I play on Arcanite Reaper. The Smallest Server in NA. Currently, we are struggling to even think about getting the gates open. Although the server has been trying to entice people to work together and track our progress prior to the Phase 5 release. We are on the verge of having almost every guild transfer off. The largest guild on the server has already made known that they are leaving, but the timing depends on how long it takes to open the gates.
Don’t get me wrong, being able to farm (or at least compete with gold farmers and RMT traders -see last post) mostly in peace is nice. Having access to all the world dragons is great. However, there comes a time when you are farming hundreds and thousands of mats to help open a gate for a server that might just die anyway (and perhaps not even open the AQ gates) and you are just thinking to yourself “What is the point?”
Will Blizzard do anything to help the small servers? There are at least 2 servers that Blizzard could merge Arcanite Reaper with and we would STILL be the smallest server in NA. The gap between the small servers and the “medium” pop servers is ridiculous. They have addressed this in retail, but why not classic at all? And don’t give me the “no changes” argument. At this point in time, that is no longer a vaild counter in not fixing something that is broken. Again, is this an example of Blizzard just looking for money because they know people will pay to transfer off? If so, they are about to just lose a bunch of subs because no one wants to play on a dead server and some people just simply can’t afford to transfer off. Looking for a blizz employee to help explain why they are not helping the servers that have small communities.
No, this is an example of choices and consequences. You chose to play on a small pop server, you have to now deal with the consequences. You can’t reap the benefits of a small pop server and a large pop server.
No. This is an example of poor communication from Blizzard, bad implementation by Blizzard and terrible decisions by Blizzard.
Arcanite Reaper was one of the first “new” servers created to deal with over populated servers during launch where people were getting 10+ hour long queues. Blizzard spent weeks touting the free transfers as a solution to queue times so right off the bat you’re looking at a Blizzard created problem.
As the population on Arcanite Reaper never went above “low” free transfers were opened again and again but it never addressed the problem that Blizzard let servers grow too large, used layering as a bandaid and then panicked when those didn’t work and tried free server xfers completely ignoring the reasons why people won’t take a free server xfer (community, friends, etc…).
So then you’re left with people who end up on a dead/low pop server due to promises made by Blizzard with no follow-through, no communication on how to improve server populations and then they open up paid transfer.
At no point in their decision making process does Blizzard stop and think “but what happens if people don’t go from High pop to Low pop? What happens if they go from their already low pop server to an already high pop server?”.
Seriously. At some point all it would have taken is for one of the brain dead marketing rejects posing as developers to actually consider the impact but NOPE.
Instead Blizzard opened up the doors, Dead servers had massive transfers off and only after the damage was done did Blizzard think “oh hey, maybe we should lock some of the xfers”.
Idiots.
This is 100% a Blizzard created problem, stop blaming players for just wanting to play on a healthy server and start putting blame where it belongs, the completely disconnected “development” team of classic.
Guild Leadership on AR before the mass migration back in Jan/February tried multiple avenues to get communication from Blizzard on how AQ gates would work, how low pop servers would be helped and how imbalanced factions would play out but nothing. Not one word.
In every customer service training, project management course, business leadership development training they all emphasize the same thing “communication”.
The problem is Blizzard doesn’t care about customers they care about shareholders. Influx of cash from transfers far outweighs any minimal losses they see in subscriptions otherwise they couldn’t justify their behaviour to shareholders.
Fair enough. We should be able to see things like active players and faction ratios when picking a server. But, they’ve never did this back when they were “better”. Why would anybody think they would do this now?
I mean that’s a pretty blatant lie as they stood back and watch server populations and faction balances get absolutely devastated only to step in after the fact.
One of the most important steps when closing down a project is to analyze the process and develop a “lessons learned” so moving forward you don’t make the same mistakes.
Seems like Blizzard is missing a huge part of their development cycle.
edit: Most of my complaints only make sense if you think of us players as the ones Blizzard is responsible too. If you think in terms of them only being responsible to shareholders then their behavior 100% makes sense, we’re just a small percentage of one of their many wings of profit generators, actually a drop in the bucket compared to King at this point.
With people like you there is no reasoning because your mind is made up and you’re incapable of seeing it from anyone else’s perspective.
This weird entitlement you have for what, picking the right server at the launch? You somehow feel that people who weren’t capable of playing with the insane queues during the first few weeks should now further be punished because of a failure on Blizzard’s behalf to communicate and manage expectations?
The level of cognitive dissonance is unreal with you people.
How exactly were they to know what size the server was going to be when rolling on it? To the best of my knowledge, servers weren’t designated as low, medium, high, endless queue population servers when classic launched… It’s all a matter of what has happened to the server in the time SINCE launch that matters.
The thing is, communication means different things to different people. It’s all good and well to say to communicate, but there is no universal acceptable amount. You can alienate and annoy just as many people by over communicating as you can by under communicating, and the line is in different places for different people.
For all intensive purposes, they essentially were. Some servers had really long queues from day one, and some did not. Also, even weeks before the actual launch, it was already being talked about that servers like Herod and Faerlina were going to be extremely popular.
Moreover, you have had ample time to transfer to a new server.
At some point, the player has to hold themself responsible for their own decisions.
You’ve highlighted a difference between endless queue population servers and everything else. I don’t think OP is asking to have their server be brought up to the levels seen on the highest population servers. What you’re proposing is that you either sit in queues for half a day on Herod or Faerlina, or roll the dice with one of the other servers. I, like OP, chose to roll the dice. I got lucky in that my server’s not dead. It’s not hugely active, but it’s not dead either. OP got screwed.
As for transfers, by the time server populations started to drop enough to be a potential problem, people have already formed bonds with people they’re playing with. Lots of people find it hard enough to leave a guild they’ve been with for a long period of time, let alone transfer servers. Essentially, you’re going to need to get the entire guild to transfer servers to maintain most of the community. Nevermind the fact that this will cause issues in and of itself by making the low population servers even lower.
There’s an easy solution on Blizzard’s part, and they’ve done it with retail. Just merge some lower population servers that are in the same time zone. It’s not rocket science!