There’s been a bunch of posts about merging servers in WoW classic, but the thing is Blizzard has already done pretty much as much as they can. Here are the current 12 WoW classic servers:
There are now only 12 classic servers: 6 PvP, 3 PvE, 2 RP PvP and 1 RP PvE which are:
- US East PvP-1: Benediction, Faerlina, Heartseeker, Incendius, Netherwind, and Windseeker
- US East PvP-2: Earthfury, Herod, Kirtonos, Kromcrush, Skeram, Stalagg, Sulfuras, and Thalnos
- US East PvE: Ashkandi, Mankrik, Pagle, and Westfall
- US West PvP: Anathema, Arcanite Reaper, Bigglesworth, Blaumeux, Fairbanks, Kurinnaxx, Rattlegore, Smolderweb, Thunderfury, and Whitemane
- US West PvE: Atiesh, Azuresong, Myzrael, and Old Blanchy
- Oceanic PvP: Arugal, Felstriker, and Yojamba
- Oceanic PvE: Remulos
- Brazil PvP: Sul’thraze
- Latin America PvP: Loatheb
- US East RP PvP: Deviate Delight
- US West RP PvP: Grobbulus
- US East RP PvE: Bloodsail Buccaneers
The thing is, you can only merge servers both in the same location and same game type. You can’t have a server in two locations at the same time.
Aside from possibly merging the two remaining US East PvP servers, Blizzard can not merge any other servers, they can only shut them down and force transfers to different locations and game types.
And that’s going to annoy some players, particularly those who don’t want their lag to shoot up in the open world.
What I think Blizzard instead should do is allow for cross-realm across all of WoW classic, including cross game-types (i.e. PvP and PvE players combined) in INSTANCES ONLY.
How this would work is that if a US East PvP player starts a raid group, then an AU PvE player can join that raid group.
Once they enter the instance they will be transferred to server of the “host” (I presume this how cross realm works for battlegrounds) so, yes, Oceania players will hit increased lag in an instance hosted by a US player.
But this increased lag will be voluntary, and in the open world players will continue to be able to play locally.
I don’t think cross-realm should be available for the open world, because it’s too much of a can of worms to allow people to cross realms for node farming. And I also think, as is the case in retail, trades should not be allowed between cross-realm characters, again as the Oceanic low pop servers will have significantly different economies than say, US East or US West.
Only allowing cross realm in instances will have some issues, in that people may find it difficult to get into instances like Uldaman and Maradon, as there’s quite a bit of open world trash to get through, it will be still difficult to find groups for open world Elite quests on low pop servers, and with the restriction on cross realm trading, GDKP isn’t going to work as well (although that’s perhaps not a big loss).
But at least anyone in WoW Classic can join a dungeon or raid with anyone else in the US region, and that can be done whilst still keeping the remaining server economies separate and not forcing everyone onto a non-local server or into another game-type.
Along with this, there should be a separate LFG channel which is also world wide (well US/EU wide as the case may be) so people can form cross dungeon groups. Like the normal LFG group membership should be voluntary, so people who don’t want the spam can ignore it, but then people can use the local LFG for open world content and the worldwide LFG for instances/raids.
I think this approach is one that balances keeping classic alive so that people can actually form raid groups, whilst avoiding weirdness like people jumping between multiple servers to node farm. It still has some inconveniences but I think it’s the best compromise and since the tech already exists for battlegrounds I imagine it could be implemented quite quickly.