Server population is an emergency that needs to be dealt with

WoW Classic Cataclysm Classic Discussion
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I started playing at the beginning of classic on Benediction. My server went from 50/50 population split, to Alliance dominated. I lost the ability to WPVP, but at least I had a big pool of players to play with. Enter WOTLK, I couldn’t even log in to play. I took the free transfer to Sulfuras because Blizzard promised to promote a balanced population. Surprise! They didn’t make good on their promise. In fact they closed transfers, preventing the Alliance population from ever reaching parity with the Horde.

And now, Sulfuras is dead. Less than 1k active players, down from over 10k at WOTLK launch. There’s no one to run dungeons with, no one to PvP with, etc. I have no reason to stay subbed any longer.

I work in business management / client relations. If I mismanaged a product this bad, promised my paying customers a solution, and then failed to follow through without any communication whatsoever, I would lose my clients and my job.

I’m not paying money to transfer again. It’s extremely unfair to pay to fix a problem that Blizzard created. Blizzard customer service told me “we want servers to be a meaningful and impactful decision for players when they transfer, that’s why there is a fee”. How can that be true when Blizzard can let an entire faction transfer off a server, which invariably harms the remaining players on that server?

Blizzard, you need to do something. My sub runs out and I will not be renewing. You have a major service issue that needs to be addressed. There’s zero point in subscribing to this Massive Multiplayer Online game, when the “Multiplayer” is nowhere to be found.

To anyone who wants to read the communications from the Dev Team, here you go:

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/en/wow/t/transfer-restrictions-and-free-character-transfers-now-available-updated-nov-22/1322487/491

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/en/wow/t/transfer-restrictions-and-free-character-transfers-now-available-updated-nov-22/1322487/815

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/en/wow/t/classic-the-unacceptable-state-of-classic-servers/1323722/10

Blizzard’s Promise:

  1. They are taking steps to prevent Mega Servers in the future
  2. They will be heavy handed in preventing any tail spins that inadvertently create other problems down the road
  3. Will continue promoting faction balance on destination realms.

They made good on their first promise, and failed to deliver on the other two. Many players, including myself, took the server transfers because we expected the developers to make good on the rest of their promises, just like they made good on their promise to end Mega Servers.

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Where did they promise this?

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Big surprise buddy but they collect a paycheck regardless of the state of the game. They’re not incentivized in any form to actually do their jobs.

You’re dealing with a dev team on staff to collect a paycheck, nothing more

Like, the poster above me literally is a dev who just comes to the forums to trash talk and troll his players

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go grobb, bene, faerlina. i will be singing this until it shifts otherwise but do not go to other serves all of them are a trap

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What should they do to manage servers? What can they do that doesn’t trap people in a place they’d rather not be?

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Players caused server imbalances, not blizzard.

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Classic is a joke atm. Outside of Grobb all the servers are mainly PvE and it’s a home for only the lowest quality gamers. It’s a retirement home for parsers who can’t do mythic or savage content

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https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/en/wow/t/transfer-restrictions-and-free-character-transfers-now-available-updated-nov-22/1322487/491

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/en/wow/t/transfer-restrictions-and-free-character-transfers-now-available-updated-nov-22/1322487/815

If you follow the chain of conversation on that forum, Blizzard closed Alliance Sulfuras, then re-opened for transfers. Seems great right? Well not exactly. Blizzard claimed 50/50 population split, but it was more in favor of the Horde by a significant amount, which is why they re-opened the servers exclusively to Alliance transfers after someone asked them to stabilize the Alliance population. Ultimately, they didn’t let enough Max Level Alliance transfer before they closed the transfers, so the population never stabilized. I suspect they included all characters in their claim of a 50/50 split. But they should have used max level characters as their metric. By the time they closed the transfers again, Horde population still dominated, hence the massive exodus of Alliance players until now.

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Classic is pretty much aimed at dad gamers. Did you really expect something else?

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If I follow the chain of conversation, I still see zero promises to “promote a balanced population”. So again, I ask, where are you getting this from? Did you make it up?

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The Sulfuras situation is rough. I was really hoping that it could be another good and balanced server going into Wrath but instead just saw history repeat itself.

I’ve debated if this is all on Blizzard or the players probably a hundred times and am not going to again but needless to say, I think the situation sucks and I know that the whole server scenario, meaning what has happened on all servers, has significantly reduced my enjoyment of playing this game. I also strongly disagree with where Blizzard has put all their efforts and resources.

There is a frequent forum poster who pretty much went through what you did with Sulfuras and from what I’ve read that was the final straw to where they quit the game and went elsewhere.

I’m more than anything posting to say I empathize with your situation.

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I used to play on a 55/45 server with around 8k population. August 2021 they open the transfers up to create mega servers. My server dies within a month as a result. Luckily I was on the 5th month of a 6 month sub. I uninstalled for half a year, refusing to pay the ransom, refusing to take two offers from friends for gifted transfers. Told my guild leader I would not transfer, even though I’d always had a great time playing with them since phase 1 vanilla classic.

All faith I ever had in Blizzard gone from that point. Eventually, I was drawn back after they offered free xfers from that dead server 6 months later. I still had a buncha friends who’d paid the ransom and had been playing the whole time on the destination server.

I’m having a good enough time in wrath but this will be the last time. I will not buy Diablo 4 or any more of their products in the future when they come out. Not worth the trouble. I have no faith in this company. They will hype some next game, release it, get their money, and peace out all their resources toward the next buck, and let the current one rot. Dead within 2 months as always. I will have a good time in a game from another company after this one ends. I mean no hard feelings or anything. I’ve had a lot of fun with classic and their past titles. Actually imo the top masterpiece pc game of all time is brood war. But I’m very certain continuing with Blizzard products is a mistake going forward.

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:cold_sweat: wow yer mean as heck

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https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/en/wow/t/classic-the-unacceptable-state-of-classic-servers/1323722/10

This is a quote from the Blue Post:

" Long term however, we do want to take much more deliberate steps to reduce the chances of this happening again, and we unfortunately need to be a bit heavy handed going forward to prevent any tailspins that inadvertently create other bigger problems down the road. It’s going to take us some time to realize the full scope of what we need to do to correct this, but for now, our best option is to continue with very tightly monitored and targeted FCMs (including potentially faction-locked FCMs, as Kaivax alluded to in another post here) to alleviate the immediate pressure."

The post that is mentioned with Kaivax, is the same post where Kaivax acknowledges the Faction Specific transfer to Sulfuras to stabilize the Alliance population.

When looking at the body of communications from the developers here, and this post specifically, Blizzard has made the following promises:

  1. They are taking steps to prevent Mega Servers in the future
  2. They will be heavy handed in preventing any tail spins that inadvertently create other problems down the road
  3. Will continue promoting faction balance on destination realms.

They only followed through on their first promise. Not the second or third. They did not promote faction balance (first promise broken), and in failing to do so, caused problems for Sulfuras down the road (second promise broken).

You may say that they never explicitly stated “we will continue to promote faction balance”. Well to that I say this: we saw them lock Mega-Server immediately and issue a statement that Mega-Servers were a mistake and might never unlock in the future. This was one of their promises, and they followed through on this promise. The players would see this and have confidence that Blizzard’s would follow through on their other promises.

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But they’re right.

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The truth hurts.

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No they didn’t. You have read their post incorrectly.

Notice how they say they WANT TO. Wanting to do something is not promising it.

Because they didn’t. There’s no way for them to promise that because it is not guaranteed.

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Thanks for sharing that all! I remembered it but haven’t gone back to look at the exact words, maybe because I knew how much it would annoy me that they seemed to be caring about the exact things I spent a long time on the forum talking about… and now they clearly just care about doing “easy stuff” to catering to the people who would already rank Wrath Classic an 11/10.

I never trusted any of it enough to transfer any of my toons though, even though I know that the experience and atmosphere I really crave (outside of the guild experience) cannot be found on Wrath Faerlina which is where I was staying.

Anyway, don’t bother with the guy you are debating with. He is just a concern troll and debates in a way the mods agree with. Your information is great. Thank you. :slight_smile:

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Blizzard could stop enabling the players at anytime by discontinuing realm transfers entirely. Want to realm hop? Time to reroll.

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Players can also choose to not transfer as they are not forced or required in most situations.
Blizzard did not force player movement, players chose to do this and abandon otherwise healthy realms due to FOMO.

However if you mean to imply that players cannot control themselves then yes, blizzard should not have offered realm transfers.

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