That’s not the purpose of this thread, though I do elude to it as one possible remedy in my OP.
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You’re just gonna bring extra griefers now to be fair
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I’ve been playing Classic since 2019, and people have been sending characters on sabbaticals to other realms to collect uncontested materials from the beginning. In the four years that Classic Era servers have existed, that’s one of the tamer things I’ve seen happen to its economy. Flowers are just going to be a little cheaper and more plentiful than they should be. It is what it is.
And Blizzard, who can’t even be bothered to police and prevent the game-breaking megaserver phenomenon that plagues all versions of Classic, is the last party with any interest in improving the situation.
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By allowing this abuse of transfers to continue, it only further propagates megaservers.
Who’s economy? The realm that is getting exploited goods? Or the realm that’s being exploited?
This is a myopic take. Did you even read the thread? You are ignoring the way this seriously damages any chance for legitimate play to occur on the smaller realms. You are not looking at it from their perspective, only as a resident of the xfer destinations that benefit from this type of cheating.
Yes, but back then it was disincentivized by requiring the purchase of two character transfers and waiting 60 days in between moves. Now, it’s unlimited and can be done multiple times a day.
What free transfers?
It’s all one economy between the servers. Transfers are just a minor barrier. Importer/exporter types will make sure that the differentials stay low. These people have, indeed, been paying for transfers and waiting out transfer cooldowns since 2019. My guild alone had two characters that came back with bags full of Black Lotus just in time for Naxx (one even came back with an AQ bug mount!!). Not sure how Era is today, but a majority of people who played on the dead servers those days were gatherers with mains on other servers.
It shouldn’t be this way. Servers should all be separated and populated and balanced. Dead servers should be merged. There should be no servers that are so dead that it’s advantageous to farm there, and there should be no servers that are so crowded that you’d go looking for a dead server to farm on. There should be a dedicated Blizzard guy who regularly sets population thresholds past which servers or individual factions are full, such that no more characters can be made on that server/faction. They did this from 2004-2010, but couldn’t be bothered in Classic. Out of all the PvP servers they spun up, only 1 still has PvP in Wrath. This undeniably sucks, Blizzard did bad. But now we’re in 2023, and Blizzard proved in TBC that they’d sooner let an entire Classic expansion flounder than lift a finger on server issues the way they know they historically have.
So, to get back to your grievance… what specific gameplay impact are you complaining about here? What grinds your gears the hardest? Are you upset that herb prices are too low on the megaservers? Or that herbs are too artificially expensive and contested on your low pop server? It sounds like you’re looking for a way to definitively disconnect these servers so that this doesn’t continue. What solution are you pitching?
connect the Auction Houses of both the East and West Classic Era pvp realms.
Golly. You’re saying that the simplest way to keep the servers from interacting with each other is to more directly combine their economies? What a modest proposal.
That proposed change will allow my Incendius gathering alt to support my Whitemane raiding characters, since it’s all connected; Any time I need gold, I can just sell a high priced gray item to my alt holding the cash. 5% AH fee is a small price to pay to hog all the herbs on Incendius I want. Plus, the only people I’ll bother are the Incendius natives, who I can disrespect up and down because this isn’t even my server.
Do you see how that solution doesn’t solve any problem you’ve described?
The unrealistic presumption that everyone Xfers for trade is dishonest. Players have always had that ability, but by design it has also always been discouraged, until now.
So wait… they can transfer for FREE?
See [Classic Era] Exploitation of Free Transfers - #10 by Despitebeing-incendius
And/or:
No. I’m saying the natural impetus for player migration should be restored by abolishing these easily-exploited transfers. The mention of a connected AH is a tangential suggestion only to be considered if abolition/stricter oversight for abusers is not up for consideration. In this way, the smaller realms would at least gain access to the market the exploiters have been muling their resources away to.
Again, connecting the AHs is not my goal, but a compromise. It places both realms’ economies on an equal playing field in terms of accesibility and permits the smaller realms to trade with the wider market their resources are being xferred to.
Yes, I agree. Blizzard has been neglecting their duties to ensure the health of all realms.
The free transfers are there as a big hint hint, nudge nudge to get you off your dead realms. Ideally, Blizzard would love it if Incendius goes to zero population, then they could shut the dang server off and save money 
the free transfers are thus never going away. sorry buddy
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By taking a transfer, you absolve Blizzard of their neglect. It is not the players’ responsibility to maintain healthy servers. They should have collectively spat the initial proposition of transfers back in Blizzard’s face and demanded more responsible management of the realms. Instead, they caved and threw more money on the fire that was ravaging server communities.
If Classic players continually settle for such lazy non-solutions from the developers of this game, what reason will the devs have to improve?
bro you do realize ironforge publishes Era realm data now right? There is literally NO population tracked on your “cluster”. It’s joever dude. If you want to play the game you go to West PVP or the PvE clusters.
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With the way the scalable architecture works, I would not be surprised if the dead realms actually save money per player.
“Server” do not have dedicated hardware now days, its more a mainframe like thing of the old days with each server being a “program” running on it., this is description isn’t technically perfect, but the way I’m describing it I hope will be more appropriate to your understanding.
Because each “server” isn’t a physical object, the less activity it has, the less resources it requires. This is why blizzard likes shards, because it reduces load I turn making costs lower. The layering system is similar to the shard system, but actually different… Each layer is effective its own server with shared AH and chat, similar to retail servers where you can group with other people on other unique servers.
yes please tell us more about the detailed workings of the WoW servers mr. blizzard employee 
If you want to play Classic WoW you don’t play on layered mega servers/clusters.
That’s a very different nameless/faceless and shallow experience and bummer to those new players who didn’t know any better but to roll there.
The one and only upside is the ease and anonymity of finding parties/raids.
Which is also a downside as the community is inevitably full of dbaggery of all kinds as a result.
God save you when HC servers which currently have 2x the whitemane pop dump their population on an already full cluster.
Might as well be old school cross server grouping at that point.
Sometimes you gotta think ahead.
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I agree that since the purpose of free transfers has been achieved (making a high pop, concentrated server), it is no longer necessary to have them around.
I think the free transfers are good for people who have recently come back to the game to discover their old server is dead.
Any who have ‘recently come back’ have either already activated their clone and taken the Xfer or permanently lost their clone and have to reroll no matter what. Neither of these scenarios validate the ongoing and indefinite abuse.
The cloning service was retired. These free transfers should follow suit.
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Source?
If Blizz isn’t going to do anything about bots, I see no reason why free transfers should be removed.
At least if people are legit farming stuff on empty servers and free xferring them, they are at least working for the gold.
You play on an empty server with unlimited resources. What do you care what people are doing with gold on high pop realms?
Cheating.
Plain and Simple. I have no tolerance for it and will continue condemning it. Something tells me you participate in GDKP cancer.