There are realms all over retail WoW that are in dire need of help with regards to server connections or consolidations, and yet not a single thread on the Community Council forum is asking about it yet.
The gameplay issues being raised in CC so far are good to talk about, but realm configuration is still a huge deal since it directly impacts the main way communities get together (guilds). My guild right now has started a heated debate on whether we could mass-transfer to a more populous realm for a better in-game economy because Arygos-Llane is so dead, and I can’t stand seeing us need to even talk about fracturing our community because Blizzard has thus far refused to go far enough on realm connections.
Please speak for issues like this that go beyond direct gameplay design. It needs to be said and discussed.
I’m reviewing now and also linking it to my guild. I’m sure there may be something else they’d like to add.
The character transfer sale going up is part of what sparked this discussion and it pains me to think we have an artificial deadline (the sale) to even try to have this serious of a debate during the holiday season.
It’s unfortunate that people would consider a mass transfer, but it’s something my server has experienced as well with some of the raiding guilds. Personally there are things I like and dislike about the small servers, and I think some small servers should exist for players who prefer that playstyle, but frankly there are just too many of them right now.
if they merge servers its like admitting they losing players. Stockholders may not play wow but they do pay attention to things like that. It dont look good.
As I recall the only reason they stopped connections before Shadowlands was because of technical hurdles they ran in to with a few of the attempted ones. I’d kinda also just like some news on where they are at solving whatever the problem(s) was/are.
One thing I’ve considered suggesting, and I’d love to hear some feedback on this, is to break down and rebuild “new” servers.
It’s not a perfect solution, but I don’t know what is, honestly.
Some of the issues would be
Character Names
Guild Names
Economy
Server Identity
Execution
Right now some realm groups are getting just too long to type or know. For example I play on Vek’Nilash, connected to Nazgrel & Nesingwary. It’s long, but I know there are longer.
What I don’t want is to say I play on Vek’Nilash, connected to Nazgrel, Nesingwary, Arygos, Llane, Hydraxis, and Haomaroush
That’s way too much. But if you took those 7 servers, merged them, and renamed them Denathrius, then what happens?
The complexity of this solution (and most other possible solutions outside more connections) makes me wonder if it could be why we aren’t hearing anything. Any type of relatively-/radically-new design for handling realm pop will almost surely be kept under tight wraps until they feel solid it has very few holes and those known holes have coverage.
That’s not to say I’m assuming they’re working on something. They could be or they could not be; more just saying that maybe they recognize a new path is needed and aren’t comfortable talking about it yet.
Realms are insanely condensed right now. And the ones that aren’t are literal ghost towns.
Right now there are 458 CE guilds right now on NA realms (including OCE/ES/PT realms)
On the top ten realms there are:
A52 - 55 CE guilds.
Illidan - 63 CE guilds.
Stormrage - 18 CE guilds
Tich - 38 CE guilds.
Zuljin - 34 CE guilds.
Thrall - 19 CE guilds.
Frostmourne - 52 CE guilds.
Mal’ganis - 36 CE guilds.
Ragnaros - 16 CE guilds.
Sargeras - 20 CE guilds.
Azralon - 19 CE guilds.
Bleeding Hollow - 15 CE guilds.
Out of EIGHTY THREE realms, 382 out of 458 guilds which have killed Mythic Sylvanas reside on 12 realms. That’s 83.4%.
Meaning that the other 71 realms only have 76 CE guilds between them, an average of just over 1 guild per realm. But that’s not distributed equally with the next 10 top realms having 49 of the 76 remaining guilds, leaving 17 guilds split over 61 realms.
FOURTY ONE realms have not claimed realm first Mythic Sylvanas.
And the saddest of the sad, on Gallywix, not ONE mythic boss has died this tier.
Now obviously the tier isn’t over and Mythic raiding (especially not CE raiding) isn’t the only relevant metric of realm health, but if you were to take the time and cross reference those realms with M+ and PvP participation, it’d probably be just as sad.
I changed the thread title again to be less whiny, which might have changed the URL. I’d probably go ahead and refresh this thread so you can grab the fresh URL just to be sure.
While yes, this is sad, it’s also important to consider that may not be their prerogative, and that’s ok! Small realms can exist, and do well, and players may enjoy the playstyle of running around in a world with just them and monsters and they should be able to have that experience if they want to.
I mean maybe. But there are guilds on there that do Heroic, it isn’t some sentilese-esque tribe of undiscovered WoW players who eschew instanced end-game.
Looking at their Nathria progression, there was one guild that tried to do M Prog (6/10M with a sister guild sharing a similar name being 5/10) but considering that guild is currently 2/10H, it looks like they packed it in in Sanctum and either moved to greener pastures, or just gave up raiding entirely.
my experiences with realm connections is they don’t fix anything and make the servers worse.
First time my main’s server was connected back in WoD - we had a top 10 mythic raiding guild that left AFTER the connection because we got connected with a lousy server. My HIGH population server again got connected with 6 others last time around and it may have benefitted some of those servers but you wouldn’t know it on wow progress because merging 8 crappy servers just gives you a crappy raid pool to select from. In addition, the chat channels are just trash now.
I think some of this could honestly be at least partly resultant from Blizzard letting the problem fester way too long. It is now more a gaping, infected wound than a small scratch and any possible solution is going to result in at least a minor number of players not benefitting at all.
