Penance (AU) has a huge problem

Hi all -

This is in regards to WOW SOD and specifically playing on a realm that is quickly dying (for NA players).

I just wanted to start off by saying I have never played WoW before and SoD has been absolutely amazing since phase 1. The dungeons, raids, updates, runes and everything have been so much fun, and me and my college friends have been having an awesome time playing any sort of WoW game for first time.

The main problem is that we (along with many others) in the US were forced to join Penance (AU) because nothing else was open. We have all been playing since phase 1 and there have not been any major issues initially. Now, we can quickly tell that there are very very few people playing on the American time zone. Cities are dead, auction house is dead and. the general spirit of playing is lower than it ever has been.

We have hopped multiple guilds because they each keep dying from lack of people. Now there are TWO NA guilds left each of which are running ONE Sunken temple each (20 man raids). I fear that in the next few weeks even these guilds may die and we’ll have no where to go. I know the easy answer is to make another account but we’ve all put so much effort into this server / character and honestly would probably quit instead if / when theres no more people to play with on NA on Penance.

Long story short - we were really hoping if there was ANY fair way of making realm hops available for the many of us who had to join an Australian server just so we have options of guilds, a real economy, more people to play with as well as other things. In general. everything on our server is hyperinflated in terms of cost, theres little mats to even make things with, and theres still common pots/patterns that were not even in AH for weeks after other servers. I don’t think this would impact the economy of another realm at all since everything is much cheaper on most servers (if anything, everything would be deflated).

Again, during p1/ most of P2 it was fine and there was enough population to somewhat play. But it’s clear now in P3 that NA population is dying - at this point theres only one person in each major city. If there’s any way some sort of realm switch would be possible for the many of us NA players who were forced to join Australian server initially, it would be awesome.

Edit: This is definitely a horde problem, I cannot speak for alliance. This server does have one of highest ratio imbalances with like 7:3 alliance to horde ratio, so the pop def affects horde the most.

Thanks so much!

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I don’t believe

The main problem is that we (along with many others) in the US were forced to join Penance (AU) because nothing else was open.

Both Chaos Bolt and Lava Lash were open, why didn’t you go there? Historically Oceanic servers were always the lowest populated servers. The onus is on you for not doing a bit of research beforehand.

To be completely honest, not everyone does a deep dive into servers and realm choice before any new game they choose. On top of that, when we started the server had a ton of people. No one could predict that NA player base would die this extensively. I’m not talking about “low pop server” this is currently a “no pop server.” There are essentially TWO ACTIVE SUNKEN TEMPLE RAIDS a week on NA. It also just seems like such an easy fix without disrupting anything.

Also “you not believing” does not change the truth of the situation. You could not join them initially if you were late.

The man did say he has never played WoW before so he had no prior knowledge of server do’s and don’t.

With that said you might just have to hang on, dude. Blizzard has opened up transfers sparingly. They may be more willing to open up paid transfers at some point, but who knows when.

Until then you are stuck unless you want to re-reroll an alt on a different server then switch to it full time when P4 hits.

Bumping up.

What about the free transfers? Did this bring any new players to the server?

It’s a good point, but I have not noticed any difference.

I feel like there’s a difference between just being the lowest population server with EVEN gaps between server population sizes, BUT theres definitely a HUGE gap between Penance and the 2nd most least server.

Even item prices of common items illustrate this (most populated server might be 1g, then 1.5g on 2nd most populated, 2g on 3rd most populated and then like 10g on Penance).

I would like to clarify and I did not do this earlier, but this is specific for HORDE too. This server has THE WORST alliance to horde ratio too. So take a server already small, have NA people on it and then a 7:3 ratio of alliance to horde (so horde pop VERY small) and you end up with this easily solvable dilemma.

Eh, I am playing with the Aussies on Penance and have been enjoying my time there, but I am quick to say that my experience is not the norm. I am a NA player, but one that works nights. People raiding in the wee hours of the mornings works well for me. Plus, I do enjoy the small population. Half the people I see in chat are people I ran something with at one point or another.

Look at any website that shows population size.

Penance: Alliance is 760. Horde is 108.

Look at the ratio and population of horde on Penance, and this does not even include the fact that half the server plays on NA and half plays on AU time.

Please help - theres a point where the population size is just too small and soon it’ll just be out.

bump in the hope some action is taken to help this server. Each phase has gotten a little worse. I am also on horde side and i like a small server , but there is a point where it becomes too small to have a functioning economy and also finding pug groups here is nearly non-existent.

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reroll on an NA server. stop prolonging the pain and get back to playing faster.

there is no other help for you. people don’t transfer to a dying server. especially at a fringe time zone within the region even if the option was available.

The Australian server’s population is mostly active around Australian time zones, and not American time zones?!

Colour me shocked and amazed.

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Why would you roll on an AU server in the first place if you are from NA

Being fair to the OP, both of these are RP-PvP and RP servers respectively.

In response to the same things addressed earlier:

No other options but AU server.

Did not expect the server to literally be 100 raiders at this point on Horde - even an Australian one.

Don’t have life resources to restart completely, obviously happy to quit if thats what it has to be, but still enjoy the game enough to see if transfering out is possible

Not trying to have people join our server, trying to transfer out of this server because it is getting close to unplayable.

You don’t need to make a new account. You can just go to a different server and make another character. It doesn’t take much time to level even casually.

Not sure if you knew you can play on multiple servers or not based on your information given.

They rolled on an Aus server as a NA player so surely that wasn’t that important to them

Its a good point - We DID NOT want RP server. Definitely a conscious choice to avoid those.

And honestly, at this point, it has nothing to do NA vs AU even… Even when I’m on on AU timezone there is literally no one on. THERE ARE 100 RAIDERS… horde is going to be dead by P4 at this rate. Last phase there were 500+ raiders at this time. Yes there’s some loss from just 20 man raids vs 10 mans, but most people are just leaving in general.

I’m sure the plan is for realm transfers at some point (I think in classic release it was p2?) - just suggesting for some clearly dying realms it should be available early to salvage the few players left.

I came here to make a similar post - unfortunately there aren’t really enough of us on Penance to get critical mass for a thread like this.

The problem is real. There simply aren’t enough players on Penance for a healthy MMO experience and people are dropping like flies.

Moving from 10-man to 20-man raid was really the nail in the coffin for us. Where we used to run 3-3.5 teams, now we can run 1, and the players who aren’t getting raid time are simply quitting.

I understand there are catch-up mechanics, but for many players the thought of starting over from scratch is simply too much. After all, we’ve invested hundreds of hours into our toons on Penance.

We were hopeful that the PVP server transfer would help bring some life, but it didn’t. No one (Horde ESPECIALLY) would want to transfer to a server that has ~100 active players.

PLEASE PLEASE Blizzard consider opening up transfers from Penance, or merging it with another server. We all love the game and want to keep playing, and if the status quo doesn’t change by P4 40-man raids, well, we won’t stand a chance.

2 Likes

bumping up - Given other realms with more population than Horde on Penance were able to get transfers - any way we can get in Penance too?