Couldn’t both of you transfer to a low pop server?
Just asking for the transfers can solve everything crowd.
Well offhand, i would say you both are able to transfer to windseeker
and play together all you want, we have no queues and no layers.
No we can’t both transfer to low pop because we are normal people who have 20+ friends on our respective servers. Not noobs.
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So transfers are not a magic solution?
I intentionally rolled on a low population server as most servers in vanilla had lower populations and I wanted to replicate the vanilla experience. Now that there are free transfers to the realm the population increasing dramatically is ruining the low pop experience I wanted.
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Then you could not play together anyways via transfer, regardless.
If you can not transfer because of friends in your server than you could not transfer to the high pop server either.
Only option would have been to create new toons someplace, which you can still do on a non locked server.
And friends wont matter because one of you would be leaving behind 20+ friends anyways.
And if they are great friends, then they would surely all 40 come roll level 1’s someplace with the 2 of you
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By doing this layering, you have officially ruined the leveling experience. I am a casual player and enjoyed the high population realms because of the ease of finding groups, questing and leveling with other players any time of the day - Now this is virtually dead and non existent over night. Local channels are layer based and the areas are virtually dead, along with the creation of new characters this means once you reach past a certain level, nobody can play below that level ever again, the leveling experience has been officially ruined and that was one of the main reasons I liked playing, now I don’t. I may as well be playing on a zero population realm.
They have made the high population realms solely for level 60 players only. Since you can’t create new characters, or even form groups at low levels barely it will only get worse as time goes on until nobody has a low level character. Absolutely Killed the leveling experience, now you are forced to start playing on a different realm just to be able to form any low level dungeon or group, that’s without any of the perks of having any gold you can send your lower level either
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So, SO very glad I’m not the only one that caught this! It’s like they’re talking down to thier audience. 
You can create new toons all you want.
As long as you already live on that realm.
You can group, people are doing it.
You are logged in arent you?
You are not sitting in a 6 hour queue waiting right?
If other people in game can work things out and make the best of it, you can too.
Respectfully, i would say they ran out of time, the issue was getting worse
faster than other approaches were paying off.
And they are hampered in what they can do effectively or efficiently right now.
In the servers I’m referencing, other approaches weren’t ever even implemented. Three (originally four until the transfers resolved the issue) servers had transfers, nine servers are now layered. Two-thirds of the servers layered never had any other options tried.
This is a tech firm. I am part of a team that runs a large analytics firm, we are still as efficient as our clients require and deserve. Wfh doesn’t have the same impact on firms working in cloud environments via VPNs.
Not to mention their stock is up, they are doing fine.
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It has a ton of impact on me.
Try reimaging one of your hosts remotely
Hi there!
I know this will get buried, but I just want to say thanks to the staff for the quick response to this issue and great comprehensive write up on the pros and cons of each approach.
I’m just glad I can play again with my friends!
Thanks Kaivax, keep up the good work.
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Our database and IT team has been remote for awhile 
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Hah, can’t be as bad as heartseeker. its like 95%/5% alliance to horde imbalance over here.
its borderline unplayable for a hordie trying to grind rep or farm at times.
So you aren’t allowing character restoration either? This is a bit stupid.
Faction specific queues.
Two birds with one stone.
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Yes, exactly. Temporary. I think that’s just it. Just wait it out. No need to make a temporary solution for a permanent game. Those who don’t wait it out are irrelevant.
I am glad you are doing something. But, this is such a band aid solution, to a problem that only exists because you all decided that bigger realm populations than originally existed in Vanilla were an OK idea.
Pagle was awful to do anything open world in long before Corona took us all by surprise. I am legitimately concerned that come TBC, the only way to level will be through dungeons, and I will never be able to open world farm or quest.
You guys need a permanent solution. This game was designed for much smaller populations.
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Where these immediate efforts are somewhat effective, as you said Kaivax, free transfers aren’t “predictable”. But you know what? They WOULD be if you guys would put built-in restrictions into ALL servers so our populations can stabilize over time.
For PvP servers at least, this should be based on Alliance vs Horde Faction ratios.
Set the population caps to 8,000 - or whatever your team feels is appropriate per hardware/software/economy/design of the game, etc.
Put a MAX PvP imbalance that makes sense based on your server cap above. Let’s just say 35/65 or 65/35 is the maximum we want this to go. The higher the population cap, the SMALLER the faction imbalances must be permitted to be.
Current servers that are already above/below those thresholds are locked for transfers on one of or both factions until the server stabilizes.
Something like that seems pretty do-able, seeing how you’ve already used all the above tools to some extent. Most importantly, it would prevent recent issues from ever happening again…such as healthy PvP servers becoming overpopulated and left as 90/10 pseudo PvE servers after a lopsided free transfer event occurs.
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