That bump in population apparently has not lasted.
On January 26, unknown to me, free server transfers opened up from two of the small West Coast servers, Myzrael and Azuresong, and to Old Blanchy.
Old Blanchy? The smallest of the three? REALLY?
Well, that is certainly no longer the case as some of the remaining Alliance guilds have moved off wholesale to Old Blanchy-US, and the population dropped to Low once more.
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| I swear it was Medium a week ago... |
My suspicion was piqued when I noticed that we'd dropped to Low, and a couple of people whom I'm BNet friends with moved their toons to Old Blanchy, which I thought was a strange location to move to. Back in Vanilla Classic and TBC Classic, Old Blanchy had a small server population, much smaller than Azuresong and Myzrael, but once Wrath Classic released the population swelled to where Myzrael-US was during Vanilla Classic. And while Azuresong-US has remained steady with about 1000-1500 raiding toons, Myzrael's Alliance population plummeted once more to where it's a majority Horde server.
The thing is, the Horde population on Old Blanchy is roughly the same as on Myzrael, so really, unless the Horde guilds on Myz start migrating over, there's no real incentive for me to move any of my toons over unless Blizzard announces Myzrael's server shutdown or something.
And for the record, I'm not going to move toons from Myzrael-US to Atiesh-US, because while the Horde population there is twice the size of what it is on either Old Blanchy or Myzrael, it's still miniscule compared to the Alliance population on Atiesh.
My Alliance toons on Myzrael?
/shrug
I mean, I've got 2.0 versions on Atiesh already, so I'm not moving them there, and I wasn't planning on raiding with them on Myz anyway, so I'm not going to chase the population exodus there.
And I'll be honest: my experiences pugging on Myzrael vs Atiesh have been rather enlightening.
On Myzrael, the pugging scene for Neve has been pretty low key. I get into an instance, whether it's Heroic or the new Heroic Plus, and I don't have any real issues with people getting frustrated or trying to go faster faster FASTER. Or people aren't being asshats when things don't go well.
On Atiesh, however... It seems that the puggers and instance runners there are all far more hardcore in outlook and who they select for their pugs: Gearscore has made it's return to World of Warcraft Classic in a big way. People demanding minimum Gearscore levels for instance runs or easy raids --such as Vault of Archavon-- are very much a thing on Atiesh-US, and I can only shake my head and sigh at this behavior.
All that's old is new again, I suppose.
***
In light of these developments, I'm planning on staying put on Myzrael for the time being, at least until I get a feel for where the Horde population is (or isn't) going. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if Myzrael-US folds, I'll likely take my toons to a server that I know isn't going away because it serves a unique player base: Bloodsail Buccaneers, the only PvE-RP server in North America.
Hooray for the Roleplaying community!
This seems timely considering my own post about population management. Without having an opinion on where you should or shouldn't move, what makes Atiesh unacceptable as a destination for your Horde toons? It being PvE, the fact that there's more Alliance surely shouldn't matter?
ReplyDeleteWell...
DeleteI've been on a server where the population is an extreme swing: Area 52-US. It's now much much worse, but back when I played Horde on Retail, the ration was merely 10:1 Horde. I tried an Alliance toon or two on A-52, but you were so swamped with Horde everywhere you kind of got lost in the crowd.
You become a unicorn.
I was reminded of that yesterday because I was on Linna 2.0, doing whatever around Dalaran, and people started posting in LFG and General "Hey, has anyone seen a Blood Elf Mage?" (Apparently that's one of the toons that you have to shower rose petals on for the Valentine's Day event.) I thought briefly about switching to Neve 2.0, like I did for my questing buddy, but I thought better of it. I don't want to find my time spent on a toon to be the equivalent of being a zoo animal on display.
But the thing is, my toons are kind of a package deal. Even if the Horde there on Atiesh-US are a nice bunch overall, my suspicion is that the try-hard nature of the Alliance on Atiesh probably bleeds over to the Horde side. In the same fashion, on Myzrael-US the laid back nature of the Alliance there was reflected on the Horde side. So if I go somewhere, I'd want the overall sever population to be a relatively decent bunch. I don't want to be in a situation where I think "I'm gonna have to see about pugging something" and not follow that up with "oh crap, this is gonna suck". On Myzrael, I didn't have to worry so much. On Atiesh, I kind of do.
But there's something I should have put in the post that I didn't.
Wherever I go, I'm going to want to consult with my questing buddy. We do enough stuff together that if she wants to go to a specific server, I'll likely go too. Unlike the franken guild who didn't accept any input on the "let's move to Atiesh" announcement --much less the guild merger-- we'll talk it over together and then make a decision.