rofl the typical clueless ***** post.
TBC has, and always will, be known for its hardcore PVE content. TBC was never known for PVP, although it was a great addition, most agree peak PVP was WOTLK/MoP(3v3 arenas)
so when you introduce a system for people to bypass the whole purpose of the expansion(cash shop for PVE TBC Endgame items) it defeats the idea of playing the expansion.
nobody quit playing tbc because it was too much of a "grind". the peak of outland population was when there was still attunments for raids/revered for heroic keys.
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Agreed, which is why the shop needs to be opened completely at this point.
I also agree that new TBC servers are pulling players away, but I think over time the quality of this server will see many of them return when the honeymoon period wears off.
I wonder if increased Rep rates and reducing the tuning that has been done would attract PvE players back/retain them?
Obnoxious, do you know if the devs are evaluating these ideas or is their position that everything is "working as intended"? Additionally, do you know if the devs have done any analysis to determine the cause of pop decline?Edited: March 26, 2019
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Ofc there are ppl that play alts. I never said otherwise.
Nevertheless most ppl are turned off by the x1 rates.
It is not enjoyable to grind Scryers or Aldor rep on x1 rates for the X time.
It is not enjoyable to skill up profs on x1 rates for the X time.
It is not enjoyable to grind all these factions, that are required for HC dungeons, to honored for the X time.
Doing all these grinds once on x1 rates is bearable. Doing it for every alt char all over again is just a torture.
If your main is called "Butkus" then you aren't BiS geared.
I'm one of these veterans and I disagree.Edited: March 26, 2019
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I forwarded this thread when it was just the original first post. This post on the first page was the result of it, but I don't have details of what exactly is being considered to change. About analysis of the population decline, I have nothing else to say. It's clear that each one has their own narrative for "what really caused it" and that there's no use in trying to change that.
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As someone who has played on this server for quite some time now, progressed all the content, played both factions, played a huge amount of PVP, has multiple alts, so on and so on; I feel I have a large amount of information gathered through experience and time. There are multiple reasons why the server population has fallen off, not just 1 or 2 particular things making this happen.
Firstly, ALL private servers have "falling offs", especially Vanilla/TBC WoW as they are very grindy and time consuming. The server has had this happening for its' entire timeline. It hasn't been as obvious as it is right for because the Cata server got shutdown and we gained some players through that, another TBC server got shutdown and we gained some players through that, Medivh got merged and we gained some players through that. These are the largest events that "boosted" the population of Outland and kept it at about the same level of players even with the "falling off" happening; some players left that didn't enjoy the expansion and they were replaced by players gained through these sources.
Secondly, multiple other servers have opened up during the lifetime of Outland (at least 2 Wrath servers and 2 TBC servers), retail WoW got a new expansion, multiple very popular new games have been released. As Obnoxious mentioned earlier, people are prone to peer pressure and follow their friends/guilds around wherever they go. So your friends that you started playing with want to go to a new server because they don't like "Factor A", you're likely to go with them. Same can be said of entire guilds with their guild leadership. EVERY SERVER has population drops when a competing/appealing server opens.
Thirdly, attunements and difficulty increases. I for one am all for attunements at the start of a server. That being said, when combined with the added increased difficulty of T4/T5, it made getting people attuned for raids much more difficult. I have seen over 20+ guilds die back when BT was highest content released because to attune someone you had to: get them Kara attuned, run Gruul/Nightbane/Magtheridon. Then you had to fully clear SSC AND TK to do Vashj/Kael'thas (you can't go straight to these bosses till SWP patch). The T5 alone would take the majority of guilds about 2 days to clear. You did all of this for maybe at most 5 trial raiders who you could then bring to Hyjal/BT and see if they were good/reliable etc. As you can imagine, this is a HUGE amount of work to attune just a few players to see if they are even worth the effort. This is not a Warmane problem in particular, this is a problem with TBC attunements and how T5 is setup; the increased tuning on T5 only made this problem worse.
Fourth, the cash shop. Yes, it is a factor; no, it's not as big of a factor as you think. I have not bought a single piece of gear from the shop, so no, I am not defending the cash shop because I pay for everything I have; I have farmed every single item that my character has. If I had the option of a "cash shop" server vs.. a "no cash shop", I would pick the "no cash shop", but it doesn't really bother me all that much. If I had to choose a badly scripted server with no cash shop vs. a well scripted server with a cash shop, I would choose the cash shop server every single time. The reality is that cash shops allow the server to survive and for content to be fixed/scripted/added in a timely and proper manner. Just take a minute and think about how many "no cash shop" servers have released in lifetime of Outland alone that have died/shutdown or are just completely unplayable quality. It's just not sustainable to run a free server and have things working properly and things fixed properly.
The people that quit over "X" item being added to the shop knew what they were getting into, the server was announced as having a planned store for buying items. They probably would have quit without there being a cash shop anyways. That being said, I think the cash shop should have had a few more restrictions in place to incentive people doing lower tier content for different items.
Fifth, PVP. This point is a combination of previously mentioned points. This server had a large PVP population that almost exclusively PVP only. These people typically play on all servers of their chosen expansion and do BGs/Arenas on all of the servers and typically have less of an investment into each of the servers that they play on. These people typically tend to favor the fresher servers and the servers with the highest peak pop as it makes arenas/BGs more populated. The cash shop had a big impact on this community in particular as facing against someone who has an advantage that you can only gain by spending money or doing PvE content weekly isn't appealing for these types of players. Warglaives are a large offender here, but many other items contributed as well.
These are just some of the larger factors that have affected server population over the last couple of years. Overall, the server is great. I wish some things had been handled differently and different paths had been taken in the past to help server life; but for the most part everything that has taken place is the natural order of a servers lifespan. At the end of the day, Warmane has more data than any of us. They know when and probably can assume why large parts of the population left at certain times. Perhaps if Warmane decide to make a fresh TBC server sometime in the distant future they will improve on some of the stuff they have witnessed here.Edited: March 27, 2019
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i think should you stop this crap you pull with saying players are not in bis cause they lack s4 shoulders... like you said many people quit playing here that did not have s4 shoulders so they are not bis, thats just dumb talk. x1 rates?yeah your wrong about that to...
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I think you didn't understand what the term BEST IN SLOT means.
Saying that many ppl quit because they are full SWP geared is just dumb.
Only a handful of players even killed KT. Only a tiny small selection of players is full SWP BiS geared.
All server rates beside XP are x1.Edited: March 27, 2019
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you want to talk about a clueless post.... you just won it!
" TBC was never known for PVP"
TBC was the best pvp wow has ever had, 1v1's all arena brackets open world bgs all much better balanced then anything wrath had. the issues that classic wow had got fixed in TBC then when they rolled wrath out it was crap for 3/4ths of the x pac.
wrath gave us dk's.... the most broken op'ed class wow has seen and i do not care if they got "tuned down a little" last patch they were still broken same goes for pallys, 1 man armies remember that, sure you do. nothing in TBC was as op'ed or as broken as dk or pallys in wrath , nothing.
this 3v3 in wrath was the most balanced crap people like you love to talk about, please stop it. 3v3 in wrath was not more balanced then 3v3 in TBC or any other x-pac. the ONLY thing 3v3 in wrath gave wow was more specs VIABLE = more specs that can do well in 3v3. this in no way means better balanced pvp, more specs = means specs not better balanced. i could say live wow has more specs in pvp then any times in wow and its does but that does not means its better balanced.
3v3 got active in wrath because classes like dks and pallys broke 2v2 and blizz took rewards from 2v2 and scrapped the bracket telling everyone is you want titles and tier 2 weapons/shoulders you have to play another bracket. so everyone was FORCED to play more 3v3, so at what point are we seeing great balance in wrath? def not 1v1 or open world, not in 2v2 or 5v5, not in bgs. matter of fact the ONLY pvp aspect anyone can talk about from wrath and say yeah that was pretty good would be 3v3 towards the end of the x-pac only. thats "not the best/peak pvp of wow" sorry its not and yes all of wrath counts not just the last patch. TSG was great only after arms got an overhaul mid x-pac cause it was broken... add in the op'ed human racial broken raid gear/trinkets remember rets out healing healers?yeah good times...
again you can say wrath had more specs viable for 3v3 ONLY but do not say it was better balanced pvp as a whole, wrath pvp was a huge step back. more specs in pvp does not mean better balance actually it means worse balance.
as for the rest of your post
so when you introduce a system for people to bypass the whole purpose of the expansion(cash shop for PVE TBC Endgame items) it defeats the idea of playing the expansion."
that is 100% how all x-pacs work in wow is it not?you progress your toon from day 1 to end game over time...if people paid for say shadowmoure in the cash shop does that not bypass the purpose of raiding/grinding icc for months?yes it does.
"nobody quit playing tbc because it was too much of a "grind". the peak of outland population was when there was still attunments for raids/revered for heroic keys."
that i agree with but like i said in my other posts everyone is spread out now thats the issue.
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what dumb is your post!again this server has 1xps on everything other then leveling correct?yet this server had 12k all with 1x rates even heading into BT, SWP correct?guess what?at that point t in game if your in BT and swp your reps grinds are all over correct?the only rep we had to grid at end game was shattered sun and that was just doing dailys as we pvp, easy grind.
2nd i think your the one that does not understand what BIS means.yeah i "get it" someone that only lacks s4 shoulders is not 100% bis.....yet you forget said players have all the other bis items, with bis gems... bis enchants rings and the like. gues what?a player has to grind rep to get bis enchants and gems right?at that point the hard grind is over is it not?all they have to do now is play...proves your point false..... see im not like you i would not sit here and see a fully geared toon and say o hes not bis geared cause he has s4 chest and not bs crafted chest for pvp.....dumb right?
like i said stop with that crap but you cant cause you want to believe yourself and even having people "that geared" in BT or swp alone shows that everyone did the grind. how else can someone get bis shoulder enchant from aldor?=grind rep and everyone did even with 1xps....
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to be fair TBC inheritet a total mess in terms of class balance from vanilla wow and it did a really good job in making all the specs pve and pvp viable. Also tbc was the only expansion where 5v5 was taken seriousy (atleast back then), my realmpool back then had about 20 gladiator spots in 5s whereas in wotlk we didnt even have the numbers for a single glad spot until s7 and 8 glads in s8. Given that wotlk had a solid class balance to build upon they did a terrible job in the first year and somehow managed to globally kill 5v5.
But yeah 3.3.5 had quite good 3v3.
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@Butkus
You are twisting my words and misintepret what I said.
I already made the whole grind on Outland and I posses several characters which are what you would call "BiS" geared.
Like many other experienced veterans I have the strong opinion that x1 rates on rep and profs are just counterproductive for a high rate realm like Outland.
It only discourage players.
Ppl that want x1 rates play already on other TBC servers.
Outland should attract those who want higher rates and atm it fails to do so.Edited: March 27, 2019
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stoped reading after this LMAO u saying 1v1's in tbc was balanced.
your a clear ***** who dosnt know what balance means.
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LMAO i just looked back at this essay. this is the definition of the most clueless post.
how about you read what i said in the post you quoted before you write your next essay.
i said "TBC has, and always will, be known for its hardcore PVE content. TBC was never known for PVP"
when people think of TBC, they think of Black Temple, they think of Sunwell, they think of the leo fight in SSC, they think about the hardcore Kael fight for "Hand of Adal" title.
i said pvp was a great addition but it isnt what TBC was known for.
in your essay you write about how its better than wotlk pvp.
show me ANY active TBC pvp server LUL you cant. here in blackrock there is 800 people just soley playing wotlk pvp on peak hours because wotlk was known for its fun pvp.
pls learn to read before you make yourself and other people more stupid by reading your useless essays.
EDIT:
just skimmed over your wall of text again because i didnt read it all the first time, just responding to this.
i have no idea what you even mean or what you are trying tosay, what you said is too stupid to understand. so let me explain what i said.as for the rest of your post
so when you introduce a system for people to bypass the whole purpose of the expansion(cash shop for PVE TBC Endgame items) it defeats the idea of playing the expansion."
that is 100% how all x-pacs work in wow is it not?you progress your toon from day 1 to end game over time...if people paid for say shadowmoure in the cash shop does that not bypass the purpose of raiding/grinding icc for months?yes it does.
the people who are playing on a TBC server, 98% are playing for the PVE experience.
case and point is how thousands of people would simply leave outland and all the work they did on their toons, and outland being in its final endgame point release. these people simply left to start over on another server to enjoy early PVE content again.
i was saying when warmane introduces a cash shop for people to SKIP the PVE grind of doing all the raids, whats to point of even playing?
you cant compare TBC to WOTLK because people loved to PVP on wotlk ASWELL as PVE
99% of the people who payed for shadowmourne wanted it for PVP.
just like how 99% of people who payed for catas edge wanted it for PVP
but unlike wotlk, tbc pve is 98% of the focus for people who love the expansion.
warmane thought they can make another icecrown server with a TBC expansion but it failed because 70% of the appeal of wotlk is its pvp. which is not the case for TBC.Edited: March 28, 2019
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Thanks for the response, Obnoxious!
I think a data-driven, reasoned response based on analytics would go a long way in settling the debate on population decline. While many narratives have been offered by the players, the narrative desperately needed is the one from the Warmane team who has access to all the data and can address each hypothesis. I'm sure the team has great insights, so encourage them to share with us!
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Another problem with the community is introduction of GS. It may give you a glimpse of a player's overall efficiency in a group environment, but asking for 3k GS in heroic dungeons is insane.
