Just came back for a looky after about 18 months away and all three realms/versions i used to play on are absolutely dead on a Saturday afternoon. Are there any realms/versions that actually have people who still play on Alliance? Seems I wasted a tenner.
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end of the season , the raid is months old
New season in April , the game will pick up again when new content comes out for everyone
WoW is very much a seasonal game these days
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Most players are in Valdrakken and the Dragon Isles which are only accessible at level 60+.
The World of Warcraft is vast now - and those players who are in low level zones are kinda very spread out making the lower level zones feel very sparse.
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All content in dragonflight is cross realm, so your server does not really matter
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Ummmmm, a bit, but not really.
If I go to Valdrakken right now on Draenor or Silvermoon, the plaza around the fountain is packed and busy.
If I go to Valdrakken right now on Magtheridon, the plaza around the fountain … well, it has some people.
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“Content”
Better to treat wow has a Lobby game than an actual world these days
It’s end of the exp. It was always in this way and there is always someone telling “ohhh so empty” .
And the only char in levelling zones are alts.
90% of my social interactions in WoW are with friends, guild mates, and people from a handful of WoW Discord servers.
It was never different for me, though. It’s nice to see other people in the game, and I do see more now than in some earlier expansions before extensive cross-realm sharding, but it’s not what impacts my “social life” in the game or my enjoyment of it.
Fewer of my WoW friends currently play, because they’ve achieved their goals for the season and they’re not hyped for a Fated Season, so they play other games. They are still in our guild’s Discord, though, so we still chat all the time.
Most guilds are a mix now. You can be Alliance and be in a Horde guild. Our raids are a mix of both. Some even changed race/faction for the racials, like Dwarf for example.
It is very late in the season for most of the versions. Solo Hardcore has just launched but that’s the only recent update I can think of.
This is the road map for Retail
This is the road map for Classic
Well Argent Dawn is pretty lively.
Granted, roleplayers. But by the size of that server I can’t imagine actual content is completely dead.
Make a test toon on some “Full” marked servers and have a quick look around how active they are.
I appreciate all the comments and believe me I am not bashing wow. I haven’t played retail for some years due to being on a server that was already low pop (Stormrage/Azuremyst) so i’m not surprised to find that even more desolute now. Then I tried classic when that came out on Pyrewood village and also tried the fresh realm of Giantstalker. Giantstalker was also withering away when i stopped playing 18 months or so ago so again i’m not surprised that is dead but Pyrewood village was still quite nicely populated but seems like it’s gone the same way.
The road map Puny posted (thanks for that) goes some way to explaining it s’pose. Maybe i’ve “checked in” at the absolute worst time and I guess i might take another look nearer the release of the next expansions. Might try your idea also Nannexx i’ve been tempted to try an RP realm in the past but never have but again I guess this will all have to wait for another time.
Thanks all for the replies.
we know when 10.2.6 will kick off?
Not seen anything so far 
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Oh and today Pyrewood village is busy … so maybe i was in a shard on my own or maybe my graphics had a brianfart.
All that’s been announced so far is that it will be sometime this month.
Most likely the former - if you log in at a time when a lot of people coming online it is possible to end up in a fresh shard and it can take a while for it to fill up.
You have a mix of the following:
- The raiding for the expansion is done
- M+ season is ending
- Phasing
- Chromie Time (Another aspect of phasing)
- Massive world with multiple continents
Overall, there are probably more people playing than you think/see but they’re scattered.
Servers, nowdays is an outdated concept.
Thankfully on retail server choice is no longer important due of all cross-realm features and more are coming with 11.0
The same cannot be said for classic and Blizzard has realised it releasing a very low number of servers for SoD.
18 months ago was before DF launched, so you presumably phased in to a SL zone. It isn’t surprising there was no-one there,
Well for lowlevel content. Everybody is running chromie-time in various worlds, lots of people are standing AFK in cities just waiting on LFD to pop.
And then in the open world, I suspect that all the layers Blizzard did before chromie-time was a thing are still in affect. Because when I am in the open world, I see nobody. It’s just me and the vast content. I generally see nobody else in the open world till I am in Dragonflight zones. - I really think they should revert the layers, now players are scattered through chromie time.