My server might as well be called Server 737636… no point having a name.
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Blizzard have made it abundantly clear that they expect the players to solve population issues with transfers, either faction or realm.
I did a little research on our realm and I would like to ask is 15,000 enough for a realm to function in any way possible? or is this the cut off point?
Do you have a source for this? I mentioned earlier in the thread that SL connections were stopped only because they came across technical hurdles that were short-term unresolvable. Further, they’ve finally admitted the faction divide (to your extra example) is a problem, so I’m not entirely convinced they’ve flat out said “suck it up” with realm pop issues.
It’s obviously not Blizzards explicit stated policy that you pay for a transfer if your realm or faction is dead, but their lukewarm responses to the dwindling populations on less popular realms as well as the increasing polarizations between factions (this isn’t aimed just at the NA Alliance, OCE Horde is basically dead in the water with most Horde players going Alliance over the last few expansions) ensured that there is no real solution otherwise if you’re interested in end-game content.
Realm merges don’t solve the inherent issues. Frostmourne has like 8 realms connected to it and all it didn’t do anything for the greater population because any player who was halfway interested in progression had already come here years ago.
Blizzard “solving” the faction imbalance won’t be them implementing something that reverses all the migration to the Horde over the years. It’ll be them removing the faction barriers so it doesn’t matter what faction you play (which granted is still really good).
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This is actually something I’m expecting them to come out with in some form.
I’m wondering how extreme a change it would be for them to shuck current realm-based guild and AH design by shifting them to region-wide compatibility. I think they are afraid it would upend the current social status quo, but something or anything more poignant than connections would be a risk I’d be glad for them to take honestly.
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mate, ty for listening us in GD and sharing with CC. really showing that you are a voice for us <3
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I think it would also be helpful if they would finally be honest about why they can’t connect the NA and EU realms. They used to claim it was a problem with copyright law between the EU and US - but since the EU regions house numerous non-EU countries, such as Russia, Turkey and the UK, and since they fired all their EU support staff and iirc, run EU customer support out of Texas - I don’t think that’s the issue any longer.
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It’s an issue I’ve dealt with for 13 years. I know its a sore spot for people 
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Do the merge “behind the scenes” battlegroup style. We as players still see our server shards and player-server for names, but the game sees them as Denathrius. None of us are really “on” our servers anyways. They can have what’s displayed to us be anything they want it to say.
Pick your “Server cluster”, pick your server, and make your character… wait… this sounds like a setup I’ve seen before…
My biggest problem with this is the latency. It’s already pretty un-fun when I get in an Oceanic BG or dungeon on their instance servers and likewise with OCE having to play on an instance in North America. I’d like them to figure out a better solution to the bad latency feeling (i.e. re-work network code) since I know not all of the problem is the physical distance. The overall possibility is something that would be cool some day.
But how do guilds work in this scenario? Sure its a “battle group” but if my load in screen says Vek’Nilash, and when I log in my character is Letholas-Denathrius, that doesn’t translate.
Server name is just a character identifier. Like a last name. It’s mostly for us to keep our names and keep characters cataloged. We never see the “Denathrius” in game. Except for the character selection screen that would be pure blizzside.
In game they’d all be one “server”.
If we think about it like an address. We live on the same street. You say you live on Server Ave. I say no way I live on Server Ave. The guy next to us says I live on the next block over!
We don’t need to say the city.
Guilds would see the whole city, not just our streets.
This is a problem with that system though. If John Smith and John Smith both work in IT and both live on Server ave, how do you tell them apart?
seems like the only option would be to allow free name changes, which sucks. however, i am certain it’s a better compromise than all these ‘dead’ servers =/
Can’t happen. Just like now there can’t be two Letholas-veknilash. For us there’d be no change except a cluster select before the server select.
Ok. Who has to change their name? I’ve had mine since January 2009. Should I have to give it up by rolling a die?
If you connect realms then the old realm name becomes a namespace technically for a name. I have used this to my benefit on my connected realm. But last names would work to solve this too.
But it can. For example: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/search/?term=letholas
If Vek’Nilash and Eonar get merged, there are two Letholas Death Knights on the same realm.