I fully admit that this title is a pretty open interpretation of the events. I have played on low population servers almost exclusively for years now and I’ve come to love and hate them. Almost all of my gold making prior to Dragonflight was done on these servers, and I was able to made gold cap without too much issue. Things sell – slowly. They sell for (usually) higher than the higher population servers because there are less people selling there. It also means there’s less buyers.
I am comfortable with that low rate of sale because I diversify my markets. Before the regionwide auction house I knew there were limited raiders, so alchemy was probably not going to be the profession for me. Now with regionwide everyone is fighting about undercuts but there’s profit to be made for a player like me, where as in the past, there was not.
At the start of Dragonflight I went looking for greener pastures. I had never attempted M+ before, and I wanted a chance to raid. I wanted to experience more than just gold making. I have multiple sclerosis so finding people who understand my physical limitations can be a daunting task. My guild on the low population servers is quite small, which is not bad but it did make things like raids more difficult to obtain. There’s also no one advertising boosts or sales on my low pop server. Anyway, I moved to a high pop server and things were really awesome as far as seeing folks around in the world and interactions with others.
The server was less awesome when it came to gold making – except for craft orders. Craft orders were my saving grace. I picked up a cheap copy of the lariat neck, the hourglass, and titanic rings, and I was set. My JC reached 100 without buying a single component. The thing is I didn’t know what the market was like on a high population realm. I would have to learn the market over again from scratch.
After a month on the server, I missed the comfort of my low population gold making. I got into a few undercut wars with people and that is a fight that I absolutely could NOT win, both physically and mentally. I didn’t know what people on this new server wanted. I was frustrated.
Plus, I missed my friends. They’re in a different time zone from me but I missed occasionally seeing a friendly face around. I don’t make friends easily, and while I thought moving to a more populated server was the answer – it turns out, I was wrong.
It also turns out that there are some really amazing and awesome communities out there who do cross realm M+ and raiding and everything else you can think of. People who are known for being patient, and for teaching others. I joined WoW Made Easy, and I joined Dungeon Dojo. Both communities are on discord, and while I haven’t actually participated in any events yet, there are options out there if you’re on a smaller server like I am, or you don’t really have a place with ‘your people’ to raid with.
I believe gold can be made on absolutely any server if you put in the time to learn the markets. Low population, high population, all of it comes down to a personal preference. If you have the time and the willpower to play the auction house pvp game and battle it out, a higher population will grant you faster sales and an instant gratification that a low population can never hope to achieve – but if you’re like me, maybe those servers are just not the place you want to be. There’s no ‘wrong’ server to make gold on. You just have to find what works for you.