As most of us know, Lordaeron population is declining at a large rate. Why is the biggest question. I'd say it's due to the overbuffing and no RDF. Even though these add more difficulty, people want to play Wrath as it is meant to be. I personally stopped playing Lordaeron as it didnt feel like a blizz like experience. The server has so many qualities that make it a geat server, but these custom features are driving away a huge playerbase .
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Member
How could population Improve?
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Moderator
Care to provide some data to back what "most of you know"? For all I, as part of the Staff, know, it has been having a stable peak close to 6000 players every day: https://www.warmane.com/information.
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Member
I agree it has stabilized, but it has definitely lost population, I am just trying to provide constructive feedback to help your awesome server out, I don't understand the hostility as I am just trying to help you to know hat may be driving people away.
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Member
Even some pugs kill anub on 25 man how much easyer you want it to be ?
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Moderator
You make a claim that contradicts what I see and I ask for evidence. That's not hostility, that's expecting you to have factual base to what your whole thread relies on. "Stabilized" and "driving people away/declining at a large rate" don't fit together, so pick which one is the case.
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Member
Most of the ppl that post/say stuff about the disabled rdf just have a hard time levling and want to afk in a capital and get carried. I joined the server a few months ago , i hate questing , i enjoy pvp mostly and still managed to get 1 alliance and 1 horde to 80 , with wich i got 10k kills in less then a month on both , population between 4k and 6k , constant. Solid pve and pvp playerbase even if the skill sometimes is lacking.
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Member
Add 'higher rate' in the list and then you will get Icecrown. As far as I know, back when the pop was 12k+, they were also filled with people who are waiting for Deathwing/Ragnaros to get Lordaeron's core treatment.
Not implying I want higher rate though. Been there, hate that.
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Dargenslayer
Pretty sure the main reason Lordaeron has a lower population than before and lower than Icecrown is because 1) You have to level a character x1 rate which requires a significant time investment 2) After you get that character to level 80 you need to farm reputations and dungeons and gold to gear up your character to the bare minimum for raids (this has become much harder over time because people only do the daily HC - not very many do multiple HCs or emblems farms and without RDF and good loot RNG from the HCs you do manage to do, it can be extremely difficult and time consuming to reach that bare minimum). 3) Finding a decent enough guild to clear as much current content and other previous raids can be challenging and time consuming as well because there are not as many middle of the pack tiered raiding guilds anymore. 4) You need to maximize everything on your character - professions, gems, enchants, etc. and then once you receive enough gear from the middle of the pack guild you've raided in for the past couple months, you can finally start applying for the top guilds on the server and if you get declined then better luck next time. If you get accepted then you have to compete for a spot against more geared and people who have been in the guild longer. This can be easy/hard depending on how well one has mastered the class they are playing.
So in retrospect, as someone who has leveled a character from 1-80, gone through the HC dungeons process, raided with a decent guild, and then moved up to the top raiding guild on Alliance over several months of playing, I can say that it is a huge time investment and you have to be quite experienced with the process to speed things up. These are some of the reasons why this server can seem unappealing to new players (especially ones who have no connections to guilds or friends currently on the server like me when I first hit 80). Having a friend who can help you out is huge in speeding this process up and getting you geared up faster and raiding regularly.
Also, as someone who raids and plays regularly on both Icecrown and Lordaeron, I can say that having RDF enabled is definitely a tremendous help to leveling and fresh 80 characters who are trying to get geared for raids. Having it disabled to make the server more "memorable, challenging, and community driven" at this stage is kinda pointless IMO. Everyone has their opinions but this is just from personal experience and the experiences of my friends and their friends who have made character on Icecrown and Lordaeron. Just my two cents.
Also also, with the content being harder on Lordaeron it is much harder for lesser-skilled or newer players to kill bosses and get geared. Obviously the point of Lordaeron is that it is supposed to be harder and more challenging, but when bosses on Lordaeron have 2-3x more hp (Jaraxxus 10HC has around 5.4 or 5.7 million on Icecrown, and it has 3x more on Lordaeron) and we have current content gear and not full BIS ICC gear (killing 3x less HP boss with 2x more gear and damage on Icecrown compared to Lordaeron) can seem ridiculous to a vast majority of WoW players. On top of the fact that previous raid tiers like Naxx and Ulduar are still quite over-tuned, it makes it difficult and frustrating for newer guilds and players to get anywhere on this server in a decent time frame. It's also the reason why there are so many "casual and chill" raiding guilds on Icecrown that still kill raid bosses and gear people up. Making raids more challenging can be a good thing, but keeping older content difficult makes it hard to catch up and participate in the current end-game content in a reasonable amount of time.Edited: December 30, 2016
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Dargenslayer
TL;DR 1) Takes a long time to hit 80 and can be boring without RDF 2) Hard to find groups for all the HC's and time consuming if you're not getting lucky and getting the pieces you need to get pre-raid BIS especially without RDF 3) Previous raid content is over tuned and too challenging for newer players and guilds to clear so they can't get to the current end game content to kill/try to kill those bosses (like Naxx being hard for raids even in Ulduar/ToC gear) 4) There aren't as many middle tier guilds people can join to get better at or have fun with raiding on Lordaeron because of those reasons above. 5) There needs to be a better balance between challenging end-game raids and making it easier for new players to transition from fresh 80 to pugs and middle tier raiding guilds and top tier raiding guilds.
This is all from experience of playing on many private servers over many years and playing on old Sargeras, old Neltharion, old Deathwing, old Lordaeron, and many other servers. I really had to push myself to get somewhere on Lordaeron and it took be a pretty long ****ing time to get to where I'm at now since I didn't know anyone on the server beforehand. These are just my friends and my own experiences and opinions, would love to read what other people think or have experienced!
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Member
RDF turn on for low level, this will make people return sever. Recently with my alt tank paladin, cant find 1 party 5 man for azeroth dungeon at NA time, even EU time. Not to mention spend more time regroup.
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Member
I know countless guys who left lordaeron because no RDF. However they said RDF is a disabled feature. But disabling it has caused huge loss to the realm design as well.
RDF was mainly designed to encourage people to get used to the class they play, but here i see most of level 80 player who dont know what they are doing even on their class and ofc they have not done dungeons while levelling. Secondly, questing alone gives it mostly a feeling of bot realm, i have levelled around 6 alts and i know i felt really like a bot and to mark "there was no fun at all in that levelling" because not all can bother about spamming global for 30 mins to fill a dungeon group for quests even, and i don't need to mention the global or trade sarcasm/trolling/craptalking over here.
So i think RDF should be implemented and it would encourage a lot of people ^_^
Adding up, point Dan mentioned is valid as well, old content is not nerfed yet as it should have been done. Prolly the staff even forget gradual nerfs were mentioned, because they were never done. Naxx bosses still has same health etc as they used to have earlier. There is literally no point in raiding Naxx/Ulduar atm because raids are too much time consuming [Dont argue on that if you have not raided except TOC], and no geared guy wants to waste 7-8 hours or more even helping to clear naxxaramas/ulduar.
Our guild has cleared TOGC, i would love to state it was not challenging, but ridiculous. I am not stating my alone opinion on this, but i have heard about this being ridiculous from players of other guilds as well.Edited: December 30, 2016
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Member
The population has "stabilized" a bit more lately, because it is less people to quit. The population have droped at a large rate ealier, and are still dropping, but not that fast.
People say that the population is high at 5-6k, well that is true in one way. But if you look at the queue times for RBG and arena, well I feel like I am wasting a lot of time on Lordaeron in queues.
I feel like many people want to hide or remove and excisting problem, by saying it is fine, when it is really not. Maybe it is still okey, but please don't ignore that fact that the population is actually dropping.
I once read a warmane staff say that the population was dropping because of the summer time. Well, it just kept dropping after too. I have been busy a lot, and have not been as active lately, last time I was online it was around 6-7k, not is it 5-6k.
I am not saying this to hate, I am saying this because I really enjoy the server, and don't want it to die (Not saying it is dead now). Currently I am feeling the staff is only trying to decline and ignore feedback from people that are worried about the pop drop, by only saying it is stabilized--Edited: December 30, 2016
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Member
Allow RDF to work for normal old instances, normal from level 1 to 80 excluding the last released ToC.
At certain point new people must be invoiced to play, what scare them most is the big gap between old players and new players.
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Member
exactly this.
there is currently almost no people who start new. + Most people cba to lvl alts because of rates 1x. I dont think anyone has a big problem with 1x rates for the first time but for alts please add heirlooms. also naxxramas and ulduar should get nerfed to retaillike lvl maybe not algalon/yogg/ but the gap with new and old player is so big atm. + With heirlooms moire people will lvl more alts = more bgs, more dungeons , more raids.
And yes 6k number looks juicy on paper but in fact theres 1-2 bg max open during primetime 4-6 arenateams and therea re 3-5 guilds who raid current content which is Togc25. which is just nothing for a a 6k pop server. Most guild lack to recruit new player since they are so far behind in g ear and its just tedious and turn off for most people to go naxx/uld.
The focus should be on current tier and everything else behind should be seen as catchup.
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Member
And 5) Lots of people were waiting to the merge of Deathwing and Ragnaros into Icecrown, which in fact, this made the biggest impact if you ask me.
Edit - To the topic in general, how come you guys are so worried about population? Is 6k bad? In the past, all realms used to cap 3.5k / 4k and everyone was happy about it, now with 6k peaks there's drama? I don't get it.
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