World of Warcraft®

Merging realms together would be a drastic but a good move, seriously.
Korgall is a perfect example, Alliance population is hardly noticed while Horde is swarming (probably not exact number but feels like 90:10 ratio). Im ready to be on RP-PvP realm if thats needed for more population, game feels by far more epic on high populated realms

True. By the looks of it the number of servers in the EU could be reduced by 25% without straining the capacity of the remaining servers.

That would involve some heavy-duty database migrations though.

The horror.

My realm as well is in the same situation, horde population is fine, alliance though is laughable. Many have migrated away or FC to horde to get a chance to raid and such. As far as I know there aren't any 25 man raiding guilds left on alliance side.

It would be awesome if a realm with the opposite problem (overwhelming alliance population and very few horde) is merged with ours.

I totally understand the frustratrions and concerns expressed here, as low population servers do take away the epic feeling the game had.

Sadly this problem has been ignored for years, and I doubt it will be addressed anytime soon. :(

I totally agree, i played on Talnivarr originally, but created characters and leveled on Outland after realising how HORRIBLE Talnivarr is these days. The population is now low, and there never seems to be more than 4 people in sight... even in Stormwind! however when im in SW on outland, theres hundreds of people. Why dont Blizzard merge a load of low populated realms into 1?

This needs major attention from a Blue poster.

We are not going to let this go.

I see fewer and fewer problems with low pop servers in the future of WOW.

Dungeon finder is across a whole continent these days, so running dungeons : np.

The new and incoming REAL ID friiends program makes you run with friends across servers even.

The rest of the play is mostly SOLO or through GUILDS for end game play.


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I can see 2 possible solutions in the future that actually will work.

1. Make economics across servers (should be a success: the bigger the economy the bigger the game).

2. Make open world grouping across servers possible through phasing.

That second solution will certainly be used in their new MMO. It will make single realm based games obsolete.

A bunch of >50 servers can be grouped into world play through this phasing technique, making it irrelevant on what individual server you actually play.

Will this be introduced in WOW in the future? Probably, because their next patch 4.2 is already leading to this world changing play.

My optimistic projection: 2011 : cross realm Real ID friends play -- 2012: cross realm economics. and 2013: cross realm world play through phasing.

I am so happy the individual server play will be gone in their new MMO.

It always leads to dying of individual communities which are simply far too small to keep things going once you have this huge content offer (+100 dungeons and BG's and a zillion zones to pass through).

The huge present day content offer of WOW simply demands cross server play. I have been calculating a bit and ... these days you would need the total population of 20 full servers to keep things going (all levels/dungeons/bg's/80+ zones/Raids/ Arenas) etc...

So server clustering is the only way out for the next decade of Blizzard MMo's.

Single server mechanisms are reallly a thing of the past.

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as long as there is money to be made by forcing people to pay for server transfers, Blizzard will not do anything about low population realms. neither will they do anything about server imbalances, as long as there are paid faction transfers.

the only way this will change is if more and more people simply give up and leave. then, and only then, will the economics of the situation force Blizzard to do something.

this is what happens when you allow micro-transactions to start in what is a pay to play game. you end up with money making taking priority over fixing in game issues.

Just maybe they may start to listen to the paying customers whom aren't happy with the service they aren't providing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFZrzg62Zj0 this

11/06/2011 13:12Posted by Unholywyer

Just maybe they may start to listen to the paying customers whom aren't happy with the service they aren't providing.

then quit or change server if your are not satisfied with the server your playing on!

11/06/2011 14:48Posted by Nerispell

Just maybe they may start to listen to the paying customers whom aren't happy with the service they aren't providing.

then quit or change server if your are not satisfied with the server your playing on!

one of which generates even more money for Blizzard.

as long as paid server transfers are a 99% profit service for Blizzard, not only is there no incentive for them to fix the low population servers, it would actually have a negative impact on their revenue.

and the upcoming premium service, that will allow you to team up with friends on other servers (at an additional cost, of course) will give them even less incentive to fix them.

Blizzard will not lift a finger while people are paying £15 a pop or 20$EU? to xfer characters. Profit is why they are in business not a charity. Even though they should do something about the low pop servers .

**Bump**

As long as realm transfers are available Blizz won't do anything to hinder their income, as sad as it is.

Listen Very good i will like this ;)

i had to pay for my mains to get transferred off of a low populated server. It was either that, or start from scratch all over again. Or i could have stayed and suffered.

Blizz aren't going to help low populated servers when they have paid transfers available. I feel quite sorry for those trapped there but blizz dont give a damn im afraid.