Warmane review from the perspective of a new player.
Disclaimer: These are my opinions that I want to express to players that may be looking to join the Warmane server, as a new player myself. There are some complaints in this thread, but I do not expect anything to be changed based on my complaints, and while they may be complaints for me, other people may enjoy it.
This is a thread that I've decided to write after reading all of the war-mane horror stories that have turned me away from the warmane realms for so long. I've been on warmane for five days now, and have been 80 for about three more and I wanted to touch on a few different things that I've learned and picked up on that may inform new players about the status of things, from someone who doesn't just scream PAY TO WIN SERVER, AVOID.
I joined Warmane (Icecrown) with the intent of playing PvP. I wanted to do a bunch of battlegrounds and spam 2v2 arenas with my friend and let me tell you, the battlegrounds have been insanely fun, even while being undergeared. The horror stories you read about getting one-shot by smourne's every 2 seconds are completely false. It does happen from time to time, but what do you expect, you have no resilience. People with the heirlooms can still nearly nuke you, because there's no mitigation. It was like this in retail also.
Now, that being said, every once in a blue moon, you end up in games like these:
https://gyazo.com/b37256b56bcc405df403e2c37ce33d7c.png
These are not fun, as you can't play, and the entire team just sits on your graveyard and kills you over and over. These are likely mostly premade games, but also has to do with the fact that it doesn't SEEM like battlegrounds have any sort of gear-score matchmaking in place. Totally fine, same with retail wotlk, it happens.
My biggest complaint is... Blackrock. Most of the time the people complaining about PAY-TO-WIN is actually people complaining about BlackRock. For those of you who don't know, Blackrock is an instant-80 realm server where you get BiS (non-arena) PvP gear for free. Free gems. Free enchants. Free everything. This is totally cool, and I understand why people would want to play like this. Spending several days grinding your equipment isn't for everyone.
However, the fact that there is cross-realm battlegrounds and arenas... makes it feel like you're totally F**KED without grinding for hundreds of hours to get the PvP equipment and gold for all the enchants and gear. Considering with PvE gear the users from Blackrock mow through you like a freshly sharpened cleaver, it really feels like you're totally useless and is likely the basis for all of the "Donators are too strong" complaints.
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ALL IN ALL - I think that warmane is a great server and it's much more friendly to new players looking to do anything, either PvE or PvP than you may realize. The community has been exceptionally friendly and the leveling experience was equal to or even better to that of retail, with players and open-world PvP being everywhere. If you're looking for a place to call home, pick one of the realms here and you won't be dissapointed.
EDIT:
MULTIBOXING This is something that's allowed here and I will never understand why. It completely ruins the fun of things like Wintergrasp when there's 50/80 of the players being multiboxers.
10 frost mages
10 resto druids
10 enhance shamans
On both factions, every game. REEE.
==== But kill the leader and they all fall apart.
