LOL, lemme guess … you think Kennedy shot first?
(Just in case that flew over a few heads, it’s a mock-up of Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories and Star Wars remake arguments over Han Solo shooting first or not.)
Most needed discussion on that happened in the officially official thread, aka the one started by a Blizzard community manager asking players for their opinions.
See Open Question: An Alternative to Queues? - #2054 by Rijndael-sulfuras
Primarily a PvP realm issue. Also an issue that predates any sort of realm transfers, free or paid. Mankrik (US East-PvE), for example, is horde dominated, but being PvE the main impacts are the AH is emptier and opt-in wPvP might be harder to find. Still happens, though.
Transfers do exacerbate existing issues. I won’t argue that. I don’t know a good solution, because for every player skewing a faction balance worse, there are players who want to move because friends/family/guild.
The only realm, of those listed, that I have a character on, a character I created day 1 (not naming day, release day). I’m glad it’s locked right now so that Layering doesn’t become an option Blizzard considers. There’s a pretty strong community, the Discord is great, activities abound.
I don’t know that I’ve ever seen them produce an all-around positive result. Either not enough players take them, or they close at inconvenient times and separate people, too many of one faction move, not enough of the other faction move, the realm they go to has players who liked it small and quiet, and lose the realm identity they loved. Just messy.
I’d have personally preferred if they weren’t added until well after Naxx was released. On most realms I’m on, there’s friction when whole swarms of people move and start making like they’re the new big thing without a clue about the server’s dynamics, without actually taking time to get to know the people who’ve been there all along.
It was Pandora’s Box, and Blizzard chose to open it early and apparently without any plan for wild shifts in population balances. (Which … given their “we’re considering it very carefully” from before the release of WOW Classic makes this debacle even sadder.)
Good thing, IMO. It should have happened sooner. It should have had clearer population points at which it happened.
Something you didn’t list, something Blizzard has always been way too cagey about, is legitimate useful player population statistics. How many of each faction at prime time, at slow times, what are each realm’s peaks and lows. And worse than being cagey, they barely seem to pay attention to them when making decisions unless it’s at the extreme end and obvious to everyone there’s a problem.
It’s unfortunate, but I don’t consider being friend or family a reason a locked realm should be given exceptions. “Everyone” is someone’s friend, and seriously the moment any such consideration was given, random strangers would be making deals to be friends outside of the game (“$$ to me and I’ll add you as a Blizzard friend so you can get in on Grobb” … think that’s unlikely?)