World of Warcraft®

@Belandor

You can like your low pop servers as much as you want to you might claim you don't really need anything else then the server provides but in reallity you are still wrong.

When you need to progress even at your own pace your AH will be dry there will be no comsumables available via gold most of the time and you would have to farm it on your own spending yet another couple of hours each week just to be able to keep up proper progression.

BoE items highly overpriced , pugs basicly none existent unless you raid with your friends who eventually will get tired to run multiple alts and then you will be left with finger in your backyard trying to figure out how to play the game you like but with no conditions on the sever you were born and raised.

Please stop claiming LOW POP Servers are good cause they are not.
For a handful of snowflakes they might be good but for the majority of the population in this game they are not and for new players they are deffo not good cause in most new/low pop servers raiding/pvp is either at so low lvl or none existent what so ever so new players cannot learn and will eventually quit the game as well when they hit any kind of brick wall and have no one to learn from.

There are no pros to low pop servers unless you like to play only within your guild and not be bothered with any one else.

@Tomura no one that is sane would want to stay on a low populated realm.
People stay cause they are either to attached to their friends/guild or cause they cannot afford to move several chars to diffrent servers.

I'm staying on my low pop realm cause of the people i play with the minute every one there realizes we are better off on a new highly populated realm i'll move instantly without ever thinking of going back to the realm where i 1st started.

Let me tell you something about my realm and how the game change for me since the release of cata.

The realm during TBC and WOTLK was mid/high populated.
I was a officer of a eu 600 guild raiding 3days a week clearing content at our own pace yet still very stable and fast.

Cataclysm came and the realm started to shrink day after day after day after day people continued to leave the realm for various of reasons.
At some point it became impossible to recruit players on the realm due to the fact the realm became low pop no new players joining no transfers cause every sane person would love to play on high pop realm.

The realm is declining there 40-50ppl tops online at peak raiding hours in orgrimar on hordeside wich used to be 2/1 ratio during tbc/wotlk compared to alliance.

I think over the course of the launch of cata and till now more then 30+ guilds have left the realm or stopped all together cause they could not sustain healthy population of players/socials/pvp/rp players even cause the realm i play is RP-PVP one.

The action house is dry you cant use the professions u've lvld to do anything with them i'm happy if i manage to sell 2 gems in 2 weeks.
BoE items are either insanely overpriced or none existent at all.
The amount of pugs going on are well 1-2 a month if you are lucky enough.
Bh is some what the only thing still alive when there is battle at the start of each week.
After that you'll be happy if you manage to meet 10 ppl from opposite faction during battles.

Also just cause my server went from mid/high pop to low populated we had to stop raiding 25man we could not recruit raiders cause of LOW POP REALM and cause stuck up snowflakes refused to move away from the realm cause they have friends here..we eventually faded out as a guild and went 10man the ppl that had nothing else to do..
Eventually those snowflakes stopped playing all together leaving the remains of raiders with really no option at the end of the expansion either to go 10man or transfer and look for new pastures away with their 8-10alts around 200euro per person for transfers alone.

So do not tell me LOW POPULATED realms are good for any one unless you can guarantee your team mates are going to play forever and the fact is no one can give those guarantees

I don't think it's really meant to be something to help out low pop servers anyway. It's just there to make the world feel a little more alive, low level areas are just as empty on higher population servers. I'd guess it's good news for people that enjoy world PvP, too.

@Belandor

You can like your low pop servers as much as you want to you might claim you don't really need anything else then the server provides but in reallity you are still wrong.

OH how silly of me, everyone and anyone who doesn't agree with your opinions on something must be wrong. I feel so stupid now... >.>

I also forgot that you know about everything I want and need from WoW. I mean everyone must want exactly the same thing as you right? And also have the same preferences and goals?

Seriously dude, grow up. It's ridiculously narrow minded of you to think that.

When you need to progress even at your own pace your AH will be dry there will be no comsumables available via gold most of the time and you would have to farm it on your own spending yet another couple of hours each week just to be able to keep up proper progression.

BoE items highly overpriced , pugs basicly none existent unless you raid with your friends who eventually will get tired to run multiple alts and then you will be left with finger in your backyard trying to figure out how to play the game you like but with no conditions on the sever you were born and raised.

Low pop doesn't mean there is nothing on the AH. As for raiding consumables our guild is pretty self sufficient on that front. I already stated in-guild we do Alt-runs and retro raids in addition to our scheduled progression raids and RBGs. Considering we've managed 8/8HC I don't think we're all going to up and leave because we can't PuG something. Especially with LFR.

Please stop claiming LOW POP Servers are good cause they are not.

Please stop claiming YOUR OPINION is fact because it is not. you are just making yourself look ignorant and intolerant.

For a handful of snowflakes they might be good but for the majority of the population in this game they are not and for new players they are deffo not good cause in most new/low pop servers raiding/pvp is either at so low lvl or none existent what so ever so new players cannot learn and will eventually quit the game as well when they hit any kind of brick wall and have no one to learn from.

I highly doubt you have any source of fact for this, as when I was new, I just clicked on a recommended server which had a medium population (Darkmoon Faire)

There are no pros to low pop servers unless you like to play only within your guild and not be bothered with any one else.

Which is how I play, so people who play in a similar fashion to me will always enjoy playing on our low pop server. But I guess we shouldn't be allowed to enjoy it because IN YOUR OPINION they are bad. Oh no! I must tell all my guildies that we should transfer a.s.a.p and appeal to blizz to shut our server down that we have been on since its inception because some random DK on the forums dislikes low pop servers!!

Low pop realms are objectively worse for players without a completely selfsufficient guild.

Less stuff on the AH.
Less people to do dungeons/raids with.
Less recruits for your raiding guild.
Less people to play RBGs/arena's with.
etc.

Anyway, I think the crossrealm zones are just a test to see how it works out. Most likely they will expand on crossrealm stuff a lot in the nearby future.

Lets see one of the most responded threads on the forums is actually about this http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2986509135.
And Beldanor, even if there were server merges it wouldn't mean that every server would be like outland, but it would mean that you could find the occasional pug, not logging on and the only option you have is either random dungeons or bg's, which frankly is the only option on some servers

11/05/2012 17:09Posted by Elviryn

Anyway, I think the crossrealm zones are just a test to see how it works out. Most likely they will expand on crossrealm stuff a lot in the nearby future.

Most likely, they will introduce a complex solution rather than just close the realms down. it's the Blizzard way.

Now it makes me wonder wheter they would ever decide to create such monstrosity as a crossrealm auction house.

I'm sorry but this isn't the best solution for all concerned. As I said in my above post there are many players who prefer to play on low pop realms, it's hardly fair forcing them to move because your guild can't recruit raiders.

maybe give the people options to transfer off but no need to shut them down, that kind of action would probably cause blizzard to lose more subs.

The thing is, i wonder how much would you enjoy the realm if you werent in a guild you love? Sure, you can say you like the server because there are good people on it but truth be told that doesnt really support the premise of a low pop server being good, because dying of bowel cancer is considerably better if you have good people around you but it would never make dying of bowel cancer a "good" experience.

I understand there are some advantages to being on a low populated realm, and if the advantages are worth the disadvantages fair enough for you. Personally however, i would ask why must we choose between the two? Surely there must be an alternative for blizz to implement to help higher pop realms cope with some of the issues they experience (Such as the node farming for instance)? But this train of thought comes dangerously close to "middle ground" which has long since been beaten out of the blizz development team.

You say yourself that you dislike being around idiots or people trolling (ok im paraphrasing there) in trade, but i can think of far better solutions to solve both of those problems:

1. Have the ignore list ignore an account rather than a character. With the up-coming battle tag system that should not be difficult.

2. Create a universal, default on LFG channel, and have functionalities in LFR/LFD that can automatically post in this channel saying you are looking for group/LFM and what you need, and that this system would be the only way to post in this channel (admitadly more technically demanding but at least you wont be forced to camp in major cities for pugs).

As i mentioned in the first paragraph, being on a low population server may be good if you are in a good guild/have good friends there, but if you are new to the realm it would be considerably harder/less likely to find those good people/guilds because it just makes it so much less likely to encounter them at all.

And there is no reason you cannot maintain the close social ties you enjoy on a high population server, its merely in the event you log on where none of your friends are on you would find it easier to group with others for group content, a more established economy and a larger server community.

I understand that the people who enjoy low population servers is a niche (hence the low population) but truth be told blizz has been crapping on niche markets enough for them not to give a crap.

I actually think this technology is good news for under populated realms, its clear that for whatever reason Blizzard refuse to outright shutdown or merge realms but the fact that they can fuse levelling zones presumably means they could combine all the zones on a realm with another realm without actually combing the realms if they wanted to. That wouldn't solve everything but it would be a hell of a lot better than the situation at the moment on under populated realms.

I really just have to facepalm at people saying how great it is being on low population, paying a monthly fee to play a single player game or with their 2 friends as if there isn't a 1000 games they could do that on for free. Blizzard must wish all their customers were those kind of idiots, they could sell them Diablo and Starcraft and charge them £10 a month to play them.

i got 2 85s, 1 80 and a 60 stuck on a dead realm, and the reason i quit play on them is: my friends moved to a new realm, i couldnt afford it when they did and moving 4 characters from 1 realm will cost 100$, whyy must we pay for a thing that isnt hard to do and costs as much as the monthly fee?

11/05/2012 15:54Posted by Beldanor

Low pop doesn't mean there is nothing on the AH.

yes it does, take a look on dragonmaw,thers hardly anything useful on the AH and not only that, the prices is over the roof and you have to farm everthing for yourself, no pugs to do, barely any guilds either, no rbg, nothing, just a damm dead server which makes it feel like you play a SP game like skyrim. and i dont see the reason to pay for realm change who costs as much as your monthly fee.

I think the number of auctions is a goos indicator of the health of the realm.