Warcraft Statistics - Starting Cities

A question recently came on Terra Nova whether virtual worlds like World of Warcraft could be a useful environment for social experiments. Sounds rather boring like a lot of topics that come from Terra Nova. However, behind this question which most gamers couldn't care less about comes some interesting knowledge. It seems since auction houses were introduced in patch 1.9 that player populations have started to rise in the other starting cities.

Thus Stormwind and Darnassus are starting to have more and more people in them. This is important since I remember creating a night elf character once and traveling to Darnassus before the patch to find the city entirely empty. Ever try to find your trainer in a new city with no one to give directions? Its not fun. Anyways a big factor in the popularity of MMO games is the inclusion of other people. Anything that distributes the players across a wider area is good. After all look how player concentration in Everquest made it hard for any interaction (grouping/trading) except in a few popular zones.

Also I would like encourage visiting the Terra Nova website. A lot of gamers might be turned off or intimidated by their language but their articles often contain insights into the games we love.

PlayOn (Starting City Stats)

Terra Nova