Deleted By Auther

Think its smart idea.
With copy option for a character you could play in all three.
Keeps the community together not scattered in various versions and servers.
keeps each expansion true to itself.

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Yes I agree with this

Top over, no longer up for debate. Move along.

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You still donā€™t. This discussion was only about what the cause of monofaction servers was. My point was, PvE servers became monofaction over the exact same time period PvP servers did. PvE servers were not already monofaction, they became monofaction alongside PvP servers over the same time period. Therefore the argument that PvP was the driving force behind creating monofunction servers is debunked, or at least incomplete, since PvP either wasnā€™t the reason or not the only reason.

Iā€™ll disagree with you that it doesnā€™t matter at all on PvE servers though. If a new player comes in, choosing a server, and realizing there is nobody playing on their faction on their server and now forced to pay money to transfer or reroll is a problem. The culprit of this monofactionism was layering, which was one of the most catastrophic mistakes made in classic bar none except the pay to win boosts and token.

It could - and I think it does - happen from two different reasons depending on whether itā€™s a PvP or a PvE server.
On PvP server, itā€™s easy. Underdog faction players leave because they get ganked, this snowballs, fast. You see all PvP realms where players have an option are 99 % one faction.

On PvE servers itā€™s multi-causual. Chronological itā€™s something like this: 1. Players on PvE servers play way more Ally than Horde. 2. Players find out where to go from the beginning, like: Horde go Mankrik - Ally go Pagle. 3. Players move to where they can join dungeons and raid if they are of this disposition.
A small detail. This - the PvE servers being 100 % mono-faction - is a US only thing.

Also almost all PvP servers start out balanced, then BAM go monofaction, where almost all PvE servers start out 10:90 and trickles to monofaction.

This is false. Whitemane, Fearlina, and Benediction were consistently balanced for years. They gradually became more lopsided in TBC when transfer restrictions and logic queues were removed, because people from smaller servers were transferring enmasse. When you have a server as large as Fearlina suddenly becoming even 10% lopsided due to mass transfers from smaller servers, it becomes less and less playable for the minority, so they look towards another server, and the cycle continues.

So the answer here is a little bit of both sides, but the root problem is ultimately the roster boss. People from smaller servers want to go where they have the easiest time recruiting and go towards the biggest server when there is no downside to doing so (no login queues/unlimited layering). Imbalance is terrible for the minority on a large server, so if a mass transfer from a small server ruins the server, they go elsewhere.

Itā€™s a lot more complex than just ā€œPvPers donā€™t want PvPā€, and the root problem fundamentally has nothing to do with PvP at all.

This is the exact same thing that happened to PvP servers, and exactly what I described.

I did not say for how long they stayed balanced, only that it happens like snap.
If you raise your eyes to EU as well, you see the :SNAP: happening on all PvP servers and the :TRICKLE: happening on all PvE servers, with EU PvE ervers still having a minority faction playing.
I painted it very much white and black, but exaggerating only, not being wrong.
Of course there is a bit all the other reasons on a PvP server as well, but when it reaches tipping point, whatever the reason, it goes poof in a week or two.

Iā€™m glad blizzard and the rest of the world disagrees with you.

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For those servers it didnā€™t happen in a snap. It was a gradual process as people from smaller servers mass transferred in. When you have a server as large as Benediction or Fearlina, it is much less playable once you have even a 10% balance compared to a server with 4k players.

The ā€œIncomingā€ is slow yes, but the leaving is Snap. Looking at Farelina I see Allys leaving in app. 3 weeks.

3 weeks is relatively slow. Snap would be all at once, but that is a pointless argument. We can both agree here this is happening as a result of migration from smaller servers, the ā€œsnapā€ as you called it happens as a result of an imbalance that happens because of these transfers.

Without those transfers, those servers remained just fine for years. So when those servers were within reasonable balance, people were OK with them, itā€™s only when the scales got tipped to a less playable state that people left.

The root problem here is layering and megaservers. If you allow uncapped realms to exist with layers, people will gravitate towards megaservers for easy recruiting. As people choose the largest server for their faction to get the largest pool of players, the game becomes unplayable for the minority faction that got shafted by the transfers.

Top over, no longer up for debate. Move along.

PVE servers are not as popular as PVP and never will be, for Classic.

Top over, no longer up for debate. Move along.

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YES!!! This is the root of many evils in WoW!

Quoted for truth!

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I agree in terms of the focus of the game being on leveling, world, slow burn things like economic growth, keeping old raids relevant etc.

Aside from that there are many weaknesses in Classic though. TBC retains the majority of the class design philosophy from Classic and simply improves it. Wrath begins to veer into homogenization territory, but also improves, itā€™s a mixed bag but overall I think itā€™s the best version of class design while retaining the old talent system.

Iā€™m an arena junkie, that doesnā€™t exist in Classic. I think the goal should be to either rerelease expansions in a way which makes them feel MORE like Classic, or keeps old world things relevant, OR make a new expansion which accomplishes this.

TBC in particular has a really unique striking art style, zone, raid design etc. Wrath has itā€™s own feel for sure, I love elements of Northrend, but it also has a lot of repetitive blandness and focuses way too damn much on the sub-par vehicle stuff.

I would love it if they removed the queue from city stuff for battlegrounds / arenas etc. I would much prefer it if you had to go to the battleground master in the barrens, hammerfall, alterac etc. and queue, then had quests and world PvP events occuring around the warcamp while you wait to enter the BG. If this ends up being too tedious from a travel standpoint, they can add caravans to the main cities which pop up (like zepplins / ships) and fade to black / load screen travel you to the location.

If there were some way to expand arenas where you go to the locations to queue, but also there are mini tournaments happening for gold rewards where players fight at set times in the live (non-instanced) arenas and there are stands where spectators can sit to watch or place bets (use invisible walls and automatic teleport system to keep non-participants from interfering with the match etc.), that would be sick and keep the world component alive when it comes to arenas.

Classic-fication of WoW is a good thing, but Vanilla doesnā€™t have everything that ever made WoW good.

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A lot of this is guilds coordinating moves together or free transfers opening up.

I know youā€™re in the eu and I remember the Firemaw situation. That was wild.

I spent over a year paying attention to the NA server migrations and could literally write a book on it all but few would care enough to where thereā€™s no point.

Anyway, I too blame layering and mega servers. There was a real server choice before TBCC. People could pick a balanced server or not, they could pick a small server or a large one or an in-between. In addition to PVP or PVE. Now itā€™s mostly ā€œone size fits allā€ and if you donā€™t fit that size, well then deal with it or donā€™t bother to play. Honestly, Iā€™ve noticed that many who play Cata now donā€™t even care about community.

I wish I could see how things would have been now had all of that layering been removed a month or so after the TBCC release, but now thatā€™s history.

Interestingly guilds did leave to go to mega servers to find more recruitment prospects, but mega servers have their own issues with recruiting. There is too much competition from other guilds and the overall attitude of people is that itā€™s fine for them to hop around to different guilds, which leads to a lot of ghosting and general turnover. Those who do guild leadership do have the perception that the grass is greener on bigger servers. Sadly, when they find that the grass is just as bad after a move, and when they have lost members by moving, and when their guilds die anyway because they still cannot recruit, few notice because that server is too big for a lot of name recognition.

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Top over, no longer up for debate. Move along.

Thatā€™s fine, I wasnā€™t telling you what server population to like. I was replying to why the servers went the way they did going from Classic 2019 to TBCC.

Also finding a guild with a good fit is good, but the perception of too much guild choice to where people hop around, while saying nothing at all due to poor ethics, always looking for something ā€œbetterā€ isnā€™t always the best thing in a game thatā€™s supposed to be social.

I donā€™t think that if there were TBC Era and Wrath Era servers there would real need to be more than 1 PVP and 1 PVE because I donā€™t think there would be an absolutely massive population. Era with how it is where the PVP server is Whitemane and the PVE server is Mankrik is fine. Although I REALLY like how there are ā€œmoreā€ servers because the people who want a small server can play elsewhere- I think that choice is always great, which I said in that post that you replied to.

It seems you want to fight. The original person you replied to about the servers said directly (with no edits) 1 PVP and 1 PVE, and never 2 PVE. Then you replied and said that PVP servers always become monofaction (if there was only 1 it almost definitely would not). So you opened this can of worms discussion in your thread. If you donā€™t like people talking about this in your thread then you shouldnā€™t have made that initial comment.

Iā€™ve always supported a TBC and Wrath Era server even though Iā€™d probably never play there. Or that and a progression server that cycles through and lets people get off at ā€œVanillaā€, TBC, or Wrath.

I really just mean fast / snap as compared to the drawn out leavings of the PvE servers. They are - in the EU more than US - still not monofaction.
And as I play in PvE servers solely I have only been followin the wild happenings on the PvP servers from the sidelines. ā€¦ I would not want t read your book :smiley:
But yes, the lack of freedom of choice is one I bemoan as well - I always think small is beautiful - and your thought experiment:

would interest me too!

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