Layering, sharding, CRZ, cross realm, connected realms, all cause problems in actual use.
I can complete an open world event with a person standing next to me, but I won’t be able to trade items with them.
One of the above, or some combination of them, makes it so one or both of us are “ineligible”.
ESO has a much smaller playerbase, and even with sharding it struggles under the weight of how many people are online. Every zone in WoW would play like Cyrodil.
when I started I joined a new player server and was annoyed to find there weren’t only new players on there. It is unfortunately a high population server now and I liked it a lot better when it was deadish.
Honestly i’m hoping for a future where blizz does away with specific servers and just has one mega server for NA, EU ect. Would make the game much better and i don’t really care about my server i only chose it years ago because it was full.
You could. But if you maintain the argument of mount farming or quiet zones, you’re missing the point. There are folks on them who want to group for things. Things made to be grouped for. Group finder is good for a lot of things, but also completely fails for others.
Heaven help guilds who need recruits on low pop servers, but started when the server wasn’t so low pop etc.
This is why it is an issue.
I am not saying eradicate all quiet servers. Just offer the option for those on “known” dying servers to hop off of it if they don’t want to be there and they are not going to do anything about bringing more folks to it.
I agree.
online gaming isn’t going away, so something has got to solve the “We can only run 20 players here or the servers crash”.
dont come to Bronzebeard 
its horrid
Promptly makes an alt there
You understand this engine is old right?
You understand we lag in non city crowds without mega servers right?
They should merge a lot of those servers at this point. It does look a tab bit ridiculous when you see all of them listed on the server selection screen and know most of them are dead servers. I do feel bad for new players that get tricked starting fresh out and picking a dead server. At the very least they should offer free transfers off dead servers.
Exactly, its all a big mess now and I don’t know if it all can be fixed with a solution that keeps everyone happy. It was never intended for people to go to low pop servers for mount farming, destroying the difficulty level and rarity of those mounts, and I suspect that when blizz realized this was going on, it was too late to do anything about it, like adjusting TLPD, Huolon and Aeonaxx spawn times on low pop realms.
And the server hopping thing… another mess. I’m gonna go do BGs and not think about it.
There are a few MMOs in the works right now that use Unreal Engine 5. I use it for some of my animations, and I’ve seen what real pros can get out of it. Maybe something like that would help?
There’s at least one fan made WoW using UE5
Just bite the bullet and reroll on a high pop server. Merging a bunch of low realms does nothing, because whoever is still on said realms aren’t interested in group content, else they would have left already.
I’m not gonna pretend to be an expert on coding but I think there’s a big difference between starting from scratch and putting things into what already exists.
This is inaccurate. Plenty of folks still doing content with their guilds - raiding, M+, RP etc - but it’s not simple to ask 15+ people to transfer to high pop especially if they have many alts.
If they’re already 15, why would they need to transfer?
Correct.
One can make their own wheel, or just buy( or rather make a license deal in the case of game engines) the ready made wheel. Either way, you will end up with a wheel.
If WoW’s engine is old enough and non-performant enough to justify a ground up rewrite, licensing an engine might be more cost effective. I used UE5 as an example, there are others.
Hardware is also a huge performance factor. Nvidia is soon to release some enterprise level hardware that is an actual game changer.
We see what happens. Tech never stands sill for anyone.
Someday WoW maybe able to handle having the entire playerbase jumping in the Vald AH while casting sparkly AOE spells.
It was just a random number for example. And 20 is needed for Mythic raiding.
But then I probably wouldn’t be the top DPS DK on my server anymore 
See, low population servers have perks too 
I just made new characters on a high pop and abandoned Draenor - Echo Isles, but I do go back to fulfill old achievements since stuff there don’t die instantly like in Area 52.
Just make new characters on a high pop server or just transfer your main and make new alts.
Join a a group or make one in group finder for world events like researcher and rifts. When doing rifts I prefer to join a group on a dead pop server over everything dies so fast I can’t even touch it may as well just be a pillar sitter.
