Into

Ha, nope. It has a higher population than any Blizzard Vanilla realm did during the glory days. All four realms are "sinking" in that they are declined slightly after launch, but ZK no more than the other three.

Great! I'm sure there are plenty. I left for many of the same reasons (also the Elysium community is fairly toxic). Alliance queues on ZK are instant. I'm Horde and it's usually a 2-5 minute wait on weekends or 10-15 minutes on weekdays. These are while leveling as I'm not 60 yet.

Agreed that Elysium does suck, it's a cesspool and that's why I switched. It's sort of just a meme really that ZK has any pop "issues." ZK is bigger than any actual retail Vanilla realm was. People just aren't used to seeing a Vanilla realm that isn't overloaded like Elysium (5X-6X Bilzzlike) and the old Nost/Anathema (3X Blizzlike). The largest Vanilla servers were limited to 2500 on at peaks and dropped to 800-900 overnight. ZK is considered Blizzlike because it has just a little more than those original Blizzard retail Vanilla servers.

We're going to roll on Anathema tonight and have a level 40 mount by next week for the opening event? We'll have to catch you on the 2018 edition on Zeth'Kur.

Elysium isn't sinking, it's just disconnecting.

Elysium shows as being down fairly often, so they aren't hiding the truth. But yes, fairly often you can't connect even when it is "up". This is exclusive to Elysium and does not happen on Zeth'Kur I've noticed when playing both.

Agreed that Zeth'Kur is the place for new toons, but it's hard to switch once you've built a virtual life on another realm. On the contrary, it seems to me that having 9000 people loaded onto a Vanilla server which Blizzard designed to max out at 2500 connections is the definition of a meme server. ZK is exactly Blizzlike, whereas Elysium (to me) is a clown town. If you play on Elysium, on purpose (i.e., don't just play there because you feel you have to after leveling to 30 before ZK was created) you may be a clown too... so you just can't see the cesspool because... you are the cesspool. Deep isn't it? But really, Vanilla was nothing like Elysium. It was everything like Zeth'Kur. The game was not meant to force you, against your will and all that is holy in the universe, into grouping up for every quest from 1 to 60. You weren't meant to have to struggle to click on a mailbox.

And wouldn't a DDOS hit Zeth'Kur too? It's usually fine and stable when Elysium goes down. Newer hardware?

Zeth'Kur also doesn't seem to go down when Elysium and Anathema go down. This keeps happening in the past week, so I screenshotted the last one today.

This has been the case about 8-9 times in the past two weeks. Never the other way around.

Zeth'Kur wasn't down. Almost never is. :) THOUSANDS of dollars. *Dr. Evil laugh*

Zeth'Kur was not down earlier when Elysium and Anathema were. I've found I've had far fewer disconnects since switching to ZK about a week ago. Not sure if it is less targeted by DOS or if the Blizzlike population allows for more stability than overcrowding a server with far fewer than the 2500 Blizzard intended for Vanilla realms.

Yep, Zeth'Kur is the Blizzlike server. Elysium is Nost+ (heavily overpopulated). Technically though, they are not twins but for one being Blizzlike and the other not. ZK is technically the freshest server as it is a few days to a week younger than Elysium. Heh.

You're welcome! Anathema is definitely my second-favorite, but since I wasn't on Nost., I wanted the experience from the very beginning with ZK. Have fun!

Oh and as far as recommendations, I played on Elysium then Anathema and then finally Zeth'Kur. I wouldn't recommend Elysium to anyone because of how overcrowded it is (making some quests and any grinding completely impossible). Anathema and Zeth'Kur have the same number of people in starting zones, but Anathema has a higher population overall because most players are already 60s and already settled into raiding guilds. Zeth'Kur is brand spankin' new.

Two realms started in early 2015 and are about to raid AQ. These are Darrowmire (PVE, Blizzlike) and Anathema (PVP, formerly Nost). Two realms started in early 2017 and are fresh, not raiding AQ until late 2018. These are Zeth'Kur (Blizzlike PVP) and Elysium (Nost+ like PVP). If you used to play on Nost., Anathema is the realm you were on. Literally. With many of the same people back there now. If you want to start over, Zeth'Kur is completely Blizzlike (still a little higher pop than actual Vanilla servers tho) whereas I found Elysium to be a cesspool. Peak hours today (March 2) had ZK (and Darrowshire) at 3000 and Elysium at 7700. Anathema (Nost.) was at 5300 for comparison.

Especially when it's with another gentleman who prefers playing female characters because they are smaller, thinner, and "feel" more mobile.

Anathema has had the same percentage drop (6K average to 3.5K average) as Zeth'Kur (3.2K average to 2K average) actually, and like I said the queues limiting Elysium to an artificially "low" number at the beginning as people waited to log on just slightly limited their decrease. Again, THERE IS NO DECREASE IN THE PAST TWO WEEKS and Zeth'Kur has reached stability in its population exactly as have the other realms (although Anathema will eventually hemorrhage people if AQ doesn't get going soon). You still didn't say where you got the graphs.

By the way: where did you get that graph? Did you make it yourself? And to be clear about what is "Blizzlike," the maximum number of characters on Blizzard vanilla realms was 2500. Your graph shows 2700 for Zeth'Kur last night on a Tuesday. The minimum number on those maxx-ed out realms was usually around 700. Your graph shows Zeth'Kur bottoming out at 1000. Those were the huge realms that Zeth'Kur is bigger than. I played on a small realm throughout my retail experience. Through TBC and WOTLK (quit just before Cata) my realm was Lethon. That realm would also be considered "Blizzlike" since it was, well, an official Blizzard realm. The max population at peaks there was 1300 or so. The minimum was around 450. This was at its glory-days peak in WOTLK. It had fewer people in all other expansions. In other words, Zeth'Kur today is exactly twice as large as the Blizzard server I played on for years, and it's slightly larger than the biggest Blizz server in Vanilla. Anathema is not Blizzlike, it is Nost-like. Elysium is a cesspool that is like nothing before. Zeth'Kur is clearly Blizzlike, and it's the only PVP realm here that is. (Darrowshire is also Blizzlike for PVE.)

Nice try, but... The graph is exactly the same for all retail Vanilla realms at launch, i.e. all realms were overloaded at launch and then settled into stability. Note that if you took the graph from February 16 to March 1 (last two weeks) the population has not declined all, which is actually unusual for any realm so soon after launch. And again, there are more people on Zeth'Kur than Blizz-like. Not fewer. This graph is also likely the same for Elysium and Anathema, which is why you didn't post those... the only difference being that Elysium had an enormous queue in the beginning, limiting the amount of overload they could have then. In fact, the recent "controversies" have likely taken from Anathema more than from Z'K, where people are relatively happy in comparison.

Not sure. These realms in general are more EU populated, or so I thought. It was above 3000 for the entirety of Saturday afternoon to evening as I recall, so EU night to late, late night. But I really only hit /who a few times. (And even 2700 is more than was ever allowed on a retail Vanilla realm at the same time, so still slightly more populated than Blizzlike.) As we speak there are 2036 people on, and it's a weekday morning in NA (8 AM in Los Angeles, 11 AM here in NYC, 4 PM in London) when everyone is at work. That's wayyyy more than would ever have been on retail Vanilla on a weekday at launch or at any other time during the original 2004-2006 run.

Nope. This is wrong. Here's why. The peak population on retail Vanilla realms was limited to 2500 at once. Z'K has 3000+ online at once all weekend. Those were the highest populated retail Vanilla realms, and Z'K surpasses that today. Being worldwide is an advantage, because those same retail Vanilla realms would bottom out at 600-700 overnight after peaking at 2500. Z'K "bottoms out" at more like 1300-1500 even at the least popular time in the middle of the EU/NA night mid-week. TL;DR: Z'K is larger than Blizzlike because the population is the same or higher at peak, and much higher at the lows.

Nope. This is wrong. Here's why. The peak population on retail Vanilla realms was limited to 2500 at once. Z'K has 3000+ online at once all weekend. Those were the highest populated retail Vanilla realms, and Z'K surpasses that today. Being worldwide is an advantage, because those same highly populated retail Vanilla realms would bottom out at 600-700 overnight after peaking at 2500. Z'K "bottoms out" at more like 1300-1500 even at the least popular time in the middle of the EU/NA night mid-week. TL;DR: Z'K is larger than Blizzlike because it is global and not regional. Not smaller.

Quoted for irony True, I am in NA and it has a healthy pop at all times I play. EU is likely even better. I can see that in Oceania the population would not be ideal. But neither would the latency. You should really have your own private Vanilla server in Australia.

When I was still on Facebook, it was as bad or worse (and not anonymous).