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.
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.
Sylvanas was pretty bad in BfA, 100%. Jaina...eh, she was always a bigger character than her father. Blizzard games always, ALWAYS had twist after twist after twist and betrayal after betrayal, dating back to the RTS days. That way you get your human vs human, human vs night elf, human vs undead, human vs orc, etc. Totally contrived for gameplay reasons. I thought they did a pretty good job of handling this in BfA. It was more or less Jaina coming home to make amends.
Yes, FUGLY females, and that trend has continued. The Kul Tiran allied race. Men pretty ugly too, tbf.
Legion was awesome and was very much an end to the Warcraft cycle.