There has been discussions in the past about merging or connecting low population realms together, but as far as I’m aware, no immediate action has been taken to do so. I am on what now is a low population realm. It was once a thriving realm with some of the best mythic raiding guilds in the world, but it has slowly died due to the mass exodus of players leaving to join high population realms for a variety of reasons. At this point, it’s obvious that this is something that the community wants, there has been discussions on this very forum dating back to 2019, yet nothing has been done on Blizzards ends to fulfill these requests. Soon there will be no one left on lower population realms, and high population realms will be flooded with players which is not sustainable in the long run. The solution at this point is to connect or merge realms to keep guilds alive and these realms thriving for the foreseeable future.
It had its share of clusterflups last time they did it. Probably why they stick with the flexibility of sharding now.
Blizz has no love for our server .
It should of gotten connected with other servers the last time around.
Stormreaver is
of WoW
There are many benefits to sharding, but it ultimately doesn’t resolve the issue when it comes to other aspects of the game. For example, Auction Houses are not shared across realms, and for lower population realms this often produces inflated prices. For example a 291 legendary base item on my server was 250k whereas on Area-52 it’s around 60k.
That is why my spec legendary is only 249
I know. I prefer more populated realms to sharding, but I think they are nervous of the kind of technical glitches that can result. I think one solution might be to have Auction houses grouped in clusters like we used to have PvP battlegroups.
i think the technical aspect and player names is what keeps them from merging servers. like what do they do if two players have the same name? but i do think they should merge some servers regardless
Be careful for what you wish for, as the saying goes.
Several years back, I started toons/transferred others from a high-pop server to the current one that I am on now; it was quiet, had low ping times, and I got what I wanted, which was to be left alone to grind out whatever it was that I was doing at the time.
But as soon as they announced ‘cross realm’, I knew I was not going to be happy, even though less experienced players cheered about it. I’ve seen this in other games as well, so I knew what was coming.
Consider:
That you and everyone else on the server will interact with each other and their connection times can (and will) affect yours. If they are connecting from the dark side of the moon with a styrofoam cup, its going to make a difference to your lag spikes. More players = more lag. See New Dalaran for further research.
Resources and WQs:
Honestly can’t get a damn thing done after school lets out during the day. Like a biblical plague of locusts, Hordies descend onto and swarm farm sites, WQ kills/gathering quests and will snipe/tag them out in front of you–as you are trying to just get that very same thing done. While passable at first, it gets annoying when it happens all the time. Everyday. Habitually and continually. Its just old at this point. See LA rush hour traffic to get an idea of what I am talking about.
Third:
I see you fussing about AH prices, but on high-pop servers, you can’t sell anything without someone undercutting you just as soon as you post an auction–and I mean in mere seconds.
I wouldn’t doubt that there are players who don’t play the game as much as they sit on their auction mounts all damn day, just waiting for you to post your auctions, so they can cancel and repost theirs, and thereby, undercut you. So, you constantly need to take time out of your game play to log on to your banker and cancel your auctions & repost just to stay relevant with most auction prices. It becomes a never-ending cycle.
When my quiet, adopted, little server became a high-pop one (against my wishes), my auction sales (used to be about 1/2 of my earned Jell-O money) dried up too.
Its high-traffic mayhem, and frankly, I don’t like it. I spent all morning looking for that mythical ONE, last non-connected NA server so I could just get things done with as little resistance/competition as possible. High-pop servers and the perceived ‘action’ on them is overblown and overrated. So again, be careful what you wish for.