When did they say layers could be spun ip independently on each continent? I was under the impression that Layering was always whole entire copies of the world being spun up while remaining a seamless experience within that Layer.
Pre classic launch when they were explaining the layering technology
Edit: here in an interview they say that layers spin up continents not the entire world: http s://youtu.be/r1oOIXi_59M?t=518
So the tech should exist to have 5-10 northrend/outland layers while still only having 1 eastern kingdoms/kalimdor layer, which, just that alone, would be a huge boon to natural rp occuring, though I’d still rather see grob drop down to 1 layer. Maybe if we’re lucky we’ll get a firemaw situation and grobs population will crash after it was locked, and only the dedicated grobb players and rpers will remain
Well, looks like Blizzard actually did it and opened free transfers from Grobbulus to Bloodsail.
I wonder if this changes anything for people.
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I’ve expressed this concern in the bloodsail discord, but I’m worried, since bloodsail is a destination realm from a lot of the other non-rp servers, that this might result in bsb getting massively diluted by non rpers, as this is exactly what happened with grob back in phase 2/3 of classic back in early 2020
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According to IF.pro, BSB is in danger of dropping to 3-digit count of raidlogging players (1094:258 A:H). Will have to circle back to updated numbers after a week of WOTLK to get a better pulse on how well the server is actually doing.
I think the bigger demographic question is if there are enough players interested in WoW Classic WOTLK RP to make a genuinely strong server. When I say ‘strong’, I mean the economy is fleshed out. There are people farming materials, producing consumables, and putting them up for sale at competitive prices against one another. The AH is not completely ruled by a small handful of scalper-barons who face very little competition and hold the local economy as a soft hostage.
From day 1, Grobbulus’ population included a significant number of people who never had any interest, intention or inclination to participate in RP-related content. This was also always true of Emerald Dream. BSB seems to have very few of these people and it looks sleepy by comparison because of it. Too sleepy for me, personally. Time will tell!
Doesn’t for me for previously stated reasons regarding RP-PvP, but I 100% support the decision.
BSB should have been a destination realm for free transfers from Grobb since the moment they opened free transfers off of Grobb up.
I imagine when queues start up tomorrow again, some of Grobb will definitely move over to BSB in the next week.
Oh wow yeah, another massive misstep on Blizzard’s part making BSB a destination for EVERY mega-server and not just Grobb. Didn’t notice that at first.
Depending on how queues go, BSB might end up just an ‘overflow’ PvE server by the time the dust settles.
I can tell you right away that those numbers are very misleading. It’s definitely a “sleepy” server compared to others, but it’s nowhere near as deserted as resources like IF.pro make it seem. That’s just such a skewed tool to use when trying to gauge population.
The problem is, as far as I’m aware, the transfers are only available for the weekend. Taking a quote right from that listing I linked…
“While we intend to keep these Free Character Transfers open through the weekend and until the launch of Northrend content, we strongly encourage players who wish to use a Free Character Transfer to do so as soon as possible. Free Character Transfers may be closed without warning as we continue to evaluate the populations of realms.”
To my understanding, that means the free transfers will stop at Wrath launch, if they haven’t already been stopped for specific servers beforehand.
Oh I missed that part. Then, uh, that’s pretty short-sighted on Blizzard’s part lmao.
I am unfortunately going to BsB. I am a pre-Grobb OG, I hearted every post in the Lets us have rp-pvp for classic thread to get a rp-pvp server type when blizz said no. I also annoyingly tweeted at Ion Hazzikostas till we got it. Played since day 1 but a 8 hour queue it just to much. I work and can only log during peak times. I wish all of you that I ran instants with, rp with, chilled with, the best of times forward.
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RIP i recommend you park a character on grob to hold onto your name, Tira will hold the fort while all the guard are gone. Luckily things seem rather quiet right now in terms of ne’er-do-wells
I would do quest with my PVP flag on If enough players go.
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Initiatives for people to flag on pve servers have never worked and likely won’t. The majority of people go there specifically to not have WPVP.
I lveled a lock on BSB and the lack of WPVP feels like part of the game is missing.
I wouldn’t be able to play if there wasn’t the thrill of something unexpected that could happen at any moment.
Today, i was doing some quests in the spore area in Fjord and there was a paladin that was out for blood and that tried to kill me anytime he could ! Of course, i killed him at least 9 times in total and his pal warrior at least 4 times, but damn that was hela fun ! It was like heroic quest mode ;D
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I was holding out hope for them adding another RP-PVP server, but with this much time passed I figure it’s out of the realm of possibility. I joined up for Wrath and intended to roll on RP-PVP, but since that isn’t an option, I’m forced to pick a less ideal server. I was debating between BSB and Eranikus and have decided on BSB. It seems more likely that I’ll run into others willing to flag and skirmish in the open world there, than I will find players on Eranikus that are interested in RP.
It’s a really unfortunate scenario Blizzard has set up here, reading about how they apparently funneled a bunch of players from non-RP realms to Grob is something I have a hard time wrapping my head around the logic of. Whenever the lock comes off I’ll have to transfer my characters over, which is really annoying, but I do want to play Wrath, and time continues to pass. So that’s one more face on BSB who’ll be flagged in the world at least. Looking forward to getting jumped by y’all 
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While this is true, there doesn’t need to be a major initiative for people to flag. If each faction had a guild dedicated to RP-PvP, or even just wPvP, that required members to flag that would be enough to generate action. The people who don’t flag don’t want to be attacked first, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be the ones attacking… Also there’s Wintergrasp introduced in Wrath which is a forced PvP open world zone.
You can still flag and invite others to attack you. That’s actually the epitome of an unexpected thrill because you’re more unsure of when an attack will come as opposed to a PvP server where you expect it to happen at some point?
Yeah, sorry, but that chance is slim to zero, at best. BsB is great for RP, so you’ve chosen right, in my opinion. You can make PvP happen a lot easier on a realm than you can RP, so as long as you put forth the effort then you’ll be rewarded with what you want, I’m sure.
Let’s also get this straight. Why people blame Blizzard for this, I don’t understand. Yes, Grobbulus was populated to begin with, and yes, Blizzard continued to allow transfers to the server… BUT THAT IS ON THE PLAYERS FOR DOING THE TRANSFERS. It is not Blizzard’s responsibility to police and control the population of their servers to that extreme. The playerbase made Grobbulus what it was, and now what it is. You can’t blame Blizzard for that, they never forced anyone to transfer.
Big disagree. You should always expect people to do what is in their own self interest, even if it’s at the detriment to a larger community. This is why we have laws. As an analogue, Blizzard are wow’s government, they set the laws, and in this case, they did not set appropriate laws to protect the players from themselves.
Lets have a walk down memory lane, shall we? The first wave of transfers to Grob happened back in phase 2/3 of OG classic. This was when layers were initially removed from the game and the big streamer servers had massive queues. Grobbulus was one of the designated overflow servers for players, so sure, while Blizzard didn’t FORCE anyone to transfer, the were highly encouraged to. This was Blizzard’s first mistake, encouraging players to transfer from a non-rp realm to an rp realm. Sudden transfers like that do not integrate well with a new communit, and led to a lot of clashing of players with different ideals. These free transfers carried on throughout the entirety of classic, with another fairly big wave hitting grob during ZG specifically (probably because ZG was a big catch up raid so a lot of people came back for it), I remember massive queues for the first couple of days for some reason, but they carried on all the way to TBC release.
Now, lets move on to Blizzard’s second mistake: Ignoring the worldbuff meta and leaving free transfers open on the current megaservers. Those free transfers are almost entirely why the pvp megaservers went 100-0 in terms of faction balance. With the worldbuff meta in full swing, and people not wanting to have to deal with getting ganked, people jumped ship from one big server onto another, creating the standard 100-0 pvp realm.
Grobbulus remained largely unaffected by this, as an rp-pvp server, there were enough people tied to the server itself for reasons other than raiding metas that even when population imbalances began to look inevitable (we were 65/35 at one point) enough horde actually stuck around. This is, however, where blizzard’s second mistake occured. As Grobbulus’ population continued to grow, they STILL kept it open as a free server destination, despite it already being a reasonably large server, and when TBC finally launched, we were hit with enough transfers as grob was now officially the only balanced pvp server left in the entirety of wow, and now, with the removal of the worldbuff meta, the people who actually wanted to world pvp, or were generally okay with it, flocked to the server in droves, and bam, a new megaserver was born. From this point onward, Grobbulus was now the permanent layer server it remains unti this day, and with the server closures, and grobbulus being a destination realm for THOSE as well, the problem was just exacerbated by the time wrath launched.
So you can see, by having free transfers available to grobbulus for so long, and at such key points in time, blizzard have been encouraging non rp players onto an rp server for close to three years now. If you don’t think that’s on Blizzard for mismanagement… Then I don’t know what to say.
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Fyi- wintergrasp does not function like og wrath so that’s out of the picture as well. There is just no replacing the wpvp element.
So again, how is that on Blizzard? The analogy of Blizzard being WoW’s government is a bit of a stretch, I could make a few different comparisons but I don’t really want to get too into it.
Basically it boils down to… Did Blizzard make unwise decisions by allowing free transfers for so long? Yes, but Grobbulus was not the only destination realm… And if you really look at the big picture they had to do something.
They originally created too many realms based on hype, and a lot of people quit. Now you have multiple small realms. Before they even started free transfers though, people were able to pay to move realms, which is always their case because money. People are the ones offering their money up, though. They’re the ones who are moving and realm hopping and balance chasing. The issue began before it came to Grobbulus… And you also have to look at the perspective of the people who came to Grobbulus in the first place, for them it was a good thing.
All I’m saying is people like to wag fingers and be like, “Wow, Blizzard ruined my server!” when the harsh reality is… No, they didn’t. Did they do anything to stop it? No, but it was the people themselves who created this mess. Again… Nobody forced anyone to move.
Also, what do you mean by that? I admit I haven’t started Wrath content yet, but I do know they were changing it to be… an instanced BG more or less? Does that completely remove the world zone, though? It became a quest hub after the battle, and unless I’m remembering wrong was always a contested zone where you got flagged?
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