A Whole New World (of Warcraft) #12: Anybody Out There?

After shipping players off to a new continent and even an entirely different planet over the last couple of years, Blizzard has gone full steam ahead with the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion, which brings the world's most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game back to its roots. And then it takes those roots, grinds them up, and serves players an entirely fresh experience in the world of Azeroth. Join GameSpy columnist and WoW-head Leif Johnson as he travels through this whole new world (of Warcraft), exploring new zones, beating new dungeons, and enjoying what may turn out to be the happy medium to unite diehards and casual gamers alike.



The Echo Chamber

It's pretty eerie when you walk into the main plaza in the Alliance capital of Stormwind, only to see absolutely no one there. On most servers, this little cluster of buildings is where dozens of players gather to trade, whine about life, or show off their mounts and gear -- but it's not uncommon for players on the Nazjatar server to find it as empty as London in those haunting first scenes of 28 Days Later. Yet, this isn't a new problem for Nazjatar, which has struggled with its population since its birth at the beginning of the World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade expansion. And now, in the wake of news that World of Warcraft's subscription numbers have dropped a tad, its unique playing environment makes it something of a poster child for concerns about the game's future (and the possible need for server mergers).


It's not quite clear what went wrong with Nazjatar. When it first opened in January 2007, a storm of other players swarmed over from five crowded servers in the hopes that they could enjoy the game without long login queues and server lag. The server was even briefly home to Nascent, one of the top raiding guilds at the time. Within months, however, Nazjatar somehow found itself ranked as the lowest-populated server. It wasn't long before Nascent transferred off (citing the poor recruitment pool), and almost all of the other competitive guilds followed closely behind. And by the middle of 2008, those left on the server were already begging Blizzard to merge Nazjatar with another realm in order to make up for its crippling population deficiencies. At the time, they called it "the Forgotten Server."

Blizzard hasn't exactly forgotten about Nazjatar, and they've tried opening it up to free transfers from overcrowded servers on other occasions as a quiet solution to the enduring problem. It's a time-honored tactic that usually works with similar servers. The most recent attempt occurred around the release of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, which breathed some new life into Nazjatar when a fresh batch of players arrived. And for a while, with world player-versus-player activity on the rise and dozens of people chattering in the trade channels, it seemed like Nazjatar might have a bright future after all.

But now, mere months after Cataclysm's release, the server appears to be quickly heading back to the way things were before. It's no longer the least-populated server, but it perfectly illustrates the challenges of enjoying the endgame with population numbers at the lower end of the spectrum. After everyone reached 85 and ran into the brutal new dungeons, many of the new players either quit playing or paid to transfer off the server. The Alliance side of Nazjatar is now eerily quiet on some nights, its existence saved only by a tenacious band of players who refuse to leave despite an overwhelmingly Horde-heavy population imbalance. Yet, the Horde doesn't fare much better: While the faction may have greater numbers in comparison, it's still often possible to find less than 50 level-85 players in the Horde capital of Orgrimmar. The situation has created a unique culture on the server, complete with almost daily conversations about why the server can't retain players. Perhaps, they say, rival MMOs such as Rift pulled everyone away. Perhaps they were scared away by Cataclysm's harder endgame content. Perhaps people simply find the server's name a little too hard to pronounce.


The guild leader of Afterlife -- the server's only powerful 25-man Horde guild -- has a cynical take on the decline. "Blizzard just uses this realm to make more money," he says. "All of the new people transferred here, realized how terrible the realm was, and then spent the $25 to transfer off. Servers like this really do help Blizzard make that much more money."