Hello everybody, all of us noticed how fast did the Lord pop went down after Icecrown was open it used to be 12k on Ulduar open and its now on 5.5k during peak times thats like 6k players gone in 4months, kinda makes me sad... sure we are at the brink of new content and that might bring some of the players back but that wont last long either .... now to the issue causing this, lets face it Lordaeron is just too hard for casual players.
Already aware that all of you people gonna say, hey if ppl cant handle it they can go play on Icecrown. First, they really cant since server is full with 2k ques xD
Second, that isnt really the right way to deal with it anyway since low pop is slowly killing and hurting Lordaeron. Less and less people que 2s so you only face same few teams over and over again,3s - lol what 3s, they dead (kinda pop issue aswell)..... bg ques - what use to take 1-2min now takes 15-20min, it takes you longer to put together groups for 5mans heroics and even longer for 5mans during leveling. Guilds disbanding since they have problem with recruiting new players.
Overall things are just going for the worse here and the reason is casuals just dont have anything to do here and end up quiting really fast once they lvl up. They are not limited by server difficulty in pvp department now lets take a look what they can do pve wise here. Once they lvl they can farm up heroic gear and then pug OS and maybe just maybe if they lucky few bosses in Naxx, forget EoE and thats it ,they cant even do Naxx10 like wuts that.
What could staff do to bring people back? Well here are few suggestions:
1st: Lower difficulty of outdates raids (Naxx, OS, EoE even Ulduar once we are on ToC) so they can actually be pugged propelly and bring some of the puglife for people that dont have the ammount of time to be in propper guild back on this server ;) Im sure even elitis core of this server would not mind this change, since no heroic guilds here raid outdated content.
2nd: Not gonna poke much into this i know staff decision and standing on RDF but seems to me it that it discourage huge amount of players from even starting to level and play here. I personally leveled 3chars here w/o it here and would not mind you enabling it. If it brings new players, go for it.
3rd: We are entering the last 2 contends of Wotlk in which Blizzard came up with the genius idea of Normal/Heroic modes for 25mans. Giving players ability to choose difficulty that fits the ablities of their group. What im saying is that you should be kind to changes to Normal versions of these instances maybe even leaving them retail-wise and you can go full Lordaeron mode on Heroic modes, buffing them so hard that you will need to (backstab your GuMs burn all the bridges with aliance transfer horde) and apply to Memories in order to clear them. This way you would pleasure haha pleasure the both parties - elitists of this server and even casuals.
4rd: Share some of your love with PvP here i mean cmon. You are doing great job fixing and scripting PvE and you tend to do it pretty fast but there are still some pretty serious issues with some basic abilities for each class that are here from release and really needs to be fixed already. Also find a way to promote 3s here with idk, better rewards or that 3s que announcer that somebody suggested. Some end seasons tournys wouldnt hurt either ;)
I thought this server was suppose to be Warmanes flagship so far its just sinking ship.
Looking forward to some feedback ;) This server needs casuals too :) not that im one of them, brrr, god no ;)
ps: no grammar nazis on me plox, and Vast if u gonna say sound like l2p issue , ima find you and ima kill you. Ciao.
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Banned
Lordaeron - How to fix dropping population.
Edited: September 4, 2016
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Member
++ naxx should be nerfed to retail level naxx so the server comes back alive with daily 25man pugs and tons of 10man pugs and ulduar endcontent guilds can actually stock up their rooster again with decent geard people.
right now its impossible to recruit new people for ulduar endcontent on ally side
its just dead
there are 2 EU guilds + 1 russian guild left who progress a bit further in 25man. and idk about the russian guild but both eu guilds rebirth& animosity got trouble to fill up the rooster and got hit hard again by legion release which makes progress for yogg hm/algalon/firefighter impossible atm because you cant recruit new people.
i mean 3 guilds on a server that had 12k player online half a year ago ...
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Member
Got to agree with everything that's been said above. The difficulty of starter raids should be brought down to allow easy progression for people who are new to the server. Yes, the server has lost a lot of players, but there are some who are still gearing up and are looking to raid. Pugs are almost non-existant on alliance, which makes it hard to gear up for the new members. Lowering the difficulty of Naxx, would make this transition easier.
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Banned
-7K players in 4months seems this is not working is it
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Member
Do you really want the people that just play casual on Lordaeron to leave too? Because I guess you will end up with 1-2k less players then. Do you want 2-3k population on Lordaeron?
Yes, the population migth increase when TOC release, but as we have experienced the population goes up at release, and drops a lot more after. Then it goes a bit up (not as much as first time) and drops a lot more.
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Member
doubt anyone has a problem with CURRENT tier which is uld hm and not naxx10/25
on ally side its just IMPOSSIBLE to recruit new people
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Member
im casual and i still play on lordaeron just because it has better atmosphere than icecrown... but i agree it needs some changes... i got lvl 80 and i play only few hours a day... sometimes 1-2 hours... i dont really have time to go dungeons without RDF so i just queue some BGs to gear up and i dont really care... i would like to go some PVE i just dont have enough time for that... but whatever... what bothers me is shrinking population... its noticeable even for casuals who only want to queue some BGs or play arenas... please do something its a really good server
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Member
Problem is, ToC/ICC are gonna come and the server will have less people than it has now. If by any chance one of your core members decides to stop playing for x reason, who are you gonna' recruit? They should make Naxx10/25 easier and OS, but they should keep ulduar the same.
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Member
I'm one of the people who might slowly pop his head back on the server because of ToC, but that is only because of the badge change in the next patch. That in itself will make getting gear easier for the 'less' hardcore person like myself.
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Member
Good suggestions OP. It sounds like the buffed raids are the biggest complaint from the playerbase. The server information thread states the following: "Raid Difficulty enhanced with increased damage and health pools based on community progress". Looking at the declining population and community progress I am assuming adjustments will be made in the near future to the raid difficulty. You made good points about "Herioc" raids, hopefully they can buff those and keep the Normal versions Blizzlike.
The community playing on this server has actually been one of the best I have been a part of for quite sometime. While there was a healthy population on the server players were generally very helpful and friendly. I hope the Warmane team makes any needed changes to revitalize the population.
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Member
These posts have been going on for way too long.... The fact of the matter is this is Lordaeron, a HARDCORE server that many people love.
Lordaeron doesn't need 8k+ players to keep a float, the player decline on lordaeron is due to the release of Legion. I know the population has been dying for months but that's fine. The players are still here on Warmane, just playing Icecrown and Blackrock.
This time in World of Warcraft was WoWs biggest decline in retail also, this is where a lot of people quit due to the game changes, in 2 weeks, when new content is available and they realize Legion sucks, they will be back.
Also people really need to realize what they are getting into when starting to level here on Lordaeron, its a HARDCORE PVE server, which means if you want to farm easy dungeons and raids through a finder system, this is not your server. The no RDF is no where near a block wall for us "competent" players. Its pretty easy to level up professions, craft gear, make gold off the AH off your prof, buy BoE gear, easily have the required gs for heroics and farm heroics till 3800 gs. It's actually pretty easy and doesn't take an "elitist" to pass that wall.
Basically its straight forward here on Warmane and you kids need to just get it through your head....
WANT TO PVP ?? ----- GO TO BLACKROCK
WANT TO PLAY THE GAME FOR FUN ?? ----- GO TO ICECROWN
WANT TO PLAY THE GAME FOR CHALLENGING (NOT OVER-TUNED) RAID CONENT?? ---- GO TO LORDAERON
DONT LIKE HOW WARMANE IS SET UP?? ---- GO PLAY LEGION
Other than that....
Thank you Lordaeron for your great and (better than blizzard) scaled content, I had a great time progressing through naxx and Uld, looking forward to a great Totc release.Edited: September 11, 2016
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Member
I can't really comment on the raid situation, i am not really into raiding, i like the server for it's x1 rates , the leveling process and it's, until now, healthy population.
I am leveling my fourth char to 80 at the moment and i noticed that it is impossible to to low level dungeons. I mean, last Saturday,, the whole day, it was not possible to find a group to do Ramparts for example. Other old content dungeons look similar, it's simply not possible to do dungeons atm.
My suggestion, and i cannot believe i am writing this, is to enable the dungeon finder for dungeons below level 80.
Greetings
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Member
Yea i'm gonna agree with nase, i'm leveling my 2nd character to lvl 80, threw vannila it's so hard to find group for dungeon, even on lich king normal dungeons is hard, i dont know if it's gonna help with a group finder enabled, but if it does u should enable it atleast for vannila or figure out something so players who want to do dungeons get group faster. And im happy how lordaeron is currently now, hardcore and good, thank you. ;)
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Member
I was reading this thread just because I sorta quit this server about 2months ago. So from the perspective of someone with a decent amount of time but not caught up with what is required I can explain it. Getting into a raiding guild is a fickle thing.
Most guilds (NA ally especially) are toxic as hell and guilds like the one I and my friends were in can literally rob you of hard earned loot and say "it was reserved" but then stop raiding 25m to do 10m Ulduar instead as they used up 15 people to get what they needed already.
On the other hand you can BE geared and find an already existing group/guild. This condenses the raiding base to a FEW guilds. This is not a healthy challenging and effort promoting aspect of the server. What this breeds is elitism and exclusivity for mundane raiding like outdated raids.
I absolutely agree that the current most content should be cleared by around 5% of a realm's pop as in Lord's case this would be about 250 or so people or about 10 guilds. This is a great number it means that a competitive population of guilds are achieving the maximum difficulty in a challenging server. However I would be surprised if less than 10 guilds still exist that actually have a chance of tackling this feat.
So that means that while the most experienced or in many cases those with the most time spent together raiding daily could be driving home their fantasy of a hardcore Wrath server. Whereas 50% of the population is likely in the mix of not raiding/pvpers/still lvling and around 20% would be considered "casual raiders" and then the remaining 25% would be decent players who are SOL in terms of finding a guild because they cant get geared, people dont want to help them, or they are slowly marching through the content they can do (which is limited to 2 raids ATM). So what happens? This 25% of the population dwindles as they are usually just as dedicated to playing as the top 5 but they see no light at the end of the tunnel.
This idea that ALL content is for the top 5% and everyone else can just lick the scraps is ridiculous and its not what retains players in WoW of all things. Wrath had the highest retention because it allowed for people of lower skill groups to clear older content or content at a lower difficulty but be fulfilled with what they achieved. That is the key problem with Lord they dont allow players to feel fulfilled and look at the playerbase bleed out for it.
So MY suggestion from a portion of your 25% who have the time but maybe not the means with which to raid at the higher levels is give the lower tier raids a nerf equivalent to their content release. I know the idea of having them being super buffed is for the sake of longevity but thats currently backfiring. Provide a stepping stone to the players who want to do the old raids to at least have a chance at competing. Put Naxx/EoE/OS at retail difficulty both 10 and 25 BAM now there is entry raid content that is puggable and fun. Put Ulduar (after ToC) at 60% of what its buffed to now, this retains the difficulty and allows for people to push into this mid tier content. 10/25m Normal ToC at 80% of what they would normally be buffed to in Warmane would then serve as a stepping stone to Heroic but make sure that since this is an especially tricky balancing act for the idea of this server dont overdo it. Rinse and repeat this with each content patch and people WILL come to have a challenge within REASON!
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Member
For the people making the argument that 4-5k is still a much better population than other private servers and we should be happy with that, keep in mind that it has dropped from 12k since like the last 3 months. Do you think it's just going to stabilize at 4k now or continue dropping?
On horde side my guild loses good players faster than we can replace them. From what I've heard, the #2 guild is experiencing the same thing - it won't be long until MEMORIES is in that boat too. I just leveled my second char to 80 and there was an absolute dearth of world PvP compared to when I leveled my main. I had something like 30 kills and deaths on my alt when I hit 80 compared to ~650 kills and hundreds of deaths on my main. RDF isn't an issue, global chat is basically RDF and if you're a dps then it's even faster to find a dungeon than RDF.
The problem is that the staff simply doesn't listen to their player base, like at all. The majority of people didn't want "hardcore raids" in the first place. I stopped wasting my time with VoA pugs many weeks ago, which was fully puggable on retail (Ulduar was most certainly not, even "softcore" as it was). Worse than that, we have the inexplicable "gold squish" coming up, which was met with 12 straight pages of "please don't do this" responses followed by a giant "**** you we're doing it anyway" from the staff and a locked thread. Their basic argument is that "it won't change anything," which begs the question, why the hell are you doing it in the first place then? If your best case scenario is nothing changes...lol. Already prices of flasks and potions have gone through the roof as people "prepare" for this idiocy to be shoved down our throats.
There are obviously some great things about the server which attracted 12k population in the first place, but the staff needs to swallow its pride, admit that it's wrong sometimes, and cater a little bit to what the majority of its players want or the server will continue to slowly die.Edited: September 20, 2016
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