In before : why you are posting on your alt, you made the decision now live with it, no one forced you to transfers (debatable) , queues will come back (debatable) quit crying, all you want is a PVE server/you can’t handle world pvp, etc.
While I can only speak for myself, I like many during WOTLK’s launch faced the decision of waiting in several hour queues, no-life’ing WoW all day to stay connected, remote logging, or transferring to a different server. At the time it seemed like the queues on the megaserver I played on at the time was only getting worse after a 3-4 weeks. The option was either quit WoW, which in all honesty I probably should have considered, or transfer off the server to one of the new realms created to alleviate the queues.
I made the gamble to transfer my toons off the megaserver with the hope that it would fill up as no one in their right mind would pay a subscription for a game they could not even log onto for close to a month. I figured that I would actually be able to play, and hopefully enough people would transfer off said megaserver that it would become unlocked in the event that the server that I transferred to died. At first there were obviously a lot of people playing and groups were plentiful, world PVP provided an additional layer of fun that I had missed, no queue times, there wasn’t an endless mob of fresh DKs, my buddies ended up moving over as well; it seemed like transferring was the move. A month later the server has died/ everyone is just raid logging/ no one is pushing arena.
QQ me right? Now I am not trying to conflate a host of different issues to this gripe so much as bring attention to the fact that in a game which values community to the extent that it does, players and entire guilds that opted to transfer to skip the queue boss and alleviate megaserver crowding, ultimately became the bag holders of classic. If you left one of these megaservers, you were essentially exited from a thriving MMORPG community for a community with dwindling population and activity with no chance of ever leaving as all the more populated servers remain locked indefinitely. Those that toughed it out on the mega servers now enjoy the benefits of an ever-so-slightly less crowded server now that the WOTLK retail Andys quit, many transferred to several different smaller servers, and no new players can join unless they already have an alt there. I understand that community builds over time, but this is re-release of a 15+ year old game and with changes such as but not limited to the exclusion of RDF, I would argue that the expectation that the population of a transfer server would continue to grow to acceptable levels over a reasonable amount of time or ever is unrealistic.
Queues no longer seem to be an issue (obviously due to the aforementioned as well as everyone has farmed Naxx into oblivion). At least for me, the change in server activity has truly made me question whether I even wanted to continue sub’ing/playing WoW Classic. I feel that in the moment I had no choice but to transfer to justify continuing to sub this game, and now that the dust has settled, I’m left with less than what I started with and faced with the same dilemma.
The questions I pose are: will there ever be a review of the server metrics to consider lifting transfer/creation restrictions? Would Blizzard consider allowing players that took the free transfers to transfer back to their original server at the very least? While I understand that not everyone can be satisfied with measures taken to address game issues, I believe it unfair to force players to burn out on servers that are either dying, heavily skewed in one faction’s favor, etc. without the option of transferring to a server which is more active and/or their friends may be on. The inconvenient truth is this, if you haven’t transferred off a locked server during the massive queues, you sure are hell aren’t going to do it now or in the future.