CC - realm population issues thread cross-discussion

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?

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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.

Creating bad business then asking customers to pay for Lizzards ineptitude is extremely unethical. Transfers from dead servers should be free.

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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.

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Hoping this sparks some additional conversation.

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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.

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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.

LOL, never heard that one.

I don’t wanna have to PAY to go to a populated server… Ive paid enough already

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.

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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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