Why did the 1x TBC Server fail?
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SteelFeVeR
It was Medivh right? What happened? People didn't know how to play the game without cash shop or what?
Obnoxious
Much like what is very possible to happen with the incoming Vanilla on retail, the hype got smothered by the reality of the expansion and the many conveniences people are used to that didn't exist back then. Many people want to play the content, but with nowadays standards, not as it actually was.
Shirakus
because it was SECOND tbc server.
Lazerbro
Because tbc 1x is a cancer
no, its not. less multiboxers, bots and (V) players
Araag
As Obnoxious said, I think people want to play TBC but not with the 1x xp rate. And Outland was released before Medivh, and was a x5 xp TBC from the beginning, so the poor Medivh had no chance :/ (and that's a shame, yep).
spraynard
I agree with the above posters. 1x exp didn't help, being the second TBC server when the other was already so high pop didn't help.
I'll also add that at the time there were others servers that released which were direct competition to Medivh (several non-cash shop servers, and even two 1x fresh tbc server alternatives). Each of these pulled a portion of the Medivh population away, which was only a few thousand at the time. The server just was not established enough to withstand top guilds and others making the move to other private servers, and letting everyone else on the server know about it. Almost all of those other servers are dead now btw. I don't think I'm allowed to say their names.
Cousywousy
People hate levelling.
Laszxx
The Insane
Originally Posted by Obnoxious
These are secondary or even tertiary reasons as to why Medivh failed. You can't blame it entirely on the psychological state of the 'current-day-gamer' who doesn't have the patience for blizz-like content.
The primary reason was the server not launching at the same time as the 5x server. People were already max level and invested in their character(s) by the time Medivh came out so only a minority of the people wanted to start over. Warmane cut Medivh's wings before it ever had the chance of taking off.
That said, look at this "realm design" announcement that was made for the server:
Only those first two points actually made it to the version we played. Other than arbitrarily delaying tier 5 we had the same PvE release schedule as Outland. It was never "progression based".
The last point is actually what likely attracted people to pick Medivh over Outland, the "Challenging hardcore content". This never happened as the tuning for every boss was exactly the same for both servers, completely nullifying the allure of more challenging content.
PvE-related issues aside, what I personally believe 'killed' Medivh was the complete lack of PvP gameplay.
Medivh was launched on the 27th of May. Arena Season 1 (and it's rewards) were not available on Medivh until the 20th of August. We had already killed Lady Vashj by the time the PvP season started.
This is nearly a 3 month period wherein there was literally 0 reason to do BGs (let alone skirmishes).
You couldn't buy any arena gear or offparts. If you did do BGs then your marks would start rotting away in your mailbox cause there was nothing to spend them on. We couldn't even hand them in for honor points.
As there was no PvP gear to be acquired all the BGs that did pop were dominated by PvE geared players;
specifically by us in Panacea and our alliance counterpart Chaos Inquisition.
It got to a point where we offered players to not wear any of our raidgear in BGs just to have them pop.
Imagine being someone who didn't start on Medivh's launch and thought it would be fun to play a blizz-like burning crusade PvP experience. You were in for a rough surprise. There was no way to solely play PvP.
The gear discrepancy snowballed into nobody queuing for battlegrounds anymore.
This turned Medivh into a no-PvP-raidlogging realm not even a month after it's launch. We could all tell where it was going.
Placing blame on the playerbase for not really wanting "blizzlike content" is very disingenuous as there were many mistakes made by the Warmane Dev team that resulted in the realm pretty much being dead on arrival. I'm not saying it's solely because of those design mistakes, but they sure as hell did not help.
//Ninthgodx
Edited: November 14, 2018
frejaj
@Laszxx But why did they choose to release the arena season almost 3 months after server release? Did they have a reasoning behind this?
Originally Posted by frejaj
As far as I know and this might be wrong, there was no real reasoning behind it. I suppose it's because they start and end their arena seasons at the same time for multiple realms. This didn't work out for Medivh as it was released two weeks after Outland. It's no coincidence that Medivh's Season 1 release was the same date as where Outland started Season 2. My best guess is convenience.
Originally Posted by Laszxx
I know we might have made choices that weren't optimal, and I believe you, and even your guild, might have left Medivh for the reasons you list, but that's pretty much as far as it goes.
I'm not sure what you think when you read "progressive," but for pretty much everyone it means "content released progressively." It being on the same release schedule as Outland doesn't makes it not be progressive and I have no idea how you think otherwise.
"Challenging and hardcore content" might, again, be what you, and even your guild, even some other guilds, came for, but it was clearly not what the majority of the playerbase was after. What attracted people was the "x1" tag that has a niche of players who like, not the content being more difficult. If anything we had people constantly complaining that the way things were at first made it so only a handful of elitist guilds managed to complete things, leaving everyone else who just wanted retail rates completely outside the loop, which eventually lead to buffs being removed. The very fact this thread was created is evidence of that - I don't see the thread creator asking anything about challenging or hardcore, just x1 rates.
Which server was opened first is also not really an issue. People who really want to play x1 often would be fine with starting over, while people who want faster rates or larger population would quickly jump to Outland if it was released later. The only difference is that for a while Medivh would concentrate the population out of it being the only option we offered, nothing else.
On top of all that, as spraynard points out, multiple other private servers opened to make direct competition to Medivh. Despite not making the same mistakes we did, despite not having anything like our Marketplace at all, despite many being fresh, despite them attracting part of Medivh's population away, despite guilds leaving us and advertising for others to follow them... they have also failed.
So, again, while you, and your guild, and even other guilds, might have had the reasons you list to leave, there's nothing disingenuous about seeing that what caused not only the closure of our x1 Burning Crusade server, but of all these others people left to, is ultimately the fact that nowadays players want to play the content of old, not their mechanics and limitations that today are laughable.
"progressive"; as having been done by other private servers, means that the release of content progresses along with the playerbase. If X-amount of guilds or a certain percentage of the population had cleared Y-content then it would be time to release the next content. What I meant was that the raid content on Medivh was not progressive for the realm itself, but rather it was piggybacked onto the progression of Outland.
If anything we had people constantly complaining that the way things were at first made it so only a handful of elitist guilds managed to complete things, leaving everyone else who just wanted retail rates completely outside the loop, which eventually lead to buffs being removed.
Which content on Medivh was buffed again? The boss values were the same across Outland & Medivh. If the numbers are the same then how can people "constantly complain" about it being overbuffed?
Which server was opened first is also not really an issue.
I disagree. I dont know how you can say it's "not really an issue" when it clearly was. It stunted Medivh's growth early on and made it so the population was too low to sustain a healthy amount of raiding guilds.
Then the issue isn't that we didn't deliver progressive release of content, but that your interpretation of progressive wasn't one following the meaning of the word ("adjective: progressive 1. happening or developing gradually or in stages; proceeding step by step") and included your own "along with the playerbase" to it.
I guess you never paid attention to the fact Outland also had buffed content and also got complains about it being elitist and causing more casual players to be left behind. The fact you point out the values were the same on Medivh only shoots your argument in the foot.
I won't bother with "it clearly is because I say so" arguments that go against what is seen in the behavior of players on different rates, expansions and even private servers. You're free to disagree, but reality doesn't requires your permission to be what it is - players prefer high rates and conveniences; having a low-rate released first would only create a temporary higher population, lasting until Outland was released and caused people to migrate to the option they prefer.
The dictionary meaning of "progressive" is irrelevant here. It means a different thing within the private wow server communities and you know it.