Blizzard,
–Note: I’m here posting mostly because of how bad things are on my current server (Incendius), but I think this experience is shared by many.–
I’m sure you’re aware that there are massive Horde - Alliance imbalances on many servers (and I understand also that, in general, this imbalance tends to be skewed in favor of the Horde) and that these imbalances sometimes result in a “server death spiral” (the imbalance is so bad, the disadvantaged faction starts to leave, worsening the imbalance further and pushing more people to leave).
For many loyal and dedicated players who have spent years playing WoW in various incarnations (and other Blizzard games) this creates an exceedingly bad in-game experience. For example, since the release of TBC Classic, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen the Terokkar Spirit Towers controlled by the horde, Halaa is controlled by Alliance 99% of the time (many people have sat on 100 Oshu’gun dust for weeks), and the only time I’ve seen the Zangarmarsh GY controlled by the Horde is the one time I personally capped it at like 3am server time. Because there are so many alliance and so few horde, even if Horde does organize to try and cap these objectives, we usually just get overwhelmed by raw numbers. These problems are not so severe as to make the game miserable, but they have contributed to a “Death Spiral” on Incendius; more and more horde are leaving, leaving fewer horde available to group with and progress in content. This is evident in Incendius’s active player counts but exceedingly evident in our Auction House; for the past few weeks, the Incendius Horde AH has had less than 500 items posted and, at some times, less than 300 items posted total.
Currently, players can only address this imbalance by transferring servers. Some would say this is a fine solution, case closed. But the obvious problem with this solution is that every player who transfers off an imbalanced server (assuming they’re on the underdog side) actually worsens the imbalance and the problems. Transferring, in other words, creates negative externalities and, as the proverbial government of WoW, Blizzard should step in and work to address these externalities.
The way I see it, there are a few solutions that Blizzard could offer to correct server imbalances:
- Merge Servers with other servers that have the opposite faction imbalance
—The con of this solution is that some people would have to rename their character, but that seems like a relatively small price to pay for a better overall in game experience. - Offer targeted free-server-transfer options to the “overpopulated” faction (e.g., offer alliance on Incendius a free transfer to only specific servers (with too many horde)). These free-transfer options could even be made more enticing by offering players in game gold, a free month of subscription, or a special item (tabard? pet? mount? costume?) if they transfer in a way that helps balance. Blizzard could have a sign up for X number of people, or give priority to whole guilds transferring (so as not to disrupt friendships/guild synergy).
—The con of this solution would be potential grief from people who paid for transfers or jealousy from people who don’t have the opportunity to get the item/gold/perks. Also, possibility people would have to name change or still wouldn’t be interested in a server transfer even if free or compensated. - Create perks for factions that are the under dogs on servers that incentivize players to transfer to that server or remain on a server despite imbalance. These perks could be simple things like regenerating rested XP faster, reduced or 0-deposit fee auctionhouses, mobs dropping larger amounts of gold, repair/respeccing costs being reduced, etc. Theoretically, you could implement this solution in the opposite manner (create disadvantages for dominant faction) by, e.g., raising repair costs, lowering loot, slowing down levelling, etc for the dominant faction, but this would for obvious reasons have huge pushback, and it seems better in this case to offer a subsidy rather than implement a “dominance” tax.
— The con of this one would potentially be a feeling of unfairness/favoritism, not staying true to the original TBC framework and adding strange new changes, and also potentially huge difficulty in actually tweaking all these parameters on the back end. - Allowing players on the over populated faction to change factions to the underpopulated faction
—The con of this would be potential backlash because this feature wasn’t in original TBC and/or Blizzard may have to implement a lottery/random system to divvy out these faction change options and people may feel sore that they weren’t given the option to change factions.
Other people have put forward server-imbalance solutions as well, but as someone who has thought on this problem a lot, these are what I have come up with.
My questions to you, Blizzard, are this:
- Do you think the state of these extremely imbalanced servers is acceptable?
- Are you considering taking any steps to address excessive server imbalance?
- What steps are you considering?
There has been talk on my server of everyone in my guild transferring to another server; this would take more than half (by my estimate) the local horde population off of Incendius and leave the ratio of Horde to Alliance irreparably damaged. We’re talking like, less than 1 horde for every 100 alliance. There must be a better solution than this.