Today, we are going to be talking about Whitemane’s Fresh Cataclysm server, Maelstrom, the server launched on March 3rd, 2023 and I wanted to share my first impressions of the server and give a brief review.

Why Maelstrom Is So Popular?

The server has a lot of unique and cool features, like cross faction play, racial ability swapping, increased XP, and even a level skip from level 60 to 80, so you don’t have to suffer leveling through TBC and WOTLK Classic again. I’ve been having a blast the last few days and this might just be the perfect fun server to join before a potential Classic Cataclysm is released.

Whiteman has released a fresh cataclysm server called Maelstrom, and the launch has gone really well so far. Of course, there were 1 or 2 server resets on the first day, some lag and the server has been crashing once or twice every few hours, but usually comes up with in a minute or two.

All in all, this launch weekend went about the same, or dare I say, better than an official Blizzard launch and now that the kinks have been worked out, the server seems to be running great. The population is huge for a private server in 2023, a ton of people are playing there right now. The number of players is about the same as the Turtle WoW Team.

When you refresh Who List, there are around 3000 people playing. People are questing in the open world and a lot more people are dungeon spamming, using dungeon finder.

Yes, LFG is a thing, it was back in Cataclysm, but what is cool about Maelstrom is that there is only one server, so you are playing with everyone from your own server. The same feeling in retail you get, where you don’t know anyone isn’t really there, because everyone in your group is from your server.

Cross Faction

Another cool feature about this server is that there is cross faction play. So, you can group with people from the opposite faction, you can have Undead with Humans, Worgen and Goblins, and surprisingly, it’s working great. Ques are fast and people are friendly. I think Blizzard should look into doing something like this on their Classic Era Servers or classic data.

Cross faction play isn’t limited to just dungeons, you can take part in mixed battlegrounds, arenas, raids, parties, whispers, you name it. However, it is a PVP server, so you can not enter the opposite factions’ cities or towns.

I was playing a tank and was getting instant ques, but imagine healers and DPS have a short wait time. I have seen no one complaining yet and leveling is super fast.

Auto Learning Abilities

Some other pleasant quality of life features of the server are auto learning abilities, you don’t have to return to the trainer every-time you level up, the spells are free and simply appear in your spell book or on your hotbars.

Speaking of free, level 20 mounts are also free, which saves you time, so you don’t have to worry about all that Whitemane Maelstrom Gold. I mentioned racial shift. What that means is you can go to a special NPC in Orgimmar or Stormwind, and simply swap your racial abilities.

So, you have the will of the Forsaken on a Tauren, or Shadow Meld on a Gnome. No need to worry about picking the optimal meta racial for PVE or PVP. Just play whatever looks and feels best for you.

All flight paths are unlocked, except the level 80+ zones, so you can easily travel between old work content, encase you out-level your zone by running 5 mans, you can just fly to the next nearest town and continue leveling there.

Friendly & Community Oriented

Whitemane has also created several community friendly rules for the server. You can not take part in GDKPs, and there is currently no cash shop and there is no pay to win. It is not tolerated on the server.

The Whitemane team loves hosting events, and have already had two events, including a Jump Event, and a 1v1 tournament, so we can expect more fun events in the future. 10 man and 25 man raids have separate lockouts, so you can enjoy both versions of your raids, and heroic raids have a raid dampening mechanic that decreases damage by 25% for 10 man and 15% for 25 man.

There are many PVP changed like, 3v3 solo que, spectator mode, increased honor gain and much more. The server isn’t without its problems. There have been crashes. However, most have been resolved, and some bugs have been reported. But devs seem to answer tickets quickly and will even show up in game to fix your issues.

Over all, the Whitemane team seems friendly and community oriented. This server has a lot of potential as a fun server to check out as an easy, less time-consuming way to check out Cataclysm before an official Blizzard release, or this server may just be your home for the future.

I’m not sure where I stand yet. I plan to level up server characters and test out Cataclysm content, different classes and most importantly, have fun.