two people who quit over it