In what comes as a shock to absolutely nobody, the purely Hardcore WoW Classic Era servers have been abandoned in favor of the Season of Discovery servers.
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| Wow. They were High and Full only two months ago. |
I got on the HC server I've used in the past only to find almost nobody there. I knew that the "regular" WoW Classic Era servers had taken a bit of a hit, but I thought the HC servers would be more immune than this because, well, I figured HC would have it's own separate appeal.
Silly me, I know.
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| This is the current population for "regular" Classic Era. There's another PvP cluster off screen that's "Medium". |
It does seem to me that the current population of Classic Era is pretty much one cohesive unit, and that population is distributed among the three types of servers. Right now the bulk of the population is in the Season of Discovery servers, as that's the new hotness, but when people tire of that they'll likely come back to the regular Era servers (and to a lesser extent the HC servers).
One thing I don't see much of is people splitting time between Era servers and Wrath Classic or Retail servers. I'm sure that exists, just not to the extent that you see evidence of it a lot.
Looking at my own server logins, I'd say that once my 10 person raid team for Wrath Classic fell apart at the beginning of 2023, about 90% of my time has been spent in a Classic Era server of one form or another. The rest of the time is probably 8% Wrath Classic and 2% Retail: most of that 8% happened before I created Era characters, and that 2% worth of Retail logins is due to me getting screenshots for the blog.
I most definitely spent a lot more time in SWTOR and LOTRO than Wrath Classic and Retail WoW this past year.
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Going forward, I'm most interested in what will happen to the Wrath Classic crowd once Cataclysm Classic releases. What will the majority of players do?
- Move on to Cata Classic
- Go back to an Era realm
- Migrate to Retail WoW
- Leave WoW altogether
I'm guessing it'll be distributed between #2 and #4. Although I've been too engaged with Modern WoW to have time for Classic WoW, my interest in Classic has always been the ability to revisit Azeroth in its pre-Cataclysm state. If I go into Classic after CataClassic goes live, it'll definitely be on a Classic Era server.
ReplyDeleteThe most active Classic Era PvE cluster is Mankrik-US. Just putting that out there. (And you can even find my questing buddy on!)
DeleteMy guess would be one and two. Skull Rock HC isn’t dead, but you can actually find mobs to kill for quests now, so I’m ok with it. I need to be dungeon running my Wrath characters to be ready for Cataclysm, but I’m working my Blackwater Raiders characters to level and gear up when not in HC or ESO.
ReplyDeleteYes, I noticed it's Medium these days, so there is activity there.
DeleteIIRC, when I leveled my first two Cata toons to L85, jumping from Northrend greens to Cataclysm wasn't all that bad as the first dozen or so quests in either starting zone gave me enough green drops that I could at least function. Mists, on the other hand, was a huge problem given that jumping from Cata greens to Mists' starting area meant I was really hobbled in that first starter zone in Pandaria, and that mini-boss/gear check at the end of that starter zone was rough for a Rogue in a mix of Cata leveling greens and Mists initial drops. I had to actually go back and run a few battlegrounds to get some gear to progress past that mini-boss.
From what I remember, Mists actually had a vendor that would sell you greens in the starter zone to get you all caught up? But you kind of had to know about that...
DeleteI don't think that existed when I reached the intro zone in Pandaria. Hmm... unless that vendor was in the initial town after you went through the landing area, that is. If that's where that vendor was, I'd already gotten my first batch of greens and fought that first mini-boss before proceeding throughout the rest of the first zone.
DeleteOops Atheren above.
ReplyDeleteI think dedicated era players are definitely hopping around to check out the new hotness to some degree. And why not? Era isn't going anywhere (fortunately).
ReplyDeleteI do think SoD and to some degree hardcore have also attracted players from other modes (Wrath Classic and probably even some pure retailers) but I think they are unlikely to stick around as long.
If you played more SWTOR and LOTRO than Wrath, you should definitely (have) be(en) writing about them more! 😜
Well, most of my SWTOR activity has been starting a few new toons, so not a lot going on there that I've not spoken about before. I suppose I ought to say something, however.
DeleteLOTRO... Well, I get on, noodle around Bree, catch the Friday afternoon band playing on the Western edge of Bree, and basically chill out.
Regardless of what happens, it will be interesting to see how Cataclysm is received (or ignored) in the modern era. I think most fans of Classic will still consider it a serious step down. At the same time, at least mechanically, it's still closer to Classic than Retail. Or at least closer than the very stripped down Retail game I played around when Classic launched. I have no idea what modern Retail is actually like.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest problem Cataclysm has is Retail itself, given that you could login to Retail and go hang out in the post-Cata Azeroth and the (relatively untouched) Cataclysm Zones. I was very confident going into this Blizzcon that the new Retail expansion would include a complete revamp of that post-Cata Old World, since that would make Cataclysm more "classic" than ever before, but.... oh well.
DeleteThe “Classic” versions of the game will benefit from the magic of being able to overlevel foes until we catch up with that nasty mechanic. Also, near the end of each expansion “catch up” mechanics are added which make it easier to start the incoming game. Those won’t be in place so your “Classic” Cataclysm will not be a mirror of what you would find in the live version. They did also promise “some changes” to Cata Classic, and I’d think none of those would “dumb down” the game given the audience. Atheren
ReplyDeleteThat vendor that Shintar is referencing might be one of those catch-up mechanics. Not so blatant as the catch-up mechanics just introduced into the cash shop for Dragonflight, but still...
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