Low population concern

[Dysphoria]

I'd say time has past and the WotLK lovers grew into other things to spend their time. The average retail player nowadays is far, far different than the one years back.

Legion is not a possibility unless you want to play WoW single player, and at this time we don't have any solid plans of advancing to a new expansion.

But yeah, I agree that it really feels like the WotLK server market in general is quite exhausted. The only thing that actually gets attention nowadays are progression servers.

I would say same, still Legion become so boring after 1 month its worse than wod pop wise. Also there is lot of ppl hyped for nostalrius 2. I wouldn't upgrade to cata since its worse expansion so logic move for me would be merge with some wotlk server there are few out there...

[Royo]

I couldn't agree more with the "people are bored" posts. Not ragging on WOTLK, it was pretty awesome and I got to kill LK for the first time (with WOTLK gear, not Cata gear), plus, I did RS as well.

I started to play on this server purely for nostalgia. Once that nostalgia wore off, the boredom kicked in. It lingered to the point where TW became my "something to take up the time." After a long day of work/uni, TW be the place for me to just take up the time until I fall asleep. Do I do anything productive or exciting? Not really.

The excitement is gone for me, and I think it's gone for many others hence why they moved on with their lives or are only "still playing" because of the social interaction they have with their friends.

I really don't want to see this server die out just like that, but as a player, I wouldn't know what the staff could do to prevent that. I know you all are trying your best, and I thank you for that.

The only thing that actually gets attention nowadays are progression servers.

I agree. I'd like to see this implemented started from what we currently have, that means going up to Cata, spend a few years there (not 5/6...) then next one, and so on. I think this would reel in some players. Just a thought, I guess. Fuck that

[mcheka]

There actually are some high-pop WotLK servers around, but most are either high rate/pay2win (gd, warmane), not English (wow-circle), or not yet at the end of progression (dala with forced eternal progression, and warmane's lordaeron realm). The overall WotLK market has decreased a lot for sure though.

[Longi]

sorry for sharing this, hope so you wont delete it, but TW and PW needs something like this [youtube]4esWZuh75AM[/youtube]

Players will be leave servers and doesnt matter which expansion they are playing....
If you play few years same shit, you will get bored.
Some players are playing on high school or uni, they will leave after finishing study.
Some of us got a job or family / childrens what ever.
Players simple grow up and they dont have time.
Other people are playing for gear and in the moment they have BIS, there is nothing left to do for them, so they leave.
Also people want to PVP, sadly this part of game is ... ehm ... on TW so we are losting a lot here ( you know a lot bugs )
Those who play for nostalgia want to play for memories, but it doesnt make them active long. They will get bored too after some time.

Our problem is TW has the strong player's base and those old dogs playing here for 5 years or more ... you know, there is nothing to do after that long time, even if you have 5 alts you will get everything you can get in WOTLK. So they started slowly leaving the server and strong base is destroyed and new, well to be honest there are not players do build new base

[skyx]

Look at what I found

http://www.dalaran-wow.com/forums/commu ... r-transfer

No, there are no possible transfers. We want every player to create their character's story from the start, in Dalaran-WoW. As Headscutter said, we have temporary enabled "instant-70" option though, for those who don't want to level up once again. But, you will have to earn all the achievements/gear...etc.

3 years later...

[hjason3]

Its sad this server has lost population lately I think its a great server and I've played for years first with spermik and now with truewow I go through times where I dont play alot but thats life. But honestly I think all servers have their ups and downs I still believe this is a great server and also I am kinda glad its not like top 3 because that would make it a target for Blizzard to shut down. In the event they do shutdown another top server there will be many more people searching for other servers to join so I dont believe that its all downhill from here I think theres plenty of reasons to feel optimisic and Ive been trying to do my part in voting more lately to get it up a little bit higher last month the ranking went up on every site. I personally love playing this game I wouldnt consider myself a huge gamer but I have a few that I really enjoy and this is probably #1. If there is another server that has low population WotLK then sure a merge could be good for both parties.. I just would like to keep the core the same none of that x4 crap I think it should be an achievement to reach level 80 not like wtf you aint 80 yet? And I would like to keep it blizlike no cheating etc just a great experience and great server.

[Fretykso]

+1 from me for the idea to go Cata and/or try to merge with Atlantiss

[Regent]

I've played on Warmane's Blackrock realm (formerly known as Arena Tournament before they merged with Molten). I've played on Dalaran-WoW. I've played on Wow-Mania. I haven't played on Gamer District, simply out of my hatred for them for their role in destroying OmegaWoW.

It's pathetic that a server like TrueWoW has SO MUCH content actually working (or working better) compared to 95% of the mainstream WotLK servers out there and yet it suffers from a population problem while servers like Gamer District thrive. They've got gear available for donations (including Shadowmourne) so the PvP / PvE situation there is basically Pay2Win. They've got an extremely toxic community. And the staff? LOL, Let's not even open that can of worms.

[Cocopuffs]

I tried Dalaran-WoW, and I was surprised to see how such a place so far behind ours has x10 the population. x10 the toxic idiots too - imagine a global channel with 10 catchy's talking to each other -

I've simply got bored of playing there cuz it's not truewow, it's not my chars, my guild(s), the people i'm used to raiding with or raging over getting killed by 900 resil ret palas that crit for 7k through wall + 1400 resil
Point is, something needs to be done to increase the pop, either merge a server with similar content to ours, or offer Carol's Cookies from the walking dead. IDK.

[Naljs]

So I've played some on both Dala and the newborn Molten and checked them out. Dala was kinda neat, but godawful lags and never any relevant fixes, in fact, the fixes that did happen actually reverted a lot of other things and it is now in a nearly unplayable state. The reborn Molten sucked AT in and turned a prosperous awesome PvP utopia into a simple funserver with hackers all over the place. The only good thing I have to say about Molten are some of the AT scripts they got with their deal, but other than that you get super frustrated on spell delays and spells going unusable in arena.

This is, by far, the server I enjoy the most, in terms of script and Staff proffessionalism. The population however is a problem for me and I've more or less retired from WoW because of this. I know how the BG's look, one side is overpowered and the other side won't queue. When you do get a BG you have some top geared players steamrolling the lower geared.
And this is where I think we have the culprit of the situation, people are downright bored of being farmed or farming others. But this is also a great chance of advertisement! Youtube has made a major change in their algorithms, so the most viewed/liked video doesn't top the search field anymore. In my suggested video feed I see streams from Nostalrius popping up with as little as 1 viewer. I think you know where I'm going with this..

This is a great opportunity to show off gear, content and working scripts. Streaming on Youtube seems to be a valid option right now. Stream LK and Halion kills, show some smexy transmogs and get good PvP and PvE montages out there!

[thequinn1485]

As someone who doesn't play during peak times I can tell you that the low population is a problem. I have leveled a rogue 1-57 so far on the horde side and have only gotten into a single dungeon at about level 22. Meanwhile I have been constantly in to the rdf and renewing that every time the Q resets.

My level 80's which are not ICC geared yet and can't find a random dungeon, including my Druid who cues for 3 roles. And no one takes a player with an under 5k GS to ICC. And no one is willing to run me through some FOS, POS or HOR to get geared. I would suspect a lot of players are quitting at level 80. You hit a wall where all you can get is crafted gear or throw away BOE's from raids.

With all that said, I still think this is the most functional private server I have ever played on. The staff does an excellent job of keeping the server going. When my guild was seeing a drop off during retail we recruited and ran people at low levels to get them powerleveled in dungeons. Or we would get fresh 80's and run them through the ICC 5 man cluster to get them geared and most became loyal guildies.

As far as Cataclysm, you could not get me to play that rubbish if you paid me. Cataclysm is why I quit retail in the first place after 5 years.

In my eyes it's not the stale content but a lack of the super elite geared willing to help the dirty underlings. You walk around Dalaran and on both factions you see 2 types of level 80's. One with a red 5.8k gear score and those with the purple gearscore of 3850, with the red GS's easily out numbering the purples. The red GS's don't want to waste time helping your underprivileged ass. And there aren't enough purple people to get a single RDF going. So people are more willing to transfer to another server that already has the population instead of growing this one.

It also doesn't help at low levels when your only way of hitting the dead end of level 80 is solo questing.

But I won't leave the server because I believe this is still the best WOTLK server functionally speaking. It is not up to the server owners to expand the community. Their track record should speak for itself. It's up to us as players. When new players come in it is up to us to make them feel welcome in our community. It's up to us as level 80's to understand that finally reaching level 80 doesn't mean you get an instant set of 232/245 gear and that a lot of hard work is required to reach that level. And maybe just maybe if we help others to become part of our group we can count on more people on our server. And imagine how new players would react if you ran them through a SFK or DM. That's how I built my own guild on retail, helping people who needed help. I had people who I ran through low level dungeons who became some of the best raiders on the retail Elune server. There were people who I was helping get geared through TBC heroics that were soon leading Mount Hyjal raids.

Until we as a community take some responsibility for the population drop off we should not even discuss it. You can keep asking the server owners to change versions and add features but what help will that be if the community is full of cold assholes?

[Saddie]

...

During peak times the population hardly reaches 120 people, full is not a word I'd use to describe it, people didn't leave cause of cold assholes, they got bored, and just as you wouldn't play cataclysm if they paid you, there's plenty that would play it even if you wouldn't, just take a look at how populated cataclysm servers are, and that's also taking into account that their devs can't seem to script anything to save their lives, you are one of those die hard WOTLK lovers and that's fine, sure the population is low because of the people, because they left bored after years of doing the exact same thing, I don't like cataclysm myself, and God knows I gave it a chance, but if TW advanced there I'd give it another shot, because playing with my friends was what made my experience here enjoyable, not the expansion itself.

[thequinn1485]

...

During peak times the population hardly reaches 120 people, full is not a word I'd use to describe it, people didn't leave cause of cold assholes, they got bored, and just as you wouldn't play cataclysm if they paid you, there's plenty that would play it even if you wouldn't, just take a look at how populated cataclysm servers are, and that's also taking into account that their devs can't seem to script anything to save their lives, you are one of those die hard WOTLK lovers and that's fine, sure the population is low because of the people, because they left bored after years of doing the exact same thing, I don't like cataclysm myself, and God knows I gave it a chance, but if TW advanced there I'd give it another shot, because playing with my friends was what made my experience here enjoyable, not the expansion itself.

I'm just stating my own experience over the last 2 years. It is not reflective of the community as a whole. Vanilla servers tend to be the most populated regardless of functionality.

[Dysphoria]

All speaking of how good server is and no people play , one thing that have huge impact on popularity is marketing which is thing that Roel should do or some admins. Merge was not enough we saw that and new ppl that wanted to try wotlk expansion choose lolten and dalaranwow which suck. So what we need long time ago is promoting server all time making videos and shit , ppl who run this are enthusiasts and do good job on fixing pve but they cant compete with other servers where many more ppl work on promotional videos and marketing.

[Jiranthos]

It would be awesome if you guys could help us promote. No one's talented enough / have enough time to make videos, posts, advertise, tweet, etc. at the moment. Laugh all you want, but Staff's pretty busy, also, not just with TW/PW tickets and development, but also real life, of course. At least PrimalWoW has some regular updates and live streams, but even there, people say that it's a great idea and good execution (script-wise), but the low population turns them off. It's a paradox. Everyone (read: most) of the people on reddit, for example, seem to like PrimalWoW, but they're all unwilling to join because of the low population.
If only they just joined all at once, overlooking the problem. By not joining, they then add to their own problem, sadly.
If our advertisements are "sustain dps" and reach a few people now and then, consistently, it's still going to disappoint those people, since a small, steady influx of people doesn't negate the feeling of "deadness". We need something that would massively "burst dps" people into our server network. The trick is getting many new players AT THE SAME TIME, and well, I don't know how to manage that, with whatever marketing you can conjure up. Maybe when PrimalWoW hits The Burning Crusade, it can see a burst influx of new players.
But that's Primal, it's very hard to promote TrueWoW, in my opinion. There are hardly any updates available, and nothing to pull in a ton of masses all at once (because getting a few slowly over time doesn't quite cut it, like I explained above).
So, I really don't know.
Everyone has been saying: "Promote, more advertising, more promotion" since the beginning of time, but are there any solid ideas or suggestions? Ones that are tangible? Any help is appreciated.
Also these are all my personal opinions and ideas, please do not interpret them as anything else.