EU Forums are apparently melting down

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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Amazing! And you have to consider that Toscha deleted hundreds, maybe a few thousand comments because they were extremely offtopic.

The German community Discord server hit over 2000 members btw.

It really doesn’t make sense.
No one asks for separation by race, ethnic group or nationality.
We don’t have a problem with foreigners playing on a German server to better their language skills, or Afro-American soldiers stationed in Germany who play there, as long as they all speak German good enough so people can understand them and integrate into the community, just like people did it in the original Vanilla WoW. We even accept Bavarians!

We just want to have our own little virtual neighbourhood where everyone speaks our language and is part of the same culture. Just like in real life.
I personally would never move to a place like Berlin, I rather stay in my suburb with about 2000 citizens. The two shops here close at 7 in the evening, but at least I know the people who work there. There is not so much to do here, but I only have to walk for two minutes to stand in the next little forest and can sit down next to a small river. And it’s safe enough here to walk around in this forest at midnight.

I don’t need a loud and dirty big place with shops opened 24/7 and it is just like that in WoW Classic. I prefer a smaller, German community, as long as it is a proper community that more or less shares the same values and speaks the same language. I don’t think that I have to make the decision between a large and a German community (well, with the exception of RP servers of course), but I just want to make this clear since this possibility is often mentioned.

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Well, because of the example you listed below. You are severly limiting yourself by not speaking proper english. Even if you never leave your country, if you want to interact with tourist / internet, english is a must.

I suppose Germany might be a market large enough to warrant fast and efficient translations for everything you desire… as a french canadian if I want to watch game of throne, it’s either in english, a cringe-worthy ‘france-french’ translation, or I wait a few weeks to get a french canadian one ( so… english wins).

I just expected Europe, who have surely been dealing with issues like this for centuries, to have handled the problem a while ago ( aka, keep your first language, but everyone learn english as their second).

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I saw one or two episodes of GoT in German, then in English and never looked back. Sometimes the original audio is far better. Dexter is a prime example for this, too. All the dark atmosphere created by Michael C. Halls voice alone is gone.

But there is a market for this, people are used to the convenience and many of them won’t adapt anymore, even if a huge chunk of the entertainment industry will stop selling more or less good translations (I cringe every time when I watch Star Trek and see that they translated “human” to “humanoid”…) and dubs.

Would it be better? Maybe. But right now I see young Germans who completely lost the abillity to speak and write proper German, who claim to make mistakes because they have to consciously remind themselves of the absolute basic rules of the German language. I see young adults with a decent school graduation writing down sentences that are not even acceptable for a 12 year old.
I would like to see the majority of Germans to speak good English in the future but for me it is more important that our own language doesn’t die.

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Let me just ask a question then, even if after the ‘tourists’ are gone, how are they going to assess who wants to go on a language specific server?

To take your example, you have no way to know the proportion of those 100k people that are going to stay on the european servers and how many are going to transfer. Not opening them at launch is like saying that they will never open them.
Checking the IP origin doesn’t say that you have a market, checking who doesn’t communicate in english isn’t possible, assigning people to check the population of language specific guild isn’t only annoying to do, it’s also flawed because some would just be waiting for their IRL friends to transfer, others would just better be on a server where they don’t have to translate things for basic communication.

And if a non-english language is prevalent on a server, you’d just leave a european server to die.

Blizzard owns a business and invested in this project, expecting some kind of risks is only natural for a business but avoiding any risk leads to a certain loss on the market.
Right now of what we know they developped it in a small team, they haven’t advertised it, they didn’t create new assets/animations, and the game is mostly tested by paying customers (they even have paying customers that expected a chance to test it). No risks have been taken.

The costs of the project will most likely be absorbed during the first 2months. And it is a sub based model so they’ll win even if someone stops at level 30 during the 2nd month or if someone decides to play it from time to time. But giving up one part of the market to other games and MMOs isn’t the smartest thing to do with how little the costs of a server is nowadays and it can also be seen as insulting to the customers (even to those who play BFA and need a distraction until a real expansion comes out).

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But aren’t private servers single language speaking realms anyway? They are usually hosted in Europe / Asia, and played by people from those countries.

My friends that played on them tell me that communication worked fairly well given the international audience.

I’ve personally played on games w/ no IP restrictions (NA Lineage 2) and people figured out ways to communicate effectively with people who didn’t speak English as a primary language.

It seems kind of condescending to think that, given a challenging environment that requires teamwork, people who speak different languages can’t figure out a way to communicate…and maybe even be prompted to learn a little bit from each-other’s languages to aid in the process

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From my experience, Germans look for German guilds and try to stay within those guilds. Even a huge chunk of Germans who can communicate in English without any problems (which is a minority from my experience) prefer to stay within German communities.
If those communities are not large enough, the German players who are able to speak proper English will adapt and look for multi-lingual guilds / raids / whatever, while the other ones either play on their own or quit.

You know, it was completely normal on German servers in Vanilla to chat with a random guy for multiple minutes, that you would maybe never see again. This won’t happen on a multi-lingual EU server, because many of us are not fluent enough in English and even if we were, there are enough French, Polish, Spanish and Italien players who just aren’t. So yes, people will run dungeons and type “sheep big guy”, “oom” or “why no heal” in the chat.
That’s not a Vanilla experience for German players.
It works, but it’s ugly.

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Fair enough…but considering the alternative (low pop servers), it might be the best of sub-optimal options. Again, it seems to have worked well enough on all the big private servers hosted out of EU & Asia.

Another idea is to have different layers for each nationality…you can voluntarily choose which language layer you want to be in, and can jump into the multi-language layer if you need help filling your raid…there you go, problem fixed! lol

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This was actually discussed multiple times on the German forums. The problem is that according to Blizzard, layers will go away after P1. So they have to break their own promise which could lead to even more distrust in the whole community. :neutral_face:

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Over 23.000 (23k) replies in the german thread.

As what I know it’s the biggest thread ever in the german forum. It’s even bigger than the real ID thread was back that time.

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all because they want to go with megaservers where each “server” is layered into many subservers.

why would ActiBlizz “waste” money on separate language servers when it doesnt help their bottom line as you cant make a subserver layer a different language from the megaserver

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Servers are virtual…to run a separated server does not cost more than running a language layer on a megaserver.

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Right now it’s 25k and counting.
A few more numbers: The Germans who are ready to take over a few EU servers and turn them into German servers already have about 90 guilds with almost 4000 players.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18sjQ6tlZ5d19Jh4-cg7YNC86wxMrZabvC1A3R64ODNM/edit#gid=0

Expect much more Germans when Classic launches.

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Ugh, no. The servers might have a virtual presence, but somewhere, they are housed on hardware. Hardware that has finite memory, finite processing power, and finite connectivity. Hardware that then has to connect over infrastructure with finite capabilities as well. You can’t just wave your hands and have a dozen new virtual servers. There’s still finite hardware capabilities. The reason layering is in Classic, or Sharding is in retail is because when you get too many people too close together in virtual space, it bottlenecks hardware resources, causing lag and other unpleasantness.

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and some arent even listed on that spreadsheet at the moment. like the one im in for example and we alone have 100 members.

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Another thing I’d like to mention (and I hope a Blizzard staff member is reading this) is that our protest on the German forum has turned into something completely different.
We found ourselves as a community. WoW players talk to each other at any time of the day and share their worries and fears about this matter, describe their ideas of a healthy community in WoW Classic, and find each other, although they may have differences in other matters.
People post there before going to work and greet the “night shift”.
It’s bizarre and it’s beautiful.

I want to add the translations of a few postings I find important.
Those were just posted this morning (it’s 9 in the morning right now) and I want to give a bit of a perspective what is going on there. I used the DeepL translator for it.

Sethix wrote:

This thread makes me happy.
This thread proves that the German community is ready to stick together just like in the past to experience the game in its best form. We don’t need the German servers just to strengthen the community. No, also from the point of view of preserving players and paid accounts, the language-specific servers will provide an unforgettable gaming experience that will contribute significantly to the commercial success of Classic.
Therefore, Blizzard, this feature will not only improve our gaming experience - it will inevitably also improve the mood in your weekly meetings.
It’s great to see so many dedicated people working on this issue in this place. I look forward to meet you all in Azeroth in August.

Tinnuviel, who is not going to play Classic WoW if there are no German roleplaying servers, wrote:

Yes, Yathrin, we’ve built a community here before we even took a single step into the game.
And that was only possible because we all speak/write the same language.

This was written by me:

This thread here, which some describe as the crying of spoiled little children, is for me the greatest proof that our concern is not only about language skills alone, but also about the preservation of our very own WoW culture and our community.

Who focus only on how much it is possible for the average player to communicate rudimentarily in English for the purpose of item acquisition, doesn’t see in my opinion how much more this game has to offer and sees Classic through the BfA or private server glasses.

Tulaydon responded:

And we have clearly shown how important this is to us.
In this thread we took action against trolls together, we argued, we came together.
Some people actually said we were “crying”, it’s just small talk… Of course it’s a lot of small talk. Because we’ve been standing here together for days, pursuing one goal and all the arguments have already been put forward. We support each other in our goal and we motivate each other further.

I didn’t give up hope for German servers, but rather than that: I would think it would be super awesome if we would come together in Classic to form a group. All of us who were strong together here. I would just love that.

Blizzard, that’s the German community.
Please, don’t forget us and don’t rip us apart!
We need German servers! :de:

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433

Thank you Blizzard for changing your mind and announcing German and French servers! You won’t regret this! :partying_face:

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As an Italian, I can confirm that there is no European “family” whatsoever, only the unspeakably horrible EU of the bureaucrats and the bankers.
That is the reason I have always played in NA servers, in English. Do not wish to interact with the EU more than I am forced to IRL.
Pity that Blizz caved in. :stuck_out_tongue:

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