Census in World of Warcraft http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20840669 en Mon, 01 Dec 2008 10:41:17 EDT Mon, 01 Dec 2008 10:41:17 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20854434 Don69Fire : i doubt D3 will kill WoW either. there have been a bunch of new games buying for the market. and a lot of people i know that tried some of the other games have since came back to WoW. ]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20854434 Sat, 26 Jul 2008 22:00:39 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20851344 Gork :
said by Leathal See Profile :
I bet you any money StarCraft will be next after D3

Ding! We have a winner!! (Maybe even before D3?)]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20851344 Sat, 26 Jul 2008 06:16:46 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20848755 Leathal :
said by TopDog See Profile :

Diablo III is a dungeon crawl, of which there have been a dime a dozen since Diablo 2 came out. Sure there will be a lot of WoW players that will be interested in it, but there will be just as many that won't. They are 2 different types of games, and there is no way that Diablo III will "kill" WoW.
I don't think I said point blank "Diablo III will 'kill' WoW". I did say that Blizzard is shifting their focus away from WoW and onto Diablo III which will be their next box seller. Games only last so long before they die because of other games that come out that are better, WoW has been losing a lot of steam since January of this year. Scilla and other servers are pretty much completely dead, there is no is only a handful of all alliance seen on the servers that Blizzard can't be making as much compared to 2 years ago.

said by TopDog See Profile :

The problem with WoW Blizzard is that they take extremely too long to release expansions. Before WOTLK is out, EQ2 will be on it's 4th (or is it 5th?) expansion. We should have already had new BGs, new arenas, new STUFF for people that don't raid yet we have to wait for only the 2nd expansion, which will most likely get pushed back into 2009, before we see new content.

Unlike EQ2 or other games that get their expansions out in a reasonable time, Blizzard renders their older zones useless because people are so sick of them by the time an expansion comes out 2 years later. People are tired of playing their 5th alt and want to level up as fast as they can. Even though they added new content to Silithus and the Plaguelands, it was already too late. People had quested there already and there was a new set of zones out there that they could get better gear and xp much faster. Same thing will happen with the Outland. People have had over a year to level their mains and many alts there so once the new expansion comes out, people will move on to the new areas and the Outland will be completely dead. Blizzard has got to do a better job of introducing their long awaited expansions without killing off their old zones, or this game will be a mess in a couple of more years with 10, 20, 30 zones that have no reason to even be occupied.
The other tall tail sign that Blizzard is losing money with WoW is the fact they are taking all things we spend months grinding to get herioc so we can have them, they are now giving them away to lower level players. Level 1 to 60 they had to shorten because people are sick the of the grind and they are losing money at the same time plus when was the last time anyone ran UBRS, LBRS, MC?? WoW is dying and D3 is their next game that will help replenish the money pot, I bet you any money StarCraft will be next after D3 quiet possibly as a MMPOG or maybe they will come out with WoW2 who knows. ;)

As soon as level 80 comes out if it ever does, all the level 70 instances will die in a couple of months because everyone will be too busy making their darknights, and once they get to 80 and realize the game is over unless they want to spend the rest of their life running end-game instances 24/7 so they can get the leet gear that in 6 months time Blizzard will give away to the people who don't have the time to get it themselves, the game will die.

Leathal]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20848755 Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:18:57 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20848300 thrillhaus : I think it's more of the fact that, for the most part, horde dominated PVP battle grounds pre-expansion. When the expansion hit, the kiddies of alliance were given the opportunity and the excuse to change factions. This is where I think the major shift occurred. The kids of alliance simply wanted on the dominate side.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20848300 Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:55:46 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20847204 Zyncotl : When the game was released the numbers used to be the opposite. What may be the case is all the people who rolled alliance are bored with Alliance quests and are rerolling horde, while horde members are rerolling Alliance.

Maybe the blame is Blood Elves for being to pretty?
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I'd take the time to insult your intelligence, but you probably wouldn't get it.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20847204 Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:30:28 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20846215 KCP : I am just tired of the imbalance. I love seeing Alliance out in the world. It makes for a more interesting game. I think that Blizzard also failed because the whole lore (as I know it) is Alliance vs Horde. Its just frustrating when I have PvP dailies (I hate instanced PvP) that I cannot complete because there's no Alliance to be found.

And I don't play Alliance. I have thought about rolling a Horde on a server where the Horde is outnumbered at least 5:1 so that there is a chance of World PvP and some ganking.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20846215 Fri, 25 Jul 2008 05:58:31 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20846054 saillaw :
said by KCP See Profile :

So does anyone know of a way to get Blizzard to attempt to fix the problem?
I think the imbalance only truly matters on PVP servers. If you're on a PVE server, who really cares if one faction out numbers the other by a tremendous amount?

On PVP servers it does matter as the summoning stones for instances and other congested areas can make it nearly impossible for one side to "play the game" if they are outnumbered 6-1 by the other faction. The faction in the minority will see a constant stream of pvp while the faction in the majority will be hungry for it and kill any opposing faction members they see on sight. You won't get to the balanced stage where people reach an unspoken truce most of the time because they just want to summon and run the instance or they just want to get this quest completed without getting constantly ganked.

I remember reading that Blizzard had for the first time waved its rules to allow people to transfer from a PVE server to a PVP server for a particular faction that was very under-represented on that server. I think this was an oceanic server if I remember correctly. Perhaps that is the answer... allow PVE people to transfer to balance the populations on PVP servers?
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Hanging with my Gnomies]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20846054 Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:00:27 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20845919 Gork :
said by TopDog See Profile :
The problem with WoW Blizzard is that they take extremely too long to release expansions.
I don't know to what degree you meant this statement, but I thought I read Blizzard's goal starting under a year ago was to release an expansion every year. So if that's the case it would seem that they agree with you.

I enjoyed some of your other comments with regard to D3 killing WoW and Blizz rendering old lands dead. I am one of the old D2 players and have been an avid WoW player now for three years and am definitely looking forward to both that and SC2 coming out.

I also found it interesting when a previous poster noted that WoW is dying, or on it's way out the door, as it were. I have read a lot of comments on the web from people who both agree and disagree with this point of view. I tend to agree, yet I haven't seen any numbers to back up my gut feeling. And though I tend to agree, my crystal ball says it's only STARTING on the down curve. ;)]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20845919 Fri, 25 Jul 2008 01:31:34 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20845715 TopDog : Diablo III is a dungeon crawl, of which there have been a dime a dozen since Diablo 2 came out. Sure there will be a lot of WoW players that will be interested in it, but there will be just as many that won't. They are 2 different types of games, and there is no way that Diablo III will "kill" WoW.

The problem with WoW Blizzard is that they take extremely too long to release expansions. Before WOTLK is out, EQ2 will be on it's 4th (or is it 5th?) expansion. We should have already had new BGs, new arenas, new STUFF for people that don't raid yet we have to wait for only the 2nd expansion, which will most likely get pushed back into 2009, before we see new content.

Unlike EQ2 or other games that get their expansions out in a reasonable time, Blizzard renders their older zones useless because people are so sick of them by the time an expansion comes out 2 years later. People are tired of playing their 5th alt and want to level up as fast as they can. Even though they added new content to Silithus and the Plaguelands, it was already too late. People had quested there already and there was a new set of zones out there that they could get better gear and xp much faster. Same thing will happen with the Outland. People have had over a year to level their mains and many alts there so once the new expansion comes out, people will move on to the new areas and the Outland will be completely dead. Blizzard has got to do a better job of introducing their long awaited expansions without killing off their old zones, or this game will be a mess in a couple of more years with 10, 20, 30 zones that have no reason to even be occupied.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20845715 Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:21:14 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20844877 MaybeTrouble :
said by JIGA See Profile :

And I thought my (per my xfire recorded hours) 44 hours in a 7 day period was a lot. :hmm:
It is a lot. My guild raided 3 nights a week, roughly 3-4 hours a night, and you only raided on the nights you wanted. That means you put in a maximum of 12 hours a week, plus time to do dailies to pay for your consumables. We reached 5/6 in SSC and 3/4 in Tempest Keep. We even had a few visits to Mt Hyjal.

Unfortunately the price of this average success meant our best players wanted more, and eventually the guild disintegrated as they left for hardcore raiding guilds.

Now myself and few others started a new guild, Horde-side, and we plan to run the odd ten man raid when we've finished leveling and gearing up, but focus on PvP.

When the expansion arrives we'll see if we have enough to run the 10 mans, but I doubt we can be bothered to organise 25 man raids.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20844877 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:02:22 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20844800 quatra : I think part of the imbalance is it's a domino effect - once alliance or horde become in the majority a server tends to breed as friends of friends join to play together (not to mention I bet it's discouraging being on a pvp server as the underdog). I believe the last time I checked my server is 2:1 alliance:horde. Yes, horde have become more popular for pvping it seems - in my battlegroup they're clearly superior at everything except AV. ]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20844800 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:48:39 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20844415 JIGA : Heh, I'll never see any of that shit. The highest raid instance I have ever been in was Kara... even then I didn't have enough time to run it.

I can't believe the amount of time people put into raiding, it's insane... And I thought my (per my xfire recorded hours) 44 hours in a 7 day period was a lot. :hmm:]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20844415 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:38:23 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20844099 MaybeTrouble : I think where Blizzard let down people like you (with little time for raids) is they failed to include the promised 10 man versions of the 25 man raids.

These would follow the same story, but be less complex and therefore drop lesser gear.

As for gear, it's a means to an end. Gear from Heroics enables you to run Kara. Gear from Kara enables you to finish the T4 raids. T4 gear enables you to start T5 raids. T5 gear enables you to start T6 raids. T6 gear enables you to run Sunwell.

The lesser gear from the 10 man versions would enable you to continue those raids until their culmination. But perhaps (as with the new badge rewards) also enable people to get into T6 raids so they can get real T6 and think about Sunwell.

That is one of the reasons I'm looking forward to the expansion, because we'll finally get these less complicated versions of each raid.
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If people taste like bacon, doesn't it follow that bacon tastes like people?]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20844099 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:26:14 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20844016 MaybeTrouble : Err the real game starts at 70. Just as the real game started at 60 pre-BC.

You see each of these games has a story. The story starts at level 1, and while most people don't read it, culminates in end game raiding.

The most interesting content has always been inside raid instances, and it has the most time invested in it from a development perspective.

PvP is almost an afterthought, but has been pretty successful and is a fun alternative to end game raiding if you don't have the time to invest in such things.

Leveling is just an annoyance that gets in the way of playing the game.

You can learn some basics about your class as you level, you can learn to work with groups and learn to PvP. But you won't experience what your class can do to its full potential until you reach 70 and have a full set of talent points.

As for Horde vs Alliance, it's simple. Most of the people that first played WoW chose to be on the side of the goodies.

After finishing (or even participating in some of) the end game, people came to realise neither Horde nor Alliance could be classed as goodies or baddies. Both have roughly the same goals, although their in-game story is slightly different. Having rolled multiple Alliance toons and done pretty much every quest over and over, the idea of doing something different and from a different perspective is appealing.

Then you have the PvP factor. 99% of Alliance toons in battlegrounds don't have a clue as to what they should be doing. You don't get healed, you don't see anyone defending key graveyards or flags. For those that want to experience more wins than losses, the answer is to roll Horde. Or at least it is on my server.

So really you have plenty to do at lvl 70 (just as you will at 80 with the new story that will accompany that expansion).

The problem is that most people who play WoW don't understand this, and think the game is about saving up badges (or honor) to get purple gear.

The reason for that is the extremely poor implementation of the story behind each game. If there were more cutscenes (like the one in the Magister's Terrace instance) with quality voice acting and such, people would be far more willing to try to complete the story via the end game raids.

If Blizzard want the expansion to be more successful in this regard, and to continue to hold onto customers they've had for many years, the next story needs to be more involving and more of the quests need to be relevant to it.

From everything I've read, this does seem to be the case, although I would like to see more cinematic cut scenes to make the culmination of quests relevant to the story more satisfying.
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If people taste like bacon, doesn't it follow that bacon tastes like people?]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20844016 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:13:04 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20843437 Leathal :
said by Shatter See Profile :

Wouldnt surprise me. I know when WOW came out the majority was always more alliance over horde mostly servers wide. It seems that trend has greatly changed over time. I think there are a number of factors that caused this. I can say I know over 20 people that have left guilds I was in to start horde on other servers or the same server. If I come back to WOW for WOTLK I plan to roll a horde character from scratch and leave alliance behind.
The problem is WOW has become a dead game and Blizzard knows this and started shifting the focus on their next big seller, Diablo III. What's there to do after level 70? Run end stuff? More and more people don't have time to run long and drawn out instances anymore like they use to.

The same thing will happen once to level 60 instances as they did with the level 70 expansion at level 80, no one will run them anymore and the game will simple end as WOW will be at it's golden age that future MMPOG will be far better and people will leave so that a handful are left.

I think for WOW survive the next run Blizzard needs to scale back the servers a bit as there are a lot them that have a lot unplayed toons on them which don't make up for the number of paid users Blizzards needs to keep WOW going.

Leathal]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20843437 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:37:51 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20843378 Leathal :
said by KCP See Profile :

I downloaded the Census addon and took one of my main's server today. Seems that there is 6.7:1 H:A ratio. I looked at a few other servers. Seems that horde is overall about 3:1. Any reasoning for the imbalance and anyone know a way to petition Blizzard to help fix the imbalance?
Its not a problem and petitioning Blizzard is simply dumb. People have a choice to play either the horde or alliance no one should EVER force them to make that choice, maybe were you are from your government tells you want to do but were Blizzard is situated it's not the case nor will it ever be.

If you don't like the fact your out numbered quit the game like so many have done so far and play something else. :D

Leathal]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20843378 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:30:14 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20842378 Cristianorj : How can blizzard to force that?
The only possible solution that I see is to force players to go to one faction instead of the other when its unbalanced.
Its a social effect... not blizz fault.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20842378 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:38:58 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20842367 JIGA : Thats what we use, Preform Enabler.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20842367 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:36:24 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20842032 ggmorton : it's called preform enabler I think.

»wow.curse.com/downloads/details/5418/

I've used StinkyQueue before for this purpose as well.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20842032 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:36:30 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20841819 elboricua : On my battlegroup Retalliation Horde usually wins AV. Right now I have a ton of AV marks to spend before the ones in my mailbox go poof. ]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20841819 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:03:01 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20841761 KCP : So does anyone know of a way to get Blizzard to attempt to fix the problem?]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20841761 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:53:18 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20841653 DownLow :
said by pounce See Profile :

Sounds like I'll have to hook up with a pre-made. Do you just offer your services in Trade Chat?
I have been seeing chat in-game about an addon for "premades" - anyone have any insights into this?]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20841653 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:34:45 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20841630 pounce : Sounds like I'll have to hook up with a pre-made. Do you just offer your services in Trade Chat?]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20841630 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:31:19 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20841466 JIGA :
said by Mystic95Z See Profile :

said by pounce See Profile :

Except that Horde gets pounded at AV in the 70 bracket constantly. It's getting old.
Anymore if I decide to AV I just run with a premade and we win ~98% of the games. Sometimes the pugs that get in screw us over by being asshats and capping SF or SH gy.
Yup, as Horde I run premades only. If you pug on Horde you will just lose over and over and get a lucky win every blue moon. Dragonmaw-Reckoning Battlegroup.

As far as Census. I really don't trust it's number that much. It requires players to pull the data and those players need to be online 24/7 to get some really accurate data. And the server needs both Ally and Horde players pulling data.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20841466 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:03:09 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20841137 Mystic95Z :
said by pounce See Profile :

Except that Horde gets pounded at AV in the 70 bracket constantly. It's getting old.
Anymore if I decide to AV I just run with a premade and we win ~98% of the games. Sometimes the pugs that get in screw us over by being asshats and capping SF or SH gy.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20841137 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:00:21 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20840991 pounce : Except that Horde gets pounded at AV in the 70 bracket constantly. It's getting old.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20840991 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:29:23 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20840868 DownLow : Having played ally (my main) and recently rolled a horde alt (now level 67), I can say the following from my own personal experience (yours may vary significantly, but I am still putting on my flame suit):

1) Horde have better racials (especially for PVP)
2) It appears to me, that the horde quests, flightpoints, etc. make it easier for the horde to level and move around (one extreme example is that it appears the Onixia quest line is shorter for the horde than ally - yes, I know, Old World example).
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Cleverly Disguised As A Responsible Adult!]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20840868 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:05:25 EDT Re: Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20840773 Shatter : Wouldnt surprise me. I know when WOW came out the majority was always more alliance over horde mostly servers wide. It seems that trend has greatly changed over time. I think there are a number of factors that caused this. I can say I know over 20 people that have left guilds I was in to start horde on other servers or the same server. If I come back to WOW for WOTLK I plan to roll a horde character from scratch and leave alliance behind. ]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20840773 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:40:34 EDT Census http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20840669 KCP : I downloaded the Census addon and took one of my main's server today. Seems that there is 6.7:1 H:A ratio. I looked at a few other servers. Seems that horde is overall about 3:1. Any reasoning for the imbalance and anyone know a way to petition Blizzard to help fix the imbalance?
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"To trudge: the slow, weary, depressing yet determined walk of a man who has nothing left in life except the impulse to simply soldier on."
-Geoffrey Chaucer, A Knight's Tale, 2001]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20840669 Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:06:58 EDT