1. I want to add that it so happen that the direction the server dev moved was about making it harder in several ways.

    For some reason the collective behaviour was counter-met with a stick every time.

    1. People started running Sunwell trash en masse -- let's reduce drop rates.

    2. Resources, potential bots -- lets reduce taps to one per vine (which doesn't affect bot, it just keeps running but affects person who cant gather).

    3. Gold -- lets squish economy every year.

    4. Bosses -- lets overtune, Warmane even fixed Quagmirran summon which ended to be a feature rather than a bug.


    Steps like those led to people frustrated, the server was tuned up to a degree people stopped logging in. An active server would have pugs on MH/Sunwell trash, abundance of recipes, abundance of gold and resources (which is how it is working on Icecrown).
    Edited: October 1, 2019

  2. I loved the xp rate and hated the other rates. Grinding gold is fine but the rep and honor farming is yikes (IMO). I stopped playing in Outland when I had the urge to level an alt. Then I remembered what I went trough with exalted reputation and honor even for one s2 piece which made me lose motivation and go back to Icecrown. I tried to make my friends join me in Outland but they refused playing at 1x rates.

  3. Yep, good points ElunarStorm. I agree.

  4. I want to add that it so happen that the direction the server dev moved was about making it harder in several ways.

    For some reason the collective behaviour was counter-met with a stick every time.

    1. People started running Sunwell trash en masse -- let's reduce drop rates.

    2. Resources, potential bots -- lets reduce taps to one per vine (which doesn't affect bot, it just keeps running but affects person who cant gather).

    3. Gold -- lets squish economy every year.

    4. Bosses -- lets overtune, Warmane even fixed Quagmirran summon which ended to be a feature rather than a bug.


    Steps like those led to people frustrated, the server was tuned up to a degree people stopped logging in. An active server would have pugs on MH/Sunwell trash, abundance of recipes, abundance of gold and resources (which is how it is working on Icecrown).
    All done to funnel people to the donation shop. That kind of thinking is what killed the realm.

  5. All done to funnel people to the donation shop. That kind of thinking is what killed the realm.
    But in the end thousands of people stopped playing. Surely, that wasn't good for the shop.

    How does making life less comfortable attract old and new players?

    Steps are needed to retain current players.

  6. All done to funnel people to the donation shop.
    Yes and no. There are some design decisions that just don't make any sense, not even from a business point of view.
    For example the rep and prof rates are x1 and the vast majority of the playerbase hates it. But there is no rep or prof service for coins so Warmane doesn't even earn money by keeping the rates that low.
    Same story with the honor rates: x1 honor rates but then s4 offparts can't even be purchased in the store...
    These design decisions just don't make any sense. They only harm the realm...
    Edited: October 3, 2019

  7. Personal opinion.

    When providing new realm, expansion, start with higher rates. Let the people see what the expansion is like. They don't have to grind for reputations and some items for that long. This means they get to do max level raiding faster, the very experience most players are after and/or max level PvP if you're into that.

    You could over a long period of time lower the rates. Icecrown, err Ragnaros, was X20 rates. Even then it was Warmane's top realm.
    Let people enjoy their stay. Then surprise them with true X1 server, not some wanna be hardcore blizzlike what Lordaeron is trying to be.

    Or you could be bit smarter with rates of the servers. WotLK isn't that grindy asian MMO-type, so you don't need to slab it with crazy rates. TBC is quite grindy, so why not throw more attractive rates to accommodate players and help them overcome some boring grinds.

    That's my 2ยข

  8. The gear shop killed everything.

    Before warglaives in shop : 10k player.
    One month after warglaives in shop : 3k player
    One year after warglaives in shop : dead server

  9. Yes and no. There are some design decisions that just don't make any sense, not even from a business point of view.
    For example the rep and prof rates are x1 and the vast majority of the playerbase hates it. But there is no rep or prof service for coins so Warmane doesn't even earn money by keeping the rates that low.
    Same story with the honor rates: x1 honor rates but then s4 offparts can't even be purchased in the store...
    These design decisions just don't make any sense. They only harm the realm...
    Yep, well said. I often wondered about these as well.

  10. 4 weeks boj even and able to buy best items kill server. Add next TBC realm similar to Lordaeron, thats be great : )

  11. I started playing this realm a while ago, got really excited. Leveled a character to 65 made some friends that were really nice. Problem is, I'm a Icecrown Player and I know the game extremely well as I have played Vanilla/BC/WotLK Realms for years, mostly Vanilla actually. What I know for a fact is that BC is the biggest Rep Grind out of all 3 Expansions and then realized the server was 1x Rep.

    I've played on (dead now but was hype when it was alive) Archangel Feenix and they had like 14x XP, 5x Rep, and 2x Honor.

    I wasn't sure what Outland was but it was advertised as 5x XP which to be entirely honest feels really really nice. I love the rates for leveling as you are forced to do a little more than your typical routine for leveling on these fast rates servers.

    That being said I expected Rep and Profs to be at the very least 2x. I even rolled a Human because I knew the Rep in Outland was a nightmare.

    Then it hit me part way into Hellfire Quests. The Rep was 1x and I immediately knew why the population was so low.

    I knew it when I picked up Enchanting and saw absolutely 0 Strange Dust on the Auction House.

    I was deranged and illusional to continue leveling and telling myself it's not that bad. The problem here is it is that bad.

    It needs higher rates to attract new players. Ice Crown is populated for a reason. People want the game to be fun not to feel like a job.

    I'm a Journeyman Electrician in real life and I get paid to make sure lights and outlets work in new homes and I love it because I know after hundreds of Homes that there are dorks like me and hundreds of kids plugging in their games and I had a small part in that.

    I don't get paid to grind Rep in Burning Crusade. I'd do some quest and dungeons but it shouldn't take as much as it does now.

    Professions should be more enticing as well. With the population so low I'm not going to go to Deadmines and Farm Greens for Strange Dust at 1x Rates because there aren't any on the Auction House. I would of wanted 4 Stats to Rings but no offense to anyone on that server but that's kind of a big nope.

    I have pugged Ulduar 25 (Frags Res) on Ice Crown which to be fair is pretty difficult to get people for because they don't really need it aside from Transmog/Achievements.

    In the time I leveled to 63 on Outland I didn't see a single Kara or ZA pug in Global.

    These are the fundamental problems for new players coming to the server. There are really nice people. In fact a 70 Hunter basically solo'd Ramparts to help me. It's not the players fault because they are trying really hard to protect something that just has imperfections.

    The fundamental problems on this server is that it doesn't have a vote shop for starter gear from 5 Mans/Heroic Blues and it doesn't have at the very least 2x Rep and Professions.

    Aside from the players on the Server which are as I said extremely nice. It's just not worth the grind and effort in it's current state.

  12. I would kill for a populated BC Server. So sick and tired of countless Palas/DKs with Shadowmourne onehitting people.
    XP 7x, Rep/Honor/Trade Skill 3x, remove raid pre quests and we have a great server.

  13. So I'm personally torn about this.

    People complain about the rates, but you have to look at this this way: there are ways around the 1x reputation: you can farm Etherium keys and get rep for everything except for Honor Hold / Thrallmar, and SSO.

    You need a reason to have players log in for goals. if those goals are gone, then there's no point: they'd just raid log (like what most people did on this server once they hit 70, got their reputations and starting raiding gear.

    What killed the raiding scene on this server was the stupidly overturned bosses that was a holdover from Medivh; where bosses had 20-30% more HP then their retail counterparts in SSC, and had some ****ty mechanics thrown in.

    Let's take some fun examples:

    1) The Nagas on the outlying platforms for The Lurker Below: if those are not CC'd and constantly CC'd they will multishot and 1-shot people and wipe the raid if ONE gets loose. That shouldn't happen. The 'test' team stated that they 'fixed' this issue 2 years ago...but it's 2 years later and guess what? They STILL 1-shot people. The CC everything strat shouldn't have become the norm; as on retail you could kill those things and be fine.

    It also wasn't fun, when the sheeped naga's would start climbing some invisible stairs and get so high up that you can't CC them anymore, and guess what? That 1 naga wipes the raid.


    2) Hydross: His HP was 30% more than on retail when we killed him back in 2017, and he had a very big "1%" chance of 1 shotting your tank; that after multiple attempts was more along the lines of 10% per swing; even if the tank was in full resist for the type of phase he was tanking + defense rating / resilience to not be crit by him; he's still throw a random 23k elemental damage swing and 1 shot him or her. It was frustrating and stupid that there was nothing that could have been done to resolve that.

    3) Leotheris: his transition phases are much shorter then on retail making the encounter harder. Now they screwed with how taunts work for him, but that doesn't change that you only have a 4 second window to run in, DPS, run out as a melee character versus what you should have which is 7 seconds.

    4) Kael'thas: he had a much, much smaller flamestrike 'warning' animation then what it was supposed to be, so it would hide 'inside' of him during phase 4 of the encounter and wipe your tank because you literally couldn't see it. P.S: small animation size + ****ty color scheme = you get it. The dagger didn't work initially, and the phoenixes would randomly go immune and not die. There was also the issue where Thaladred the Darkener 1st gaze for phase 3 went off of threat instead of his fixate target - that was fun.

    I believe if the overturning of the t5 content was taken out; you could have kept a lot of people raiding into the T6 era, and if they had delayed the cash shop; things might have been different, but it's no use guessing on what could have been.

    I am glad that I stuck around though, as I was able to be in a guild that cleared all content. But now there's nothing. :(

  14. People complain about the rates, but you have to look at this this way: there are ways around the 1x reputation: you can farm Etherium keys and get rep for everything except for Honor Hold / Thrallmar, and SSO.
    Farming Etherium keys is not really a work around since you get also only x1 rep from them.
    The thing is that Outland is advertised as a x5 high rate realm, thats what is shown to newcomers when they look at the server informations.
    Players that choose a high rate realm don't want to grind rep and profs on x1 rates.

  15. Imo people like tbc because it's grindy and I think overall the server concept is perfectly fine,
    the shop was poorly designed and some gear releases there came at a questionable timing, which likely lost you some raiding guilds.
    Given the run time of the latest tbc content on this server I'd say the numbers are somewhat expected after devalueing actual gameplay since why would someone even be motivated to clear the latest content given how much preparation goes into it when you can just buy ur bis items for coins, this is different for wotlk since getting into the latest content is comparably easy there.

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