A View from the Other Side

"I have seen the enemy, and it is us." --Pogo

 

Given that I've been enjoying myself more on the Horde side of the fence as I've been leveling Neve, I suppose it was inevitable that I'd try out what's going on in a far more populated server as well.

My questing buddy, as usual, led the way when I logged in last evening and found her on a new toon on Atiesh-US. When I whispered her a 'good evening', she invited me to create a toon over here and explore like she was doing. "Hop into the Discord with the rest of us!"

Rest of us? Just how many people were over there?

Turns out there were 4+ people from an old guild she still has a toon in, and I was already in their Discord, so I put on my headset and joined their group. 

And what did I do?

Create another Cardwyn, because I am so original.

"At least people will know it's me,"
I said to myself.

As soon as I logged in, I discovered things were different than on Myzrael.

"Hey, there's toons here!" I exclaimed as I got started around Northshire Abbey. Outside of when I created Briganaa, these were the most new toons I'd seen in an intro zone at one time in quite a while.

"Wait'll you see Stormwind!" another friend --who also raided with the Monday team-- replied. "It's the most people I've seen in Stormwind since Classic!"

Given that I knew that Atiesh was roughly 5 to 6 times the size of Myzrael*, I wasn't exactly surprised, but when I went there a couple of hours later I was shocked. It was far more than just 6x the toons; it was actually active in a way I hadn't seen since.... Maybe circa AQ40? Oh, definitely not on the level of when the Ony buff would drop --as the place would explode with people during those times-- but at that time of night, much larger than a predicted "6x the size of what you'd see in Myz". 

As my questing buddy is a bit of a social butterfly, she'd already joined a leveling guild that yet another friend of hers was a member of. I was then informed that their guild regularly purges their ranks of people who haven't logged in 30 days. "Do you mean individual toons or people in general?" I asked.

"They try to keep track of alts, so people in general. But if they miss someone you can always whisper when you get back online to get an invite again."

"Makes sense."

It turns out that this guild had well over 40 people online the other night, which as my questing buddy put it was more than she'd seen from Valhalla even on raid nights in a very long time. I'd found similar logins on my Horde leveling guild compared to Valhalla although to a lesser extent --around 25 to 30-- even though that Horde guild doesn't raid at all.

I did point out that it doesn't mean that people aren't on; after all, I typically am online, just not on a Valhalla toon. But still, the size of this guild on Atiesh threw me for a loop.

It's kind of like Texas, I suppose. Everything is bigger over here on Atiesh.

The next couple of hours were spent grouped up and questing in Northshire Abbey and Elwynn. I'd like to say there was a downside to this, but it was an enjoyable couple of hours being a lowbie and exploring the Old World again. But here's the kicker: there were other people around. Were it not for those others, it would have been what has become a pretty typical experience: a largely empty world, devoid of flavor, with people clamoring for boosts in LFG. But I actually found people wanting to run instances without boosts in LFG chat, which meant that others were leveling just because, rather than raiders rushing to get to endgame.

***

What does that mean going forward?

Well, I'm not planning on moving any of my toons over to Atiesh unless it's a free transfer, so there's that. I'm not made of money, despite what Blizzard thinks, so my old stable of toons will remain on Myzrael for the time being.

However, this is the closest I've been to the original Classic experience in a long time. 

Obviously the Old World is not current content, so I have no idea what the crowd is like in Outland. Given the sheer number of raiding toons listed in ironforge.pro, you'd think that the size of people just hanging around Shattrath would be gigantic. It could be that once we get to Outland, we'd discover what the downsides to a server this size really are. Or that just like Myzrael, toons are raid logging and suffering from burnout from following the Meta too; it's still an unknown, and I'm not likely to get to Outland on this version of Card until Wrath drops. 

Still, this provides an alternative to my current Alliance stable of toons, with a more active Old World going forward.

***

I don't have an idea as to what I'm going to do in Wrath, but I do know that I'm not planning on doing any progression style raiding. I did all of that for half of an expac, and I saw what the "chasing the meta" is like, and I'm happy to not be on that treadmill any more.

And, from what I can tell, more and more people are indicating to me via private conversations that they're at least considering stepping back as well; while they've not totally burned out on progression raiding, the state of chasing the bleeding edge in TBC Classic has soured them on that for Wrath. I've even heard/seen a few things in just idle chat that makes me think there's also going to be a shake-up in raid leadership for Wrath, which doesn't surprise me much given that as much as the meta is for the raiders, for raid leadership it's even more so. 

For all of the people in guild who are clamoring for automated LFD, I'd say be careful what you wish for; if there's an easy alternative to endgame progression raiding in Wrath, the number of people who are wanting to raid will likely plummet. If nothing else, this is what chasing the meta in TBC Classic will likely lead to: a similar situation to Retail, where you have a smaller amount of progression raiders pushing content and a larger group that will unsub and sub based on access to new content. 

It won't have been the Classic Team that will have "Retail-ized" the Classic experience, it will be the Classic players themselves.

*Just checked, it still is, but due to the declines in Myz's raiding guilds it's now much closer to 6x.