Just resubbed after a hiatus - WTF? - please help

TLDR;

just resubbed after a long hiatus. My server had 11 level 60s online during peak Friday evening hours last night. Literally unplayable and blizzard wants to shake me down for $100 to transfer all my characters because of their piss poor management and it’s absolutely SICKENING they would hold their players hostage like this.

Why are they not merging dead servers?
Why are they not offering free xfers from dead servers?

This is absolutely unforgivable and I cannot look past it. Very absent management and I will not support a company that cares so little about their players.

/TLDR


Day 1 player here. I took a day off work and sat in front of my PC for hours just to reserve my names. I took entire launch week off just to grind it out with my homies. I played 3-4 hours every night after work and 10+ hours every day on weekends. This game was AMAZING and everything I ever wanted.

Then Blizzard turned on server transfers. My server, Incendius was a day 1 server. Almost 50/50 split population. Absolute GEM of a server. Unfortunately this is where things went down hill.

Due to blizzard’s apparent lack of oversight alliance flooded into our server unchecked. It destroyed our faction balance and brought back massive 3-4 hour queue times.

I’ll give blizzard credit where it’s due. They realized the mistake they caused by having zero oversight into the amount of people coming in so they decided to offer free server transfers. This caused a mass exodus of horde guilds to leave the server.

Unfortunately I missed the boat when my guild decided to stay and let it play out. Guild obliviously imploded and because I don’t have that kind of money to transfer I stayed and waited to see how things played out. Literally sat alone every day in Org for over a month waiting for my sub to expire. Just waiting, hoping for blizzard to step up and correct the problem they caused. But no help ever came. I lost hope. I gave up and left.

I’ve been missing classic every day since I unsubbed. I decided to resub last night. Hoping that blizzard has addressed this issue plaguing my server for the majority of its life now. But to my lack surprise they’ve done absolutely nothing. There were 11 level 60’s online last night during peak friday evening hours and they were all bots. Absolutely depressing.

I cannot comprehend how they botched management of this game so bad. It’s sickening to think they would rather chase $20 server fees they provide a quality experience to players that have been supporting this company for almost 30 years like myself.

3 Likes

My dude, you didn’t miss the boat; you stood infront of the gangway and watched it leave.

I know this is tough but maybe pick one or two characters to transfer off now, and the rest later.

5 Likes

I know. I should reword that a bit. The guild decided to stay, then imploded.

Believe me. I want to play this game SO BAD. I want to find a guild and have people to hang out with again. I miss having something to do every night. I miss having freinds.

But at the same time, it’s been 7 months since they had the free server transfers. 7 months.

The fact that they even keep the two dozen or so players here with no option other then to pay them $20 per character is so disrespectful the thought of giving them another dollar is even more sickening to think about.

I know I’m just harping on the worlds smallest violin, but blizzard has to see how messed up this situation is for people like me

1 Like

Reroll. That way if they come back and TBC allows you to persist (or transfer for free) you dont have to move characters around again.

1 Like

I won’t be playing TBC. Classic only. Also I have hundreds of hours invested already not about rerolling. I’d rather the multibillion dollar company step up to the plate and manage a service I’ve paid for.

1 Like

This ain’t it chief.

You’re on you’re own with this one. Server transfers are the only supplemental income classic has, they aren’t going to do anything.
It’s the reason the realms themselves have been managed the way they have.

You’re only level 19. Just reroll on a higher pop server

4 Likes

how’s that unplayable? I guarantee there’s no lag and no queues.

2 Likes

Ignore the trolls, you’re 100% right. Blizzard needs to be actively merging dead servers/factions, so that no one is stranded in a ghost town. Or at the very least, offer free transfers off servers that are too small to support progression raids.

If I ever treated customers this way at my job, I’d be fired in a heartbeat. It’s sloppy customer service, and short sighted of blizzard to ignore the damage to their brand.

1 Like

Sucks for you, you shouldn’t have taken such a long hiatus

2 Likes

But they won’t. So suck it up buttercup.

1 Like

Yup, they sure won’t as long as bootlickers keep defending them

1 Like

I wouldn’t really call it boot licking.

It’s obviously not 100% OPs fault but it’s not “bad business” to let customers deal with and handle the consequences of their own actions.

I get and understand were OP is coming from but at the same time customer service at a chain restaurant isn’t going to reimburse me gas money (server transfer) because I have to drive to a location further away because the location closest to me closed down because of poor business (dead server).

2 Likes

The best businesses have many guardrails in place to prevent their customers from having a lousy experience. For example, notice how when you try to delete a character, the game makes you type out the word “delete”. Getting stranded on a deserted server falls into the same category - someone should have to go out of their way to get stranded. A limited time offer to transfer away from a server that used to be very healthy - that is not a good enough guardrail.

Is activision obligated to follow best business practices? No, they are legally allowed to do anything they want. They can even delete every single warlock character tomorrow, just for the giggles, if they feel like it. But they are really just shooting themselves in the foot. There’s a reason why most successful businesses have an obsessive focus over eliminating customer frustrations.

2 Likes

I did the exact same thing on Incendius. I had a orc hunter and I took a break from the game for a month, and when I came back, over half the horde on the server had transferred to Earthfury for some reason.

Incendius used to be a high pop server and had a nice faction split that was almost a perfect 50/50% split. But Blizzard was allowing free transfers TO incendius back then, which caused the server to have a massive que time to login during peak hours. I’m guessing the que is what made alot of horde guilds transfer off. Its a shame that the server was ruined by all the horde leaving. ironforge.pro says that its now a 100% Alliance server, so idk what happened there.

I had to just delete all my horde toons there and pick a different server to play on. It was a shame, I almost had 2 toons to 60 before it happened.

It is unfortunate that you find yourself in this situation.

My personal suggestion/preference would be to either select a main and transfer that 1 character to a server that’s preferable to your playstyle or reroll a new main on a server that is preferable to your playstyle.

Mergers, etc. would possibly cater to someone like yourself who would prefer a different population than the server you find yourself on, but would harm the experience of those who are currently playing on their preferred server based on their playstyle preference.

1 Like

No they can’t, rofl.

ehh, free reign on lotus sounds great. but its miserable when thats all there is to do.
unless…well, you know