What's the deal with Ironforge?

[Lothaeryn]

When they added an AH to all cities, people started using the cities they liked most and were most convenient. That same patch, iirc, linked all of the LFG and Trade channels so it didn't matter what capital you were in. Stormwind won out and has been gradually made into the main Alliance hub as the years progress.

Absolutely and completely fucking wrong. IF was the de facto alliance capital until Cataclysm, when all of the content was funneled directly through the portal system there. Logistically IF had all of the amenities stormwind had until that point. And was the fastest way to kalimdor(Menethil Harbor) and to most vanilla end game content.

Afterwards post Cata, it never got touched again by dev's. Stormwind and Org are the only two capital cities that have gotten content and locale updates at all. Every other capital city is as they were since vanilla save teldrassil and Undercity now.

[Super Kami Dende]

Depends on the Server, I played some some servers that had IF as their major "Hub" I played on others that had SW as their major "Hub"

[Kromus!]

I suspect its like people have said in this thread, due to Org/SW getting the most attention now, and Vanilla behaviours, otherwise it'd be a pretty thriving place. I still see a lot of people there, and its still awesome, so it must be doing something right. But Stormwind is definitely the attention grabber at the moment, I guess with Anduin being a big focus too hasn't helped things. I had thought Magni being speaker would've given Ironforge more love, but I guess he's detached from all that stuff now.

I would like to see more love to Ironforge definitely but its already awesome so no worries if not.

[Lothaeryn]

I suspect its like people have said in this thread, due to Org/SW getting the most attention now, and Vanilla behaviours, otherwise it'd be a pretty thriving place. I still see a lot of people there, and its still awesome, so it must be doing something right. But Stormwind is definitely the attention grabber at the moment, I guess with Anduin being a big focus too hasn't helped things. I had thought Magni being speaker would've given Ironforge more love, but I guess he's detached from all that stuff now.

I would like to see more love to Ironforge definitely but its already awesome so no worries if not.

Ironforge needs a complete graphical overhaul to bring it to just 2010's graphical fidelity (which is what stormwind is currently at). In 2019, it would need even more detail. As such, we know Blizzard is never likely to touch another city again since it would be too much work for their "budget".

[seleri]

Absolutely and completely fucking wrong. IF was the de facto alliance capital until Cataclysm, when all of the content was funneled directly through the portal system there. Logistically IF had all of the amenities stormwind had until that point. And was the fastest way to kalimdor(Menethil Harbor) and to most vanilla end game content.

Afterwards post Cata, it never got touched again by dev's. Stormwind and Org are the only two capital cities that have gotten content and locale updates at all. Every other capital city is as they were since vanilla save teldrassil and Undercity now.

I can only speak from my experience. On my servers, people spread out after 1.9 added auction houses and global trade/LFG and Ironforge was no longer the de facto capital. Most people chose Stormwind because it was no more out of the way than IF was and it was a change of scenery. Stormwind to Booty Bay to Ratchet was no less convenient than Ironforge to Menethil to Theramore.

After 1.9 Stormwind had all the amenities of Ironforge plus the Dragonslayer buff and druid trainer. If Ironforge stayed the capital on your server(s) until Cataclysm then it was most likely an anomaly. In Burning Crusade it was the closest to the Dark Portal. In Wrath it had a boat to Northrend. There was no good reason to stay in Ironforge after 1.9.

[Soon-TM]

The reason for IF in classic was that it was a little bit closer to seeing gorge where people gathered for the raids in BlackRock.
Personally I find IF much more practical but well... Maybe the heavy human focus has an end after 8.2 and there faction war crap.

Well, one can always dream...

Ironforge needs a complete graphical overhaul to bring it to just 2010's graphical fidelity (which is what stormwind is currently at). In 2019, it would need even more detail. As such, we know Blizzard is never likely to touch another city again since it would be too much work for their "budget".

This is much more likely imo

[Lothaeryn]

I can only speak from my experience. On my servers, people spread out after 1.9 added auction houses and global trade/LFG and Ironforge was no longer the de facto capital. Most people chose Stormwind because it was no more out of the way than IF was and it was a change of scenery. Stormwind to Booty Bay to Ratchet was no less convenient than Ironforge to Menethil to Theramore.

After 1.9 Stormwind had all the amenities of Ironforge plus the Dragonslayer buff and druid trainer. If Ironforge stayed the capital on your server(s) until Cataclysm then it was most likely an anomaly. In Burning Crusade it was the closest to the Dark Portal. In Wrath it had a boat to Northrend. There was no good reason to stay in Ironforge after 1.9.

Even in 1.9 and BC it was still logistically the easiest to navigate from compared to stormwind. Yes, during 1.9 when AH's went live in Darnassus and SW more people did spread out because (Lag)forge was still a huge issue, which prompted the change to begin with.

But overall, you still wanted to be in IF because it was:
A: easier to navigate on the ground

B: had all trainers and amenities in an easy to access uniform fashion

C: had access to Blackrock mountain from Searing Gorge, which was a 1-2 minute fly instead of flying from stormwind to SG (cause you sure as fuck werent going to run to BWL from Burning Steppes and waste time)

D: has access to both theramore and Darnassus via Menethil Harbor (remember, before wrath and the SW harbor update, the boat to Darnassus was IN Menethil, not Stormwind).

F: was literally the closest capital for the Alliance to reach Southshore, Scarlet Monestary (which was always in demand between level 28-40), the plaguelands for Stratholme, Scholomance, and Naxxrammas.

G:Still had access to the deeprun tram, which made staying in Stormwind pointless as a major social hub.

and, if you were on a PvP server, H: much easier to defend against Horde raids since they only had 2 locations to come from, both easy to defend and chokepoint.

overall, IF was still very much favored for these reasons UNTIL WotLK, when SW got a significant logistical boost by introducing the Harbor to Borean and the relocation of the Boat to Darnassus to said Harbor, Theramore was still a less favored point to get to Kalimdor, so the population started to spread out after that point. Even during BC, people still stood in IF instead of SW because it was overall more convenient save for going to the Dark Portal, which was still a non issue due to the Deeprun Tram.

In honest retrospect, I'd rather say your experience was an anomaly, not the other way around.

[seleri]

But overall, you still wanted to be in IF because it was:
A: easier to navigate on the ground

B: had all trainers and amenities in an easy to access uniform fashion

C: had access to Blackrock mountain from Searing Gorge, which was a 1-2 minute fly instead of flying from stormwind to SG (cause you sure as fuck werent going to run to BWL from Burning Steppes and waste time)

D: has access to both theramore and Darnassus via Menethil Harbor (remember, before wrath and the SW harbor update, the boat to Darnassus was IN Menethil, not Stormwind).

F: was literally the closest capital for the Alliance to reach Southshore, Scarlet Monestary (which was always in demand between level 28-40), the plaguelands for Stratholme, Scholomance, and Naxxrammas.

G:Still had access to the deeprun tram, which made staying in Stormwind pointless as a major social hub.

lol

Not going to argue when you've got points like these (one of which goes against IF being the main hub[G] and one of which is flat out wrong[B]). We'll see where people congregate when Classic comes out. I imagine it will be IF at first for the nostalgia then people will wise up. Since connected flight points will be in Classic WoW, there will be absolutely no reason to prefer IF over SW, other than good ol' nostalgia for the first year of WoW.

[Lothaeryn]

lol

Not going to argue when you've got points like these (one of which goes against IF being the main hub[G] and one of which is flat out wrong{B}). We'll see where people congregate when Classic comes out. I imagine it will be IF at first for the nostalgia then people will wise up. Since connected flight points will be in Classic WoW, there will be absolutely no reason to prefer IF over SW, other than good ol' nostalgia for the first year of WoW.

oh yea, sure, I'm completely wrong about each trainer being easily locatable and logistically easy as fuck to navigate to, including PROFESSION TRAINERS IN THE MIDDLE OF A SHORTCUT THROUGH A CITY.

compared to Stormwind:


Where most trainers, and profession trainers, are far flung on different sides of the city, which are only accessible to you via a bridge system that forces you through each subdistrict at inconvenient vectors from the ground. I'm not the one in denial here about why one city was far more favored over the other for much longer than you allude to.

And on the matter of Classic? this isn't even relevant to this discussion. the playerbase who engaged in the actual retail vanilla is not the same population that will play that remake. The mindset is a decade apart and a LOT of information that was not well known back then is now known to a science level of accuracy, history will not repeat itself because the actors are not the same. You equate two scenarios which have no basis to be compared to each other due to variables that cannot be controlled or tested for, which is quite a pathetic attempt to deflect any onus for you to prove me wrong back to me.

So go ahead, prove me wrong with why Stormwind was absolutely the de facto city for the Alliance post 1.9. when all of the evidence suggests otherwise. I'll wait. Ive got 5 hours before I can reply back, I'm sure you'll have your ducks in a row by then.

[khalim]

ïn classic the Auction house was only in Ironforge for alliance orgrimmar for Horde and neutral AH in Gadgetzan


that was also why there was alot of ppl there back then

and when AQ came out in Classic the whole setup leading up to the opening of AQ was in IF

[Beloren]

Why is it not even on the map as an Alliance capital city?
Why isn't it utilized in the story anymore?

In all my years of playing, Ironforge was the capital for the Alliance in-game, not Stormwind. Thoughts?

the elves have been warning about this for a long time, we are all been human washed in the alliance, and the horde, the forsaken dominate everything too horde side.

[Wermys]

only reason for that was the AH, once more AH's where added to the other cites IF slowly died out.

Even without the AH, IF was a better central hub to everywhere.

[Varanus]

I can't really weigh in on the IF vs SW discussion here, as I pretty much have soley played Horde. But I did notice that when I started playing back in BC, all the Horde capitals seemed fairly active. And I would argue on my server, that Undercity was probably the main hub being used at the time, as opposed to Org. Org had alot of people, but UC always seemed packed. And though I rarely left NR during Wrath, UC still seemed to be bustling during that time, when I did go there. It wasn't until Cata, when Org became the center point of the expansion that the mass migration and death of the population of UC occured. And it remained fairly desolate from that point on, except for Hallows End, really. I can imagine that the same thing started happening to IF dominated server pops during Cata as well. And I have always blamed the lack of portals in the other faction capitals as their downfall(and if I recall, only Org and SW had the Tmog and Void storage guys at first as well). Org and SW just became so insanely convenient in comparison to the other cities, that all but those 2 faded away.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Depends on the Server, I played some some servers that had IF as their major "Hub" I played on others that had SW as their major "Hub"

Why would you use SW during classic? The AH was in Ironforge and all relevant places were closer. Besides being prettier there was little to no reason to prefer SW, unless the server was recently opened and everyone wanted to be closer to STV/Dustwood.

Edit: I guess having a potato-PC while playing on a full server might have been another reason.. but even then..

[DeltrusDisc]

That is fine, a lot of other people haven't played Vanilla either

Except I did. lol

- - - Updated - - -

That is fine, a lot of other people haven't played Vanilla either

Also, we can see countless examples of important cities in the real world that have bigger populations but are not capitols.

Say for instance:
Chicago is the biggest city in Illinois.
The capitol of Illinois is Springfield.
Chicago has a population of almost 3,000,000.
Springfield, IL has a population of just shy of 115,000.

Population =/= capitol.

At no point in WoW lore was IF the true capitol of the Alliance.

[JacobMarley]

The reason the game is so centric around Stormwind and Orgrimmar, and great cities such as Thunder bluff and Ironforge have fallen to the way-side, is because of the Cataclysm.

In Cataclysm, Stormwind and Orgrimmar got given a lovely new design, new textures etc and a nice make-over. During that same expansion the zones were Hyjal, Vashj’ir, Deepholm, Uldum, Twilight Highlands - and they were all spread out over the map.

So they put portals in Stormwind and Orgrimmar to get to these places, and ever since the lesser cities have been ghost towns.

Unfortunately there is no benefit to setting your Hearthstone in Thunder bluff or Ironforge, it’s just inconvenient. If I am ever going for a very specific purpose like the AH or the Bank etc I still choose these cities at portal hubs though for nostalgia’s sake.

[The Stormbringer]

All Capitals need some help. Adding barber, transmog and AH would be nice first step.

I'd love to see some improvements beyond those barebones fixes, but those would definitely help.

[33kamous3]

I played on Bleeding Hollow, and as I remember, people tended to use both Stormwind and Ironforge pretty regularly. If you were meeting someone for a trade or transaction, there was about 50/50 chance which city they'd be in. I think I've always slightly preferred Ironforge, for a few minor reasons. But really, it was not a long flight path and the two cities were connected by tram, so it's not like it was ever that big a deal.

I really like that promenade in IF between the bank and AH, though. It was just such a great place for people to congregate, goof around, play the piccolo, see and be seen. Even as a Nelf, I've always though Ironforge was a really cool city.

[sam86]

IF fell of human main capital since wrath, tbc was the start of its death but wrath finished it
did u stop playing alliance since 2007 or something ?

[khalim]

when i played horde still have the chars tho just playing mostly on my alliance chars atm i actly preffers Thunder bluff over the other horde citys i don't know if it got anything to do with that my first horde chars was a tauren shaman (started as alliance )