Server states
When do you plan on doing something about all of the dead servers? Enough is enough, stop counting the transfer money and start fixing the problem. There are several servers that are ‘dead’ for one faction and a small group of players are stuck there. The raidloggers on IF tell a pitiful story, and now that I am on a dead realm, I can accurately say that it is much worse. 400 raid loggers is less than 200 active players.
This is not a ‘player made issues’. Removing queues, adding layering, adding HVH - removing the natural checks and balances that the previous developers (who actually knew what they were doing) placed caused this issue - not desperate players who want to play the game.
Yes, blizzard can fix it. We know they have the ability to do so. At the very least, they need to make a post saying that they know that they have ruined some servers and plan to fix it.
Yes, the ship has sailed for most methods of fixing these lower pop. realms. Yes, it will cost blizzard money and their interns will have to work. Merge low pop servers, enable cross realm for low pop servers, free faction change to low pop factions, reenable queues with free transfers, allow pve → pvp, etc. Also, no we don’t care about cross realm - there is no sense of community on a realm of 100 active players. Chats don’t move, guilds transfer and die, and every zone is empty. Literally any action is better than servers rotting. Just try a method above, if the population doesn’t shift, try something else. Every pvp server is shifting to pve status and becoming one sided anyways. They are basically pve servers at this point - combine them with another pve server and allow free transfers to other (smaller) pvp servers.
“Reroll or transfer”. No, I will just quit as many others have. At the rate people are leaving, Blizzard will lose their transfer money many times over in the coming months from lost subs. As a player, it is easy to scream this for daddy blizzard, but at the end of the day, you are the one getting your wallet back out to transfer again or playing on a barren server. You should care about low pop realms and low pop factions as much as your own, as it will impact the long term health of this game.
No realm is safe and your realm might be next - my realm, Fairbanks, was ‘full’ in classic with a large alliance population. We now have less than 40 level 70 players online at peak time. There are only 400 people raid logging, and many more are transferring off. There are several other servers like this that are unplayable. This is a ‘massive multiplayer’ game - most content is literally impossible to do without other players and blizzard is holding us hostage for $25 for a service we already pay for. Even basic things like mounts are almost impossible to get on a dead server unless you farm the raw gold yourself - there is no economy, no enchanters, no JC, etc. I may as well get my sub discounted as I am only allowed to access a small portion of content due to Blizzard’s incompetence.
Mega servers are not good. Every alliance will transfer to grob or Bene in fear of their next realm dying. The lag, the layers, the gold selling and botting that will occur with such a huge market of players, the sold accounts (not boosts, sorry Blizzard), the lack of resources, the looming faction imbalance, the lack of community, the horde that will be crushed…the list goes on.
Fixing this issue will not be easy. If we do not stop realms dying then we will end up with 3-5 alliance mega servers and the rest of the realms dead. You may not think that is a bad outcome, but your experience will suffer. This will also lead to a long term attrition of players to other MMOs, further limiting your experience.
GMs always say to post on the forums about dying servers whenever someone asks. If you are unfortunate enough to also be on a dying realm, make a post so blizzard knows they aren’t getting your $25.
Lastly, for those of you who still do not think that this is an issue: if nothing else, this sets a tone from blizzard that they do not care about what happens to this game and want to cash out before letting this game die - and probably a lot faster than you think. Every Friday night you log in to raid, just remember that you may have nothing to show for it a lot sooner than you think. There are other methods to increase profit that do not make players suffer and kill the game (character recustomization, name change, etc.).