I am struggling a bit when it comes what to call this post because I don’t want it to seem overly alarmist. That said I have noticed something over the last seven days that gives me concern. I mentioned these thoughts to my friend Eliyon yesterday and at 7:00 pm CST last night he agreed that there might be something to it. Last week there would have likely been 8-10 people on at that time of the evening, but last night there were three… and of those 3 one of which was Stargrace’s auctioneer that she leaves logged in most of the time while doing other things. There has been a noticeable drop off in activity.
Granted at this point we are twenty four days after the official launch of WoW Classic, and also at this point folks are exiting what I would call as the “easy levels”. At 37 the going is so much slower than it was even in the 20s and I have been chewing on this level for a couple of nights now. Granted I am not focused on being optimal and more focused on trying to get as much ore as I can to push up blacksmithing and mining, along with keeping up with the constant maintenance of needing to craft food. As a warrior I eat an excessive amount of food, and in order to lower downtime I am eating every 2 or 3 encounters.
I am not sure if I can really call this a trend yet since it more or less just started happening over the last week. I know of several cases where folks have stuff going on, like Grace for example is going to be out of pocket for another two and a half weeks or so. The west coasters don’t tend to start showing up until 9 ish my time, which means that in many cases we are ships passing in the night. They are coming on as I am logging off and I think players are starting to move away from playing the game at any cost and trying to find a more healthy balance. All of these things are probably adding up to the absence that I have noticed, but it does still give me pause.
For me at least I have not felt the sirens call of something else. I didn’t even pick up Borderlands 3 for example because I knew I would be otherwise engaged. Similarly there is a bunch of stuff coming out this week that I am likely going to just let sit there unpurchased until I hit a lull. The desire to hit 60 and gear up is way too great to allow myself to be distracted by something else. The only thing looming on the Horizon that is likely going to pull me away at least part of the time is the impending release of Destiny 2 Shadowkeep on October 1st. Even my beloved Monster Hunter World and its Iceborne expansion has not been enough of a draw away from Classic.
The positive is that there seems to be a group of us all in the same level range that seems to be similarly committed to this nonsense. So long as I can keep easily building guild groups I am likely going to stay engaged. However I wanted to throw this discussion out there. Have you been noticing a drop off in your own guilds? What things have been pulling players away from the game that you have noticed? I am curious if I am alone in this observation. Ultimately I am hoping this ends up being just a “bad week” and not a lasting trend. The servers are still actively populated and the chat channels lively, but I have noticed a thinning out of players in the level range I happen to be in.
I think ultimately I am finding myself between waves. I am too slow to be part of the “first” crowd, and too fast to be among the folks that are still in their early to mid twenties. I think maybe I need a change of scenery. I have been focused on grinding out the items needed for the Warrior level 40 weapon quest, and doing runs along the walls of Arathi for ore. This means I am moving every so slowly, but it does give me constant access to raptors which serve as two sources of cooking materials. I still have no clue where I am going to get the money in a few levels for a mount, and I figure that is going to be another phase that stalls me out as I go find something grey to grind. The various “gold farms” that I have heard of are all heavily camped, so I may just go without a mount for awhile.
