Classic WoW Era Realms - Playerbase from Fragmented realms need to be connected as a community

[Spaltung-pagle]

they don’t want to make any choice before the big ceo approves it.

[Wonderdruid-herod]

@Xerolol-herod

With Blizzard officially launching Classic Era servers on May 18th and its promise of maintaining higher realm population through merging servers, many diehard wow vanilla fans either paid to clone or send their character on a one way ticket to classic era realms anticipating to play Classic Era in the decades to come.

However, many people playing Classic now are separated into sparse population on different clusters making it extremely hard to find group for any major raid or open world content. Many have been posting on Reddit and the WoW Classic forums for Blizzard to fix this issue, but we have gained zero response and acknowledgement so far and player population on Era servers continue to dwindle at an alarming rate.

Attached below are some samples of the population size for all US pvp realms:

Jume 30, 2021	16:03	Horde	Kromcrush	34
		Alliance	Herod	15
		Horde	Netherwind	24
		Alliance	Faerlina	23
TOTAL				96
July 1, 2021	16:26	Horde	Kromcrush	25
		Alliance	Herod	10
		Horde	Netherwind	22
		Alliance	Faerlina	30
TOTAL				87
July 2, 2021	16:24	Horde	Kromcrush	30
		Alliance	Herod	11
		Horde	Netherwind	34
		Alliance	Faerlina	43
TOTAL				118
July 2, 2021	18:34	Horde	Kromcrush	35
		Alliance	Herod	14
		Horde	Netherwind	39
		Alliance	Faerlina	41
TOTAL				129
July 3, 2021`	20:00	Horde	Kromcrush	36
		Alliance	Herod	20
		Horde	Netherwind	46
		Alliance	Faerlina	49
TOTAL				151
July 4, 2021	20:00	Horde	Kromcrush	47
		Alliance	Herod	11
		Horde	Netherwind	29
		Alliance	Faerlina	46
TOTAL				133
July 5, 2021	19:13	Horde	Kromcrush	37
		Alliance	Herod	18
		Horde	Netherwind	37
		Alliance	Faerlina	50
TOTAL				142
July 6, 2021	19:24	Horde	Kromcrush	50
		Alliance	Herod	16
		Horde	Nethwerwind	32
		Alliance	Faerlina	50
TOTAL				148
July 7, 2021	20:10	Horde	Kromcrush	50
		Alliance	Herod	15
		Horde	Nethwerwind	49
		Alliance	Faerlina	50
TOTAL				164
July 9, 2021	19:18	Horde	Kromcrush	27
		Alliance	Herod	13
		Horde	Nethwerwind	33
		Alliance	Faerlina	50
TOTAL				123

This, lack of support coupled with the “TBC” Hype that players are spreading, creates a toxic, network effect driven by momentum - the negative momentum that Classic era “servers are dying” such that new players who come on Classic Era have a bad experience, and unsubscribe due to uneahlthy realm population. This has a few negative consequences:

-Further reductions to player base

-Lesser quality of life on all servers

-Blizzard suffering significant subscription loss that can potentially span years

-Players migrating to private server options where better direct, communication, and support is available.
etc

More importantly, the drastic decline in player population renders high tier raiding, world pvp, open world events and battlegrounds nigh impossible for certain clusters of a particular faction, and in worse cases, both faction of the entire server. An extreme case of this negative impact would be the RP-PVP realms who have not seen a single raid past MC since the launch of Classic Era and US Eastern Cluster 1 & 2, where one side of the faction had no raiding options due to limited population.

While lower levels of player engagement was expected, current levels are not sustainable for a healthy population and they preclude paying players from enjoying the game in the environment it was intended to be played in.

As diehard fans of the original WoW Classic, we understand that Blizzard cannot force players to play on Classic Era servers.

However, Blizzard has adequate capabilities to facilitate a healthy, vibrant community and maintain the original, authentic MMORPG experience that is World of Warcraft for many decades by implementing 2 significant realm settings:

Classic Era Server Realm Merge

1. Merge all NA PVP East, West, and RP-PVP servers into one server or cluster.
2. Merge all NA PVE and RP-PVE server into another cluster.
3. Merge all EU PvP and RP-PvP servers into one cluster
4. Merge all EU PvE and RP-PVE servers into one cluster

Temporary Global Cross Realm for all Regions

5. Implement a temporary global non-layered cross realm on ALL Classic Era servers across the Americas, Europe, and Oceanic region

The above mentioned suggestions benefit the Classic Era Community in the following ways:

Benefits of Classic Era Realm Merge

By merging all NA PVP and RP-PVP realms into one respective cluster, factions will be balanced by the respective population and players on both factions will get an extremely high chance of experiencing high-end content which will lead to opportunities for better gear and will lead to a better quality of life experienced by the player for all future PVE, PVP, and Open-World events hosted on the server. This increased quality of life will lead to a recurring subscription for many of the die-hard classic era fan that can span for several decades until end-of-life, resulting in player delight, and high profits for Blizzard.

Benefits of temporary Global Cross Realm

The advantage of a temporary global cross realm will enable players from all over the world to experience the magic that is Azeroth 24/7, seven days a week across all time zones without experiencing any dip in population at any one point of time, and ensure players can always get into a PVE / PVP / Open world event without much trouble or hassle.

This can prove to be a more effective method than a realm merge on a specific region as the law of large numbers will effectively ensure that all players from anytime, anywhere across any time zones will be able to achieve their PVE/PVP/Open world end goals that require a form of social interaction. This method can potentially eliminate BG queues and the endless wait for dungeon group forming at all times of day for both factions.

The only decision that needs to be factored in for non-layered cross realm is how will Blizzard remove artificial agency and decide on how auction houses, resources, nodes and rare spawns will behave on cross realm server (aka - will it be cluster specific?), how internet ping behaves when a player from another geographical location invites someone from another geographical location. Both these are to reduce the lag drastically and prevent cross realm abuse. It is notable that Private servers are able to find a way to eliminate lag and latency from all geographical locations on one giant, mega server.

As it stands, Vanilla Classic is much loved by those outside of the Americas region, and this can be seen by the active international audience that play the original iteration of WoW on a server type that is different from the geographical location. Having a temporary global cross realm will increase the quality of life of all players and will result in much love and many players subscribed to classic era in the decades to come.

[TL;DR]

There is a healthy population of players for classic era wow, however the player base has been spread across several clusters and this has created quality of life issues when playing the game. If Blizzard could just merge all of the cluster and consolidate the populations regionally or globally we would have a robust and healthy community.

Please implement changes to how realms connect starting with the American Server Clusters, followed by the Oceanic and European clusters.

Step 1:

1. Merge all NA PVP and RP-PVP (East and West) servers into one server or cluster.
2. Merge all NA PVE and RP-PvE into one server or cluster.
3. Merge all EU PvP and RP-PVP servers into one server or cluster
4. Merge all EU PvE and RP-PvE servers into one server or cluster

We would also ask that character transfer restrictions be lifted from PvE/PvP transfers, to be allocated one free transfer per character, and all transfer restrictions, including gold cap to be removed.

Step 2: If we are still seeing unhealthy population levels

1. Merge all NA clusters completely
2. Merge all EU clusters completely

Step 3: If a healthy population is still not achieved by step 2 consider a Temporary Global Cross Realm

1. Merge all classic era wow servers into one centralized global server

Signed Xerolol, Herod

100% agree.

How do we tag J. Allen Brack in this post?

[Junilaya-bloodsail-buccaneers]

I also think we have something special on Bloodsail that I’d like to explore further. If the players on other types of servers want to merge, I’ve no objection, but I’d prefer that there continue to be an RP PvE server that is not merged with other server types. For me, it’s about having choice.

[Dangerzone-rattlegore]

I agree as I really do NOT want to go back to the crap show that is private servers. Whether its fresh or a huge merge or both something needs to happen

[Latherfal-nordrassil (Latherfal)]

I think they’ll just end up doing one big PvE server and one big PvP server.

[Nostradamus-myzrael]

Merge all pvp then PVE- 2 servers end of problem

[Kylra-westfall]

I would like a completely merged server of all realms called Azeroth. One world, one player base.

I do mean all of them merged together. I doubt there would be enough players to even be full if you did this.

[Krytture-emerald-dream]

Yeah, last couple times I was on Deviate Delight, there was only 1 other horde player on. AH completely empty. Sad times indeed.

[Antifresh-herod]

Customer service tells us to come here to feedback but the truth is it falls to deaf ears

[Stumbly-kromcrush]

What the god damn hell

Address this problem merge all servers do a name wipe merge everything to 1pvp and 1pve server
Lag is a non issue this game can run on a patato

[Bellamy-kromcrush]

Blizz - I think you forgot to respond to this!

[Georgegervin-netherwind]

Can we please get an official response to this? Or at least cluster the RP realms into other PVP/PVE realms in their data centers?

[Mildred-anathema]

Bump. This is a complete sentence

[Antifresh-herod]

I guess we shouldnt expect much from a company whose President is a lustful, sexist pig. Busy trying to get laid instead of trying to consolidate realms.

[Primeval-kargath]

Private servers still running?

[Zhasira-skeram]

So what do you think will happen to your character when your fresh realm will hit the Naxx phase again?
Are you going to trash it and make it again from scratch and play on another fresh realm?
If so, then good for you.

If not, then be prepared to get your butt filled with sand since he’ll get transferred to the Classic Era realms pool, and OUR actual dire situation will be YOUR as well.

Now, do you still think that post you made before will bring you any more fortune in that future or was just a pretext to be acknowledged by all those fellow FRESH keyboard warriors just for those 5-10 minutes?

Why people like you still struggle to understand they’ll end on Classic Era realms sooner or later when “fresh” is gone?

[Ørmus-earthfury]

I get blizzard wants to shake everyone for transfer money but this lack of management is going to cause a premature death of this game.

Merge the servers already

[Xerolol-herod]

Youtube content creator has a video that succinctly illustrates our issue, all we are asking for is some clear communication from Blizzard.

Classic Era: Is The Pulse Even There Anymore...?

[Hadd-pagle]

Since they managed to kill vanilla and tbc is a complete disaster already, wouldnt free to play vanilla servers be a viable solution?

I mean, before everything simply fades away… it might save a dying franchise.

[Clenn-dark-iron]

People are paying money for this unplayable game, more servers need merging or give out free transfers, this is becoming ridiculous