I would like to request some greater transparency around the decision to shift the Arugal server back to 1 layer on 21 August 2020.
Arugal completed the Ahn’Qiraj war effort on 12 August 2020. This meant that the 10-hour war event to celebrate the opening of the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj commenced at approximately 1918h (server time) on 17 August 2020, and lasted until 0518 (server time) on Tuesday 18 August 2020. This was less than one week ago. During the 10-hour war Arugal had login queues at a time when the server was still operating with TWO layers.
In Kaivax’s post announcing the return to one layer it says that you have “carefully observed and tracked the player populations” and that based on that information you thought it was “safe” to “delayer” the server.
Blizzard, can you please explain to us: How can it be considered “safe” to delayer when less than 1 week prior we had log in queues with TWO layers? What data are you looking at that could justify this decision? As I am sure your population data would attest, the period immediately following new content releases has been a time of heightened player activity. The opening of the gates of Ahn’Qiraj is exactly this type of new content release and historically has been the times when you have previously had to introduce layers to manage server queues. It has come as no surprise to the player base of Arugal that immediately after the removal of layers, there have been 5+ hour queues for players attempting to log in to raid on Saturday and Sunday nights. These are not even peak player number nights - Wednesday immediately after the weekly raid reset is the most popular raid night.
In addition, I would question the decision to remove the restrictions on character transfers, specifically, allowing characters to transfer from other realms to Arugal.
As at the time of my writing this post (24 August 2020), Arugal is the only Oceanic realm to have completed the Ahn’Qiraj war effort. I have heard anecdotal evidence of entire guilds transferring from Yojamba and Felstriker - the other Oceanic PvP realms - on to Arugal in order to be able to access the Temple of Ahn’Qiraj content, which is still locked on their originating servers.
If the decision to maintain a single layer on Arugal is going to be upheld, allowing these transfers is UNFAIR to the existing Arugal player base, who are the population that worked to complete the Ahn’Qiraj war effort, but are then suffering even longer queues than necessary due to BLIZZARD’S policy decision to allow character transfers to the server. If you are going to take people’s money then you have a moral obligation to maintain the player experience. Players who have transferred from other realms are free riding on the efforts of the Arugal Player base to complete the War event and should never have been allowed to occur.
The two decisions are, in my opinion, misguided, and display a fundamental lack of understanding of player behaviour (your paying clients) and your own game’s content. I call on Blizzard to take the following actions, immediately:
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Re-introduce layering on Arugal until the login population at peak times subsides. Following the opening of Ahn’Qiraj I am 100% certain that the population has significantly increased compared to the same days and times from one month ago prior to the opening of Ahn’Qiraj.
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Immediately prevent further transfers from other realms to Arugal. Allowing transfers on to the server only serves to exacerbate the existing overpopulation issue. If Blizzard are genuinely seeking to have the server on a single layer, you cannot allow the population to accept additional players until such time as the server is stable with reasonable queues on one layer.
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Introduce a restriction on character transfers where the originating realm does not yet have the gates of Ahn’Qiraj open and the target realm does. This is a game imbalance issue and is unfair to players who have contributed to completing the Ahn’Qiraj war effort on their own server.