Era would have been my choice. But the servers don’t seem super populated (a poor guy spent hours trying to form a group for Deadmines, which turned me off).
SoD? I have a hard time with that one. Basically, it’s Era but with blocked progression. That doesn’t appeal to me at all.
WotLK? Same, the return of daily quests, quest markers, Outlands and Northrend are zones I really don’t appreciate. But with the upcoming release of Cataclysm, we can probably expect a drop in population in other versions, perhaps the final nail in the coffin for Era?
To put it simply, Era is the only version I really like, but the lack of players is too noticeable.
For SoD, we can trust players to leave as soon as Cataclysm comes out.
WotLK seems to have a shortage of players right now, but that will probably change with the release of Cataclysm. Even though it’s the version I like the least, it seems like the best long-term choice.
I’ve more or less brushed through everything: I have a level 60 character on Era and a few alts around level 30.
I have a character on retail who has completed the entire storyline + exploration: from the beginning of Azeroth to the end of Dragonflight. I just haven’t farmed reputations and other daily content.
Hardcore servers seem quite empty, and they don’t really attract me.
I’ve never tried Classic WotLK for the reasons I mentioned in my first post.
then i recommend continue playing era because i don’t think it will really die in near future play alliance on firemaw for the highest population, if you don’t have anything against gdkp, if you do join pyrewood village but you have less players. you could also take a look at retail endgame with raids and dungeons.
Era has decent population, some left for hardcore and many for SoD but they will return.
I would recommend to try SoD, leveling is really fast and it’s exciting what raids will look like at level 60.
Hardcore is not as exciting as it was when official servers first released. And the population decreased a lot.
If the level cap is your only problem with SoD, that’ll soon be resolved when it goes into Phase 4 in 2-3 months. Although it’s not clear what comes after that.
It’s good to have vanilla era available, but I really don’t see the point in playing it long-term knowing there will be no new content ever. And I doubt I’m the only one, this is basically why SoD exists.
That said, I doubt Cata will steal many vanilla / SoD players, for the same reason why players wanted Classic in the first place.
