Hi CS,
After multiple attempts and different platforms, we’ve still received no communication on the extreme negative impact the removal of layers has had - especially on the Arugal Server. There is a summary of that here;
We believe that the data used looked at peak US times, not Oceanic US times (Which when you account for all countries represented on our server is about 2pm - 2am Australian Eastern Standard Time).
Since layering has been removed, our peak time has been hitting 5+ hour queues. This makes the game unplayable on weekdays and even some weekends for day workers. In addition to this, transfers are enabled TO Arugal despite these queues, as well as character creation for accounts which are new to the realm.
This presents a very large problem. A number of factors are making this very bad;
- Arugal is the only server on Oceania with the AQ gates open - players from other realms are transferring to us as a result.
- There are no free transfers off the server
- Even if we could transfer, we’d need to do the war effort all over again AND be disqualified from Scarab Lord because of the 90 day rule.
- Much of Australia and New Zealand (Two major countries on the server) are experiencing COVID-19 restrictions meaning we’re all locked in the house most times of the day, leading to more online time.
- Since the start of Phase 5 the server community has become much more closer. People leaving creates significant disruptions.
- A significant increase of Bots and Multiboxers has occurred since allowing transfers and new character creation leading to more logged in accounts and bigger queues.
There’s no way your data analysts considered all of the above and felt that switching off layering was the correct call for Arugal. In my heart, I really want to think someone just read the wrong data and lumped Arugal in with US east and west time zones, not considering our peak hour is different. But part of me has this sinking feeling that this is by design to make increased money from transfers.
We have created a topic with over 900 replies, and countless other threads on the General Forums, and no one has engaged with us to give us insight or solutions to this problem. Wowhead and Icyveins have even covered our plight. The fact that these two news sites have and we have had no official response from you as an organization is upsetting.
We’re hemorrhaging community members and subsequently subscriptions for you. We can’t fill raids because we lose more than half to queues. We have to do dumb things to stay logged in to dodge the queues - a problem that is solved simply by having a 2nd layer which 99% of Arugal is completely fine with.
Please give us some sort of response or solution here - It’s ~11:15pm on Tuesday night as I make this post. In about 15 hours, Arugal is going to start getting backed up with a massive queue because Wednesday is a major raid night, and the queues will continue all week. The only non queue nights will be Tuesdays.
My recommendation is to keep the 2nd layer on Arugal until deep, deep into Phase 6 or we will keep running into the same issues.