Teardrops for the Ironforge and Ultima Online ghost towns
In light of a massive exodus of people flocking through the Dark Portal and into the Outland, you can’t help but wonder what’s left in Azeroth? Is “the Old World” still even there? Well, yes it is, apparently. You get a bunch of people having their own “boring crusade” and bosses talking about the lack of mobs.
rufbo from Curmudgeon Gamer decided to resurrect his WoW account, and since he didn’t have the Burning Crusade expansion, had to settle for good old Azeroth. Unsurprisingly, it’s not the same “good old Azeroth” that he once knew. What he saw reminded him of expansions of Ultima Online.
When UO started throwing in expansions, the old worlds very quickly started clearing out…. a bustling urban center [turned into] an absolute ghost town, made all the more eerie as the wandering NPC robots grossly outnumbered humans for the first time in my experience. That’s happening now in WoW. Ironforge is nearly empty… auction houses, banks, city square, all nearly empty on my server…. I couldn’t tell if my “new video card” was providing much better performance or if there simply wasn’t anything to render!
Should Blizzard be worried? rufbo even playfully suggests that Ironforge should host a bingo night for gamers. On a good note though, he thinks that they should create expansions that are backwards compatible so that “players with expansions should continue to flow through old hotspots (possibly with new buildings in cities accessible only if you have the expansions, etc).”
Yes, equilibrium point will break even given some time, but for now, to those who are in the new frontier, let’s use this time to reflect on our roots and where we’ve come from…
In light of a massive exodus of people flocking through the Dark Portal and into the Outland, you can’t help but wonder what’s left in Azeroth? Is “the Old World” still even there? Well, yes it is, apparently. You get a bunch of people having their own “boring crusade” and bosses talking about the lack of mobs.
rufbo from Curmudgeon Gamer decided to resurrect his WoW account, and since he didn’t have the Burning Crusade expansion, had to settle for good old Azeroth. Unsurprisingly, it’s not the same “good old Azeroth” that he once knew. What he saw reminded him of expansions of Ultima Online.
When UO started throwing in expansions, the old worlds very quickly started clearing out…. a bustling urban center [turned into] an absolute ghost town, made all the more eerie as the wandering NPC robots grossly outnumbered humans for the first time in my experience. That’s happening now in WoW. Ironforge is nearly empty… auction houses, banks, city square, all nearly empty on my server…. I couldn’t tell if my “new video card” was providing much better performance or if there simply wasn’t anything to render!
Should Blizzard be worried? rufbo even playfully suggests that Ironforge should host a bingo night for gamers. On a good note though, he thinks that they should create expansions that are backwards compatible so that “players with expansions should continue to flow through old hotspots (possibly with new buildings in cities accessible only if you have the expansions, etc).”
Yes, equilibrium point will break even given some time, but for now, to those who are in the new frontier, let’s use this time to reflect on our roots and where we’ve come from…
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