With the last minute announcement ( 24 hours prior to launch ) and general uncertainty / worry about realm population by even the developers - unfortunately 3 of the largest OCE guilds opted to roll on NA servers for longevity. This has in turn, resulted in a severely impacted realm population as it influenced many players immediately, and more after they hit the level 30 ranges and realised how hard dungeon groups were to form. It’s sad to admit, but safe to say that Maladath is a failed experiment within 3 weeks of launching.
I cannot speak to Horde side, but on Alliance we have a single guild that is raid ready right now, with not a single other guild appearing ready for week 1 raiding, other guilds that have already conceded they wont make the cut by Christmas, and others disbanding. Further to this, the “mega” guild has been sniping high levels from other guilds, which is affecting them beyond repair and is not at all sustainable. As a side note, even with the mega guilds numbers, they likely wont even be able to house a 2nd raid week 1.
I understand that the current stance on transfers is that these are not available on Anniversary realms, outside of Hardcore → PVE. However, with the short notice on the realms, and even shorter notice on OCE - I would ask that Blizzard re-think their stance going into Molten Core, atleast for the OCE population as Maladath is already in a worse state than Shadowstrike prior to transfers. I have discussed this at length with many players that are not happy with the current realm population and even less so with the only option in terms of guilds - that are holding out for a transfer announcement. But it is safe to say, that with too much time elapsed, players will likely opt to call it quits rather than re-level to 60 on the NA realms.
Would love to hear everyone else’s thoughts on this.
Did you just happen to miss the already existing thread about the server?
P.S I’m OCE and did NOT roll on Maladath - I saw the writing on the wall as did many others, we have 5-6 guilds on Dreamscythe Ally and 2-3 on the Horde side. Can not comment for Nightslayer as I do not play there however I have heard there are a few guilds there too.
I tried to warn people to not ask for an OCE server but they cried too hard and Blizzard gave in.
The point in making this post, is that the other one is mainly talking about not seeing people open-world / layering which I understand is an issue for NA realms to a certain extent as well. This one is moreso highlighting the actual server health so the community/developers are aware.
Right now we actually do have decently okay numbers realm-wise , but in terms of raid “health” which was the original concern raised by the developers that were against the idea of an OCE realm - we are not doing okay and it’s not looking to improve over the next month based on how slowly people are levelling and how many people are leaving post-30 to reroll or quit.
Blizzard delivered a server to OCE, with only days before launch; leaving many people unsure about which server to roll.
People that are not closely following forums, and social media posts about it, just roll into their regions server; because, why wouldn’t you?
Playing on OCE is such a small community, and as OP mentions, there aren’t all that many options if you’re looking at end-game content.
Now I don’t see that changing the layering will help, potentially in a few months, there will be more peoplke playing at 60; but it would still be an incredibly small pool for a server, with people dropping out already due to numbers.
Given that Bliz initially thought to roll OCE into NA, then days before release, changed this to a PvE OCE realm, then within a day of release, changed to a PvP OCE realm; the three guilds that I had flagged to play with, all rolled NA.
Whether or now I play NA/OCE; the way that Blizzard handled the release of a OCE realm, has caused this chaos; and I believe that it is up to Blizzard to put forward a solution to the players that aren’t getting what they signed up for in an MMO.
The problem is if they want to get off of Maladath the only option is Nightslayer which is East Coast. Dreamscythe the PvE server is West Coast. If the OCE community didn’t cry so hard, they wouldn’t be forced to the East Coast server because of “muh PvP”
Transferring from PVP → PVE has never been an issue in the past so I don’t see why Blizzard would die on that hill, and it being the only OCE realm it doesn’t make sense to not open transfers to both. However in saying that, I have no issues in rolling Nightslayer and it would be a preference.
Also I really don’t understand the hostility/negativity. Players like myself assumed more would roll OCE because SoD is a different story as to why the realm population died, and in the past blizzard have shown they will allow transfers off low pop realms in the worst case scenario. This is obviously not what happened and the server is quite literally DOA, but most thought we’d be able to atleast form raid teams and struggle with some dungeon farming.
The situation is worse in hindsight, in terms of OCE players we could have housed a healthy population but unfortunately that is not what happened, many were on the fence literally until the servers actually launced. Now players are hoping to transfer off, to add to your population and further increase your server health. How in any way is that a bad thing especially in later phases where there will be player drop off?
Playing OCE is nice, as you get to stumble into the other players, the problem is that the playerbase for OCE was split down the middle, due to the late announcement, and changes from Blizzard prior to launch.
Again, not everyone spends time on the forums regularly, so pointing to another post about speculation around OCE server pops; or how Blizzard made their decision to release an OCE server isn’t really helping the player-base.
It would be great if Blizzard did review and consider a transfer, whether it PvP or PvE (*My preference would be PvP, but will take whatever we can get).
As it stands, there isn’t much content available, due to small pop; and with the dwindling numbers, I am already seeing people who have reached 60, stop playing…
This was an easy prediction. All we had to do is see that we have a 5th split in wow. Retail, era, classic cata, sod and anniversary.
Retail most people dont care about classic.
Then we have the 4 classic styles games. Dont have an opinion on era for oce pop. But as for Cata was popping first few weeks not its raid log simulator with no large pop. Arugal is the server PvP like 90% Horde, Remulos is dead. Died in TBC but has been kept around because its the pve choice.
SoD had both servers start dying in P2 ( no surprise the novelty wore off) and penance was dead dead in p3 shadowstrike wasnt far behind. Penance begged to move to WG since p2.
History has shown that when the honeymoon phase goes away gamers leave. And OCE pop is low to begin with it was destined to die. I gave Maladath 2 weeks or phase 2 at best.
OCE pve was going Dream. That market never existed for OCE servers. Remulos has been been issues since even TBCC. PVE’ers weren’t going to repeat that for TBC part 3.
and even in cata, Remulos either stayed on thier life support server, west coast cata server moves, or quit. They did not go arugal in any case as whole.
PVP side…see arugal. last man standing server. It shows…what happens when gamer fade happens in a game now 20 years old.
You get a smaller pop, that really likes one side. Horde in this case. Even with the dreaded emfh by cata level, “for the horde!” is said often on the server.
Another factor for me was since I don’t care one way or the other about wow wpvp…if I joined the dreamscythe collective, it will have bg’s pop.
Carebears come to pvp when PVE rng hates them. Or some work out gold making. spam honor, sell honor items that can be moved, get paid. TBC to come especially when jewel crafting hits.
We will still get our BG pops. AV will happen. AB too. WSG, I hate the place and only run that in cta weekend type events tbh.
And being realistic…in an AV zerg being 100 ping or 200 ping won’t matter.
In wow av on tower runs (defence or attack) when 6 dudes focus fire me…I die. 100 or 200 ping, death will come.
I have cata grobb for my wpvp as well. I didn’t see a need to redo 60 levels to know how wow wpvp goes. I have 85’s on cata who show that. Either I am in the 5 killing the 1. Or I am the 1 getting 5’d. How wow wpvp goes most times lol.