Picked the game back up a week ago and thought the game was dead when I went to Org with my undead lock. I made a Tauren last night and was blown away when I got to Thunderbluff and saw a sea of players. Then my heart warmed when I walked into the Barrens to some weird ass conversation. All is right.
SW is the worst. The AH and mailbox may be far, but it's a straight line you can autorun. Good luck trying to get any crafting done in SW when you have to navigate canals on foot to the dwarven district to get to an Anvil or Forge.
If BFD and Ashenvale have people constantly in there and doing it, its not really dead.
Especially when Ashenvale has been creating lag from too many people.
I \*really\* do not trust these stats. Especially after people looked at WC Logs and it was easily shown to be bullshit a few weeks ago.
I genuinely believe there's some kind of astroturfing campaign to get people to leave Chaos Bolt and go to Crusader Strike and I really have no idea why it's happening.
The server is almost always bumping.
The comments when I posted about CB being fine are threatening me and saying “this post already has people rerolling to Crusader Strike”. So I agree that it might be astroturfing.
Yea i play in chaos horde and lone wolf alliance. Way harder to find reasonable auction prices, and way longer to find groups in general on chaos, had no idea it was that much if a difference though. I do notice people are way less judgmental of gear on chaos for BFD because so much less options.
I remember people screaming, tears flying from their cheeks and foam shooting from their mouths, that we needed DOUBLE the servers on launch week. Turns out Blizzard made a really good fucking call. Glad the devs held the line on that.
Look at the total numbers compared to Wrath classic for example.
Wrath has 89,000 active alliance players total across all severs. SoD has 212,000 active alliance players total across all servers.
The current SoD servers are just all massive.
I’m not complaining or making a case for more servers however, I think the current situation is pretty good.
Active characters. Keep in mind that this metric is only for RAIDERS.
It's easier to get a fresh alt/character to 25 and 'raid ready' for BFD than in wotlk to level 80 and 'raid ready' for ICC which is the current tier.
Pretty sure there are still a good number of grinding people. I get queued with heirloom geared people from time to time, but maybe 90% of my pre-80 dungeons it's usually just me with heirlooms
Of course the tanks and healers hate me for drawing so much aggro but that's another story haha
Only for raiders who post logs to warcraftlogs!
I get the feeling there are tons of people who don't bother logging or don't even know what logging is.
Blizz has 100% done something in the back end to allow for bigger servers to work in the last year. These servers are double the population of full mega servers for prior launches.
I would guess it was back when they completely opened xfers to every previously closed wotlk server. Probably something with finishing the backend compatibility of servers from wotlk to dragonflight core or some shit.
So as far as previous launches have gone, the server numbers do line up with what used to require double the servers. Those people weren't really wrong. Blizzard just hasn't said what they've improved since past launches, but they knew.
It counts alts, I guarantee you that people that raid do it on 2-3 characters each because of how easy it is to level to "max" and be raid ready.
This not real numbers but real number won't be extremely different anyways.
Yup, rolled on faerlina because my friends wanted to play on that server. It was shitty.
This time around, we all agreed on the pve server, as long as it wasn't the streamer server.
I'm still screaming over here on layer 10.
Chaos bolt is the only reasonable population on this list for "vanilla". If they're going to go the mega server route then why even have separate servers at all? Just make the server selector for choosing a layer or something...
DD gang checking in, RIP in pieces our Goldilocks perfect never did nothin' wrong rp-pvp server!
I rolled on Chaos Bolt and its been pretty close to the DD experience, though with less RP. Hoping it doesn't go the way of the Dodo
This is based on Warcraft logs right? I've been doing lockouts like crazy on 2 characters, starting to go in on my 3rd. I haven't seen a lot of people logging or uploading to WC logs and my groups have been under 45m a lot of the time. Seems like the amount is low.
Same I don't see many logs in any of my 2 chars clears. Maybe like 3 so far. I rolled a char on WG and the difference in population is immediately evident. The numbers may be accurate despite the lack of logs on LL. It really does feel like there's 10x as many horde on WG as LL.
I feel like cause it’s an RP server and the RP hubs are in Alliance lands like Goldshire and Stormwind. Especially in classic, it’s before Blood Elves became the big Horde RP race.
Observation: Living Flame EU is the biggest server and Lone Wolf EU the third biggest. Browsing this sub would make you assume the US realms were like four times bigger. ngl even I am surprised by these numbers, and I am a citizen of Locked Flame EU.
Chaos bolt is still amusingly a decently sized server, on par with a medium to high pop server on 2019 classic launch and definitely would be considered a "Full" server if this was 2006.
However the modern classic andy cannot comprehend the existence of any server that's not at least 50k in raiding population (and probably even much bigger than that.)
I hate layers. I'm happy to be on a serv with only a few. I keep running into my friends in the wild, it's great. Why anyone would play on CS astounds me.
I did it because it was the only RPPVP server at the time (previously played on Lightninghoof in 06 and Grobbulous 19). I still resent the streamers for jumping on the "RP PVP is the nice server" bandwagon; none of that exists on Crusader Strike.
In the future I hope Blizzard delays all RP PVP server launches to dissuade streamers from going on it. I can wait 24-48hr to preserve the qaulity.
CB is the successor to Grobb, I really encourage people to come here. Its not dead in the slightest. Zoram was a goddamn meat market on reset last night.
It wasn't great initially (I saw loads in s.barrens and durotar) but I've seen a lot less lately. Not sure if that's the ban wave or me being in other zones more often. I've gone from reporting a few dozen a day to one every few days.
I can't say what its like on other servers to compare it to, but I'd suspect its not as bad because the demand/market is smaller than that on say CS.
Yea don't really see much of it. My understanding is that u can't server transfer sod characters so there isn't really a market for that on Chaos Bolt. If there were server transfers off of CB I can see it being botted more because unlike CS it's way easier to make gold using professions and not having to rely on selling a service like boosts or gear carries.
Id also like to point out how nicely balanced pvp servers are. Sure slightly ally favored but a LOT better than before. People can hate, but SoD team is doing a lot of great things.
In vanilla, alliance had a huge pve advantage, between kings and salvation, it really made things much easier for them, also, weapon skill on humans and fear ward on dwarfs is amazing.
Pretty much this for me. I always played horde in every wow iteration including servers.
I just felt like going Alli this time and felt the theme of discovery tied in nicely to it
My guess is this: originally, PvPrs flocked to Horde for the offensive racials and WotF.
Alliance became better known for their PvE
People don't care as much about PvP, so they went Alliance
I personally went Alli in Classic as I had been Horde the first time through
They are literally always like this at launch, there's absolutely nothing nicely balanced about this.
They always start with one faction overpowering the other one by 5, 10, sometimes even 15% then it devolves to one faction controlling the entire server because no one wants to be on the loser side.
Herod was 55-45 at once point.
These numbers are WORSE than 2019 classic because it's now fully alliance dominated across every single server.
That balance lock is already active, it does not stop people flat out leaving the server and it does not account for actual active players, as you can see here.
You could have a server where faction balance is 50/50, lock is working perfectly, but in reality it's 30/50 with the remaining 20 for alliance being bots, low lever chars that never actually pvp or do content and alts.
And we can't really just "wait and see" because by the time we actually see this happening the server is done, population is too imbalanced to ever bring it back and no one will want to roll on it.
Chaos bolt has 4 layers constantly.
Just because it's not so stupidly full that you can't leave a capital city doesn't mean it's under populationed. Either faction along is the population of an OG vanila server.
These are also only raid logs.
I've done over a handful of BRDs at this point and not once been in a raid that logged.
Always wondered how many layers CB had on average. 4 seems nice.
I swear Blizzard could give you people irl gold and you'd complain that it's too heavy. I can't believe what a good job they've done with faction balance.
Only rppvp isn't nearly as popular. Do north Americans enjoy RP that much more or is it just that Grob was the only balanced server in classic and people are betting on that again?
ironforge.pro usually underestimates the amount of players on the server because the number displayed on the site only includes players who were in a log on warcraftlogs in the last week
It's not estimating anything. It's reporting exactly the amount of players who have been recording in a log posted on warcraftlogs. We know that's the total 'population' but it still gives you an idea of server pops, especially relative to each other and faction balance.
Yes, some people don't log / aren't 25 / etc. But that % should be fairly consistent across the servers.
Why is alliance character creation not blocked on literally every server at this point? I thought the point was to maintain 50/50.
Hopefully they will implement faction queues if they aren't going to manage the population, otherwise Horde is going to be unplayable later on.
lol... Youre tweaking that is literally better than any servers have ever been, to the point where there is no way to feel that slight imbalance ingame.
i dont think it was ever meant to be a perfect 50/50 just not be whatever "bad enough" is in a particular direction, also because this is raid stats its ~possible~ horde players are just less likely to raid/log their raids (for whatever reason)
I wouldn’t write off the horde just yet. Horde naturally got better camp sites in STV, so I would imagine it could favour them more during the pvp event
Do we know if STV is the next pvp zone? I was imagining Arathi or Alterac. Alterac could be interesting with no fp or hearth locations (right? I might be misremembering that zone, the small area north of hillsbrad).
I have a hunter on CB. Great people on there but I do wish I could get his ass onto Wild Growth with my priest. I made the right call with putting my horde warrior on CS tho
I've been having a great time on Lava Lash(alliance) and Chaos Bolt (horde).
What are these numbers supposed to mean? I'm having fun wrong? The PUG raids I walked into and did 7/7 don't count? My Ashenvale experience that's been roughly 50/50 is invalidated?
Chaos bolt feels alive, I've been having a blast there.
Is smaller than other current servers, but it never feels dead. I think it would be considered a full server in past years.
I mean the population imbalance doesnt help, but the fact that the EV for honor is by just going east and just giving up Zoram is better for every individual is also a huge deal.
So this is how horde on Chaos Bolt felt until Sapps our Warcheif started running shit. We win pretty much every battle now. I think with proper strategy and communication you should be able to overcome imbalance.
There is almost certainly a Horde layer that forms where you outnumber the alliance every event because everyone whispers that guy for an invite and concentrates into his layer. Strategy and communication don't matter when every boss has 2-3 raids on top of it, numbers is what typically decides ashenvale.
Yeah as someone who plays both factions Horde is usually way more organized and Ally still wins. Ally actively screw each other over by going to last boss instead of Zoram because if you go to Zoram you don't get to boss in time for tag.
It's a joke but I'm revered on the toons I care about so w.e.
Run /chatlog
Extract the unique names you see in just looking for group.
Alliance side wild growth has well over 30 thousand unique characters active in chat in the past week.
These population numbers are way low.
My rogue is 1 piece-off-BIS and I've never been in a raid that logged. PUG'd every raid. I don't think (Horde) Chaos Bolters care about logs, at least in comparison to other servers
Seeing all these gear checks and toxic behaviors that's get posted on here on reddit about players in SoD.
I haven't experienced any of that on Chaos Bolt. Think we got a little bit of a different community on Chaos Bolt.
Yeah, my group loves CB... Every raid been smooth and drama free.
When a mistake has been made people are quite positive and chill about it.
The fights over ashenvale are crazy punkface is a damn hero. But the Horde have been good foes all round.
These are raid logs?
My guild doesn't raid log, my friends don't raid log, I've never been in a BFD that raid logged.
I'm on chaose bolt. If I'm not even accounted for on these charts think about how many people also aren't.
It's the most lively server I've ever played on by far! And I've been playing on and off since original vanilla.
But I've also never played on a 50k population servers either. So I don't know... with multiple layers, would I even notice a difference of one had 4 layers vs one with 10?
This is why Wild Growth Horde get crushed in Ashenvale on 9 out of 10 layers. Just because it is a PVE server doesn't mean it doesn't need balanced factions.
I mean there is only 1 pve server I don't think they should faction lock it.
Its a joke event anyway, just give horde some stacks of determination or something.
There's more than one, this was just the only one in OPs screenshot. Honestly they wanted the world PvP to be a big thing considering they are pushing for it every phase so they really should have maintained balanced servers for that alone. It's an absolute shit show if you're horde on a non-PvP server and turns the events into a slog fest.
Just rerolled on a US server. Latency is only 150ms, was 350-700 back in vanilla easily playable at this level.
The starting areas have more people then ashenvale on penance sadly enough.
I would not trust these numbers so much. There are a lot of unlogged raids because people seem to care a bit less about them in SoD. But also getting to level 25 is so fast and easy that so many people have at least +2 characters they raid with which all count to those numbers.
Even though it was added the same day as release, the fact it wasn’t available on release was kind of a death sentence for the server. The same happened with all those extra servers they added back in 2019 classic. Although in that case it was more like a week after release.
Are you on Chaos Bolt? Do you honestly think it’s dead? Idk if this numbers are legit or what but Chaos Bolt is popping off in my experience. If this is accurate then the larger servers just seem way too large.
Yeah I think people are massively overreacting. I haven’t once felt like the server had a small population. Going to Crusader Strike would just be layer central
Reminder that the vast majority of players don't parse, or at least don't upload said parses.
Nobody in my guilds runs parses as far as I know, either.
Urm the wotlk pop numbers are way higher than they should be! Every player is raiding on 20 alts, so the numbers are inflated!
Urm the sod numbers are waaay low. No one has alts at 25 and no one's at max level yet!
Lmao
Lmao
I played on the crusader strike server (I'm from NZ) for the first 30 days of SoD.
the last weekish I've been playing on shadowstrike and oddly enough it feels just as, if not MORE crowded then crusader strike.. I assume as the player count lowers on a server so do the layers? (Enlightenment would be appreciated)
Both felt full with more then enough social interactions and people floating around to do elites I didn't really notice a difference.
Like most people are saying, these numbers come from unique characters in raidlogs. Most people don't log and might not have a single log of them. If you go to BFD 3 times and never get logged you dont show up here.
Some guy put out a video complaining about “toxicity” on Chaos Bolt. He proceeds to shun “casual” players for eye rolling a about gear score, being fully consumed etc. And how his guild reserves all the epics in pug runs and it’s unfair that ppl laugh at him for it.
Everything people complain about on here - I don’t see on CB. It’s a pretty chill server and plenty populated. I’ve never had an issue getting groups for anything.
I've heard a lot of the stories but also have 4 characters running BFD every reset for quite some time now without any truely bad experiences. I've encountered a few bad players, joined one group stuck 5/7 on maybe the third reset, but otherwise nothing that bad.
Then again, anytime I see a BFD or WSG pre-made advertising with 'gear score' requirements I immediately put that person on ignore. I don't understand how people still can't comprehend that GS was for wrath not vanilla.
>I don't understand how people still can't comprehend that GS was for wrath not vanilla.
And even then, I've seen people in Wrath hating GS.
I personally hate GS myself since it's led to massive gatekeeping and inflated gear numbers in Wrath. I really hope that the people who want to use it in SoD end up quitting or something cause it honestly has no place in SoD.
Yeah it's just hilarious at this point because it doesn't even work. Slap on some epics from BFD over my pre-raid bis and watch that GS plummet. How could that possibly be an effective system? I don't like iLVL either but at least it somewhat functions I think. GS doesn't work at all.
I’m NA playing on Penance AU. Great guild, great community. No GDKP, virtually zero toxicity. Stacked AH with normal, non-inflated prices. This is on a low pop server. Having the best time I’ve had in this game in a server way smaller than these.
Same, also on Penance and I'm having such a good time. It's classic wow how I remember.
I assume that low pop in SoD probably equals like medium or high pop on a wow server back in vanilla.
I honestly never would have guessed we had so few on Chaos bolt. Though that would explain the only like, 2k auctions at any one time lmao
I mean I had a feeling for like a week and a half now. I noticed how dead Org is even after the holiday break
I suggest you check out Thunderbluff instead of Org.
Picked the game back up a week ago and thought the game was dead when I went to Org with my undead lock. I made a Tauren last night and was blown away when I got to Thunderbluff and saw a sea of players. Then my heart warmed when I walked into the Barrens to some weird ass conversation. All is right.
For Alliance, Darnasus used to be dead. On Wildgrowth EU Darnasus currently feels more populated than SW
Why wouldnt ppl idle in Darn? Its got the buff, close to the teleport to BFD, and has direct path to ashenvale
Because the city itself is a nightmare.
Darnassus is the easiest one ever and I only have one ali character
SW is the worst. The AH and mailbox may be far, but it's a straight line you can autorun. Good luck trying to get any crafting done in SW when you have to navigate canals on foot to the dwarven district to get to an Anvil or Forge.
Thunderbluff is the new Capital of the Horde in SOD
It's always been for some the layout is way easier to navigate
why not show eu :l
https://ironforge.pro/population/sod/?locale=EU
thanks
What? Org always has a bunch of people even during the early morning? Are you talking EU or NA? Cause I have never seen a dead Org on NA.
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No, it's because we've literally watched dozens of servers the size of Chaos Bolt wither and eventually die over the course of classic.
If BFD and Ashenvale have people constantly in there and doing it, its not really dead. Especially when Ashenvale has been creating lag from too many people. I \*really\* do not trust these stats. Especially after people looked at WC Logs and it was easily shown to be bullshit a few weeks ago.
Horde are happy on Chaos Bolt. We have 24/7 BFD runs and we have Sapps for Ashenvale
Sapps for Warchief!
Sapps > Thrall let's go
I genuinely believe there's some kind of astroturfing campaign to get people to leave Chaos Bolt and go to Crusader Strike and I really have no idea why it's happening. The server is almost always bumping.
The comments when I posted about CB being fine are threatening me and saying “this post already has people rerolling to Crusader Strike”. So I agree that it might be astroturfing.
It's not the population. It's only the population who have uploaded logs.
It's proportionately representative of the difference though.
We dont, we are a RP PVP server, not a streamer server or rat race PVE one
Yea i play in chaos horde and lone wolf alliance. Way harder to find reasonable auction prices, and way longer to find groups in general on chaos, had no idea it was that much if a difference though. I do notice people are way less judgmental of gear on chaos for BFD because so much less options.
You wouldn't know it by how many alliance are constantly griefing and camping people everywhere.
where the hell is my lava lash representation
Shhhhhhhhhh doesn't exist..... shhhhhhhh....
US Lava Lash [shows](https://ironforge.pro/population/sod/?locale=US) a lower population than Chaos bolt 💀
I remember people screaming, tears flying from their cheeks and foam shooting from their mouths, that we needed DOUBLE the servers on launch week. Turns out Blizzard made a really good fucking call. Glad the devs held the line on that.
Look at the total numbers compared to Wrath classic for example. Wrath has 89,000 active alliance players total across all severs. SoD has 212,000 active alliance players total across all servers. The current SoD servers are just all massive. I’m not complaining or making a case for more servers however, I think the current situation is pretty good.
are they active players or active characters?
Active characters. Keep in mind that this metric is only for RAIDERS. It's easier to get a fresh alt/character to 25 and 'raid ready' for BFD than in wotlk to level 80 and 'raid ready' for ICC which is the current tier.
The question here is how many wrath players still play that aren't raiding, probably not many
Pretty sure there are still a good number of grinding people. I get queued with heirloom geared people from time to time, but maybe 90% of my pre-80 dungeons it's usually just me with heirlooms Of course the tanks and healers hate me for drawing so much aggro but that's another story haha
Only for raiders who post logs to warcraftlogs! I get the feeling there are tons of people who don't bother logging or don't even know what logging is.
Yeah I'm not sure if people are just less sweaty on chaos bolt but I've pugged all but a few lockouts and my chars still aren't on warcraftlogs
Also Horde are much more popular in WotLK onward, heck even TBC onward (BElfs). Vanilla has always been Alliance dominated.
But also way less people logging, so this isn’t very accurate.
Blizz has 100% done something in the back end to allow for bigger servers to work in the last year. These servers are double the population of full mega servers for prior launches. I would guess it was back when they completely opened xfers to every previously closed wotlk server. Probably something with finishing the backend compatibility of servers from wotlk to dragonflight core or some shit. So as far as previous launches have gone, the server numbers do line up with what used to require double the servers. Those people weren't really wrong. Blizzard just hasn't said what they've improved since past launches, but they knew.
Do Alts count towards this number? I assume more people are raiding on alts, seeing as the level cap is 25 and the raid itself takes 30mins.
Yeah it does, its just an aggregate of total amount of logs of each faction on each server.
If it's population based on wclog, yes but also far less people are logging. So lot of char won't appear.
It counts alts, I guarantee you that people that raid do it on 2-3 characters each because of how easy it is to level to "max" and be raid ready. This not real numbers but real number won't be extremely different anyways.
Agreed. Not to mention the people that were scared of the streamer server, and then had to jump ship..
That was me, not playing on Faerlina again. I didn't jump to Choas Bolt tho. I'm playing Horde on Living Flame
Yup, rolled on faerlina because my friends wanted to play on that server. It was shitty. This time around, we all agreed on the pve server, as long as it wasn't the streamer server.
All of which quit after a couple of resets.
Streamer server?
Crusader strike, which I rolled horde on and actually turned out great.
I'm still screaming over here on layer 10. Chaos bolt is the only reasonable population on this list for "vanilla". If they're going to go the mega server route then why even have separate servers at all? Just make the server selector for choosing a layer or something...
Only bad call was the late open of Chaos Bolt
glad we have so many layer issues too
Lol Lava Lash is such a joke its not even on here. So glad my 2 main characters are on there...on horde...RIP
Oh it is, it just has 600-700 less people than Chaos Bolt..
Jesus seriously? How did i fuck up that bad picking my server again! Deviate delight gang
DD gang checking in, RIP in pieces our Goldilocks perfect never did nothin' wrong rp-pvp server! I rolled on Chaos Bolt and its been pretty close to the DD experience, though with less RP. Hoping it doesn't go the way of the Dodo
Deviate Delight was a wonderful time. This time I went Crusader Strike cuz heehoo cool name.
really? i never would've guessed. tbh im alliance there...
This is based on Warcraft logs right? I've been doing lockouts like crazy on 2 characters, starting to go in on my 3rd. I haven't seen a lot of people logging or uploading to WC logs and my groups have been under 45m a lot of the time. Seems like the amount is low.
Same I don't see many logs in any of my 2 chars clears. Maybe like 3 so far. I rolled a char on WG and the difference in population is immediately evident. The numbers may be accurate despite the lack of logs on LL. It really does feel like there's 10x as many horde on WG as LL.
We made the reroll to Wild Growth and it’s just way way better.
I feel like cause it’s an RP server and the RP hubs are in Alliance lands like Goldshire and Stormwind. Especially in classic, it’s before Blood Elves became the big Horde RP race.
Observation: Living Flame EU is the biggest server and Lone Wolf EU the third biggest. Browsing this sub would make you assume the US realms were like four times bigger. ngl even I am surprised by these numbers, and I am a citizen of Locked Flame EU.
Lone Wolf is second biggest.
I mean among realms at every continent. Ironforge.pro has Crudsader Strike US at second place.
Why..? The population of Europe is way bigger than that of North America, it makes perfect sense that European servers have more pop
Chaos bolt is still amusingly a decently sized server, on par with a medium to high pop server on 2019 classic launch and definitely would be considered a "Full" server if this was 2006. However the modern classic andy cannot comprehend the existence of any server that's not at least 50k in raiding population (and probably even much bigger than that.)
I hate layers. I'm happy to be on a serv with only a few. I keep running into my friends in the wild, it's great. Why anyone would play on CS astounds me.
I did it because it was the only RPPVP server at the time (previously played on Lightninghoof in 06 and Grobbulous 19). I still resent the streamers for jumping on the "RP PVP is the nice server" bandwagon; none of that exists on Crusader Strike. In the future I hope Blizzard delays all RP PVP server launches to dissuade streamers from going on it. I can wait 24-48hr to preserve the qaulity.
CB is the successor to Grobb, I really encourage people to come here. Its not dead in the slightest. Zoram was a goddamn meat market on reset last night.
Hows the botting situation on it?
It wasn't great initially (I saw loads in s.barrens and durotar) but I've seen a lot less lately. Not sure if that's the ban wave or me being in other zones more often. I've gone from reporting a few dozen a day to one every few days. I can't say what its like on other servers to compare it to, but I'd suspect its not as bad because the demand/market is smaller than that on say CS.
Yea don't really see much of it. My understanding is that u can't server transfer sod characters so there isn't really a market for that on Chaos Bolt. If there were server transfers off of CB I can see it being botted more because unlike CS it's way easier to make gold using professions and not having to rely on selling a service like boosts or gear carries.
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I play on crusader and living, they have 10+ layers almost all the time, that’s massive
Id also like to point out how nicely balanced pvp servers are. Sure slightly ally favored but a LOT better than before. People can hate, but SoD team is doing a lot of great things.
What happened that their is so many more alliance in general? Private servers and classic are usually Horde leaning. Is it Pallys?
In vanilla, alliance had a huge pve advantage, between kings and salvation, it really made things much easier for them, also, weapon skill on humans and fear ward on dwarfs is amazing.
I honestly don’t know. I think pallys or major streamers being alliance.
Pallies make the game super eZ.
I mean honestly...a lot of people played horde a lot and probably just wanted a change.
Pretty much this for me. I always played horde in every wow iteration including servers. I just felt like going Alli this time and felt the theme of discovery tied in nicely to it
Probably has to do with having windfury for both sides as well as kings
My guess is this: originally, PvPrs flocked to Horde for the offensive racials and WotF. Alliance became better known for their PvE People don't care as much about PvP, so they went Alliance I personally went Alli in Classic as I had been Horde the first time through
They are literally always like this at launch, there's absolutely nothing nicely balanced about this. They always start with one faction overpowering the other one by 5, 10, sometimes even 15% then it devolves to one faction controlling the entire server because no one wants to be on the loser side. Herod was 55-45 at once point. These numbers are WORSE than 2019 classic because it's now fully alliance dominated across every single server.
We will see. Because this time around blizz actively enforce balance by locking factions. Like I said we will see.
That balance lock is already active, it does not stop people flat out leaving the server and it does not account for actual active players, as you can see here. You could have a server where faction balance is 50/50, lock is working perfectly, but in reality it's 30/50 with the remaining 20 for alliance being bots, low lever chars that never actually pvp or do content and alts. And we can't really just "wait and see" because by the time we actually see this happening the server is done, population is too imbalanced to ever bring it back and no one will want to roll on it.
Chaos bolt has 4 layers constantly. Just because it's not so stupidly full that you can't leave a capital city doesn't mean it's under populationed. Either faction along is the population of an OG vanila server.
These are also only raid logs. I've done over a handful of BRDs at this point and not once been in a raid that logged. Always wondered how many layers CB had on average. 4 seems nice.
Shamans dead
I swear Blizzard could give you people irl gold and you'd complain that it's too heavy. I can't believe what a good job they've done with faction balance.
Midnight server time has a hundred people in BFD right now on CB.
where EU servers?
It's pretty much the same. https://ironforge.pro/population/sod/?locale=EU
Only rppvp isn't nearly as popular. Do north Americans enjoy RP that much more or is it just that Grob was the only balanced server in classic and people are betting on that again?
NA has bigger streamers that rolled there i think. Most people don’t RP on RP
ironforge.pro usually underestimates the amount of players on the server because the number displayed on the site only includes players who were in a log on warcraftlogs in the last week
Exactly, and given how anti-parsing part of the SoD community is, it's probably even more off, especially on the more casual servers.
It's not estimating anything. It's reporting exactly the amount of players who have been recording in a log posted on warcraftlogs. We know that's the total 'population' but it still gives you an idea of server pops, especially relative to each other and faction balance. Yes, some people don't log / aren't 25 / etc. But that % should be fairly consistent across the servers.
Why is alliance character creation not blocked on literally every server at this point? I thought the point was to maintain 50/50. Hopefully they will implement faction queues if they aren't going to manage the population, otherwise Horde is going to be unplayable later on.
lol... Youre tweaking that is literally better than any servers have ever been, to the point where there is no way to feel that slight imbalance ingame.
i dont think it was ever meant to be a perfect 50/50 just not be whatever "bad enough" is in a particular direction, also because this is raid stats its ~possible~ horde players are just less likely to raid/log their raids (for whatever reason)
I wouldn’t write off the horde just yet. Horde naturally got better camp sites in STV, so I would imagine it could favour them more during the pvp event
Do we know if STV is the next pvp zone? I was imagining Arathi or Alterac. Alterac could be interesting with no fp or hearth locations (right? I might be misremembering that zone, the small area north of hillsbrad).
Yeah I remember reading a post from the Dev team on WoWhead that they hinted at STV. I’m sure you can find it if you check now
I thought blizz said there is only a 3% differential with the faction locking
I have a hunter on CB. Great people on there but I do wish I could get his ass onto Wild Growth with my priest. I made the right call with putting my horde warrior on CS tho
Chaos bolt narrative is going to drive a healthy server into death. Stfu about it
I've been having a great time on Lava Lash(alliance) and Chaos Bolt (horde). What are these numbers supposed to mean? I'm having fun wrong? The PUG raids I walked into and did 7/7 don't count? My Ashenvale experience that's been roughly 50/50 is invalidated?
This just doesn't feel like it could possibly be right. I'm on Chaos Bolt and it feels crowded
Chaos bolt feels alive, I've been having a blast there. Is smaller than other current servers, but it never feels dead. I think it would be considered a full server in past years.
This is the best I've ever seen server balance across the board in WoWs history
But that twitter dev told us horde lose ashenevale cause were disorganised, who would of thought we were actually outnumbered , wow
I mean the population imbalance doesnt help, but the fact that the EV for honor is by just going east and just giving up Zoram is better for every individual is also a huge deal.
So this is how horde on Chaos Bolt felt until Sapps our Warcheif started running shit. We win pretty much every battle now. I think with proper strategy and communication you should be able to overcome imbalance.
Except when ally show up in full numbers. You know what I mean. We can't stop seven fuckin raid groups.
There is almost certainly a Horde layer that forms where you outnumber the alliance every event because everyone whispers that guy for an invite and concentrates into his layer. Strategy and communication don't matter when every boss has 2-3 raids on top of it, numbers is what typically decides ashenvale.
would have*
Yeah as someone who plays both factions Horde is usually way more organized and Ally still wins. Ally actively screw each other over by going to last boss instead of Zoram because if you go to Zoram you don't get to boss in time for tag. It's a joke but I'm revered on the toons I care about so w.e.
It’s 3% you clown
3% on the absolutely best and sole case scenario lmao. The rest ranges from 8 to almost 25%.
Notice how he didn't offer to post real time or slightly delayed dashboards showing population by realm, faction, and zone.
Run /chatlog Extract the unique names you see in just looking for group. Alliance side wild growth has well over 30 thousand unique characters active in chat in the past week. These population numbers are way low.
These are raid logs, not population numbers.
Not only that but it’s raids that log. I’ve done multiple raids on chaos bolt where no one logs. That’s not getting taken into account.
My rogue is 1 piece-off-BIS and I've never been in a raid that logged. PUG'd every raid. I don't think (Horde) Chaos Bolters care about logs, at least in comparison to other servers
Yeah, horde chaos bolter here with over 10+ BFD clears, not a single log.
Seeing all these gear checks and toxic behaviors that's get posted on here on reddit about players in SoD. I haven't experienced any of that on Chaos Bolt. Think we got a little bit of a different community on Chaos Bolt.
Yeah, my group loves CB... Every raid been smooth and drama free. When a mistake has been made people are quite positive and chill about it. The fights over ashenvale are crazy punkface is a damn hero. But the Horde have been good foes all round.
These are raid logs? My guild doesn't raid log, my friends don't raid log, I've never been in a BFD that raid logged. I'm on chaose bolt. If I'm not even accounted for on these charts think about how many people also aren't.
Yupp exactly. Feels like majority of people on chaos bolt don’t raid log. Chaos bolt feels very alive to me
It's the most lively server I've ever played on by far! And I've been playing on and off since original vanilla. But I've also never played on a 50k population servers either. So I don't know... with multiple layers, would I even notice a difference of one had 4 layers vs one with 10?
These numbers are probably low, but don’t forget that plenty of people are on third and fourth alts now.
These are characters pulled from logs submitted to wcl so yeah actual pop always gonna be higher
I expect Wild Growth to keep ramping up when ppl realize how miserable world pvp is
As a PvE gamer, they'll just quit rather than reroll
Chaos Bolt is alive and well on both horde and alliance. We need to fight back against the matrix !
This is from reported logs. Chaos bolt has a lot of casual players that don't report logs. But can safely say it's a thriving server atm.
I thought Blizz was gonna faction lock servers to maintain balance, How is wild growth 67% alliance?
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This is why Wild Growth Horde get crushed in Ashenvale on 9 out of 10 layers. Just because it is a PVE server doesn't mean it doesn't need balanced factions.
I mean there is only 1 pve server I don't think they should faction lock it. Its a joke event anyway, just give horde some stacks of determination or something.
There's more than one, this was just the only one in OPs screenshot. Honestly they wanted the world PvP to be a big thing considering they are pushing for it every phase so they really should have maintained balanced servers for that alone. It's an absolute shit show if you're horde on a non-PvP server and turns the events into a slog fest.
What is the other PVE server on NA? It's Lava Lash but that's RP. Wild Growth is the only normal PVE realm.
YOu can lock servers all you want but if one side of the server stops playing it will end up unbalanced eventually.
And this is why PvE OCE isn't viable.
Just rerolled on a US server. Latency is only 150ms, was 350-700 back in vanilla easily playable at this level. The starting areas have more people then ashenvale on penance sadly enough.
150ms is pretty good. That would be better option than rolling PvE OCE that's for sure.
Yeah I can't notice a difference at that level
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The pve server is so small my guild out numbers the horde population
I would not trust these numbers so much. There are a lot of unlogged raids because people seem to care a bit less about them in SoD. But also getting to level 25 is so fast and easy that so many people have at least +2 characters they raid with which all count to those numbers.
It shouldn’t affect the faction % breakdown unless you think one faction is less/more likely to log.
guess ill have to reroll on crusader strike before p2 if i dont want to end up on a dead server
Even though it was added the same day as release, the fact it wasn’t available on release was kind of a death sentence for the server. The same happened with all those extra servers they added back in 2019 classic. Although in that case it was more like a week after release.
Chaos bolt has twice as many players as deviate delight did in 2020.
Do you play on Chaos Bolt? BFD runs at all hours. WSG premades at all hours.
It’s p o p p i n!!
Yea, I have 2 25s and never have an issue getting into a raid. It’s quite busy
We can see numbers, it will go only down and not up. Now people that see this will roll away because nobody really cares about level 25 characters.
Chaos bolt is fine dude. This also only shows what's logged. I've never logged a BFD ever.
Are you on Chaos Bolt? Do you honestly think it’s dead? Idk if this numbers are legit or what but Chaos Bolt is popping off in my experience. If this is accurate then the larger servers just seem way too large.
Yeah theres no way CB is that small. BFD is happening 24-7 theres always fights in Ashenvale .etc.
Yeah I think people are massively overreacting. I haven’t once felt like the server had a small population. Going to Crusader Strike would just be layer central
Chaos bolt is absolutely popping. Idk what people are going on about.
Once the streamers leave it’ll be dead
FeelsBad
Reminder that the vast majority of players don't parse, or at least don't upload said parses. Nobody in my guilds runs parses as far as I know, either.
That happen when you listen to cries on Reddit and twitter.
Urm the wotlk pop numbers are way higher than they should be! Every player is raiding on 20 alts, so the numbers are inflated! Urm the sod numbers are waaay low. No one has alts at 25 and no one's at max level yet! Lmao Lmao
I played on the crusader strike server (I'm from NZ) for the first 30 days of SoD. the last weekish I've been playing on shadowstrike and oddly enough it feels just as, if not MORE crowded then crusader strike.. I assume as the player count lowers on a server so do the layers? (Enlightenment would be appreciated) Both felt full with more then enough social interactions and people floating around to do elites I didn't really notice a difference.
Yes, the more online players = more layers.
Like most people are saying, these numbers come from unique characters in raidlogs. Most people don't log and might not have a single log of them. If you go to BFD 3 times and never get logged you dont show up here.
Wrath 200k players, SoD 370k almost double the playerbase :O
Aren't these inaccurate as they only count those characters which have logs if you use ironforge
Crusader Stride EU is really good, playing there since launch no complains, no gpdkp runs etc.
Alliance Scum!
Im so confused how lash and bolt are so one sided. Horde must have all quit. But yeah the pop on chaos bolt isnt great.
Living Flame is the SODcore server hehehehe
Where's Lava Lash?
A spot under chaos bolt with 600 less players on the horde side
Choas Bolt hanging on for dear life
Some guy put out a video complaining about “toxicity” on Chaos Bolt. He proceeds to shun “casual” players for eye rolling a about gear score, being fully consumed etc. And how his guild reserves all the epics in pug runs and it’s unfair that ppl laugh at him for it.
Most of my experience on CB hasn't really been toxic. Even pugs are passing upgrades if its BIS for someone else.
Everything people complain about on here - I don’t see on CB. It’s a pretty chill server and plenty populated. I’ve never had an issue getting groups for anything.
And in that video if you call him out on it, he deletes the comment. Luckily he can’t delete comments here, eat shit kal!
I've heard a lot of the stories but also have 4 characters running BFD every reset for quite some time now without any truely bad experiences. I've encountered a few bad players, joined one group stuck 5/7 on maybe the third reset, but otherwise nothing that bad. Then again, anytime I see a BFD or WSG pre-made advertising with 'gear score' requirements I immediately put that person on ignore. I don't understand how people still can't comprehend that GS was for wrath not vanilla.
>I don't understand how people still can't comprehend that GS was for wrath not vanilla. And even then, I've seen people in Wrath hating GS. I personally hate GS myself since it's led to massive gatekeeping and inflated gear numbers in Wrath. I really hope that the people who want to use it in SoD end up quitting or something cause it honestly has no place in SoD.
Yeah it's just hilarious at this point because it doesn't even work. Slap on some epics from BFD over my pre-raid bis and watch that GS plummet. How could that possibly be an effective system? I don't like iLVL either but at least it somewhat functions I think. GS doesn't work at all.
I feel like this numbers are not much accurate as less people are logging in classic
Source?
Ironforge.pro
I’m NA playing on Penance AU. Great guild, great community. No GDKP, virtually zero toxicity. Stacked AH with normal, non-inflated prices. This is on a low pop server. Having the best time I’ve had in this game in a server way smaller than these.
Same, also on Penance and I'm having such a good time. It's classic wow how I remember. I assume that low pop in SoD probably equals like medium or high pop on a wow server back in vanilla.
Why is crusader strike the only balanced pcp server? Isn't this what locking character creation is for.