Citing precedent for ‘how it was done in the past’ is kind of meaningless when the Classic Dev Team said they would be trying to enforce faction balance as strictly as possible, far more than in the past, back at the start of SoD.
Enforcing faction balance seems to be one of their key efforts in SoD, seeing as they continuously talk about how successfully they’ve done so all the time. I’d say it’s probably a very good excuse in their eyes.
I’ve never actually had a problem getting in group or run on Shadowstrike. Why not merge the PVE realm with the PVP and if people don’t wish to world PVP they can toggle it on/off? Keeps everyone happy, increase the pop on OCE.
Oceanic does not want this. The only request we had was for Penance to xfer to Shadowstrike
Just bumping to clarify that whilst a megaserver is a great idea, we’d love the ability for OCE players to seed an instance hosted in our region. This is a solid compromise that keeps our raiders satisfied whilst simultaneously taking care of the overall health of the game.
While i get that oce servers are a bit slower now(alot of ppl dropepd off cos of the slow content release, pick up the release pace rather then bandaid fixing with a merge), but during normal afternoon and evening play still has plenty of groups going and this had been a thing on oce servers for ever, not as many ppl around during the day lots around during the night.
If ppl want to move off so they can play with ppl that are active in there time thats fine, but dont kill the server for the ppl that want competitive ping to try and push content. (i know sod is ment to be casual but there are plenty of ways its already been made competitive and we are loving it) going form a 10ms to a 250ms is going to be crazy on ability to play reactively for pvp and pve.
I played van-mop on na servers and going to oce servers when they first opened was life changing, game became completely different and more enjoyable.
I dont know what the short term solution should be to fix it, but killing a server and forcing ppl to play on higher ping will likely just have them drop off and quit anyway. Long term just speed up the content and not have ppl getting bored waiting.
Also the drop of retail also probs took a toll on sod, once everyeones raid logging again on retail other content will see more players coming back.
Don’t kill oce servers, if anything implement warmode and merge the oce pve pvp servers
I know i was able to move an alliance onto my horde sever back when they open SOM transfers
On suggestion from the Shadowstrike discord I tried making a character on Living Flame to find out I have 270 ping. Even with having instanced raids/dungeons for OCE players, having to open world get world buffs etc is going to cause such a headache, i’m not even sure i’m willing to continue playing with that solution.
There is a solid enough community on Shadowstrike for what OCE players generally expect, and I’m sure there will a spike of players each new phase. People stop playing as much when there isn’t anything to do outside of raid logging, so making the game more alt friendly or having more activities to do outside of raid would keep the server healthy long term.
One pressing issue from a lower population is having less access to world buffs, especially Rend. Given this is a seasonal server, it’d be nice to have ways to trigger more than 1 rend / dragonslayer per character.
Most players on a US server wouldn’t be online during our peak hours anyway, so the larger population wouldn’t make much of a difference for most of us really. It is hard to see the value in trading low ping for a somewhat easier group forming experience.
Additionally, it would suck to be on a PVP server with low ping, as the US based players would have a natural advantage over OCE players in world pvp. If you are going to go ahead with these transfers, please consider allowing OCE players to transfer to Wild Growth (PVE) at least.
Following 3 threads are filled with oceanic players saying they do not want a merge and want a better solution and the ability to continue playing on low ping.
Please take this feedback seriously.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/oceanic-region-better-solutions-no-merge
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/oce-please-allow-oce-players-to-raid-on-oce-ping
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/dont-close-shadowstrike-au
Also a reminder thread from when you did same thing to us on season of mastery and we also didn’t want it then either and i personally quit after it.
We’re doing a vote on the shadowstrike discord about how we feel about this. As of writing this message we’ve got 71 votes for merging and 178 votes for not merging.
Listen to your player base.
Some OCE feedback that I haven’t seen others mention much:
The biggest problem with the current plan of having Shadowstrike merge with Crusader Strike is that Crusader Strike is based on the east coast data centre. As someone from NZ, this gives us a barely tolerable ping, but anyone in Aus, especially western Aus, is utterly screwed over.
I can see why merging us with a US server makes a lot of sense. Im not inherently opposed to the idea. But crusader strike is a terrible option. At least have us for merge with Wild Growth. If Oce has to play with terrible ping, a PVE server aint a terrible option.
However, I also think there’s a real possibility for having Penance and Shadowstrike merge, and open FCM transfers TO Oce FROM the US servers.
If there’s a chance to have an OCE mega server, that’d be my first option. Second option is a West Coast data centre. I’m really not enthused about being on an east coast PVP horde dominated server as alliance with 300+ ping.
I am a raid leader of a small guild in shadowstrike AU. I just asked all my guildies and not 1 people want to play on a US realm with 200+ms Ping. Just want to say Let the AU server keep away from this character transfer. THIS IS THS SIMPLEST WAY!
If Blizzard really want to do something to help AU players. Just Merge the Shadow Strike and Penance together and maybe give us a Warmode change option? I know this could be hard, so just stop the transfer from beginning and do things slowly but safely. DON’T KILL OCE SOD PLAYERS PLEASE!!!
Sir the technology seems to be there for oceanic instances on Crusader Strike. If the technology isn’t there, tell us. If it is there but we’re too small for you to implement it even though we’re paying customers, tell us straight. I’ll respect you guys if you just tell it to our face that we’re too small to cater for. I imagine I and many others will go on our way sooner or later.
Hi Blizzard,
I’d find it easier to believe your desire for feedback about this was genuine if you’d had the decency to ask at least a couple of weeks before you were opening the transfers but oh well… chances are I’m just shouting into the void here but I’ll give it a go anyhow.
I see two paths forward for your server merger plans that would keep me (and I suspect a lot of others) subbed (I assume you want that):
(Best) Make Shadowstrike(AU) a destination server for these migrations and allow toons on PvE servers to move to it even though it is a PvP server. Some Penance(AU) players may want to move to a PvP server in order to maintain their OCE ping. Some OCE players who rolled on US servers may choose to migrate back. And some US players who like a less crowded server may choose to tolerate the high ping and migrate to Shadowstrike(AU). Put together those 3 things should increase population levels to what Blizzard considers “viable”. (Many of us playing in OCE now already consider Shadowstrike(AU) entirely viable, btw)
(Tolerable) If toons on Shadowstrike(AU) must migrate to a US server allow the choice to head to a PvE server (because open world PvP with the pings OCE players will have is not what we signed up for when originally choosing a PvP server) AND implement instancing of dungeons and raids on OCE servers when the party / raid leader is an OCE player.
Crossing my fingers, not holding my breath.
Guild Leader of SGIAM - We’re one of the top Horde guilds on the server.
Having had discussion from those within my guild and other top horde players on the server, the preference for us is definitely to stay OUT of the merge.
As others have mentioned, having people in the same time zone and ping are crucial to us to be able to play the game at a level we find enjoyable.
If we were to merge with Crusader Strike, I have heard many say that it will likely be the nail in the coffin for them in SOD.
Comon Blizzard.
Shouldnt we think about why population falling down? Org was busy in P1 and P2, even in early P3 and P4.
After u banned 10man raid, many people left. When u decided to delay launch P4, many people left.
Now u wanna shut down the servers to the players that still play ur game after all u have done. srsly?
Do something that make ur game more fun to play, and people will come back and play, the population problem is solved.
For example, give Alliance Shaman, give Horde pala, how hard is this?
STV in P2 is good, people have something to play instead of keep leveling alts. Why STV dead now?
Don’t make the player suffer for your mistakes
OCE pls keep it as an OCE server hell even if we lose the pvp let’s keep the community
The first option here is great. I am sure many people would welcome the chance to come to Shadowstrike.
Adding my two cents. Please dont merge the OCE realms with NA/US (or EU). This is something that can only be done once and cant be undone. I’ve not once had a group dissolve because we couldnt find the required number of people (5, 10 or 20). With BWL dropping soon, players will come back. When the merge happened in SoM, it killed the AU server and I stopped playing rather than swapping realms.
Yep as above said, OCE realms merged into the US cluster will kill any chance of future phases bringing players back.
If you plan to merge Oceanic anyway then you are better off just deleting the OCE SOD servers altogether - we suffered through that round the world ping for too long before OCE servers and we aren’t going back.