Mokalyn, I don’t think you understand the severity of the problems people are having on this server. RPers in this game are not always RPers first, the rest of the game second (if at all). I used to RP, and now I don’t, but I have far too many resources on this server to leave, in addition to the real life cost. The problem’s that are most severe are affecting guilds’ abilities to maintain the core things that are an integral part of the game such as raiding, M+, and other such forms of content. We’re bleeding players faster than we can replace them. And we’ve BEEN a dead server for ages, with some crap about “wanting to preserve communities” being given as the reason why. First, though… THERE IS NO COMMUNITY TO PRESERVE! Second, MERGING WOULD NOT HURT THOSE COMMUNITIES. If people truly wanted to stick together and play together, a merge affects that—oh wait, it doesn’t. They still can. Only now, they might be able to add even more people because there’d be more folks around that could be interested.
Needless to say, I agree that we need to be merged. Everything about this server is dead or dying, and there’s no sense in protecting or worrying about hurting communities that are on the verge of extinction. The common thing I hear is “Just transfer!” which is what a lot of my guildies have been doing or threatening to do through various means, but that would be SIGNIFICANTLY expensive for many of us who have deep roots on this server in terms of alts, guilds, gold, etc. Not to mention the real life cost in cash. Blizzard, sorry, but you don’t deserve several hundred dollars for neglecting us, and it feels like a slap in the face to us every time another person gives you that money to transfer off server. We are dying, you can stop it, and you’re not. Please, change this. Merge us as SOON as you possibly can. Guilds are bleeding out raiders, and for all that I’ve tried, no one wants to merge guilds to revitalize the raiding, so we’re just going to rot. I’m still trying, but it’s just getting easier and easier to look at what else is out there. My girlfriend and I met in this game, and played it together for years, but we’re both thinking committed to quitting if we can’t maintain a raid. Speaking of that raid, I’d also like to point out to even field it in the first place, we have to take people that are clearly not supposed to be there, and it hurts our morale every time it happens, and has even caused fights to break out. There’s so many problems that YOU are causing us but not merging us, and some action and acknowledgement of this would be appreciated. The RP scene is dead. I’ve even gone looking for RP as I used to do it myself, and it’s nowhere - people are taking their toons to Moon Guard and WRA for that. I used to be a decently popular RPer on this server briefly way back, and yeah, EVERYONE I knew back then is gone. Where did they go? WRA and MG, or just quit WoW altogether. I don’t even care if you merge us with a regular PvE server, it would seriously make no difference at the end of the day due to War Mode.
It would be worth considering the value of a small quiet server if we weren’t just thrown into shards with other servers anyway, but instead we get to see a busy game filled with people were not allowed to invite to our guilds. Perhaps this was supposed to make the game look lively, but all it does is emphasize how bad things are for us. I’m amazed to see people from MY OWN SERVER any time I go out to do world content. It’s absurd. And I’m aware of the rumors that WoW’s just dying in general, and that merging servers is just a temporary fix to a problem that would eventually return… But this assumes that the developers won’t save it, and it also will cost more money in lost subs to do nothing and let ER die. Not everyone will just server transfer. I specifically would rather quit because I do not want to pay Blizzard for bad decisions. Some folks can’t afford to transfer servers, some folks would rather just quit, some folks don’t care one way or the other. It simply won’t hurt more than it would help.
To give some perspective on the perhaps vague statement of raid problems and how fights break out, an example would be wiping on heroic due to mechanics that wipe the raid if a specific, singular person fails, right? Or even simpler, they just do really poor DPS, and we can’t make DPS checks because maybe there’s a few too many of them in the raid. The question would be asked of the raid leader “Why are these people in the raid if we’ve provided ample evidence (through logs and such) that they should not be” and the answer will be given that they are the only Priest/Shaman/Warlock/Warrior/Demon Hunter, whatever class that provides a highly desirable buff or utility. Additionally, it will also be stated that we need a roster of 20 for Mythic, and since lots of folks want to do Mythic, we have to take our top 20 (well, more with a bench but you get the idea) to that raid while also maintaining specific comps that make things easier. For us, both statements can be true that we don’t have 20+ highly skilled players capable of Mythic, AND we don’t have all the classes we’d need as skilled as we’d like them to be. These contentions are the ones that lead to the accusations of elitism, and fights. Obviously, accusations of elitism are usually completely true - when you have a game with scaling difficulty, people capable of higher levels of play tend to prefer to play with people of similar skill level - its just more fun. But not all people that are elitist in that way are the same elitists that say things like “if you’re bad, you shouldn’t get any of the loot.” There’s different degrees, I suppose. But, again, this brings me back to server population - with more people around, we could bring in more players, some of whom will be great or have the potential to be great, and will improve if we work with them. But I can tell you that I’ve been trying to help people improve for the sake of our raid for about five or so years now, and I’m tired. Some people DO improve, and it’s great to see, but most don’t, and it feels SO bad to have to tell them that, but also to know that all that effort I put in didn’t go anywhere. I feel like I let them down, they feel like they let us down… Can’t we just have more people so we have more talent, and can go back to saying “You’re good enough, you can come to the raid” and not “Okay, I see that you’re rage capping quite a bit - you need to use Rampage ASAP, there’s almost no situation where you’d hold it. Also, you’re not refreshing Meat Cleaver properly -” and on and on. I don’t always want to give my time to everyone else in such a one sided way. I don’t get any benefit for helping others (which isn’t to say I don’t want to or won’t). I don’t care about raiding Mythic, and it can be mentally draining. Sometimes, I just wanna enjoy the game with my friends that are all as good as I am, and not have to research someone else’s spec for them while I baby talk them through improving because we need them. The current state of ER, though, doesn’t really allow me that luxury.
![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
Also, I apologize for being hyperbolic. I have talked to a good number of people about this, but I can’t really represent that here. I understand that all I’ve said is just my opinion and will be viewed as such by the powers that be. I’ll do my best to get other people to share their opinions.