Returning players

[Queen of Hamsters]

No citation needed. Are you kidding LOL? When could the population have possibly been lower? I can think of only WoD.

Also, the realm selection screen doesn’t mean anything. They lower the “Full” thresholds to get new players to choose other realms.

Then it isn't a fact, just wild speculation coupled with... feels?

You're just full of it, plain and simple. Every single realm I play on that's listed as Full, has multitudes of people online even on off hours, healthy economies and lots of guild. "Doesn't mean anything" my ass, especially when coming from people pretending to know shit they simply don't.

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Welcome to Draenor-EU.

Here we are packed. One square inch each.

Packed like sardines, and loving it!

[Doffen]

Packed like sardines, and loving it!

It definitely feels alive, and those on the medium/low pop realms, man they are missing out ^^

[Eleccybubb]

It definitely feels alive, and those on the medium/low pop realms, man they are missing out ^^

Wow....

Actually revelling in the fact that people might not want to/be able to afford an overpriced character service or want to start from scratch?

That's pretty low dude.

[Queen of Hamsters]

It definitely feels alive, and those on the medium/low pop realms, man they are missing out ^^

Yeah, although I know a fair few who prefer to play on low pop realms which will probably ensure they'll always exist in some capacity or other.
Can't recommend people enough to play on high pop realms though, don't listen to the "new players" recommendation.

[Eleccybubb]

YEah pretty much, Take away CRZ and sharding and they would be dead and empty. Before I quit just after 8.1, there was rarely any more then 10 people playing in any BFA zone during peak hours. And this is on a High pop "realm"

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Thats not full at all .

Blizzard should just do Megaservers at this point. But of course won't net them money from transfers.

[whywhatwhowhenhow]

Yeah Draenor still has lots of people around, but you don't interact with anyone. They might as well all be NPC's jumping around. There's no community feeling at all.

[Dystemper]

Blizzard should just do Megaservers at this point. But of course won't net them money from transfers.

Yep. Since they need MTX and money from services so badly, they wont do anything to jeopardize that until the player base gets so low they will be forced too

[Eleccybubb]

Yep. Since they need MTX and money from services so badly, they wont do anything to jeopardize that until the player base gets so low they will be forced too

Either that or a Realm visit/guest system akin to what other games do.

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Yeah Draenor still has lots of people around, but you don't interact with anyone. They might as well all be NPC's jumping around. There's no community feeling at all.

Yep. Same with Silvermoon.

Population means diddly squat if the community is not... well being a community lol.

Silvermoons taken a huge hit on Census sites too. 90k at start of BFA. Down to 45-50k. Draenor was like 110k now it;s 65-70k.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Yeah Draenor still has lots of people around, but you don't interact with anyone. They might as well all be NPC's jumping around. There's no community feeling at all.

If you don't interact with anyone, you're culpable in not building a community around yourself.
Communities exist all around, there's always crowds of people chatting to one-another, guild groups, trade interactions etc going on.

That's before touching on out-of-game communities in Discord, for example. Huge servers will naturally be more anonymous on account of players can't keep track of one-another, but you and only you decide how much of a community you want to build around yourself.

It's a favourite tactic of the usual suspects to poke at whilst ignoring reality, but only really makes them come across as socially inept... which is probably quite accurate considering their demeanor.

[Doffen]

Wow....

Actually revelling in the fact that people might not want to/be able to afford an overpriced character service or want to start from scratch?

That's pretty low dude.

What the hell did I just read...

How can you take that from what I wrote? Just so you know my guild is on a low-pop realm, and we were on this server before. First on low-pop, then on Draenor, then back to same low-pop server. My horde characters stayed on Draenor. And I made a personal guild there with few of said guildies so we can have some fun.

And what I do with my hard earned Class Hall gold in Legion is up to me. Feel free to "farm" the gold and do character transfers yourself. I know ffxiv got the option. If people don't want to do character transfers, it's all up to them. Stop spewing bullshit.

[arkanon]

Decided to re-sub this weekend after leaving BFA after a month @start

Changes i noticed sofar:

- Much nicer visuals, love it
- easy to catch up mechanisms work


Server completely DECIMATED - there's hardly anyone playing it seems (Frostmane, EU) --Edit: im Alliance

I thought the negativity was hyped, but wow it's very real

Is it the same everywhere?

Basically yes. The good news is i am confident some of the players who have quit would come back should Blizzard listen to feedback and make changes, instead of just adding more shit. More mounts dont improve gameplay. More WQ dont improve gameplay. Working on the classes is what will bring players back. Eliminating WF/TF will bring players back (agree or disagree with WF/TF, people clearly dont like it, no matter how hard Blizzard sell it)

There is a bad case of "the community that cried wolf" going on here. Since day 1 people have been talking about the decline of the game. Many of those claims were entirely unfounded, or at very least misguided. I remember Total Biscuit (RIP) saying "i am quiting wow, its too casual and not challenging enough for me anymore" at a time when he hadnt completed any endgame content, let alone the hardest content on offer.

And after 10 years of hearing this shit, i think the rest of us just started to assume the majority of the complaints on forums were the same thing. Sadly, this is really impacted the reception of genuine concerns from the community from legion leading into BfA. The concerns about Azerite armor and classes feeling shallow were loudly shouted down during beta, and i remember myself saying "lets just wait and see".

Sadly, we waited, and what we got was everything those complainants had tried to warn us about. Sure, there are still the usual "the sky is falling" crew, but some of the very real and very serious concerns about the game are getting ignored by everyone, including this very community.

tl;dr - yes, the game is a wasteland for an awful lot of people. Some in niche communities - the 10hour a day casuals without jobs / school, they are still playing and because they mostly just do ultra casual content with other 10+hour a day home-stayers, they dont notice the issues.

[Queen of Hamsters]

What the hell did I just read...

How can you take that from what I wrote? Just so you know my guild is on a low-pop realm, and we were on this server before. First on low-pop, then on Draenor, then back to same low-pop server. My horde characters stayed on Draenor. And I made a personal guild there with few of said guildies so we can have some fun.

And what I do with my hard earned Class Hall gold in Legion is up to me. Feel free to "farm" the gold and do character transfers yourself. I know ffxiv got the option. If people don't want to do character transfers, it's all up to them. Stop spewing bullshit.

That's his new hobby, unlike FFXIV (which incidentally has people pay to skip story, or pay for cosmetics and character services too).

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Basically yes.

tl;dr - yes, the game is a wasteland for an awful lot of people. Some in niche communities - the 10hour a day casuals without jobs / school, they are still playing and because they mostly just do ultra casual content with other 10+hour a day home-stayers, they dont notice the issues.

Yes, I'm sure all those Full/High pop servers are only filled with 10-hour-a-day casual players without jobs/schools, which is also why there's a clear surge in activity on said servers during hours when most people are not at work/school.

You people are just plain funny in how you pretend to sit on any insight.

[Eleccybubb]

Basically yes. The good news is i am confident some of the players who have quit would come back should Blizzard listen to feedback and make changes, instead of just adding more shit. More mounts dont improve gameplay. More WQ dont improve gameplay. Working on the classes is what will bring players back. Eliminating WF/TF will bring players back (agree or disagree with WF/TF, people clearly dont like it, no matter how hard Blizzard sell it)

There is a bad case of "the community that cried wolf" going on here. Since day 1 people have been talking about the decline of the game. Many of those claims were entirely unfounded, or at very least misguided. I remember Total Biscuit (RIP) saying "i am quiting wow, its too casual and not challenging enough for me anymore" at a time when he hadnt completed any endgame content, let alone the hardest content on offer.

And after 10 years of hearing this shit, i think the rest of us just started to assume the majority of the complaints on forums were the same thing. Sadly, this is really impacted the reception of genuine concerns from the community from legion leading into BfA. The concerns about Azerite armor and classes feeling shallow were loudly shouted down during beta, and i remember myself saying "lets just wait and see".

Sadly, we waited, and what we got was everything those complainants had tried to warn us about. Sure, there are still the usual "the sky is falling" crew, but some of the very real and very serious concerns about the game are getting ignored by everyone, including this very community.

tl;dr - yes, the game is a wasteland for an awful lot of people. Some in niche communities - the 10hour a day casuals without jobs / school, they are still playing and because they mostly just do ultra casual content with other 10+hour a day home-stayers, they dont notice the issues.

The funny thing is while the sky isn't falling Blizzards games as a whole have taken a huge hit on the MAU count they so desperately like to parade around.

I've never seen the game in this awful of a state though and it's quite sad as a WoW fan.

[arkanon]

That's his new hobby, unlike FFXIV (which incidentally has people pay to skip story, or pay for cosmetics and character services too).

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Yes, I'm sure all those Full/High pop servers are only filled with 10-hour-a-day casual players without jobs/schools, which is also why there's a clear surge in activity on said servers during hours when most people are not at work/school.

You people are just plain funny in how you pretend to sit on any insight.

Blizzard control what is displayed on a realm - full for example. It is meaningless. You know that, right? I mean if you want, you can read the data Blizzard just released which clearly shows a drop in activity. But no, you are right, we are wrong, and Blizzard are wrong.

[Eleccybubb]

Blizzard control what is displayed on a realm - full for example. It is meaningless. You know that, right? I mean if you want, you can read the data Blizzard just released which clearly shows a drop in activity. But no, you are right, we are wrong, and Blizzard are wrong.

It's funny because those saying that "this is fine" right now are arguing the metrics Blizzard themselves present that show player activity is down.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Blizzard control what is displayed on a realm - full for example. It is meaningless. You know that, right? I mean if you want, you can read the data Blizzard just released which clearly shows a drop in activity. But no, you are right, we are wrong, and Blizzard are wrong.

"Blizzard control what is displayed on a realm", care to provide citation for that? Because last I saw someone link anything about the servers, their display is fluid with how many characters log in.

And MAU being down across Blizzard titles =/= you have any data to back up your extremely belittling ideas on what kind of players are still playing the game. I'd dare say not even Blizzard has access to data on what their players do IRL or not.

Player activity fluctuates, that is nothing new. Fluctuates, yet so many servers are so very active.

[arkanon]

"Blizzard control what is displayed on a realm", care to provide citation for that? Because last I saw someone link anything about the servers, their display is fluid with how many characters log in.

And MAU being down across Blizzard titles =/= you have any data to back up your extremely belittling ideas on what kind of players are still playing the game. I'd dare say not even Blizzard has access to data on what their players do IRL or not.

Player activity fluctuates, that is nothing new. Fluctuates, yet so many servers are so very active.

You guys crack me up. "prove it, show me data!" shows data "no, not THAT data, i want different data!"

[Eleccybubb]

You guys crack me up. "prove it, show me data!" shows data "no, not THAT data, i want different data!"

And again the funniest part is it's BLIZZARDS data.

People who were critical used to get called out for their sources all the time on this forum.

But it's ironic now because with sources from Blizzard people are like "nah fam it's still wrong".

I won't lie. I find it amusing how these days even facts are considered wrong.

[Queen of Hamsters]

You guys crack me up. "prove it, show me data!" shows data "no, not THAT data, i want different data!"

When someone's need to believe something becomes so fierce that they make fun of the idea that people will request official data to back up ones statements.

Says all that needs to be said, for sure. But you have the chance, provide citation for your statement about server labeling, and real life stats for currently active WoW players.

[arkanon]

It's funny because those saying that "this is fine" right now are arguing the metrics Blizzard themselves present that show player activity is down.

I honestly think its sad. The level of delusion is so godamn high, they just dont even realise how absolutely ridiculous they sound. I still play. Not anywhere near as much as i did, but weekly. I am on a "full" server, although you can still create characters, and there hasnt been a single queue since launch. Blizzard activate the queue whenever they need to for various reasons - server issues being the most common motivator. People on absolute ghost town servers have posted comments about having queues.

People as delusional as some of these "everything is fine" crew will find "proof" wherever they can, and ignore proof that doesnt fit their agenda. For example, not once did i say the only people playing the game are 10+ hour a day ppl with no jobs. Look how quickly this kid tried to screw my words around and create a strawman. What i said is that the NICHE part of the community who play long hours and have friends in a similar situation are far less likely to notice the reduced play count, because their ultra casual community is still happy with the game from what i have seen mostly.

But look how quickly this guy tried to twist that around and screw it into something he could disprove. Amazing really.