I am struggling a bit when it comes what to call this post because I don’t want it to seem overly alarmist. That said I have noticed something over the last seven days that gives me concern. I mentioned these thoughts to my friend Eliyon yesterday and at 7:00 pm CST last night he agreed that there might be something to it. Last week there would have likely been 8-10 people on at that time of the evening, but last night there were three… and of those 3 one of which was Stargrace’s auctioneer that she leaves logged in most of the time while doing other things. There has been a noticeable drop off in activity.
Granted at this point we are twenty four days after the official launch of WoW Classic, and also at this point folks are exiting what I would call as the “easy levels”. At 37 the going is so much slower than it was even in the 20s and I have been chewing on this level for a couple of nights now. Granted I am not focused on being optimal and more focused on trying to get as much ore as I can to push up blacksmithing and mining, along with keeping up with the constant maintenance of needing to craft food. As a warrior I eat an excessive amount of food, and in order to lower downtime I am eating every 2 or 3 encounters.
I am not sure if I can really call this a trend yet since it more or less just started happening over the last week. I know of several cases where folks have stuff going on, like Grace for example is going to be out of pocket for another two and a half weeks or so. The west coasters don’t tend to start showing up until 9 ish my time, which means that in many cases we are ships passing in the night. They are coming on as I am logging off and I think players are starting to move away from playing the game at any cost and trying to find a more healthy balance. All of these things are probably adding up to the absence that I have noticed, but it does still give me pause.
For me at least I have not felt the sirens call of something else. I didn’t even pick up Borderlands 3 for example because I knew I would be otherwise engaged. Similarly there is a bunch of stuff coming out this week that I am likely going to just let sit there unpurchased until I hit a lull. The desire to hit 60 and gear up is way too great to allow myself to be distracted by something else. The only thing looming on the Horizon that is likely going to pull me away at least part of the time is the impending release of Destiny 2 Shadowkeep on October 1st. Even my beloved Monster Hunter World and its Iceborne expansion has not been enough of a draw away from Classic.
The positive is that there seems to be a group of us all in the same level range that seems to be similarly committed to this nonsense. So long as I can keep easily building guild groups I am likely going to stay engaged. However I wanted to throw this discussion out there. Have you been noticing a drop off in your own guilds? What things have been pulling players away from the game that you have noticed? I am curious if I am alone in this observation. Ultimately I am hoping this ends up being just a “bad week” and not a lasting trend. The servers are still actively populated and the chat channels lively, but I have noticed a thinning out of players in the level range I happen to be in.
I think ultimately I am finding myself between waves. I am too slow to be part of the “first” crowd, and too fast to be among the folks that are still in their early to mid twenties. I think maybe I need a change of scenery. I have been focused on grinding out the items needed for the Warrior level 40 weapon quest, and doing runs along the walls of Arathi for ore. This means I am moving every so slowly, but it does give me constant access to raptors which serve as two sources of cooking materials. I still have no clue where I am going to get the money in a few levels for a mount, and I figure that is going to be another phase that stalls me out as I go find something grey to grind. The various “gold farms” that I have heard of are all heavily camped, so I may just go without a mount for awhile.
I’m treating Classic way differently than I did Vanilla. I’m not rushing to level. I know better now. I know that I’m playing because in that moment, I just want to relax and do some levelling. There’s no bigger drive for me, because I can look at all the retail characters that I was so consumed by (in terms of levelling or gearing) that I could care less about today.
I’ve got no plans for other games for the time being, however my playtime with Classic will always just be about having fun without attachment.
For me its just been a matter of busy as hell at work. My progress has been next to nothing on my Shaman but I am still having fun. I decided to make the weekend my main playtime until work settles down into something a bit more reasonable,
My guilds are still going pretty strong with 15-25 people on every night. During the day, I’m told they usually have 3-8. I have noticed some decline in things here and there, but also surges in others. It’s really hard to judge based on what you see, other thank your guild list and friends list, thanks to the layering technology, but I still see a ton of people all over the world, playing and enjoying it, comparing it to retail and largely people talking about preferring classic.
The first time I started to notice things declining was earlier this week which is also when I started seeing the trolls come out. People spamming Thunderfury in trade chat, calls for ERP in Goldshire, and so on.
If you take that away and look at what else is there, though, you see a really great community setting up a foundation. People buffing randoms they walk across. People who sold bags in the first couple of weeks are now offering bags for free to people under a certain level. People ask questions, and they get honest replies. I’ve also seen a lot of people really embracing the community aspect of the game by coming together to help with quests, people being excited to find people to run a dungeon with them, having actual conversation throughout the dungeon, and adding to friends lists for future fun together.
The people I’ve seen fall away in my own guilds are those who are still trying to treat the game like retail. They want to faceroll things, they don’t take the time to learn about how their pets work, how to manage threat, and so on. The people who have no patience and no regard for other people are the ones I see falling away.
Personally, I had no interest in classic at all. I decided to give it a shot because I didn’t start playing myself until BC, and everyone I know was pretty hyped to try it so I figured I might as well. I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed the old leveling experience. Not necessarily the slowness of it, though I do actually appreciate some of that as well, but the fact that you get rewarded again for every level you achieve is something that I missed more than I know. As someone who enjoys leveling more than any other aspect of the game, this feels so much better to me than the current system. The only real drive I have to play the retail version right now is farming gold so I can pay for my sub with gold instead of dollars.
There was always going to be some tapering off as time went on. We’ve seen that with every EverQuest progression server, the LOTRO Legendary server, and just about every expansion launch. The initial rush, with people sprinting ahead, settles down to a more stately pace. And there will always be some who realize that this just isn’t for them.
Our group is on the very slow end of the run into WoW Classic. We finally got our first full group run together this past weekend and we still have one person who is moving so we’re doing an A Group and a B Group so when they finally get settled we have some characters that can work with them.
And while my own time is still focused on WoW Classic, I am coming off the initial binge mode to make sure I’m taking care of other things in my life, some of which I neglected in that first week or two.
Populations are going to fall. I don’t believe Classic is going to ramp up and overtake Retail as some have suggested, nor do I think it will suffer any kind of implosion. Players who were already subbed will be making their choice as to which they prefer. Some are going to go back to Retail. The merely curious will have seen enough to satisfy their curiosity by now. The returning vets will have sated their nostalgia.
Those who stay will be those who prefer Classic to what else is on offer right now. That includes me. GW2 received a very good update yesterday, which I would otherwise be very happy to dig into; EQ2 has a series of good pre-expansion events. Lots of MMORPGs have things going on. I’d stil rather spend 75% of my time in Classic. Give it another few weeks and that might change.
I tend to judge by the server screen when I log in. Today is a misleading one because we had server maintenance earlier and everyone was kicked out so it looks light compared to usual. Yesterday, though, three-quarters of the EU servers were High or Full by mid-afternoon, when people are supposedly still at work or school. By primetime everything was red except the two or three late-starting transfer PvP servers and my server, the RP-PVE one, which barely ever shows Full and mostly sits at Medium.
That’s a heck of a population still. Don’t think there’s much to worry about in general although no doubt the specifics will vary a lot from server to server and guild to guild.
I think this type of balancing out of population is natural. Some people wanted to see what the all the talk was about, others like me, are still pre 20s so I am in no hurry anywhere. As far as MMOs go, this is my home and I love it. I am reading quests, I am going extra slow so that I dont feel like I have a second job, like I did when it first came out. So while some people have had their taste and are happy, others like me are here to just be here in this world, because it feels like a world.
I got in a nice guild in the first day or so of Classic. By the end of week two, I was the only one on or there were three others at most. I think in this case, the guild leader and his wife weren’t on much after the first few days, so discouraging for the people who were also in the guild on the Current Game servers. Can’t abandon your peeps, fearless leader!
I’m juggling between both as best I can. One thing I did decide on was not automatically making officers from retail officers in Classic. I did not want to pressure people into a job if they were deciding on which the preferred. We have a lot going on in our personal lives also that’s making it difficult to split time.
I’m seeing a little different. We have around 15 logged into Classic, which is pretty steady. Retail had dropped to 3-4, however, we’ve picked up a few from guilds that are suffering and now are around the same as Classic. Raid nights are the exception when some log into retail over Classic.
I think Server community will be a big factor, and whether or not guilds are just enjoying the experience or trying to push for end game. Mine is not pushing, and overall everyone seems to be having fun. Certainly retail raiding is hurting, but it was prior to Classics release.