I caved in and bought into WoW's Pandaria expansion. I had quite a fun time today, playing the Pandaren starting experience up to being introduced into the Horde by Garrosh Hellscream.

Experiencing the contrast to Guild Wars 2 was satisfying. GW2 does so many little things better than WoW, littles touches like interacting and looting with the F-key instead of clicking, to its removal of the *mob tagging* mechanic, and so forth and so forth, it's quite astonishing how much ArenaNet has managed to improve on the basic rulesets and templates of classic MMO gaming. It's been a good thing to be reminded of. Regardless, it definitely seems to me like the genre of MMO games is in dire need of much more thorough reinvention. I can't help but feel like everything that's tried and true is now also so tired, it can no longer truely excite me. The magic of massive persistent online multliplayer worlds is gone, and without it, the gameplay experience does sacrifice too much to cater to the circumstance of it being a MMO.

That said, WoW still oozes *that Blizzard touch*, and despite its age and musty designs, I'm having a good enough time, for the time being... and then I arrived in Orgrimmar. I had bags full of low level crafting materials, and my plan was to lighten my load and put it all up on the market. To my great surprise the auctionhouse was all but empty. All that's left is a handful of extremely inflated and overpriced wares.

Upon inquery in the general chat I found out that my home server has been all but abandoned since I last logged in 2 years ago. I guess due to the new cross server play functions, it doesn't matter for the moment to moment gameplay. The auctionhouse however is tied to a single realm, and hence the in-game economy is pretty much dead in the water. Borderline unsustainable for high level characters, and a true nightmare for twinks. Since all I want to do is checking out the Pandaren starting experience with a monk, and then do the new high level zones and dungeons with my ancient main charater - a Troll Hunter - I guess I'll ride out my 60 days of gametime there anyways, and still be fine with these circumstances.

I kinda didn't realize what it meant for WoW to lose 3-4 million players since its high mark. I certainly didn't expect my homeworld to be dead. It's a day 1 realm - for Chrissake. Since empty servers don't translate into empty zones anymore, due to cross server play, it's not as bad as it might be otherwise . Regardless - it's an odd thing to see a place I've spent so much time in wither and die like this. Melancholic.

A server transfer is out of the question for multiple reasons, not the least of which is that I won't spend more money on my current stay in Azeroth. Should I just abandon ship, and start anew on a more lively server? Obviously the remaining die-hards have consolidated on a handful of choice servers. Or just hope that Blizzard will introduce a cross server auctionhouse, in order to unfuck the broken economy on all low-population servers? In a way, it's all that stands between me caring about being on a low-pop server and not.

All hail ESO's megaserver. I'm sure soon most MMOs will be built with an infrastructure just like it. Hell - WoW's already halfway there, and will be there before long.

I do feel for you playing on a empty server, I had to server swap about 6-7 months ago to a heavily populated server cause I just got tired of strange prices in the AH and not many skilled players. The CRZ stuff does make it nicer, and websites like Openraid.us are sweet for trying to see all but the most recent raid stuff, if that is your cup of tea. Sadly this is just one of those effects that will hit MMOs eventually, when the playerbase isn't what it was (though WoW still has insane numbers for it's age)

I don't ever foresee a cross realm auction house happening, I think it would do a lot more harm then good, and they just don't have the technology to do something to send items cross realms at a rate that an AH is used.

WoW (or any MMO really) has always been server reliant; I started on Vashj (desolate) in total obscurity, moved up the ladder to Smolderthorn (moderate pop) and met a few Nightmare's Asylum trolling buddies, then finally went to Korgath (high pop) which was at the time home to both Overrated and Death and Taxes; alongside several other top 50 guilds; while Smolderthorn has some fond memories (Naxx 40 with Bugged Sapphiron Iceblocks) Korgath was by far the best time. Gradually rised to ascendence in this process and became one of the best tanks in the world, quit shortly after Wrath release (the smartest people quit about a month after Wrath was released, since Wrath quest design was awesome but waiting 6-7 months for Ulduar was a dumb idea) I delayed it a bit too long sadly; of course I've had a much better MMO experience since then so I don't feel all that regretful. That said Korgath has finally ceased to be a top 5 realm and is also dying out; almost every good guild is gone too at least in the US; there used to be some sort of hardcore raiding scene but now it's like 5 guilds tops and of course hundreds of incompetent guilds instead of thousands back in the day.

GW2 has a global trading post. Granted, it has problably just a quarter or so of WoW's daily concurrent userbase, but items can be listed from anywhere on the world by anyone - it's handling insane traffic - so unless there's some legacy stuff preventing such a thing from happening in WoW, it's apparently feasible. Diablo 3 has it too, so it's not like Blizzard doesn't already have lots of experience on the topic.

I'm no trader, but most trader types I know prefer GW2's global trading post over WoW's realm-bound auctionhouse. Wares and gold circulate at a much more rapid pace, which makes trading all the more viable. Granted, I'd rather spend my time ankledeep in monster guts, covered in the gory glory of battle - rather than running with the math of making money from nothing productive all day. Then again, money can buy you things you can only dream of otherwise.

At least to an extent - WoW's got more fair design than real life in that regard.

WoW is never going to be as good as it was when you first played it. Objectively, it's as good now as it's ever been- my younger brothers obsession proves that to me, as it mimics my own obsession in 2006-2008.