World of Warcraft has come a long way since its launch back in November 2004. The game as a whole has aged, and as an online game ages it can become harder for new players to find their place in it. Is World of Warcraft an exception?

An important factor in easing new players into an online game is whether or not they’ll have a tough time finding groups for quests and instances. In World of Warcraft the grouping scenario is different on each realm, and each of these scenarios are based on a realm’s population.

In my experience, and as illogical as it may first sound, the lower a realm’s population, the more one will be able to group at lower levels. This is attributed to the fact that when a new realm is made available, new and old players alike all have to start from the same base – level one. On established realms the majority of the active player-base will have already played through the older content, and will be primarily engaged in end-game activities. The longer one waits to join in on the fun, the older the average character level on the server will become and the harder it will be to group in early areas.

Thankfully, it is relatively easy to solo the majority of the early content in World of Warcraft, which is exactly what most players will spend most of their time doing. There are a number of “Group quests” that require teaming up with party members, but it is rarely necessary to perform these quests, and many players will skip them all together. Grouping for quests in general is not something that players tend to do with much frequency. There are exceptions, but overall, the average WoW player seems to prefer soloing quests instead of spending precious time finding people to play with when it is not necessary. There is simply not that much incentive for grouping any more.

Instances, on the other hand, require groups in order to be played, and players seem to have migrated away from doing lower-level instances at all! This could be attributed to a number of reasons, but it’s most likely due to the fact that on most established realms, finding an instance group can literally take hours as there are simply not enough people to play with that fall within the recommended level range.

Blizzard has also made a number of changes over the years, which have been implemented in order to make it easier for players to level by questing, such as less experience points being needed to level up and higher experience gains per quest. These changes have somewhat lowered the appeal of playing through early instances, as the benefits they provide (desirable loot and experience) are usually far outweighed by the difficulties involved in actually finding people with which to run an instance, especially when one could be performing relatively easy solo quests for what have become inflated experience rewards.

Ultimately, there is simply no way to judge the effortlessness of grouping in the game as a whole, as every realm paints a different picture. Even on the oldest of servers, you will find a group if you’re willing to start one and take the time to find people to fulfil the various roles within it.

Keep in mind that realms labelled as “Recommended” in the server selection screen are labelled so for a reason.  Do not make the mistake of thinking that because a realm’s population is “High” or even “Full” it will be easier to group, as this is simply not the case.

When starting a new character, stick to the newer realms and your life in Azeroth will be a much easier one!

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