Was doing some digging because I was bored and occasionally stumble back on wow classic for the pvp. The largest populated sever in all of modern wow is Area 52 which has 18k, 2nd is stormrage with 14k, third is Illidan with just under 14k population and 4th is Jubei’Thos with just over 10k per wowprogress.com, those are the only servers with over 10k active users currently there’s 3 servers with 9k, 1 with 8.8k, 2 with 7.6k. So on the top ten servers in modern there’s just under 109k active players, we can safely assume about 200k overall and being extremely generous maybe 250k.
In comparison per ironforge.pro numbers from 4/9/25 to 4/15/25, Classic SoD had 70k active users for what is basically wow vanilla plus. The 4 main servers have 24.5k, 22k, 12.5k and 10k population, again we see 4 servers with over 10k population. But that’s not all folks! WoW anniversary had 96k active users with the 4 main servers at 30k, 27.6k, 17k, and 16k, again 4 over 10k. And last but not least we have WoW classic cata which (at its lowest point currently) still has 111.7k active users. None of the servers in cata classic are over 10k however. What’s interesting is between the wow classic series there’s ~277.7k active users. Even with cross play overlap there still more activity on wow classic than current. This is even aside from Cata classic being in a lull until MoP releases in August.
There is no way I would go play current WoW, they lost me at BFA and from there all they did was add more racial diversity, more feminism and more gay and trans stuff.
Wow classic is tempting but not going back. What is the point if it will eventually lead to BFA?
As for active players, the numbers seem low but I assume it is still highly profitable.
Hey now, who doesn't want to travel to a new land/expansion and almost immediately be greeted by two gay dragons surveying a river, and then almost moments later be greeted by two gay humans who are a main feature of the new crafting system and you will probably run to every single week for the weekly quest one has in the capital?
Also look at how progressive the Horde now is, their racial leader for the new hype class is totally non binary despite the entire lizard from being extremely androgynous so the only way to pull that off is to pair a female sounding voice with a sometimes seen male elf body when not in lizard form, which is both dumb and retarded even by Blizzard's own standards because surely they should feel comfortable in their own body so why do all the lizards need to hide in human/elf form then?
About the only thing good in Dragonflight is some of the music as is standard for a lot of things including Tron 2 but then that literally had Daft Punk do the music for the film AND star as themselves in the actual movie so difficult to fault.
It's genuinely terrible in every dimension.
They've always gamed the sub count. I wouldn't go back to WoW after they fucked over multiple areas.
That’s kinda the point of SoD which is almost an alternate WoW timeline for vanilla plus. At least with wow classic just reaching MoP there’s still MoP which was at least fun, WoD which was meh, and Legion which was the best one since wrath. That’s 6+ years and you can grind play tokens pretty easily once you’re high tier. Anniversary is just plain vanilla wow as well. I’m betting that wow is going to pump out one more woke expac where the playerbase completely crumbles into classic which will massively drop during WoD. This might make a wake up moment where they do Wrath with a SoD and start over completely, but I doubt they’ll learn why their active base collapsed and double down on gay shit while people play classic because it’s doesn’t have it.
I actually really enjoyed BfA. I can't put my finger on it, but I probably spent as much time on it as any expansion.
Shadowlands was just garbage.
Dragonflight SEEMED like it should have been a return to form, but I just hated it.
I started War Within and haven't completed a single zone. It just doesn't do it for me anymore. I've played my main since the originally classic. It's sad.
I am, however, playing on the classic realms, I played on the BC realms, and I'm definitely going to play on Pandaria as I missed about 1/2 that expansion the first time around.
During BFA I noticed the change towards a more feminist story and I just knew it was corrupted and I didn't bother with it.
Classic was a ton of fun but I had to cut it off do to being addictive during that period of my life and now I just don't care since it will lead to the same globohomo slop
So, off the top of my head, Warcraft 1 had a handful of female characters: Garona, the half-orc spy. Ok, that's the only one I remember unless you count the sexy female water elementals.
Warcraft 2 added a handful of female characters. Elven archers. Alleria, the elven ranger. That's it. (Alexstrazsa the dragon I guess counts.)
Warcraft 3 did add quite a few. Tyrande, Maiev, Jaina, Sylvanas, Naga witches, etc.
WoW was fairly balanced from the beginning. Sylvanas, Tyrande, and Jaina are three of the most prominent characters to this day.
I don't know if BfA went feminist. The Little-Mermaid-Ursula monster character was annoying. Jaina going full Elsa from Frozen was annoying. But, Drustvar was fantastic. I enjoyed Tiragarde sound. I liked Mechagon island. Nazjatar world raid events were great fun.
BfA was the last expansion I really played much of.
Sylvanas was the worst, Jaina I did not like because it disrespected her father. And if I remember there was this smaller faction with mostly ugly human women I had to do quests with. It also seemed to have a huge focus on women.
It's been some time since I played so all the details elude me but the tone shift was clear compared to the rest of the expansions. It was a shame after Legion, I enjoyed Legion a lot but it was also a good way to end wow.