Players, or more precisely, players behaving like idiots. This is the engine that drives these migration processes.
A very large portion of the players are pricks who grief and abuse PvP situations with 2v1, 3v1, 5v1, making it impossible for the opposing side to win. To this large percentage of players, it’s all about winning. However, when the population skews enough and they become the minority, suddenly these players cannot handle it. They cannot stand their own behavior when it is dished out to them by the larger faction, which is why they start looking for a new server.
You would think that they would start to reflect on their own behavior after getting the treatment themselves, but they do not. They just move to another area and start over.
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Feels kinda lazy and simplified to explain the whole thing only with “People dont like getting outnumbered in PvP”. In what PvP to be exact? That one death, at best, every reset on their way the loot pinata?
People started to shy away and get tired of big outdoor PvP mid way through Classic (time is money), and that was with World Buffs. Looking at the biggest PvE servers (Top 5 World Wide), with more than 5K population, they are all mono-factions (atleast 80% or more of a majority faction). How would being outnumbered in PvP be a factor for them?
I think a much bigger factor these days is the critical number of players around in order for a server to be considered “active”, which causes players to pool up.
1000-3000 players might have been enough to make a server feel alive, offer groups, leveling, new recruits, guilds etc back in the day, but the efficient min/maxing and race to “who can play less” these days simply require much larger numbers for these activities to be available “on demand”. Hence, people tend to move to bigger servers, not to dominate in outdoor PvP but to be able to play the game like we do 2022.
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So where is the sweetspot between being able to find outdated raid with one BiS item for one role only on demand and avoiding lag fest, login queues and AH inflation?
No sweetspot I’m afraid, only extremes.
Either YOU ARE being able to find outdated raid with one BiS item for one role only on demand, BUT HAVE TO ACCEPT lag fest, login queues and AH inflation
Or
YOU ARE NOT being able to find outdated raid with one BiS item for one role only on demand, BUT DON’T HAVE TO deal with lag fest, login queues and AH inflation
Population numbers clearly show which option of the two is more acceptable for the majority of playerbase. That being said, instead of fighting megaservers, Blizzard should acknowledge and accept them as a playerbase-desired choice and build around them, e.g. acquiring new HW infrastructure (similar to one Zenimax is using in Elder Scrolls Online) to reduce/remove some of the downsides megaservers (such as lag and queues).
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I assume they are following the “twitch streamer” types to join them and unite rather then playing certain server they can adapt to certain community
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Word of advice, you really shouldn’t refer to people as idiots, you’re going to forget you’re not on the internet one day and be sent to hospital.
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Technically I did not call people idiots, I referred their behavior being idiotic (which it is). I cannot of course help if you managed to recognize yourself from the description and concluded that you are the idiot the OP is talking about.
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The few who did not leave Firemaw stand strong amidst the flow of deserters. Like a massive boulder in the middle of a strong current.
The myth that playing on a PvP server is the “superior choice” for playing Classic and that PvE servers are casual trash.
A non cavalier attitude for one faction to act impish and bully the other when they have the numeric superiority. Kill quest NPCs, monopolize certain game elements (PvP, drops, gathering, etc.), block raid/dungeons entrances and your run of the mill ganking.
And a cascading effect when the above combined makes for a miserable experience for one faction of players leads to a mass exodus.
All combined leads to what is happening, and it is entirely self-inflicted.
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the success of wotlk is in fragile state after blizzard mess up the transfers from firemaw, it was the largest server and had awesome faction balance sadly, on top of that we have a hyper gold inflation in tbc and gdkp spam, some whales wont care but to reach a bigger audience and attract players back this is a huge turn off
yaawn nice story bro u sound like a real phsycologist all tho ure hobby diagnos on the playerbase didnt even mention the horrible bugg blizzard created with razorgore to gehennas transfer
if u have devs that moderate care about the player base faction balance is not that hard to achieve
i see you are a retail player, firemaw had decent faction balance for 3 years, thats longer then one of your retail expansions u been playin
Nobody cares. Those that want to play WoTLK will play and the population will be high.
And WoTLK will give pretty much everyone even more gold and even more farming opportunities.
oh poor you. Players started to use transfers as a weapon since early Classic. It sucks to be on a server after a chain effect happened but to prevent this from ever happening Blizzard would have to block transfers forever and for every realm.
And what they would do? Block players from playing dominant faction? Preventing minority faction from leaving, forcing them to either play against their will or just quitting wow entirely out of that?
And all it takes is some noticeable guild transfering in or transfering out. And if Blizzard would block transfers you would see river of tears how people want transfer there or create new character.
…or people had enough playing on a mega realm that when blocked from transfers had price spikes due to insufficient supply of consumables. 10K is already a lot not to mention 30K. Don’t blame people that they weaponized transfers at such population and insufficient layering.
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“If given the opportunity a player will optimize the fun out of a game.” Expressed by both Sid Meier and Soren Johnson.
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They really should implement faction locks on balanced servers and activate it before the balance goes too much on either side. Meaning that for example in Firemaw when the balance started to lean more to alliance, they should have locked the alliance side so that no new characters could be made OR no new players on alliance side until the balance is back
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I’m curious about Your idea. How would You count an account with both alliance and horde character? Say, with ally locked, would I be able to make horde toon, and immediately after ally toon, as the horde one offsets the number of ally characters?
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Of course that won’t work unless they prevent creating characters on both factions on the same PvP realm / account
Yea, I think so too. And since Blizzard has already removed restrictions for having characters of both factions on the same server, and such two sided accounts already exists, it seems that what You propose is not doable on the currently running servers.
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I wouldn’t bet on it.
I mean at launch it will be high for sure. But I have a feeling that it will decline very rapidly and by quite alot a few months in.
Unless Blizzard actually does something aabout bots, RMT-GDKP’s, change their mind on RDF, and so on…
Yes, even during prepatch on new realms 
Overall player dropoff after initial progression is to be expected.
Ofc it is. There’s always a dropoff, mostly after a new launch but also after new patches (or phases in this case. That is normal and to be expected.
That is not what I’m talking about, that wouldn’t even be worth mentioning. I just have a bad feeling that unless Blizzard steps up their game (pun intended ), there will be a way bigger dropoff this time around. Call it a “classickiller” if ya want 
, even if it wont be completely dead, only close to.
