Such was my feeling working my way through Pandaria.
I'm already on my third zone, Krasarang Wilds, having completed the first two.* While I know two things --cross realm zones are turned off for Pandaria and I've already passed one of the big "dailies" hubs at the Tillers area-- I'm still surprised at how few toons are out and about in Pandaria itself. I've seen more toons in Hellfire Peninsula than in the first three Pandaria zones, and that's kind of scary.
There's obviously players out there, as Cynwise demonstrated in his class distribution post, but wherever they are, it's not in Panda-land.
I am not going to jump to conclusions here, but I suspect that people like me who took their time to level a new toon are outliers, and most of the utility in the new zones is already spent. As the "game starts at max level" people will tell you, that's not a surprise. But think of all the effort it took to generate the data in those new zones, and you'll understand why I'm more than a bit concerned about the future of WoW.
Just like in Cataclysm, Blizzard expended a lot of effort to create new content (and a new continent), but the usefulness of that content evaporated once the big wave made it to L90. I suppose you could make the argument that 2 years of development was useful for the majority of players up until patch 5.1 dropped, only a few months worth of playtime. That's not exactly fair, but the dearth of characters out in Pandaria feed the perception that Blizzard would be better off spending time devising new raids and BGs. (And pets.)
For those people (like me) who have complained about Blizzard's use of the WoW novels and short stories to advance the lore rather than develop it in-game, this is a pretty damning result. If you were a bean counter at Blizzard, which would give you more bang for the buck: a novel or in-game content? And what's more, if you knew the in-game content would be tossed aside at the earliest opportunity, where would you put your development dollars at?
It's a shame, really, because when Blizz' development staff take themselves and their topic seriously they can create some really good content.
*Given my current leveling rate, supplemented by BGs, I'll be at max level by the time I'm finished with Kun-Lai Summit. That's great for entering the Dread Wastes, but for a BG-er, that's going to be painful.
All pre-panda content is auto CRZ. So it's not surprising you saw more people in Hellfire or Northrend than Jade Forrest, but that defiantly doesn't mean more people are playing BC/LK content than MoP.
ReplyDeleteThe difference is that in both Wrath and Cata I saw more people in those zones while leveling than in Mists. As a marker, Wrath had been out for a year when I finally got up to max level, and Cata for about six months.
DeleteBy comparison, most of the Vanilla CRZ zones outside of the starter areas have been even more empty than what I see in the Mists content. But if you consider that Hellfire is, by itself, a starter zone for DKs, the activity in Hellfire does make sense.
Still, the fact that Mists activity is very low less than a year after the expac dropped has to be discouraging.
I know what you mean, I was just leveling a rogue through the Jade forest and I saw two other players for the couple hours I was on. I think the biggest reason it is so noticable is because of the cross realm zones. Hellfire used to be fairly quiet before that too but it has turned into a very busy zone after cross realms were implemented.
ReplyDeleteYou also have to remember that anyone leveling toons through questing (or partly at least) must still go through Pandaland. So all those people questing in Hellfire now will soon be going through Pandaria, just not as a big group. On the next patch they should have randomn tumbleweeds rolling along. ;0
Like I mentioned to Dimli, outside of starting zones I've seen very few toons in the CRZ areas except Hellfire. But since Hellfire is pretty much a DK starting area, I guess that makes sense.
DeleteStill, that bothers me that Pandaland is as empty as most of the CRZ areas.
wow is dead. 500 people on the median server. I resubbed one of my two accounts a couple of months into pandaland. levelled a few toons to 90 and let the account lapse again. i'd much rather play a single shard game like Eve where 50k-60k are on at once even if there are only 500k total players.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's dead, but it isn't very healthy right now. On Ysera-US at least, population is noticeably down; it used to have a total population approaching A-52's, but it's down to about half that now. The old Stormscale PvP server I used to be on is in even worse shape at about 75% of Ysera's population.
DeleteHowever, there are still servers with huge populations like Wyrmrest, Moon Guard, and A-52. The problem is that CRZ has masked the problem of declining realm populations, and Blizz needs to seriously consider realm merges.
On the flip side, I can see far more activity on a random planet in TOR than in a random vanilla zone in WoW. Yes, there are several factors here: TOR is more a leveling/story game, and TOR doesn't have as many zones as WoW. Still, the activity is there, but in WoW it isn't.
I agree that they need to really consider some realm consolidations, especially after their promotion for 50% off character services this week, which includes realm transfers. I moved to Thrall a few months ago, and I cannot tell you how often I see in chat and on the realm forum that players, and even guilds, have moved there from dead servers. Maybe this promotion is to get a little more money from frustrated players on low pop servers before they begin mergers....
ReplyDeleteI am also disappointed in the lack of lore placed in-game, and I am not even a lore person. I literally accept any quest available, then open my map to see where to go and what to kill or collect. But I know quite a few people who have made this comment. The lore that is in game relies so heavily on phasing, that it is very annoying for players like me. For example, when leveling through any remodeled zone in the Old World, you have to finish one quest hub before the quests in the next hub are even available. I use to be able to skip quests that annoyed me (like anything with murlocs!) or that I had done 7 times already on other toons. I am finding now that my choices are much more limited now because of phasing.
I do not mean to sound like a complainer.... I still love the game and am happy to pay $15 for my entertainment, and I understand that you can never make everyone happy. It's just a shame that they don't seem to do a good job balancing the game for different play-styles (end-gamers, lore lovers, PvPers, levelers, questers, grinders, tradeskillers).
I've been noticing that Pandaria isn't really that much better than Cata in terms of quest hubs too. I was thinking that the quest hubs would become less linear, and I suppose they have, but you still have to finish things to "progress" through the story. It's still not the same as in Wrath, where I felt they struck the best balance between story progression and allowing you to pick and choose. You could completely skip Zul'Drak, for instance, and not miss out on important parts to the story.
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