I mentioned in my OP, but I’m not expecting an immediate solution. Blizzard has their hands full at the moment and I can accept that. However, it’s been two months and the game’s population continues to dwindle. A simple statement along the lines of “Hey, sorry, this isn’t panning out like we’d hoped. We plan to address this but we need time. Your patience is appreciated!” would go a long ways towards good will and greatly mitigate feelings of dissatisfaction shared by myself and, evidenced by a brief perusal of this forum, several others.
While you may have confidence that this will be resolved “eventually”, the longer this issue persists the more the population dwindles and the greater the appearance of underhandedness becomes. The optics of this are one of forcing players into paying more money for transfers to further exploit their player base. This isn’t a good look at the best of times, perhaps less so right now.
I’m not stating that this is their intent, but it’s very easy to come to this conclusion.
Implied within is the expectation of reasonable delivery of said service to the best of their abilities. Servers with fragmented, unsustainable population while keeping their player base in the dark for two months does not qualify as reasonable.
The current situation is that adequate population exists but is unable to connect with each other due to restrictions currently imposed by Blizzard based upon a projection of interest that turned out to be incorrect. By solving the problem of players being unable to connect with each other (as an example, via server merges), Blizzard is providing the best opportunity they can for their players to enjoy the service they paid for.
Should such measures be taken and the population is still not enough to sustain play, no further fault can be laid at Blizzard as they took reasonable action to provide their service. In this case, it would just be a service an insufficient amount of people want to engage in.
Further payment to Blizzard (ie, server transfers) to solve a problem that they have created (via enforced population segregation), is inappropriate.
I’m not quite as worried about this as you are but I agree this is about the time Blizzard needs to start looking at this. The tourists are drifting away, the populations are stabilizing, now is the time to look at server mergers.
This would be an acceptable outcome, though it should be noted that it’s not my intent to dictate how Blizzard should solve this problem… I support them having the freedom to pursue a solution that they feel best addresses the needs of their player base, but customers who have paid for services that are currently falling short of reasonable expectations do deserve some communication on, and ultimately, a resolution to, this issue.
Access and hardware stability.
That is what the reasonable expectation involves.
If you personally don’t care for the population balance, the company makes another optional service available to you in the form of a server transfer. Which implies that population levels or balance is not a part of the basic service. Your perception seems to be that the company is cheating or gouging you on optional services.
Not a very good take as the expectation was that Blizzard would connect realms to provide a sustainable population. While they did connect some realms, they didn’t do enough connections, leaving some realms virtually dead.
You’re wrong. OP has the correct expectations based on what Blizzard said:
Currently, many realms do not have healthy populations (no idea why they wouldn’t connect DD or Grob to any other server). Hopefully, they are actually monitoring and will rectify this in the near future.
I left a couple of characters behind and my realms are dead. Fortunately, I didn’t waste money cloning given that Blizzard has not delivered on the expectations as they explicitly stated.
I will consider cloning/playing Classic Era if they actually fix this by making more connections.
While I understand that some are dissatisfied with the current populations on realms in Classic Era, implying that the company has somehow tricked one into making an optional purchase is disingenuous.
I understand you are not happy with the current situation. The OP is upset about the clone purchase but he was not promised anything with this optional purchase other than what he received. The population is a separate issue which you addressed with a post where a CM shared their thought process. Still no promise other than they would “consider” which doesn’t always mean action.
Blizzard does state what their goal is for the Classic Era player and that simply cannot be achieved on some realms. For example, if you log onto DD Horde, maybe you see one other person on the realm.
“Hope” is not Blizzard crossing their fingers followed by inaction. They mention a tool they can use (more connections) that can help with population and thus, allow for the clearly stated goal to be achieved.
The statement I quoted from Blizzard would be empty words if it is followed by inaction when action is clearly needed to achieve the goal. There does not need to be a legalese explicitly stated promise that demands action at a specified point in time, which seems to be your fallback position to blow off the quote.
Yes, the cloning service was provided as intended but players were relying on Blizzard’s goals for the Classic Era community.
The issue isn’t with the clone, in and of itself. It was that Blizzard created an expectation that the Classic Era community would be supported, thereby justifying the purchase of a clone.
I see no further need to debate this with you. You are not the one who can provide mitigation and/or solutions to the current problem of fragmented Classic Era population. Whether or not you agree with me is irrelevant.
My intent here is to tell Blizzard that I’m dissatisfied with the way this has been handled, and to express that I feel I’ve been cheated by being enticed to purchase a character clone for the purposes of continuing my Classic experience under the pretense that the community would be supported. At this time I require nothing further than acknowledgement and a statement of intent to investigate the matter further.
It would be unreasonable of me to expect that to happen immediately though.
Howdy Tubbly: I think you’ve raised a very important topic for discussion. This is a timely thread and you are not the only one thinking along these lines (and no I don’t work for bliz)
Just seems to me your post got immediately trolled by some inconsiderate people.
Your original posting is very well spoken and the questions legit. For me (and I’ve posted this in other places) they should have listened to what I suggested BEFORE they even launched Classic and designate some servers that will NOT be going into a “Classic+/TBC” so that people who know they just want Vanilla style gameplay will have a strong healthy server (and no transfers or fees were needed) Bliz is reactionary and not so proactive.
As I see it they have 3 main things to choose from:
1.) Merge the servers that paid for the transfer (these players do not wish to start over and want to keep playing with their earned gear and gold on CLASSIC not TBC)
2.) Launch a Fresh Start Classic lvl 1 (you start with nothing and can bring nothing there from other era servers) Give players a place to rebuild in a 2 year progression just like what we experienced with the EXPRESS STATED UNDERSTANDING that This server will NOT be progressing into TBC or any sort of “Classic +” it is a place to build a home *with minimal (if any) changes. (*edit)
3.) There would be announced with this Fresh the possibility for ‘customizable’ or Vanilla with sprinkles servers that changes some QoL things or increases gold or any of the items produced in that leaked survey. Seasonal server launches. Expectation of a small number of servers (some PvP, PvE, an RP) every year for players who want to possibly vote or be polled and have some variation of Classic.
As I see it that’s pretty much the only way to allow all players to do what they want to do and not leave you feeling cheated. (shew Bliz should hire me to solve all their problems before they have em)
They should have merged the servers by now. That is the problem. I just logged onto my Classic Era server and there is ONE level 60 logged on. This was on a west coast realm. Blizzard should not have let nearly three months pass by without doing something to help fix this. Without enough players to play with, which was obvious in the first few days of the split… the Classic Era servers were doomed to fail. That is on Blizzard.
They created the game feature and sell it, mentioning the desire to monitor the population. Players take that as a guarantee of a certain service level. They have the power/tool to improve it, yet haven’t implemented it. It’s understandable that you are upset as the expected service doesn’t meet the advertisement. This thread is well timed. We really need all realms merged to sustain a big enough population.
