Why do people like high population servers?

[Qnubi]

Why is everyone assuming the OP is referring to dead servers as alternative. There is a middle-ground between over-populated and an empty server. This shows exactly why most roll on the highest population server, they have no knowledge of anything other than what most people do. I am playing on EU-Thrall. A healthy middle of the pack server with (according to WoWRealmPopulation) 44k active max level characters which is 1/3 of the highest, which is Kazzak with 127k active. I can buy everything I ever need, find dozen of guilds to join if I wanted to and the mythic scene is healthy and thriving. Obviously if you join a server like Tirion which has 2k active characters you are gonna have a bad time. But nobody implied we are talking about the lowest of the lowest....

If you are one of those people replying here that assume anything other than high pop means dead you have no clue and never researched anything and you are just a sheep.

[lockybalboa]

It's an mmo.. People who play MMOs normally enjoy some company

[Nalam the Venom]

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

After the somewhat sucess of Genshin impact i hope devs start moving towards more Solo-Friendly online games.

[crusadernero]

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?

I rolled on a, back when classic launched, a very active server. When I returned not so long ago it was more or less dead. Very few active players and even less active guilds. Impossible to get a dungeon group going, no one to see out in the world.

Migrated to a high pop server where a friend plays, now I have no issue finding groups/guild(s) and players out in the world to group with for quests. I migrated to a pve server, but why people pick the faction with most people? cause most people dont want a challenge in pvp, they want to steamroll and win. People dont want to be ganked.

[Queen of Hamsters]

I want to raid.
I want to make gold.
I want to see people around me.
I want lots of stuff on the AH.

I've been on all kinds of servers. I'll always, ALWAYS, pick High/Full pop.

[Hibiki]

WoW is such game type who works properly ONLY on high pop serwers. Low pop is miserable expierience.

[RoKPaNda]

There is less of a community like you'd see in a small town

A lot of people don't like that kind of intrusive "community." - I'd rather have a better server economy and more options for guilds tbh.

[PenguinChan]

The only distinct advantage I know about when rolling low pop / really low pop servers is getting rares, mounts, and other nice things to yourself as not many people even with cross-realm inclusions will be rolling around. Otherwise, it's just better to be on higher pop servers.

[Mozu]

After the somewhat sucess of Genshin impact i hope devs start moving towards more Solo-Friendly online games.

I'm just curious, why not play actual single-player RPGs if you feel this way?

Why bastardize MMOs for it?

[ThrashMetalFtw]

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.

There was no crossrealm in Cata, that only started in MoP, and you still had to be manually invited to phase into other realms back then. If you didn't actively try to be phased into another realm by joining a crossrealm raid, you would still only meet players from your own realm out in the world and major cities (and the extremely low amount of off-realm players being in a group with somebody on your realm at the time). The same is true for WoD.

True crossrealm as we have it now (randomy seeing x-realm ppl out in the world or in major cities) and the sharding technology, was added as late as Legion.


The general lifespan of a realm has nothing to do with the quality of the expansion. The exact same things you describe happened on my original realm, except that my realm was in its heyday in TBC, and kept dying through all of WotLK, being on the last chapter when Cata launched... Then I went to a realm that was active and full of life for all of Cata and MoP, only to die the same slow death as my original realm during WoD.

[Stardrift]

There was no crossrealm in Cata, that only started in MoP, and you still had to be manually invited to phase into other realms back then. If you didn't actively try to be phased into another realm by joining a crossrealm raid, you would still only meet players from your own realm out in the world and major cities (and the extremely low amount of off-realm players being in a group with somebody on your realm at the time). The same is true for WoD.

True crossrealm as we have it now (randomy seeing x-realm ppl out in the world or in major cities) and the sharding technology, was added as late as Legion.


The general lifespan of a realm has nothing to do with the quality of the expansion. The exact same things you describe happened on my original realm, except that my realm was in its heyday in TBC, and kept dying through all of WotLK, being on the last chapter when Cata launched... Then I went to a realm that was active and full of life for all of Cata and MoP, only to die the same slow death as my original realm during WoD.

It was started in cata, 4.2 to be more exact.

I was stating when server identity started to crash. Cataclysm blew a hole right through it, and it's been rotting ever since.

As I stated, lots of guilds die patch by patch. So you're right on it not being just because of the expansion.

[Nalam the Venom]

I'm just curious, why not play actual single-player RPGs if you feel this way?

Why bastardize MMOs for it?

Because no other game have the amount of content that WoW has... and the thing i hate about single player games is that they have a definitive end, they don't get updated over time like WoW does.

So hopefully they will do away with having to be in groups to achive something.

[SimithDAEN]

High population servers have better economies, more guilds so usually a lot more high end raiding, much livelier main cities, etc. Depends on your priorities and what you want out of the game.

[Djuntas]

When I first started, I wondered why all my friends were on a high population server.

Valid critic, but playing on a high pop has made me filthy rich for my AH play. And it has given me more opportunities.

If I didn't play on a high pop no way Id make the same amount of gold as I did since I went there in WOD.

Also back on my old vanilla realm, before I moved the first time, it was so dead it kinda ruined wotlk and cata for me. I could not get any good raiding in cata...I liked being a known person on the realm, or at least known a bit, but it didnt matter when we could not even recruit DPS for raiding.

[Biglog]

Both high and low pop reams have their pros and cons -

Low pop: Pros - Less lag, less fighting for quest mobs/rares.
Cons - Hard to find items in the AH, much tougher to find guilds and groups for raiding/pvp, less or no wpvp.

High pop: Pros - Easier to find AH items, easier to find guild groups for raiding/pvp, more wpvp.
Cons - Lag, fighting over quest mobs and harder to find rares.

I wouldn't list login queues as a pro/con since it doesn't come up often enough to be a big issue.

[Overlord Anrakyr]

1. Easy to find guilds. For someone who skips a lot between guilds due to various reasons, having a large selection of potential guilds is very important.
2. Feeling of population. An empty world is a very depressing thing.
3. Large selection of items in the AH. On small servers stuff is rare and expensive.

[ihate2beapessimist]

I made the mistake of accepting a free transfer off my high pop realm to some brand-new realm.
Even worse than the fact that it was a dead realm, was the fact that it was called "Shu-Halo" which sounds awful when you meet someone who plays WoW and they ask what server you are on. Shu...Halo? Not sure what the heck I was thinking at the time.

[Lubefist]

Not gonna repeat all the valid reason already mentioned but one big one is also how depressing it is to go to Org/SW/whatever and see like 3 other players.