World of Warcraft®

Merging servers might be bad PR but it is the best solution.

Bad PR is stating that 600k players have stopped playing.

Being big enough to say, that they need to help the paying customers get the best out of the game is something that would only be seen as valuing what you have.

Blizzard should really DO something, because it ruins the playing experience, and blizzard must guarantee equal game experience to everyone who pays.

I'd suggest you to look at Al'akir alliance - You're lucky if there is 49 or more lvl 85's, most of the time its under 49. While Horde is overcrowded.

If we all start submitting tickets, surely they will sit up and take notice?

I've been clamming for this for months now, I have mane several suggestions on several forums, I have opened ingame tickets about this matter, everything to no avail..

Imo the best (and only?) solution is to merge realms, something has to be done cos the social aspect of the game is getting lost.. they lost 600.000 subs because you get bored pretty fast on an empty server, specially when there are no content available..

The only solution was for you to PAY to change to a better realm, now they came up with an alternative.... PAY to queue with realID friends...

Isn't anyone there on Blizz brainstorming meetings saying "that is a baaaad idea guys..." ? Cos its pretty obvious that this is going downhill and fast.

Thing is, Blizzard seem to be ignoring this situation.
I don't want to pay to move all my 10 toons on my server, I use them all.
I am willing to accept the shut down of my realm and move freely to another, either a new realm that is the target realm for 3-5 realms being closed or another low populated realm.

All Blizzard have to do is state whats going on.
Give GMs the chance to move their guild there, then the rest of the guild can move straight into their new home.
Give the players a deadline to do it, say 2 weeks.
If they don't move after 2 weeks, their toons will be deleted with the shut down of the old realm.

**Bump**

14/05/2011 18:35Posted by Unholywyer

2) Opening up a free character migration

Not gonna happen.

19/05/2011 07:36Posted by Alox

2) Opening up a free character migration

Not gonna happen.

Thats so constructive and on a lvl 3 alt toon.........

It's getting so tiring...

"Bad PR"

"It's too difficult"

"It's too expensive"

When did Blizzard stop caring about it's customers and the enjoyment of their games and only looked at the numbers? It's not bad PR if they put effort into making sure everyone is having fun playing their game... it shows involvement, caring and a professional approach to running a business. I've been a fan for years but the feeling is dying, due to this indifference to glaring problems. Instead of fixing this, new features are introduced which are utter nonsense and you also have to pay for them.

Right now 100's of people have serious issues with playing this game as it was intended and are considering stopping because of it. Yesterday another 3 people I know and had in my guild migrated away... there's no stopping the death of Executus now, unless something is done.

Worst of all tho... no word whatsoever, no plans whatsoever. We hear completely NOTHING from Blizzard. The only thing we heard recently is "Look at this new shiny thing! Pay for it!".

You can do better than that Blizzard, you always could and did... don't stop now at a critical point in time.

**Bump**

This is a subject which ive had strong opinions for a long time now... so ill add what i know :P

Firstly, Blizzard will NEVER merge realms. There are dozens of extremely obvious reason why they wont ever do this so forget that ever happening. Bad PR is the main reason, but also massive technical headache, same player names, guild names, server geographical location etc. LOADS of issues.

Secondly, the paid transfer service is a massive income source for Blizzard. The shareholders (Activision mainly) would never make it free all the time they make so much money from it. So also forget that ever happening too.

It annoys me that so many people treat Blizzard like a charity which must be giving its customers stuffs and attention. Its a multi-million dollar business run by businessmen, not gamers. Every decision is made for financial reasons not the happiness of a handful of upset customers.

I was on a low-pop faction and eventually gave up trying to play on that realm and paid for a transfer. it was the best decision i ever made in Wow. Sure the £15 was annoying, but if i wanted to play Wow properly with all the game options open to me then i had to do it...

20/05/2011 12:20Posted by Endemonadia

Secondly, the paid transfer service is a massive income source for Blizzard

Depends: if people on low pop servers choose to quit the game rather than bothering with a transfer, that's a loss.

IMHO they should merge ALL realms into one.

Today WoW is played mostly in instanced areas, so there is no reason to have separate realms, they can just instance the whole world and then have players split automatically across instance servers.

20/05/2011 12:46Posted by Lolisa

Secondly, the paid transfer service is a massive income source for Blizzard

Depends: if people on low pop servers choose to quit the game rather than bothering with a transfer, that's a loss.

IMHO they should merge ALL realms into one.

Today WoW is played mostly in instanced areas, so there is no reason to have separate realms, they can just instance the whole world and then have players split automatically across instance servers.

Really? And on a lvl 1 toon?
Yeah think I'd post such a stupid suggestion on a lvl 1 toon myself.

The only options are merging servers.
Names are going to be a problem but thats something we can live with.

I suggest guilds be able to invite players from other realms. I related that to Real-ID, so they will have to have Real-ID enabled to use the cross-guild-function. (If not that, players would prob don't bother about their behavior to much.)

Minus: They can not share the guildbank, or trade between characters cross-server except for the drops in raids.

Plus: This would make people play on low populated realms, and still be part of a good community. And they get the advantages from guild-reputation and guild-progression.

This character, along with my Alliance characters, reside on a low pop PvP server Xavius. A month or so before cataclysm we were designated a free migration server. Now most people flock to servers with a high population and this causes large queues and then Blizzard open free migration to lower population realms like Xavius. When this happened it helped us out greatly, a largish guild moved there and managed 6/13 hc in the current content but then migrated to another server as people left again. It was great and some people who migrated stayed but those who joined the big guilds left woth them and we then became a low population server.

During the free migration our population increased greatly but that only lasted for a month or two. Lots of people try out warcraft, join guilds maybe even raid and then decide the game is not for them and leave. Servers that are designated new players need for this to continue a lot longer so they can have their population built up to say a high-medium so that when players decide the games not for them the realm doesnt crash in population back to low.

The official subscriber base of WoW has reached a plateau and will probably spike when new expansions and major content patches come out so I don't forsee new servers being launched but maybe some servers should be shut down as a huge hike in the steady playerbase is very unlikely. I know this will lead to many QQ posts but will it lead to many more that say paid for mounts or paid for dungeon finder, probably not.

Blizzard always claim that PvP is not balanced on 1v1 and world PvP is usually 1v1 when your out questing. This tends to lead to one OP class (at a specific level) 'ganking' players that have no way of defending themselves because of a one-shot ability or no wat of getting out of a specific ability. You also get level 85s one shooting players many levels below them just for fun. World PvP is a joke and that has lead people to leave PvP servers in droves and that's why they're empty.

Blizzard introduced queues in high population servers and that's what drives the free transfers - this works but it needs to run longer so a server can build a stable population. New players should be unable to make a character on a full server; it's common for people to see high population on the server list and then go there because it's more active, leaving the loo population servers alone. If your friends on that server then get him to migrate to the low pop server too, for free.

As I have said before, people don't like PvP servers so Blizzard decided to make some PvE servers and allow free transfers to a PvP server. Let's do this to more servers, some people, like myself, regret moving to a pvp server, it's not PvP most of the time - it's ganking.

I'm not sure if I believe the sats that some sites have but some claim that servers are 70% one side and 30% another. Faction change has made this even worse. On Xavius it's pretty much a Horde server, by how much I've no idea. I have noticed that instead of server transfering people have decied that because Horde have more members it will be better to change, this makes the situation worse. If server balance is so bad maybe faction transfers can be suspended on a per server basis.

Anyway, thats enough of my wall-o-text.

Not a wall of text mate, its more feedback which we're trying to get Blizzard to take notice of.

**Bump**

I will not pay to move my chars if it ever came to the decision so i gues iwould just quit. I feel for you though since i have played games where the world is dead.

I enjoyed Asherons Call for almost 5 years and the last two were just empty and devoid of people. I am lucky that on my server we have people and i intentionally chose a server with a medium pop for that very reason.

I bought the Japan relief pet but that is diff and not akin to moving chars..

18/05/2011 12:32Posted by Debgo

Karazhan realm is low populated since it was open

I still have my prot pala on there. The last few months it seems to have gone downhill even more Alliance wise. On a peak time in SW you literally see about 4 - 5 people. Executas is gaming paradise compared to that realm to be honest.