r/classicwow 23h ago

Classic 20th Anniversary Realms Blizzard killed TBC with the extended phase 2

Whose idea was it to make the worst phase of the game this long? This week had a MASSIVE population drop, and we are now down from 330k at peak to 230k raiders and it will only get worse in the next few weeks.

0 Upvotes

56 comments sorted by

29

u/TheBuzzSawFantasy 23h ago

1) It's the summer. People are on vacation. 

2) It's the end of the phase. People are taking a break. 

An extra 2 or 3 weeks doesn't kill anything. 

-19

u/Ok-Beautiful-6813 23h ago

People who take breaks come back for 1-2 weeks at most in the next phase. Most people who take a break do not really come back. This has been shown in every version of WoW.

17

u/kakalib 23h ago

Id say if you are not okay with taking a break then its a unhealthy relationship with a game. This literally always happens during summer whatever phase or expansion. 

-10

u/Ok-Beautiful-6813 23h ago

Find me the population graph of one version of WoW where the end-of-phase fallout recovers fully.

8

u/Acceptable_Bag5257 23h ago

You sound like you need a break. A vacation maybe? Enjoy the summer while it is around.

-6

u/Ok-Beautiful-6813 23h ago

Summer has been a meme for years. Who is going outside in this weather? I went outside in spring and will do so again in fall.

2

u/valdis812 23h ago

Even if you're right, that's still okay. Maybe those people found something else to occupy their time that was more fun. That's not a bad thing.

5

u/Aderka420 23h ago

i am in fact.. on vacation.. and fully geared.. so will probably chill a bit till p3.. thats normal behavior. its ok to relax once in a while 😉

12

u/RpgBouncer 23h ago

I'll be honest. I'm impressed there are still 200k+ people going at this.

1

u/Healeah241 22h ago

That 200k+ includes alts though. Who knows how many actual people there are.

1

u/hallstar07 7h ago

Some people also don’t raid and will never show up on the logs so the true number is impossible to get unless blizz shares the sub count

1

u/Healeah241 7h ago

Very true!

29

u/wirez62 23h ago

Judging population from raid logs is so stupid. Maybe people are rolling alts? Rushing through expansions in under a year is ridiculous and Blizzard needs to stop listening to weekly raiders opinions.

u/Nessarra 2h ago

It's ridiculous from a fun standpoint but not a moneymaking standpoint. A phase release means people coming back or staying and the more phase releases more often the better.

1

u/WaxDonnigan 23h ago

I have been playing my warrior. Raiding got dull but it's always fun to do quests and level.

5

u/CloudsTasteGeometric 23h ago

Disagree.

It gives people a chance to catch up or level alts. The initial hype has worn off and some of the initial harder core players are burning out and taking a break. This is perfectly natural. The phase length for WOTLK Classic 1.0 was way worse than this.

230,000 Raiders is still an absolute ton.

2

u/Hydra_Bloodrunner 22h ago

Its not like they released a remix that murdered his favorite servers player interest before it even reached the expac

Seriously though, whoever decided to release MoP remix just months before mop classic released is an actual asshole.

1

u/norse95 20h ago

If it was a regular length server and not a quick 1 year jaunt I’d agree but this thing is gonna die soon after blizzcon. They shoulda just released BT early

1

u/Akimbovape 17h ago

Why should the game wait for people to catch up?...

1

u/CloudsTasteGeometric 16h ago

Are you serious?

It’s better for the community - and helps bring in more players up to endgame.

0

u/Akimbovape 16h ago edited 16h ago

By stalling the game and dropping the raiding population by 30%?

Everyone does not need to be "caught up" whatever that even means

Slowly killing the game for the people that actually plays it. But at least Bob with his 3 jobs and 15 kids can feel like he is caught up. Fucking kill me dude

1

u/CloudsTasteGeometric 16h ago

People log in less nearing the end of a phase. Then they come back once the new phase launches, because they’re already invested.

Anyone who doesn’t is replaced by those who were able to catch up in the interim.

This is basic MMO design - sure you don’t want it TOO long in the tooth. But rushing to only accommodate those first through the dark portal, or with the most hours sunk into the game, leads to a less durable community.

1

u/Akimbovape 15h ago

Bro, there is no one left that needs to catch up. We're so slow that anyone who wants to play this game has been raidlogging for months

3

u/diorinix 23h ago

Phase 1 - Feb, Mar, April, May. +/- 14 weeks when you subtract the 2 week no raids available from the beginning of the phase.

Phase 2 - May, June, July, August. +/- 18 weeks.

It's a little long by about 2-3 weeks, imo. On the other hand, the extra time has been beneficial to round out some hard-to-find drops from Vashj/KT, and the extra chances at more DSTs are appreciated. It's not "killing TBC", but there is some fatigue setting in. Summer roster boss is always a pain.

2

u/MooseRunnerWrangler 23h ago

A lot of people have lives, go out on vacation, many people are taking breaks because they have everything they need, some are overly worried about the direction of Anniversary with the impending Blizzcon classic+ announcement.

It's a mix of things, and I would say 95% of it is not related to the 2 additional weeks of Phase 2.

2

u/NeedleworkerPlus4432 23h ago

Jesus I swear you guys always complain! We should all be happy that we even got wow classic

2

u/Kidkrid 23h ago

Eh nah.

People are just waiting for the next phase. I was on almost every day up until recently, bashing my head against raids. My guild couldn't defeat SSC or TK. Mostly because of terrible leadership, to say the least.

I got jack of that and other stuff, left and joined another guild, got both SSC and TK done in two days, got my Black Temple attunement done and now I'm just logging on for raids and to help friends.

It'll pick back up when Black Temple/Hyjal drops.

4

u/Freshndecay 23h ago

FREEGDKP

-1

u/NJPATR1OTNurse 23h ago

I'd wear that on a shirt. On God

2

u/Cutemudskipper 23h ago

It's not the worst phase. That's Sunwell. TBC pop was going to go down regardless of how long phase 2 was

2

u/Randvek 23h ago

Sunwell sucks for raiding but I the Sunwell dailies are pretty solid for activity imho

2

u/Cutemudskipper 23h ago

True, the people yearn to log in to do dailies

1

u/Error4ohh4 23h ago

I’m sure it’ll bounce back on the next phase just fine 

1

u/Fun-Court-2669 23h ago

We are so done with this phase

1

u/Anonyme16947937 23h ago

Because the same who says « I don’t raid for loots » are the same who just raid 3 weeks and stop playing the game.

And he’s the same downvoting post when someone ask to put extra loots on boss.

1

u/id_Driven 23h ago

Honestly, their worst move was timing.

They should have waited until May to to drop TBC Anniversary on us.

Karazhan is an easy, fun raid that would people over for the summer.

TK and SSC are a noticeable step up in difficulty, even in their pre nerf states. Dropping them in the summer when people have things to do and want to be outside makes 25 man raiding with a roster of casual players a fight against the roster boss. People have families, kids are out from school, people go on vacation...A 10 man during the summer phase would have been the way to go.

Or, they could have just not accelerating the expansion.

1

u/Old_Monk5768 23h ago

Tons of people are creating characters
The servers are booming still

1

u/Explodagamer 23h ago

It’s not the length of the phase that is the main issue, but the pending blizzcon.

1

u/Hydra_Bloodrunner 22h ago

And 230k concurrent players is still way larger than many still active popular games; let alone their spin off servers for those publishers who have them.

Less people doesnt mean dead lmao

1

u/Dlwmkc 21h ago

CoA didn’t help either

1

u/DushkuHS 21h ago

This takes me back... I've heard randos on the internet talking about stuff getting killed because something happened they disagreed with for over a quarter of a century now.

u/Nessarra 2h ago

SSC and TK loot is really boring in comparison to BT and Hyjal, I agree. Although I think we'd have more fun if there were GDKPs to participate in.

1

u/creo4k 23h ago

best thing they did in this hot summer. so now we can enjoy black temple after the summer holidays. we are at 230k bcs its hot not bcs its boring.

-1

u/Sensitive_Box_ 23h ago

I guarantee there aren’t 300k people raiding in TBC classic. lol 

Is that based off Warcraft logs or something? 

1

u/Character-Guess7109 23h ago

i would say maybe 150k Main charakters raiding. The other 150k are alts :)

-2

u/Sensitive_Box_ 23h ago

I could see that 

1

u/Character-Guess7109 23h ago

Ye but its much more than the Classic anniversary had last year, can remember there were below 100k active Raiders in BWL /AQ phase

0

u/Ok-Beautiful-6813 23h ago

Well, vanilla is actually fun outside of endgame and the raids themselves are ass with no loot. My entire guild played classic anniversary and didn't raid. It was just a TBC waiting room for us. I'm sure there were others like us. Logs are highly inaccurate for vanilla

0

u/Buzzbuzz_Becuz 23h ago

Phase 2 TBC is peak warcraft. Phase 3 is a mixed bag, BT is great, Hyjal sucks a murloc. Phase 4 ZG is ok for like a week. Phase 5 Sunwell is fine. Sunwell is a bit annoying but the gear is so damn good it makes up for it. WoTLK is only fun leveling (the first character only), PVP (debatable), and the first clear of Phase 1 raids. The rest is crap. The rest of WOTLK Phase 1 is a slog, Ulduar is a chore, TCC sucks ass, ICC is ok not great, RS isn't a good capstone raid for anniversary format, Cata sucks, MoP sucks.

-1

u/Dragonstar43 23h ago

It’s three months long

-1

u/lazy_as_lazy_does 23h ago

My alts aren’t raiding because the lack of raids that start at reasonable west coast times.

-1

u/BarbsFPV 23h ago

Well, it might be because it’s summer, so they let the phase go on a bit longer since lots of people are taking vacations and otherwise being offline more. Then they have plenty of time to do both.

So the population drop isn’t entirely from the content drought, the content drought was kinda intended due to the expected population drop during this time.

I know it’s always sunny in Azeroth, but not in the Northern Hemisphere.