Originally Posted by
Zarator8
By your logic, how could it happen that Classic PvE servers are alive and thriving? On the pserver scene, they tended to die quite damn fast, and never had the level of population we're seeing nowadays on the likes of Pyrewood Village, Mirage Raceway, or their US counterparts.
The thing is, pserver players are VERY different from official players. They tend to be more competitively-driven, more PvP focused and in general more tryhard. The only place on Classic where you could expect to find an environment like that are the more competitive PvP servers like Gehennas, Firemaw, or Herod. That's part of why it makes me smile when I read posts complaining about stuff like elitism, ppl always looking only for spellcleave groups etc. It's like you guys have never checked a PvE server on Classic... or even the less populated PvP servers.
To answer your question more precisely, TBC pservers tend to die because, without custom systems etc., the racial unbalance tends to become unbearable and this kills wPvP/BGs - which, to the pserver crowd, is basically the only endgame worth playing. And, once you start employing custom mechanics such as giving Alliance bonuses, you begin alienate a bigger and bigger crowd until you end up being just a niche product.
A Classic TBC however would be a whole different story. Yes, we would still have many Flamelash scenarios... but we also would have many situations such as Hydraxian Waterlords, where the Horde is by far a minority on the server but still thrives because it's a PvE server. And given the debacle WPvP was in Classic for many people, I'd expect a LOT less PvP servers to open up if/when TBC launches, and a lot more PvE servers to fill the gap. And even on the PvP server side, sure a few might meet the same fate as Shazzrah or Flamelash, but I'd bet whatever you want that we would also have at least one Mograine or Ashbringer with more balanced numbers.
In conclusion, even with a few casualties among PvP servers, the few balanced PvP servers surviving and the rest of PvE servers would be more than enough to keep TBC alive. Maybe not to the same numbers we've seen at Classic launch, but certainly far above what we've seen on TBC pservers.
Besides, even if BGs had excessively long queues, in TBC you can still queue for arenas against your own faction, so PvP isn't as impossible as it would be on Classic under the same conditions. Sure, getting those PvP offset items would be more daunting, but that's about it.