I have a question about Classic WoW, and I’m hoping you can help me out. Currently, I’m playing Retail, but I’m looking forward to playing Classic again.
I’m not fully familiar with the current changes, but from what I understand, I can choose between ERA and Anniversary. ERA is the version as it was just before TBC was released, while Anniversary includes some QoL changes. I’ve checked the server populations, and it seems that ERA servers are low, while Anniversary servers are high/full.
I would like to stay in Classic and not progress any further—I like Classic as it was; otherwise, I’d prefer Retail. From what I understand, Anniversary will eventually progress to TBC, and Blizzard hasn’t confirmed yet whether players can choose to move from an Anniversary server to an ERA server when TBC launches.
I’m not great at RP, but I’d like to give it a shot.
So, any thoughts on what to choose? Also, what server/cluster and horde/alliance would you suggest for me? Thanks a lot!
If you don’t want to progress to TBC then the case is clear: you should go Era.
As you write yourself, it is not known if it will be possible to move your characters to Era once Fresh has completed.
On Era you basically have two options:
The Firemaw PvP cluster
The Pyrewood Village PvE cluster
Both are connected with several servers to form two bigger clusters, so if you check server population for an individual server it may be Low - the overall cluster population will be higher though.
There are pro’s and cons with both clusters:
Firemaw is bigger but is also full of GDKP and Boosting runs (and gold buyers and -sellers), and prices are inflated.
Pyrewood is smaller (especially Horde side) but economy is more balanced and overall this is probably the closest you can get to a Vanilla server.
There are also a few separate realms not part of any of the clusters such as the RP realms, but they are basically dead.
A once proud server such as Hydraxian Waterlords (RP server) now have roughly 20-30 people online - and only a handfull of those seems to be role players (at least when I check using TRP3)
So my recommendtation is to roll on either the Pyrewood (PvE) or Firemaw (PvP) server.
In that case i would recommend to go Era. It may be doesnt have much population but it is extremely stable there are always avtive people and guilds there. About anniversary - there is no info about whenever there will be option to save character clones on vanilla servers. So if i were you i would 100% go era.
There is another factor. Most people will move into tbc in anniversary. So if blizzard will create anniversary vanilla own servers they will be dead for those who remain. Will there be option to transfer to era - no idea. I wouldnt risk getting stuck on dead server or even losing character to tbc if there will be no option to stay in vanilla.
I sure hope they give us the option to transfer from anniversary to era, or do something about the era servers because the pop on many era servers went down when they released anniversary
Come to era! We’re a good community, there are a lot of raids (both pug and guilds) each week, and we do not have any layering or QoL stuff. Your progression and characters are forever and you play at your own pace. Welcome
We do have pop fluctuations, constantly. Right now anniversary is in full swing and still, Era servers (specially Firemaw) are healthy enough to get your leveling, raiding and PvP fix. In time, and whenever Anniversary is in later stages of progression or TBC hits, Era’s pop should increase, since there are a lot of us who prefer to play Vanilla, rather than any other version of the game.
It is true that in Firemaw we do have a lot of RMT going on, but any player can “silence the noise” and get to play with like minded people in friendly raids and get all content done.
This being said, welcome to the community and hope you have a great time with us!
Blizzard hasn’t announced anything but the Hardcore server will not progress to TBC and where the dead character will go after TBC release - they’ll go to Era. It’s likely that transfers from the Normal and PVP server to Era will be enabled at that stage.
How’s the state of BGs and raids in ERA? Is it possible to transfer from PvE to PvP server? How’s tge raiding scene? Also is the GDKP and RMT really that bad there as people saying?
Sorry for asking questions like these, butnit is hard to find a relevant sources of information about the ERA now.
There are many raids and buff pops every day on era, the alliance side is a bit bigger, but horde is very alive and thriving. I’m in an SR guild and we’re progressing on naxx. If GDKP is your thing it’s that too, but lots of alternatives. I obviously don’t have any numbers, but in my experience it’s about equal RMT on era as on fresh, nothing more and sadly nothing less. It looks like a lot of the bots have moved from era to fresh though, which benefits our community on era.
I am not sure regarding realm changes as I’ve always been on Firemaw. If you want to check out the publicly posted pug raids on Firemaw, you can go to wowfiremaw dot com. Keep in mind there’s fewer raids there this week due to holidays, and the guild runs are not posted there (and GDKP guys are quite eager to post their raids, so not all SR stuff can be found).
I don’t like GDKP, would like to avoid it and find a guild with normal type of raiding, even the progressing one would be much better.
I am more interested in doing dungs, chatting, finding new friends, leveling new characters together, doing BGs, etc. As long as the community is active I am pretty much happy.
Era is fine, the servers go between low and medium, but are merge and are basically a full server. Aniversary will go from first version to tbc and then probably shut down the server or move towards lichking. If u just want first version, era is the way to go! gl <3
However in fresh anniversary realms you will find a lot more low level players to group with, leveling and dungeon quest runs are a very important part of the vanilla experience so keep that in mind.
While there is no official confirmation yet, most people are assuming blizzard will give players the choice to clone their characters to era when anniversary fresh tbc launches.
