I played Classic at launch, at the resurgence after TBC and now I’ve re-subbed again in 2024 and I honestly wish I didn’t. This post is mainly about the Firemaw PvP cluster and should ideally serve as a warning for new players thinking about rolling a character here or coming back from a hiatus.
lower level zones are pretty much deserted, I decided to level a character from 1-10 on a saturday morning and all in all there were 10 of us in the entirety of Durotar, two of which I confirmed were bots
Auction house prices are heavily inflated and the selection of items is pretty sparse when it comes to leveling greens
there are no social / leveling / entry level guilds anymore basically the only guild advertisements you’ll see are those from high end Naxx speedrunning guilds looking for a handful of specific classes
endgame is spamming AV for welfare epics or swiping your credit card and doing GDKPs
Overall I’d strongly advise against rolling a new character on the Firemaw cluster as you’ll spend most of your leveling experience alone, struggling to find players to do even the most basic of dungeons, people rarely talk and the entire experience just feels dreadful.
This warning only applies to the Firemaw PVP cluster obviously.
On Pyrewood we do have levelling guilds and although levelling zones are not crowded, we do have people levelling all over. What we don’t have is GDKP runs and insane AH prices.
Can also confirm all the above that Xenera said. Pyrewood PvE is going strong with people levelling etc. Sure it’s not as full as the PvP cluster, but haven’t got all that rubbish that comes with that either!
You should look into Zandalar Tribe RP-PvP server and what’s going on in there.
Maybe you will like it, if you interested go to the discord and ask around https: // discord.gg/ 83nQmbeM (i had to do spaces in order to the link be allowed to be posted so care and take the link without spaces of course)
I started this character to take over forum posting from my WOTLK character. And I am glad I did. There are plenty of low level players. I didn’t even have to ask to join groups. I was whispered to do Deadmines few times. I was offered free dungeon boosts but 1st time I had to go to bed and 2nd time I just wanted to explore the world. The guild I was invited is full of low level characters and dungeon runs are advertised all the time in guild chat.
AH prices are inflated but that could be a good thing when you are the seller. I have never felt the need to buy gear on the AH.
I can’t tell much about the endgame and I am not in a rush to get there. And I don’t really want to get to Naxx because there isn’t anything to do afterwards.
Hey!
Im just here back leveling this char on Firemaw, and its like u say. And lots of ganking as usual.
BUT i still love vanilla, cant stand the rest anymore (retail and classic retail)
Era OG here - The state of PvP is terrible… awful in every way, shape or form.
Before the system change Era had a lively pvp scene with a couple of dedicated guilds and we were even able to recruit some of the best players in the world to come play and have some fun from time to time. Constant WSG games at all times plus full on ABs & AVs on its dedicated weekends. ABs also popped randomly here and there.
But now? People are rewarded R14 gear for mindlessly PvE in AV and then quit the moment they get the gear. The grind is so incredibly absurd, AV is dying as well, as in its current state it is the most boring content imaginable. No wsg bar a few evening games where the last remaining pvpers play.
I have come to the conclussion that 99% of people do not have fun at this game. Getting gear and “achievements” is like a drug no matter how f* boring it is, and they also will not do anything to help the community and keep up the spirits.
The motivation is certainly different for everyone.
Personally I found PvP in WoW awful most of the time.
I had a certain amount of fun in long running AVs or the open pvp in Arathi back in Vanillla together with my former guild mates of those days. I also liked the action in Halaa in TBC Classic, being underdogs on the alliance side during the last 18 months before Blizzard shut down Lucifron. While I mostly was on PvE servers back in Vanilla, Lucifron was PvP.
But, to be honest, I don’t consider WoW a PvP game. PvP is a completely different beast in games like EVE Online, where you really lose something if you mess up. The experience is ways beyond anything WoW can offer.
I basically play WoW to have a fun time playing together with others. I rarely do bgs even on a PvP server, considering them just another sort of PvE activity anyway and in the last 18 years only used them to get the PvP mount for dedicated RP chars because those were cool to have in role playing.
Why someone would play WoW to collect stuff or achievements is beyond me, tbh.
It all started taking that direction the day they decided to launch TBC and to h*ll with all progress done up to lvl 60, even if only <4% of the WoW pop at the time had completed Naxx. Look at retail, its all about getting new things today and throwing them in the trash when the next patch comes out.
Era was different in the sense you could play at your own pace. WoW without the eternal stress factor, without the rat race. But of course this could not last long. First came the bots, then the GDKPs, then they destroyed the PvP community.
Blizzard is targeting people’s animal spirits, and hard. Ban bots, ban GDKPs and let everything else be. They could have an amazing, long-lasting community of loyal players who always return.
As for the PvP, WoW is a PvP game for a good percentage of the playerbase. And unfortunately, it has been reduced to nothing when we made huge progress that took the community a huge deal of effort to put the info out. The feeling is not good let me tell you…
I’ve been leveling approx 4-5 characters over the last few months and haven’t experienced any drought of players. 10 players in durotar leveling on a saturday morning is quite healthy when you consider that’s one of 6 starting zone.
It almost seems like a “this is dead” troll post. I ran RFC with a full group at approx 1am last night, If i couldn’t run RFC between 6-10pm then I might get on-board that its dying out but that’s not the case. There’s a constant stream of leveling.
As for the economy, well there’s not much you can do about that. Life and the world works like that too. There wasn’t/isn’t any consideration for gold sinks on a 5 year old server running the base game. The economy works in your benefit to get skills and mounts etc.
I honestly think OP was going to quit anyway, if it ain’t this…it’s something else. You either want to play this version (taking on-board the “issues”) or you don’t.
Wow is a social game, bring your friends to have fun together and exp. Start exping with your friends and reaching max level is much more easier.
You are right about prices being heigh but there is no inflation at all. Prices for consumables, idols, some preraid BiS epics are always same. For example, flask of supreme power around 300g for at least 6 months. Prices for warrior books, mage books decreased a lot, Mage frost bolt book was around 2k 4-5 months ago, now it is 400-1000g.
About leveling greens, if you really want those you need to be putting some effort on farming. You can farm westfall around 15 level, and make 50g / hour. Just go kill birds around and collect than auction Light feathers. Magic dust is an other option. You can fish or do other farms as well and with 50g you can buy full greens for leveling.
there are tons of guilds who are not doing end game content. I have seen guilds wiping in their chill zg20 runs in which nothing HR’ed old gold sold.
Noway, you dont have to part in GDKP runs. There are a lot of guilds who run DKP or EP/GP. You can apply and become member of them, and start grinding end game content. At least there are 5 big era guilds who run SR or DKP and some of those i remember: the company, classicstoners, mellons, gooptroop, threat control.
Maybe you had bad experience because you tried to rush things, if you want end game content you need to invest time, or if you want leveling again you need to invest great amount of time. This is how classic is.
don’t celebrate too early i will still que AV with the difference that i’m not going for honor anymore but for zerg and maybe forcing turtle. Becaue i’m one of the guys who likes to zerg mid. while i understand the objectives in WSG and AB people gets mad when someone zergs mid. AV is the perfect battleground for it because you can do something productive like bunkers and towers. Also AV during AV weekend has the shortest quetime.