Why do people like high population servers?

[Ashleyxoxo]

When I first started, I wondered why all my friends were on a high population server. There is less of a community like you'd see in a small town, which results in more toxicity due to anonymity. Also, lag and fps drops from too much people. And don't get me started on people who join servers where their faction is dominant with 80% or more players. What's the point of even rolling on a PvP server if you're ganging up on a helpless bug?

[Your Mommy]

Why do people like high population servers?

Guilds? People who want good guilds or to raid mythic will choose high pop servers to be able to choose from many guilds in the server.

[OokOok]

Is this a serious question cause the answer is obvious?

Dead servers/low pop servers have dead Auction houses, even in the current state of casual WoW where everything can be done cross server being on a server like Illidan will still benefit a solo player. People who prefer to pug raids will be able to pug Mythic raids months before it becomes cross server. The auction house is also filled with pots/food/mats/gear/items ect, and I mean who wants to play an MMO and run into a city and only see NPCs?
Populated server also make world questing easier, no one likes getting ganked by 10 people when you're just trying to get world quest rewards with a bonus, or maybe you're apart of the 10 people running around ganking solo players, well being on a populated server will also make that easier even with phasing.
Mythic + is terrible pugging and being on a populated server opens up your options to joining guilds and making new friends to do them with, or guilds in general. Lets say you're on a dead server like Black dragonflight that has 0 guilds completeing mythic. You join a the top guild who's 5/12 and you hate being there, but the next best guild is 0/12, kind of shitty scenario. You won't like a guild just because you joined it and being on Illidan has 50+ options

[Toybox]

I played on a dead realm for 10 years before leaving for Draenor EU in 2016 (although I ended up returning to my old realm earlier in 2020 to reunite with my MoP/WoD guild). There's plenty of reasons that instantly come to mind:

1) Guilds are the big one. While I transfered to join a guild I'd applied to, if that didn't go well for whatever reason, there was plenty of other alternatives for me to try out if I needed to.

2) The auction house. Need that rare old material? It's there. Need some random quest item from 10 years ago? Again, it's probably there. Got gold to spend? Some of the cheapest AH prices in the region because of the crazy availability.

3) Crafting. Need something rare/unique making? If you can get a word in between the boost spammers, chances are you'll find several people who can make what you're after.

[callipygoustp]

Back in the day I preferred high pop servers because it was easier to find groups for pvp, dungeons, and raiding. These days, with communities, and being able to run all kinds of content cross realm, doesn't matter. Well matters for the small % of people that run raids competitively. For the rest of us, doesn't matter.

[nekobaka]

In general them being more populated leading to more even now local people to interact, build groups, and guild forming along with better market. Although, the even larger realms and heavily lopsided which are sadly effectively all does come across too large for my preference.

[xeddin]

Because being able to stand out on a high pop server does wonder on the ego

[Zantos]

I left a low population realm. Here are the reasons why:

1) Better guilds and more of them. My old realm didn't get Realm first Heroic Lich King until after the first raid of cata had dropped and people were geared up from that. The pickings for guilds on my realm were very few and far between. None of them really all that skilled in the grand scheme of things.

2) Better ah. This was another big one. We had 1 guy who controlled the AH for everything from engineering on my old realm. He had a monopoly on the mechano-hog and other engineering related things. Same thing for ever profession. 1 or 2 people had a corner stone on the entire market for it.

3) More people to play with. This is the final one. Having more people to play with helps greatly. Back then, we didn't have bnet or merged servers. So having a larger population to pull pugs from and to play with outside of the guild went a long way.

[Kauko]

OP is not talking about empty realms. He is talking about realms that are medium or high. And this realms are more than good enough for everyone, no lag, just as full AH, lot less toxicity... But sheeps are sheeps.

They all think they are the 1% -.- . Look at old PVP/PVE realms. Everyone wanted the PVP, there are better guilds, best players etc. Now? The majority of this players never ever touch War mode... but best guilds were on PVP so sheeps follow.

[Bigcountry11782]

never understood someone that plays and mmo but would want a dead server lol

[tankbug]

My wow-live improved a lot when I moved to a server where people would join me for quests, dungeons etc. Azeroth is a lonely place on a dead server.

[Stardrift]

Communities. A small handful of the high-full pop servers are the only ones with a sense of community.

Everything else, especially the dead servers, have no personality and community to them.

Low pops are full of anti socials. Which isn't a bad thing btw. Those that want less interaction are gonna go where there's fewer people.

[Whitedragon]

Is this a serious question cause the answer is obvious?

Dead servers/low pop servers have dead Auction houses, even in the current state of casual WoW where everything can be done cross server being on a server like Illidan will still benefit a solo player. People who prefer to pug raids will be able to pug Mythic raids months before it becomes cross server. The auction house is also filled with pots/food/mats/gear/items ect, and I mean who wants to play an MMO and run into a city and only see NPCs?

Honestly I don't get this, even the low pop servers have a functioning server AH it's not like you don't have people posting things. The mythic thing I understand but I don't see that being a huge selling point. Also as a one off I totally would play a WoW server where I could do everything solo with the appropriate amount of effort.

Populated server also make world questing easier, no one likes getting ganked by 10 people when you're just trying to get world quest rewards with a bonus, or maybe you're apart of the 10 people running around ganking solo players, well being on a populated server will also make that easier even with phasing.

Only with warmode on, and even then this isn't totally true, you can be on a full server where you still have one side with super gank teams around at all times.

Mythic + is terrible pugging and being on a populated server opens up your options to joining guilds and making new friends to do them with, or guilds in general. Lets say you're on a dead server like Black dragonflight that has 0 guilds completeing mythic. You join a the top guild who's 5/12 and you hate being there, but the next best guild is 0/12, kind of shitty scenario. You won't like a guild just because you joined it and being on Illidan has 50+ options

Options are always good, but sometimes somewhat being forced to put down roots can also help. You are more likely to make friends when you can't just be a prick to everyone with the only drawback being you just join another of the 50 options...

- - - Updated - - -

Communities. A small handful of the high-full pop servers are the only ones with a sense of community.

Everything else, especially the dead servers, have no personality and community to them.

Low pops are full of anti socials. Which isn't a bad thing btw. Those that want less interaction are gonna go where there's fewer people.

I mean I don't want to outright say no your wrong but... In my experience the larger the group the less personality it has. everyone on a low pop sever knows who the people you make fun of for peddling trash in /2 are, high pop you're going to have to many to effectively pick on . Likewise In a smaller sever almost everyone with a history on it knows the 1-2 main guilds within that have existed since Vanilla, and they can probably tell you the drama of them as well. You are much less likely to know everything about all the guilds when you have x20 the amount of them to keep tabs on...

[VinceVega]

When I first started, I wondered why all my friends were on a high population server. There is less of a community like you'd see in a small town, which results in more toxicity due to anonymity. Also, lag and fps drops from too much people. And don't get me started on people who join servers where their faction is dominant with 80% or more players. What's the point of even rolling on a PvP server if you're ganging up on a helpless bug?

Because i like playing stuff without waiting for hours^^

[erifwodahs]

When I first started, I wondered why all my friends were on a high population server. There is less of a community like you'd see in a small town, which results in more toxicity due to anonymity. Also, lag and fps drops from too much people. And don't get me started on people who join servers where their faction is dominant with 80% or more players. What's the point of even rolling on a PvP server if you're ganging up on a helpless bug?

Is this a classic thread?
Prices and guilds would be the main one in retail. I pay way more gold for items in my medium realm than in Kazzak.

[kranur]

When I first started, I wondered why all my friends were on a high population server. There is less of a community like you'd see in a small town, which results in more toxicity due to anonymity. Also, lag and fps drops from too much people. And don't get me started on people who join servers where their faction is dominant with 80% or more players. What's the point of even rolling on a PvP server if you're ganging up on a helpless bug?

The answer is obvious really.
Bigger server equals larger guild pool to choose from (usually better guilds too) and at the same larger pool of people for guilds to recruit, generally better market (though for classic may be a little worse in the lotus area due to limited spawns), more groups getting formed for general activities (not applicable to retail of course).

While a small server is more intimate, spending an hour or more to fill a group, finding consumables at absurd prices where you eventually end up farming everything yourself or having items selling very slow is not fun.

[seta-san]

because they aren't subscribing to a single player game.

[Mozu]

Also as a one off I totally would play a WoW server where I could do everything solo with the appropriate amount of effort.

This is what it boils down to. You view wow as a single player RPG. The people on full servers do not.

[Stardrift]

Honestly I don't get this, even the low pop servers have a functioning server AH it's not like you don't have people posting things. The mythic thing I understand but I don't see that being a huge selling point. Also as a one off I totally would play a WoW server where I could do everything solo with the appropriate amount of effort.



Only with warmode on, and even then this isn't totally true, you can be on a full server where you still have one side with super gank teams around at all times.



Options are always good, but sometimes somewhat being forced to put down roots can also help. You are more likely to make friends when you can't just be a prick to everyone with the only drawback being you just join another of the 50 options...

- - - Updated - - -



I mean I don't want to outright say no your wrong but... In my experience the larger the group the less personality it has. everyone on a low pop sever knows who the people you make fun of for peddling trash in /2 are, high pop you're going to have to many to effectively pick on . Likewise In a smaller sever almost everyone with a history on it knows the 1-2 main guilds within that have existed since Vanilla, and they can probably tell you the drama of them as well. You are much less likely to know everything about all the guilds when you have x20 the amount of them to keep tabs on...

I found it to be quite the opposite when I first started in WOTLK. Without the sharding, server merges, crossrealm bullshit. My server wasn't huge but it certainly had a much larger population than it does today. Evidence being it has now merged with three other servers.

Back then, there were tons of familiar faces in trade chat. There were a ton of high end guilds, famous and infamous guilds, trolls, good guys, and a decent PvP scene. This was the Malfurion server.

Then Cats hit, obliterated server identity with crossrealm shit, and promoted holing yourself up in a guild you spent time and gold on levelling up for its OP perks. Content was bad, and people left, and you ended up stuck in this empty guild you worked so hard on. Pugs died out hard as the guild levelling system rewarded full guild groups.

My server withered down into being a low pop. Nobody talks in trade. New guilds are made but die with a whimper come the next patch cycle. There's no such thing as familiar faces anymore because of all the crossrealm/merging/sharding. Just a bunch of introverts.

Having moved to KT (I know, toxic streamer server. Idc about streamers), a high pop server, the difference is like light and day.

[Kuja]

When I started back in the day, I thought it was cool that it was easy to find groups, and finding stuff in the auction house was easy.

But these days with cross realm bullshit and transmogs, I just despise massive realms. It's so much more convenient to play on medium pops, especially if one likes to sell transmog.