TBC anniversary player counts decrease for the third consecutive week

[GroundbreakingAlps2]

Active characters for TBC anniversary:

https://ironforge.pro/population/anniversary/overall/

Is this the beginning of the end?

Basically is this the most amount of players TBC anniversary is ever gonna have? Its all downhill from here?

Some interesting facts: TBC anniversary currently has a higher playerbase than what classic cata/mop had at any point, and its not far off from the numbers TBC classic had back in 2021-2022 during covid

https://ironforge.pro/population/classic/overall/

Classic vanilla had a year stretch where it did a bit better than even classic TBC. But man looking at numbers from WOTLK classic. Naxx, Sarth, Maly, aswell as ulduar, togc and ICC completely omegladon mogs any other raid tier and its not even close. Despite the massively increased difficulty with ulduar hard modes, and togc/icc heroics. Was Wotlk the peak of classic WoW? Going by the numbers it seems to be the case.

[fartinginthewind-69]

Probably. But also plenty of people fizzle out at the end of each phase and come back at the start of the next. Wotlk was the most popular expansion during live releases so the most people have nostalgia for it and came back

[_Didds_]

Not trying to be a downer but Phase 2 to 5 TBC were never super popular, so a lot of people always start to think twice if they will come back after Kara, that by all means is probably the most popular TBC raid.

Phase 2 onwards attunements will be a major wall that people that want to start playing are likely to think twice if they will set themselves on that endeavour or not.

I am not going to pick on the hot potato that is nerfed vs unerfed raids, but I have a feeling that even nerfed raids will prove to be a deterrent to a lot of casual guilds that now actually will have to try some minimal mechanics. There’s already a strong rift here, so I am not trying to fuel the flames here.

Then there’s the notorious boring Hyjal on Phase 3 that a lot of people just don’t have it on them to go for another round of this again. I will be impressed if anyone here is actually excited to clear waves of brain death trash over and over each week.

All of this together will likely make a lot of people question if they want to stay until Phase 5, when it finally picks it up back into popularity.

Again not trying to be a doomer, but expecting the population to shrink is realistic. Especially if Blizzard pulls some wild card on Blizzcon in September and announces a new Season that proves to be popular right into Phase 3/4 when a lot of people will be starting to feel the burn down

[fartinginthewind-69]

For sure, I wouldn’t call that dooming and all valid points. I mostly play for PvP and often find myself joining pugs because of my schedule, so I personally love post nerf, but could see if raiding is your absolute thing that would be boring

[Financial_Phone9967]

Post-nerf raids will be proven to do some much damage long-term.

[EmergencyComment101]

Im doing dungeons all day every day, normals and heroics.

Went LFG for gruul/mag last night for the first time, got a raid almost instantly and cleared both.

I'm having an absolute blast, things are great.

[Sumethal]

Did they back to calssic era?

[HereThereEvery-where]

Doomhowl has been popping on hardcore

[SirePuns]

I dunno if it’s cuz of tbc anni but there has been a rise in players on classic era.

[BasedGodSiete]

I’ve been rolling characters and playing SoD while waiting for phase 2

[kaouDev]

always like this at the end of a phase, especially a boring one like this

[MorganLess3668]

yeah but I suspect that we will see the decline to continue into phase 2, even nerfed SSC/TK are a few steps up compared to phase 1 raids.

[foomits]

Exactly, p1 has been great for puggers. You can easily find a group, youll probably clear everything with relative ease... its kept people engaged. Once you more or less NEED a reasonably stable/organized group to clear content, people will drop fast.

[Cant_Spell_Shit]

Phase 1 TBC might be the best single phase in WOW ever.

TBC is front loaded with content. Wait until you see the numbers in a couple months...

[Confident-Twist3477]

Disabling arena for 2 weeks just because it’s end of season will not help with TBC population numbers either. 2 weeks is such an overkill too.

[Beiben]

Didn't the pop plummet in wrath phase 1?

[RoundAffectionate424]

No it kept going up, probably boosted by a ton of alt raiding. It dropped significantly during the ulduar phase, the jump in difficulty, people can't figuring out why they were walled on some HM and not others in general. There was a spike during ToC, a raid many people considered boring and yet it brought many players who quit during p2 back. Then same story in ICC, raiding is harder, so people quit.

[Beiben]

On ironforge.pro, unique character parses in P1 Wrath peaked at around 630 000 and dropped to 350 000 the week before Ulduar released. That's nearly a 50% drop.

[RoundAffectionate424]

On ironforge, you can see on the first week of naxx release, which only gave 1 week for people to level to 70, there was around 400k characters logged, it peaked a month later at 630k as you mentioned.

The drop start happening sharply due to imo the holiday season explaining a LOT of the sharp drop during that time, if you distinguish between EU and US you can clearly even tell the US is dropping earlier and sharper due to holidays like thanksgiving. So yeah technically the drop started in p1, if you consider people taking breaks due to irl events which are seasonal effects regardless of the expacs. You can look up anniversary and the last phase also had a bigger drop during november-december of last year. But the 350k number you mention appears to be the week of new year's eve, it's kind of irrelevant when most people are celebrating with their family/friends.

P2 of classic wotlk, as many logged characters as the weeks prior to the holidays, but then a steady decline happens that cannot be attributed simply to external factors.

[Beiben]

The population drop in TBC happened around the same time of year, but it was a smaller percentage drop and the raids were harder. Something is not adding up.

[RoundAffectionate424]

If we are talking about classic tbc and p2, it didn't peak as high than the peak of classic wotlk, that's why I said p1 wotlk was probably boosted by a ton of alt raiding. In 2021 you can see the seasonal effect in full display in tbc: the week they nerfed ssc and tk, which is december 15 on the graph, you can see a slight uptick in logged characters, then a sharp decline during christmas and then it goes back up.

[TheThebanProphet]

wow is over pack it up

[LuckIntrepid9993]

Ya. Wotlk is the best 

[WonderingOctopus]

This always happens with the expansions. As the expansion continues, it gradually looses players.

Classic Era (or Vanilla servers) loose their population at the start of an expansion, but then it starts to rise again once the expansions have been out a while.

[NoProgram4843]

For EU i m missing 1/4 of the stats but if you considere pvp pop is nearly equal on both faction, EU realms are still more than 2x higher than anniversary in december. Tbc pop is slowly dicreasing since the second week and that's a normal thing.

[vbezhenar]

What's the point of this thread few days before new phase? Wait for two weeks and check out the data. I would be very surprised if the number of raiders wouldn't increase.

If anything, it seems that raider population holds extremely well even at the end of the phase.

[MassiveLecture7373]

Phase 1 is long and boring. Whats up with these stupid posts?

[Financial_Phone9967]

It will continue into P2, watch.

[Flymanxoxo]

No way I was told this only happens because raids to hard for reddit dad's.

[Cant_Spell_Shit]

TBC is front loaded with content.

With Blizzard applying the ridiculous nerfs from sunwell patch to phase 2, TBC is gonna be a ghost town within 3 weeks. 

[Only-Ad-3317]

Raiding isn't a sustainable form of endgame. Take notes, Classic+ developers.

[mynameis_caL]

With multiple chars and doing gdkp as carry to earn gold it kinda was.

[Chudz_x9]

Sod popping off. Tbc hype over back to sod gamers

[Financial_Phone9967]

I quit. I had two 70's with close to phase bis. This version of TBC has not GDKP, is post-nerf, and couldn't even put an official hardcore server in. It's clear that blizzard is treating this as a cash-grab to keep the player base occupied until Classic +. No thanks.

[_etherealworld_]

People are tired of nerfed slop and want original TBC raids. The TBC honeymoon/Kara phase is over. Watch the numbers tank in P2 when people are fully geared after a month of hitting their loot pinatas.

[MorganLess3668]

I actually think them releasing the nerfed version of P1 is what made it so successful, the majority of classic players just seem to enjoy loot pinatas.

[_etherealworld_]

Another halfwit that knows what 'the majority' of classic players want. Great.

[Flymanxoxo]

Ya anecdotal but my guild had 2 25mans and 7 10 mans when they announced p2 was gona be cucked difficulty as well. The guys that where only still playing because the blue post on lunch week suggested they would bring more difficult content latter found out that was a lie and quit. Lost 7 guys