World of Warcraft®

Hi there,

I play on the Deathwing server. For years I've played only alliance, but a few months ago I migrated one of my 85s to the horde side and also started up a new horde shaman. This turned me on to the fact that there is a massive disharmony between the horde and alliance populations on my server. This is easily noticeable from just chilling in Ogrimmar and checking out it's auction house and then doing the same in Stormwind or from queueing for Tol Barad (something that never happens on my alliance chars because I just get in straight away, but on my horde char I have to queue right at 15 minute mark during peak hours to get in).

It seems like there are as many as 3 or 4 times the amount of players on the horde side (this is just my experience obviously, could be less).

These revalations coincided with my alliance guild deciding to migrate servers for this exact reason. The alliance side is dead. I chose not to migrate servers with the rest of my guild for various reasons but I would like to ask if you, Blizzard, are aware of this problem and if so is anything being done to remedy it? I've noticed in the past that targeted character server transfers have been offered presumably in an attempt to restore some sort of parity.

This is a serious problem. I love my alliance chars and it sucks feeling like I'm only getting half the playing enjoyment out of them compared to my horde chars (an example is that it can be very difficult to find pick up groups to do stuff on alliance side where at worst you can sit around for hours, whereas you hardly have to wait 5 minutes in Ogrimmar for the same results).

Might be an exaggeration, but there can be no denying that the problem is there. I don't feel like spending 4x 25 euro to transfer my remaining alliance characters to the horde side. Not just because of the money but also because of the alliance lore which I enjoy.

I also suspect that this can't be a problem limited solely to the Deathwing server. Please Blizzard. This is severely crippling the gaming experience in the long run. Hope something can be done.

27/10/2011 14:13Posted by Dreader

These revalations coincided with my alliance guild deciding to migrate servers for this exact reason. The alliance side is dead.

This is why the servers are dead or dying, it's not Blizzard fault, so stop asking them to fix it.
Players on these servers should make an effort to attract and encourage more people to join them, not drive them away by migrating and calling them dead servers. Blizzard can only do so much, but the main problem is the players themselves.

28/10/2011 10:35Posted by Holstein

These revalations coincided with my alliance guild deciding to migrate servers for this exact reason. The alliance side is dead.

This is why the servers are dead or dying, it's not Blizzard fault, so stop asking them to fix it.
Players on these servers should make an effort to attract and encourage more people to join them, not drive them away by migrating and calling them dead servers. Blizzard can only do so much, but the main problem is the players themselves.

I don't think it's unfair for me to ask Blizzard to address this issue to be honest. And while I agree that the solution certainly isn't for players to abandon ship can't you see that it quickly becomes self-fulfilling? Once the population seems too low then players might start to leave ensuring that was a small problem is now bigger.

Also, I am staying but I can't solve this problem on my own. As a player I can't really do much at all to be honest except to keep my alliance characters alive and kicking so I am writing this which feels like the only thing I can do. So, unless you're suggesting that I just accept my fate and "stop bothering others" then I can't see a problem with me asking Blizzard for help while trying to make the community at large aware of this issue.

28/10/2011 10:50Posted by Dreader

This is why the servers are dead or dying, it's not Blizzard fault, so stop asking them to fix it.
Players on these servers should make an effort to attract and encourage more people to join them, not drive them away by migrating and calling them dead servers. Blizzard can only do so much, but the main problem is the players themselves.

I don't think it's unfair for me to ask Blizzard to address this issue to be honest. And while I agree that the solution certainly isn't for players to abandon ship can't you see that it quickly becomes self-fulfilling? Once the population seems too low then players might start to leave ensuring that was a small problem is now bigger.

Also, I am staying but I can't solve this problem on my own. As a player I can't really do much at all to be honest except to keep my alliance characters alive and kicking so I am writing this which feels like the only thing I can do. So, unless you're suggesting that I just accept my fate and "stop bothering others" then I can't see a problem with me asking Blizzard for help while trying to make the community at large aware of this issue.

The issue is not with your server, or any specific servers, but the game in general. The game is losing players on a daily basis and this affects the population on all servers.
If you start asking people to move to your server and help populate it, you have to think where you're getting those players from and what affect that will have on the other server.

It's like pouring one gallon of milk into 12 milk bottles. You can't fill them all.

I don't think it's unfair for me to ask Blizzard to address this issue to be honest. And while I agree that the solution certainly isn't for players to abandon ship can't you see that it quickly becomes self-fulfilling? Once the population seems too low then players might start to leave ensuring that was a small problem is now bigger.

Also, I am staying but I can't solve this problem on my own. As a player I can't really do much at all to be honest except to keep my alliance characters alive and kicking so I am writing this which feels like the only thing I can do. So, unless you're suggesting that I just accept my fate and "stop bothering others" then I can't see a problem with me asking Blizzard for help while trying to make the community at large aware of this issue.

The issue is not with your server, or any specific servers, but the game in general. The game is losing players on a daily basis and this affects the population on all servers.
If you start asking people to move to your server and help populate it, you have to think where you're getting those players from and what affect that will have on the other server.

It's like pouring one gallon of milk into 12 milk bottles. You can't fill them all.

I see your meaning. But I think I am a little more nuanced in my plea. Surely there must be servers out there with an over-populated alliance side. It would be from those servers I would want players to come to mine. Not just some arbitrary server where it might currently be roughly 50/50

The issue is not with your server, or any specific servers, but the game in general. The game is losing players on a daily basis and this affects the population on all servers.
If you start asking people to move to your server and help populate it, you have to think where you're getting those players from and what affect that will have on the other server.

It's like pouring one gallon of milk into 12 milk bottles. You can't fill them all.

I see your meaning. But I think I am a little more nuanced in my plea. Surely there must be servers out there with an over-populated alliance side. It would be from those servers I would want players to come to mine. Not just some arbitrary server where it might currently be roughly 50/50

Taking milk from one bottle to help fill the other will still leave an empty bottle. It may not be you bottle, but someone will always end up being short of milk.

Easy option then rather than trying to spread the player bas around.

If you have two servers one has 70% Horde-Alliance ratio another has 70% Alliance-Horde ratio but both realms are low-medium population.

Merge them.

In essence going along with your analogy, fill up one bottle from the two half bottles then throw the empty bottle away.

Easy option then rather than trying to spread the player bas around.

If you have two servers one has 70% Horde-Alliance ratio another has 70% Alliance-Horde ratio but both realms are low-medium population.

Merge them.

The servers may appear to be low populated to you and me, but we are only counting the active players that we see. A server merge has to take into account all the inactive players aswell and only Blizzard has those figures. What appears to be a 70:30 to you, may actually be a 50:50 to Blizzard... and merging two servers could result in 100:100... it won't fit!

28/10/2011 11:26Posted by Totlimber

In essence going along with your analogy, fill up one bottle from the two half bottles then throw the empty bottle away.

I wish it was that simple.

Easy option then rather than trying to spread the player bas around.

If you have two servers one has 70% Horde-Alliance ratio another has 70% Alliance-Horde ratio but both realms are low-medium population.

Merge them.

The servers may appear to be low populated to you and me, but we are only counting the active players that we see. A server merge has to take into account all the inactive players aswell and only Blizzard has those figures. What appears to be a 70:30 to you, may actually be a 50:50 to Blizzard... and merging two servers could result in 100:100... it won't fit!

No you kind of misjudged what I meant because you are basing % ratios on full servers... let me explain in mumbers.

Say for an easy explanation 100 people could fit on a realm.

On one realm you have 10 Ally 30 horde and on another you have 30 ally and 10 horde.

This is the case where I would say mergers are possible.

Bare in mind obviously those are incredibly simplified numbers and not all realms would be able to do this however some would and it would go someway to address the issue.

The servers may appear to be low populated to you and me, but we are only counting the active players that we see. A server merge has to take into account all the inactive players aswell and only Blizzard has those figures. What appears to be a 70:30 to you, may actually be a 50:50 to Blizzard... and merging two servers could result in 100:100... it won't fit!

No you kind of misjudged what I meant because you are basing % ratios on full servers... let me explain in mumbers.

Say for an easy explanation 100 people could fit on a realm.

On one realm you have 10 Ally 30 horde and on another you have 30 ally and 10 horde.

This is the case where I would say mergers are possible.

Bare in mind obviously those are incredibly simplified numbers and not all realms would be able to do this however some would and it would go someway to address the issue.

I know what percentages are and how they work. You can't fit 200% onto one server.
You forgot about the 60 inactive accounts on your servers. Where do you put them?

Ok but im talking about the % ratio of players on a server whether inactive or not.

Not the % of what a realm can hold.

If you worked it out by your logic your saying every server is at or near 100% capacity which is just not correct.

Please. Blizzard answer to low population servers or unbalanced servers is to let people migrate between them.

Lets say realm has too little players. Then Blizzard lets people migrate from too populated servers. That is no solution.

Ok but im talking about the % ratio of players on a server whether inactive or not.

Not the % of what a realm can hold.

If you worked it out by your logic your saying every server is at or near 100% capacity which is just not correct.

Even if the servers were at 51% capacity including inactive accounts, that's still too much to merge two servers together.

Ok but im talking about the % ratio of players on a server whether inactive or not.

Not the % of what a realm can hold.

If you worked it out by your logic your saying every server is at or near 100% capacity which is just not correct.

Even if the servers were at 51% capacity including inactive accounts, that's still too much to merge two servers together.

The point is there are plenty of servers which arent even near 50% capacity, go onto any WoW census site and compare say Outland-EU to any other low pop eu server there is much less than 50% even 30% of the players on the low pop compared to somewhere like Outland.

Even if the servers were at 51% capacity including inactive accounts, that's still too much to merge two servers together.

The point is there are plenty of servers which arent even near 50% capacity, go onto any WoW census site and compare say Outland-EU to any other low pop eu server there is much less than 50% even 30% of the players on the low pop compared to somewhere like Outland.

Those figures only show the current active accounts. You have to take into account the inactive accounts before considering a server merge.

Outland according to EU Realm Stas has 26,000 players and is classed as a "FULL" server.

Laughing Skull on the other hand has in total 2800 players.

So could quite easily be merged with a similar server.

Even taking into account the inactive accounts.


Source: http://www.warcraftrealms.com/eu_realmstats.php