Returning player... so, I guess the F2P scene had it's time?

[Ostriches]

Made my characters in Wrath of the Lich King back when it was a 10-day free trial
Returned for permanent trial and enjoyed the F2P meta experience greatly through the xpacs

Came back for the first time since Legion, and not only has the F2P scene vanished, but on the whole WoW is definitely fading into obscurity. For one, all the realms (EU) are completely dead. NOBODY at Goldshire or Org gates anymore, even on full realms like Silvermoon. There used to be loads of F2P and 20's chilling and duelling.

Hopped into a few BGs in my cata dungeon gear (lol)... and everybody has epics now? Got one-shot repeatedly by level 29s.
Not sure if it's even worth gearing up as a F2P, the power gap seems pretty big. Seems nobody even plays pure F2P anymore; everybody's riding their mains end-game mounts. Back in the day everybody rode the noob lvl20 mounts; their basic bitch horse, saber, kodo, mechanostrider, etc.

I guess it's back to Old School RuneScape

 

[Druhgy]

na we still here some of us stayed at 20.

 

[Chops]

The f2p you remember is long gone, for a variety of reasons.

there are a few of us f2ps still kicking about, but mostly folks have moved on

it is worthwhile to recommit to it if you liked the pve/achievement chasing aspect of it because… damn. Theyve given us damn near the whole game at this point.

but otherwise man, yea. Its dead and its been dead for a couple xpacs now.

 

[orcgazmatron]

Oof... lousy time to have returned! not but a month ago, 20's were thriving! Ques we're a few minuets, gearing was as fun, creative & interesting as it had ever been for twinks... & then, Twinks were segregated. it'd be one thing if it had just been XP-OFF toons & F2P-Vets ( which makes perfect sense, even if it's still segregation ) , but true F2P's are thrown in there to boot!

Since then, many GF'ed trophy toons have come off the bench, kitted out in Raid gear & ( mostly ) unobtainable gear, & have had their way with the bracket. At the same time came the news that Twinks in Wrath will be allowed in normal BG's with their xp turned OFF; & so the ( coerced ) migration began...

If you're interested in running 29's, that's where the action is at this time on retail. In Wrath. 39's.

Personally, I'm of the mind that 20's will be back. Might be within a few months after Wrath's release, or a few weeks after DF flaps out in Nov/Dec. , but eventually the playerbase will find it's way to F2P again & I hope that the bracket will become 'bottom-heavy'
again.

 

[Ostriches]

The f2p you remember is long gone, for a variety of reasons.

there are a few of us f2ps still kicking about, but mostly folks have moved on

it is worthwhile to recommit to it if you liked the pve/achievement chasing aspect of it because… damn. Theyve given us damn near the whole game at this point.

but otherwise man, yea. Its dead and its been dead for a couple xpacs now.

Ah, that sucks.
The PvE was nice, I loved doing those iconic dungeons like Wailing Caverns, Shadowfang Keep, Blackfathom Deep, etc.
The best thing about the level 20 twinking was that the gearing wasn't a big grind. You could get everything you need in little time, but there were still prestigious gear that gave advantages like the Gurubashi trinkets, for those who wanted to grind.
Now apparently there are purples with 0.01% drop rate. Yeah, fuck that. Took me a while to get Foreman's gloves and I'm not doing a new grind every time blizzard changes things for no reason.
But if you want to do dungeons and raids then you might as well buy a subscription and play the full game. The whole point of F2P was a hardcore high skill PvP community. I guess blizzard wised up and realised that our neat little meta wasn't really their intention. Shame the music had to stop.

If you're interested in running 29's, that's where the action is at this time on retail. In Wrath. 39's.

Personally, I'm of the mind that 20's will be back. Might be within a few months after Wrath's release, or a few weeks after DF flaps out in Nov/Dec. , but eventually the playerbase will find it's way to F2P again & I hope that the bracket will become 'bottom-heavy'
again.

I see. I didn't foresee that some day F2P level 20s would be playing against level 70s.
So now the PvP bracket is just being dominated by those in grandfathered raid gear. Doesn't sound skill-based to be honest.

As for the last paragraph... I'm not optimistic. Blizzard has been going downhill for years; it seems the talent left that company a long while ago and they don't know how to make a game anymore. Dragonflight will be another flop.
It's truly depressing seeing how empty and devoid of human life these realms are. Standing in places which used to be full of people a decade ago. The MMORPG scene is pretty bleak.

 

[Dragpz]

Ah, that sucks.
The PvE was nice, I loved doing those iconic dungeons like Wailing Caverns, Shadowfang Keep, Blackfathom Deep, etc.
The best thing about the level 20 twinking was that the gearing wasn't a big grind. You could get everything you need in little time, but there were still prestigious gear that gave advantages like the Gurubashi trinkets, for those who wanted to grind.
Now apparently there are purples with 0.01% drop rate. Yeah, fuck that. Took me a while to get Foreman's gloves and I'm not doing a new grind every time blizzard changes things for no reason.
But if you want to do dungeons and raids then you might as well buy a subscription and play the full game. The whole point of F2P was a hardcore high skill PvP community. I guess blizzard wised up and realised that our neat little meta wasn't really their intention. Shame the music had to stop.



I see. I didn't foresee that some day F2P level 20s would be playing against level 70s.
So now the PvP bracket is just being dominated by those in grandfathered raid gear. Doesn't sound skill-based to be honest.

As for the last paragraph... I'm not optimistic. Blizzard has been going downhill for years; it seems the talent left that company a long while ago and they don't know how to make a game anymore. Dragonflight will be another flop.
It's truly depressing seeing how empty and devoid of human life these realms are. Standing in places which used to be full of people a decade ago. The MMORPG scene is pretty bleak.

Yeah, big retail server are still pretty popular like Moon Guard (A), Stormrage (A), Area 52(H), Tichondrius (H), and there are still quite a few Hordies that duel in front of orgrimmar, but most people are playing classic atm. Not an amazing time to come back because yea, 29s are just stomping on F2P/Vet twinks and the 20s bracket is dying a slow painful death. Most of us have already moved onto other games. If they revert the change in Dragonflight, maybe we'll see some revitalization of the community, but honestly, I doubt that will happen. We will always have PVE achievements I guess, but without the PVP aspect the 20s community will likely die out.

 

[chelly]

@Ostriches Please repost this in the wow forums.

Up until a month ago since the change to the xp-disabled bracket, 20s was in a great spot. Of course there were the meta fotm rerollers and premaders but they will always be here. Those tourists just rolled 29s now as the next latest advantage.

I do believe this can get reverted if enough die hard 20s share their stories and take the fight to the forums and bug reports.

 

[orcgazmatron]

As for the last paragraph... I'm not optimistic. Blizzard has been going downhill for years; it seems the talent left that company a long while ago and they don't know how to make a game anymore. Dragonflight will be another flop.
It's truly depressing seeing how empty and devoid of human life these realms are. Standing in places which used to be full of people a decade ago. The MMORPG scene is pretty bleak.

I think we're in accord over the state of Blizz... as for the realms though, sometimes you just need to move to one that's populated.
Couldn't tell you where to go on EU realms, but I'm sure that one will do you right.

 

[ZenwØw]

R i P

 

[toskosa]

Kinda wish that 20s just got there own ftp/vet bracket. That would have been super interesting. Maybe even allow trading but only between f2p and vets.

 

[chelly]

Take it to the forums. Open bug reports on beta/ptr.

 

[Fang]

All those moments will be lost in time...

 

[Vasquez]

Recently dont have many time to play this, but how much is the que times for 20-29 these days. Prefer eu datas.

 

[orcgazmatron]

Kinda wish that 20s just got there own ftp/vet bracket. That would have been super interesting. Maybe even allow trading but only between f2p and vets.

Yeah, that's... never going to happen.
I'd be satisfied with true F2P going back into the leveling que, as it should be.
A vet acct. is & has been prepped for twinking & is, for all intent & purpose, XP-OFF. F2P has towering but surmountable challenges before them to get to where us Vets can go by heading to the AH, or logging over to an alt to craft us the bags, 'chants & gems.

Blizz will never allow, nor should they allow, an un-subbed acct. to trade, or, for that matter; use the AH or mailbox.... well, maybe allow for trades in a dungeon group... that is perhaps not unreasonable, no matter it's unlikeliness.

 

[Zemmix]

You could look at it that way, due to the state of PVP, yes.

But you could also look at it that we now have more to do than ever, more quests and achievements, more...everything.

The brackets will adjust and be fixed eventually, and there is no shortage of fun stuff to do. Now, if you just play F2P to do BGs? Yeah, you might be a bit disappointed.

 

[shanker]

Made my characters in Wrath of the Lich King back when it was a 10-day free trial
Returned for permanent trial and enjoyed the F2P meta experience greatly through the xpacs

Came back for the first time since Legion, and not only has the F2P scene vanished, but on the whole WoW is definitely fading into obscurity. For one, all the realms (EU) are completely dead. NOBODY at Goldshire or Org gates anymore, even on full realms like Silvermoon. There used to be loads of F2P and 20's chilling and duelling.

Hopped into a few BGs in my cata dungeon gear (lol)... and everybody has epics now? Got one-shot repeatedly by level 29s.
Not sure if it's even worth gearing up as a F2P, the power gap seems pretty big. Seems nobody even plays pure F2P anymore; everybody's riding their mains end-game mounts. Back in the day everybody rode the noob lvl20 mounts; their basic bitch horse, saber, kodo, mechanostrider, etc.

I guess it's back to Old School RuneScape

start of the always playable F2P starting in CATA was not all roses and and currently if geared is not as bad as it was back then, but its still bad overall, its nothing new. in CATA facing 29s, then 24s, then back to 29s in the era of full unsquished enchants along with more talents was pretty brutal even in the legion expac template era (enchants did not work) due to paid players able to buy and equip alot of item level 35-50+ items

retail WOW population has severely declined and alot that are subbed in retail WOW are playing blizzard official temp private servers which are.
- classic WOW
- classic WOW season of mastery
- classic TBC
- classic WOTLK
- possibility of Classic CATA, and another rework of classic WOW
also you have players unofficial private servers

blizzard has done alot of changes concerning collections: mounts, tmogs, BOAs, toys

Mounts, originally mounts were only available to the character you earned it on. so if your F2P account was attached to your main Bnet account, you could still only use what you had earned on that player. blizz made mounts account wide years later, so if your F2P was attached to your Bnet account, you had full access to all mounts.

blizzard uses heavy sharding more than ever and even when they dont need to. you can be outside Org gates see a annoucement Gorn beat Chad in a duel and see no one out there. another is chromie time, if you are on legion time, others are on TBC, BFA, you may not see them unless inside Org.

gearing, there are gear guides and players gear set ups on this site. for F2P gear look at TBC loot tables, gearing options are insane for F2P since SL. you are geared like a 70 twink with alot fo gem socket gear as a 20. when you took a older f2p into a BG even if you faced a geared vet20 or f2p you would have been instantly destroyed

most who play vet20 and f2p20s have faced 29 twinks who used exploits to enter leveling BGs in BFA and SL before the recent BG changes were made, so everyone knew what was coming when the v/f20s were put back into xpoff BGs with twinks level 25-29

 

[chelly]

Just re-merge the queues. I’d have no problem playing with/against the 29 scumlords.

I just don’t want to play ONLY with/against them.

 

[toskosa]

Yeah, that's... never going to happen

Probably not but it would be neat.