Realm Consolidation - Lava Lash

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
325

I like to see comments like this. I feel like as the population of WoW players become adults, they have different expectations than 20 years ago - or even 10 years ago. Players want some kind of accountability.

LL players didn’t expect that devs would just unilaterally make a decision like this without taking into account how it was going to negatively affect the player base. Sure there are some positives in general - players who raid would be accommodated with a larger pool of raiders. But the RP-PVE community - who are known to be not happy to be shuffled to a PVE server or an RP-PVP server for the reasons mentioned numerous times above, are again feeling ignored, underserved, left out of decision-making, sidestepped, etc.

I guess my question is, what could devs have done better here? Shouldn’t they have expected that SoD would likely follow the trend that most WoW game modes have, in that there would be a large influx of interested gamers joining at the beginning, with many players losing interest after a couple of weeks while others did not? This is certainly expected by players. Shouldn’t this be in the plans by now?

I would expect that going forward, it should be something discussed by devs, along with things like what server streamers are going to “pick.” We shouldn’t keep seeing the same types of problems recurring. When a new game mode is discussed and planned, it should be discussed thoroughly, like what will happen at the middle and end of the life cycles, including niche players like RP-PVEers and RP-PVPers.

6 Likes
326

Can you move to Crusader Strike and give me your gold first?

327

Well I guess that’s where my view differs. I don’t think the problem was an unavoidable transitional population. I guess it really doesn’t matter at this point. It’s more relative to hiring a manager that’s only really good at losing customers. Then sticking with that manager and expecting a different outcome. Even while you start shuttering locations (servers) due to customer loss.

As a player it irritates me because eventually something as cool as SoD could have been… won’t happen because they’ll just expect this outcome. Even though with proper management it could have prospered.

1 Like
328

I honestly don’t see RP happening on LL. Of course, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. But there’s no consideration for those that want an immersive experience. I mean, it’s kinda hard to get immersed when every other name you see is something like “Steaktube” or “Healzees” or “Orcguy”. So yeah, just how "serious is RP in World of Warcraft generally? I’m thinking not very.

1 Like
329

The issue is, that Blizzard no longer monitors names.

On Era RP, all those HC folks came and some had just gibberish and nothing happened to them.

As for RP in general,

I think it is a missconception to assume, that everyone must be heavily involved in RP. Many just enjoy the more casual setthing on these realms, some others the AH market that is less raid driven, again others the lower population.

Plus, if you truly like to join an RP guild, then RP realms are the best chance you have. I have been in some crazy RP guilds throughout the years, some guys are very creative and others are like me, not playing by the lore always on the edge of being cast out.

:kissing_heart:

2 Likes
330

Also, have they said when the servers are actually being shut down?

331

What happens to characters on these servers when they go down? How much time do player have to get their characters off of the servers? Days? Weeks?

332

Steady L’s from these clown devs

334

I miss LL and its non-inflated economy, not having to fight bots while farming, and chill vibe. Let the Chads play w the Chads, let people who want to chill- chill we all pay the same…

3 Likes
335

Lava Lash wasn’t dead until Blizzard decided to show up and kill it without warning without any feed back from the community they were effecting

Lava Lash was perfect for what it was, a lower population more friendly focused and welcoming server, for people that didn’t want to be on stupidly large mega servers with dozens and dozens of layers and queue times anytime new content drops.

Blizzard killed Lava Lash, it was perfectly fine before they meddled.

Get ready for all the servers to be “Consolodated” because they aren’t as big as Crusader Strike, so that blizzard to force everyone into mega servers to save themselves a few dollars a month on server load.

9 Likes
336

Can you imagine what would happen if Blizzard locked Grobbulus on Cata and opened free transfers off to Bene and Faerlina?

There’d be riots.

But this is SoD so they can get away with it. Nevermind the season is only temporary. They had decided we’d all be happier on megaservers.

3 Likes
337

They won’t at this point because Grobb has the population they want but yeah…

BB Cata could have been on the chopping block.

After 2019 - 2020 being amazing I didn’t think it was possible to dislike the direction of Classic WoW and what the dev team is doing more. Over the last 2 years (with the exception of the hardcore thing because that was fun IMO) I’ve strongly hated almost every decision they’ve made.

I REALLY hate to see communities destroyed and I also hate to see selfish, entitled people who can’t think beyond getting fast groups, their class rotation, and themselves, getting rewarded and catered to over and over and over again.

I might just be done with WoW for good because what’s the point when things always end up like this?

Yeah I can’t blame any RPer who quits and decides they are done.

2 Likes
338

I mean, this is what happened to Maladath.

As well as Skyfury and Thekal for that matter.

Those were the “fresh” servers for Cataclysm.

And there are pages of “consolidated” servers along those lines.

This isn’t just SoD.

All the fresh servers for WotLK are gone, and there won’t be any for Cataclysm - not that I think that was an option, given how quickly that expansion is set to run.

There’s no “getting away with it” or not - it’s just done.

There doesn’t seem to be any emphasis on, or attracting people to populations could help growing - and I’m certain that a lot of “offers” for getting people to move or re-roll or anything else would get shouted down - and, frankly that’s OK. Layering realms, and getting servers to behave for large events is a challenging problem - even with a twenty year old game.

But I didn’t want to move from Maladath in Cataclysm, where we’d all started, and then end up on a server that was 95% Alliance or Horde, with an established economy. Enough so that I stopped playing that character and game entirely. Having people shout “Dead Server” is at best a drag.

But is there anything that Blizzard could do to attract people to move one way or the other? Is there anything any one of us would have accepted to move over to Lava Lash? Better gathering opportunities, or extra Fish Tourney wins? A free boost of an alt with the move of an established character to say, level 25? A month of game time?

I don’t have the answer, and I don’t particularly want to see any of those off-the-cuff thoughts vivisected.

My question is “In SoD, if you’ve offered so many players so many chances to do things they couldn’t, isn’t there some sort of incentive anyone could have thought of to help Lava Lash?”

Wouldn’t at least an Aggrend tweet before entire founding servers get de-allocated be the kind of “Discovery” that would help in all versions of the game for population balance?

-Horse

339

This is where I was at after trying out Wrath, but :turtle: reminded me how much I love Vanilla. I only came back to SoD because it was Vanilla, and from what I’d seen of my friends playing it, the changes looked Vanilla too.

All it’s done is reinforce no changes as a necessary mantra. There are a few things that could be better changed in base Vanilla to make it better, but ultimately if you give them an inch, they’ll layer that inch until they get a mile.

1 Like
340

Ya that was the one time I supported “fresh”. I didn’t start there… I rerolled there when it opened. Joined a guild yada yada. Which to be honest Maladath and Lava Lash were the only two times I bothered to join a guild in WoW since Legion.

With Maladath I took a break and when I came back the guild MOTD was “Thank you for playing with us.” Most of that guild didn’t move and simply quit. With Lava Lash we finished off ST last night and then moved and reformed our guild.

The funny thing to me is the same guy I’ve had on perma ignore since just about day one of SoD is still spamming about “fresh” classic servers. I mean some times you just need to read the room and buy a clue.

You wanna know what is actually ironic to me? When Holly Longdale came over from EQ I figured they were just going to get into the progression server business. EQ 1/2 which I honestly don’t even know who owns those games now… which I would think of as one of those dead games. Well they made an entire business out of running progression servers and enough people show up for them to keep doing and people keep showing up.

You look at classic and now SoD… and I don’t see how they can justify doing another season or trying to do a progression server. It’s kind of odd when you think of the numbers of subs this game used to have… sure a lot of people are older now… I’m one of them. I’m still here because if you like MMO’s what has come out new that is what you’d even call a AAA game or a non cash shop pos. For me the answer to that is nothing.

So there is actually a market that you could draw a bunch of people into. Classic had big populations for a while… SoD had big population through 90% of P1. What drove people away? My view comes down to one singular repeatable answer… Development Team decisions.

“We know what is best and you saying you won’t play it is becuase you don’t know.” Then people quit… no accountability on the Dev Team… lost earning potention close down/merge servers.

Over and over and over again. Like they expect a different result and apparently the players that do come back also expect a different result. Although personally I think players have gotten to the point now where it’s just “Well I can play for a while and it will be fun and I’ll quit when it isn’t.”

I had some thoughts of returning to classic for Cata. When they announced SoD there was no going back to classic. For me that’s because SoD should have been different. I don’t really care to keep playing the same game over and over and over. Which is why I was never into the EQ Server progression thing. Ya it was a game I played off and on for years both EQ 1/2 but to me there is zero point to a progression server. It’s liike playing a classic version that you know 100% will turn into a version that made you quit. In the case of WoW you don’t even get “classic” because of all these changes they made.

With SoD it was advertised as “you will be powerful” with commentary that the “new” content would be tuned for that. Instead it was you will be nerfed repeatedly be really not powerful and there isn’t really much of any “new” content and it certainly wasn’t tuned for your “power”. P2 and P3 weren’t hard they just had some crap mechanics you had to learn and when people realized that… along with the fact that “upgrades” weren’t upgrades they quit. Or they wanted to PvP which was obviously going to have even more balance problems with all this new stuff… and they quit.

Sorry for the wall.

341

Yeah. I forgot you lose ALL your honor when transfering from servers and lost everything I worked for through the week. Bummer. Also lost most of my names that I love for my characters. Sad.

I should’ve stay on Lava Lash till the end, lol.

1 Like
342

Honestly, this is the kind of thing that makes me seriously rethink my life and how much time I waste playing this game and that maybe I should find a more constructive hobby…like rebuilding classic cars or building ships in a bottle or writing clown erotica.

5 Likes
343

Posting in support of the Lava Lash players.

What are devs thinking? “Too lean”? Over 80% of these 300 posts are against it and don’t want mega server to RP on. Imagine RPing (if you can even find the community in big servers) just to get layered lol.

Like wtf for real lol clearly don’t care for the community. Let them RP without getting layered or ganked on PvP server/play with sweats on PvE server.

8 Likes
344

We went from ‘Locked’ to “Low”. What’s happening?

345

Did they unlock the server?

Someone with no characters on Lava Lash try to make a character, check it out.