Hi,
I target this post at blues. This is a simple guide to salvaging the remaining player base (and perhaps bring back subs) before BCC is over, and it can be done with relative ease - or at least I would think so.
First, what problem am I proposing we solve?
According to ironforge.pro there is a massive imbalance across all US East and US West servers of significant population, most especially PvP realms. I am almost positive this same problem exists for other regions.
Due to the recent drop of population on many realms, it has driven population towards a few concentrated realms – further exacerbating the population hemorrhage among medium and low-pop realms.
As an unfortunate result, these realms have been targeted by particular factions creating significant imbalances between the factions. On PvP realms, this is most noticeable since PvP is a core part of the game for PvP servers, obviously. Open-world PvP is a quintessential part of PvP realms, and for that, it makes sense that a large imbalance (>25% population difference) is problematic.
The core of the problem is that too many realms are either unpopulated, or severely imbalanced such that no server is a particularly good option - there are some that seem somewhat balanced, but even those exhibit significant imbalances. Imbalance cannot be stopped completely, but it can be mitigated. Dying, underpopulated servers, however, can absolutely be avoided.
What is the proposed solution?
Obviously, merge servers. I know that this may leave a sour taste in some peoples’ mouths, but there is a key to how to do this to minimize impact. I remember server merging on retail, and I know exactly why this can be bad, so I will summarize what I believe is the best move forward to handling this situation, and I encourage others to comment on what they agree and disagree with. After all, a solution must be reached else WoW classic will lose a large portion of its players who further refuse to transfer servers and would prefer to let their characters die on a realm.
If we merge servers, we can do the following:
- Coalesce the player bases of many servers with less than 10k total population into servers where each faction has greater than 5,000 players (hopefully somewhat more than 5000 per side).
- Find a balance of active players such that no server has more than a 40-60 split among factions.
- Increase efficacy of player trade by increasing auction house liquidity.
- Increase ability for players to find dungeons and raids, due to a larger amount of people playing.
- Bring back people into the game who had left or temporarily halted game play due to perceived lack of activity.
How should we do it?
- Low and medium pop realms merge into 1-4 realms per region.
- Servers should be merged by type, preserving playstyle.
- Character names could be preserved by appending “-Realm” to names, but this need not be the way character name preservation/distribution is handled.
- High population servers can be merged if necessary, since layering is a “viable option” to handle populated parts of the map.
- High population servers possibly could get free transfers to lower-population servers - but only for dominant factions.
What should we avoid?
- We should avoid allowing auction houses and trading to be segregated to origin servers like was done in retail upon server merge. This is key to prevent a dead economy.
- We should avoid being too concerned about appeasing individuals, and work towards appeasing the masses - generally speaking.
Key points on why we should avoid certain things
In retail, auction houses (and player trades) were separated per server when the original realm merging happened. I’m not really sure the reason this was done, but it made the auction house a very antiquated system and discouraged trade among servers that had really gone south in the population count. For instance, I played on Shandris-US in retail. Trust me, during the population drop beginning in late WoTLK and every expansion thereafter, the auction house was pretty much dead.
I know people have strong feelings about the auction house being “not the point of WoW”, but economy is a quintessential part of most MMOs, especially MMORPGs. I feel this way, and some may not, but it is definitely felt by many and that’s the reason that a lot of people quit servers. I always hear, “I can’t find dungeons” and “I can’t buy/sell what I need/want on the auction house” when talking to people who are transferring servers.
As for the aforementioned worry about “appeasing the masses, not the individual”, I am very much an individualist at heart, but in times where large numbers of people are affected by a problem, sometimes you have to ignore the strong opinions of few in favor of the many.
There are many posts talking about merging realms. Recently Blizzard attempted to solve this problem by allowing a select number of realms to transfer to other realms. This just made the problem of imbalanced realms worse, since most people transferred to servers with high population counts. This seemed to not really help medium-pop servers at all, and frankly I’m not surprised.
What incentive do people going from low pop realms have to go to medium pop realms when the same thing is happening to these medium pop realms? Virtually none. Some people will be upset because they prefer low-populated realms and I think that naturally that is a preference of a very small population of people playing this game.
I would imagine the large majority of the demographic of WoW does not want to continue the status quo.
Why do I care?
Anecdotally, I am currently on the second realm that has experienced a significant drop in population. I went from Kromcrush-Alliance (0 alliance pop) to Thunderfury-Alliance (~35% alliance pop, lost >60% of players on my faction since I joined). Thunderfury in the last few weeks is strikingly similar to where Kromcrush was around the time of TBC launch.
To be frank, I don’t find the game enjoyable anymore with so few people online. Finding raids is near impossible without joining up with a large guild who want me to have dedicated timeslots. As a greater-than-full-time employee, I find it hard to be able to make promises and prefer to PUG when possible.
Farming for items is mostly pointless, because items have a hard time selling in the auction house. The last few days of playtime, I lost money posting auctions due to nobody buying items (truly, lack of demand).
I’ve paid for a transfer, I’ve lost my money once and Blizzard still has no plan on refunding me for my transfer from a realm that shortly after was given free transfers to other realms. I don’t expect that money back, but I do plan on cancelling my subscription in the near future if this problem is not handled in a way such that I feel my subscription money is worth it.
End rant
I’m not really into the idea of spending time playing this game that much longer if things don’t change. I love WoW classic, that’s why I renewed my sub, and that’s all I am paying for.
Retail bores me. About half of my TBC experience (the expansion I wanted to play the most) has been plagued by this problem, and I don’t see it changing without a significantly clear-headed action on Blizzard’s behalf.
Frankly, I don’t see them doing this any time soon, nor do I think my rant in particular will actually do anything. Still, I post this to increase the number of posts addressing this, and hope that others will chime in, and maybe make their own post addressing this. Eventually, Blizzard will come to their senses, or people will quit enough to make them come to their senses.
After 14+ years of being an on-and-off subscriber, I know how this goes. And a year-long or longer subscription hiatus may help Blizzard realize this.