I am pretty sure connecting realms in classic would be a huge issue with the community, so I can’t believe they wouldn’t discuss it there if they were going to do this.
3 Likes
Ravenholdt connected to Emerald Dream will make me very happy.
I am expecting that connection to be made.
Will you be offering free realm transfers for every toon if you connect realms that stop us from enjoying the game?
How exactly would a realm connection stop you from enjoying the game?
If I get connected to a realm that is notorious for bad players, realms known for political agendas, etc… It will make me want to transfer to another low pop realm to get away from them. People move servers sometimes to get away from bad guilds, people and other things.
Blizzard needs to offer free transfers if you get suck with one of those servers.
What is it with people generalising whole servers? I’ve never noticed any servers being more toxic and/or worse than others.
3 Likes
I shop around AH on many servers .The big pop servers are full of commercials on selling 5 masks ,AOTC ,or 15 keys, guild and raid recruitment . The political jargon is weird everywhere and if your SW you get more of it .It is hard to have a conversation on any topic with a constant flow of spam commercials.
1 Like
Agree, I’ve played on about 10 different realms, and didn’t really notice any difference regarding bad behaviour. I currently play on three realms and hope two get joined, so it will become 2 realms I play. My low pop realm has a messed up auction house, so prefer that it get connected.
2 Likes
It just means more name choices.
Name-server
If there are three realms, there can be three toons with same name, but the server name acts as a last name.
I have a toon I want to move to ED, but that name is taken, so if it gets connected to ravenholdt, I can keep my name and still join my guild of choice.
1 Like
Agreed, they really need to consider raising the cap with this new change coming.
Otherwise, players on these new connected realms whose guilds are already close to cap will not be able to invite new players to their guild.
Or what if existing guilds decided to join forces / merge? If the cap stayed at 1000, that’s going to be impossible.
How so?..
To keep it brief. When you merge realms and force servers together on one realm as other MMOs have done in the past, you destroy communities, you destroy guilds, you destroy friends lists and you force character name changes for those who have fairly common character names.
None of which are great things, because the attachment that players have to their communities, their friends, their character names and their guilds are what keep players in the game when the game itself is a mess. You take that away and you’ll have players quitting left and right.
It’s what happened with Warhammer Online. It’s what happened with SWTOR, it’s what happened with RIFT. All of these games tried to merge servers, and all of them ended up losing players because of the destruction that merges create for the servers that die so one server can have a larger population.
4 Likes
There’s hardly any communities in Azshara, Azgalor, Destromath and Thunderlord group right now, we’re the “New Player” realms afterall.
No realms are being merged – they are being connected. There is a distinct difference in those terms.
By connecting realms, guilds & characters get keep their names as their servers still keep theirs. Nothing is being destroyed. Connections allow realms to share the Auction House, join each other’s guilds, trade with each other, send mail to each other, & keep their character & guild names.
By the way, this is nothing new. We already have connected realms.
My realm (Blooodscalp) & Boulderfist were the very first ones to ever be connected in 2013. Shortly after that, Dunemaul, Maiev, & Stonemaul joined our connection. We didn’t lose anything in the process.
See this post for the current list of connected realms: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/11393305/connected-realms-update-820
2 Likes
Which baffles me since Thunderlord is a Vanilla PvP realm. My understanding is that it was always a backwater server, but making it a new player server just doomed us to several bad situations. I don’t get designating “New Player” realms. It’s a death knell.
He knows that. He was explaining his view of why merging is bad. Just…for clarity.
1 Like
Oh and I definitely agree that merging would be a bad thing to do. I know that some people are rather attached to their character/guild/realm names and would prefer to retain them.
I am very happy that Blizzard chose the connection route vs. the merge route.
I will never stop thinking one of the game’s problems is the lack of closed communities, and if connecting realms is how they intend to go about doing it, then that’s how they’re going to do it.
IF the only players I ever saw were the ones from our connected realm group (Thunderlord, Destromath, Azgalor, and Azshara), I’d be more inclined to approve of their doubling down on this direction. But they’re not. We’ve been designated a new player group, and that means most of the new flow we get is inexperienced players who don’t raid, don’t M+, and don’t PvP…yet.
This creates a crippling effect that chases away the “good” players and reinforces the flight problems that made our realms die in the first place. If the community were closed, that could evolve and change, but it isn’t. We have SO MANY players from Tichondrius (which is and always has been – ironically – my Horde server) which is a Vanilla-era PvP realm with a high, Horde-heavy population and lots of focused arena players. Tich is EVERYWHERE in my “new player server group” world.
I was really, REALLY hoping for a merge and purge. I’ve wanted it for years. Now that it’s clear that will never happen, I’m looking at what that means for connected realm groups like mine.
If I had my way, my guild would pick up and move lock, stock, and barrel, but that’s not going to happen, and so we’ll continue to sit in a world full of established and aggressive server players in constant rotation through our LFG and in our world content…but with access to only new players and players who’ve played here since Vanilla for our recruiting and groups because being named “Thunderkitty” is more important than gameplay.
They’re throwing literal noobs (nothing wrong with being a noob) into BG’s with freaking TICHONDRIUS. That’s who Thunderlord Alliance has to queue with.
It doesn’t work. Along with the connections for dead realms, there should be a realistic realignment if CRZ is going to continue on the level that it currently exists. This is THE REASON that Alliance never turns on War Mode, and the ONLY cure is merge and purge realignment which has now been established firmly as “never gonna happen” because apparently having to change from “Fifth Affix” to something new or losing “Meriweather” is supposedly game-breaking.
Fine. I’ll allow that many players feel that way and my opinion is a minority. So. How to fix the problem?
If you call a connected group “New Player,” then they should ONLY be CRZ’d with other “New Player” groups.
If you call a connected group “High” or “Full” it should only be CRZ’d with other “High” and “Full” realms. Illidan should only CRZ with realms like Tich and A52. My server…freaking Thunderlord…should only see other new player groups in Arathi Basin and world quests. That’s my point, I guess. Otherwise, connecting the realms will not stop the bleeding.
1 Like
I remember when CRZ first hit and suddenly seeing all the players from Tich & Darkspear out in the world. It was a shock at first as our tiny little server didn’t seem to do that much wpvp at the time. That quickly changed, lol.
I agree that it might be time to re-examine which realms appear in each other’s CRZ. But of course, with how War Mode is implemented not sure that changing the CRZ realms around would impact that aspect of it. Though we can still manually flag ourselves for PVP without entering War Mode.
Also, how does it work when you are queueing into BGs? What parameters are there for which realms are queued together?
2 Likes