The Server balance problem, and why it will never be fixed in one paragraph

WoW Classic Burning Crusade Classic Discussion
#1

Again, this logically makes a lot of sense. However, there are some details to consider:

  • Looking inward as a player, would you voluntarily move to the outnumbered faction on a realm? If the answer is yes, can you honestly say that you feel that a significant number of other players would make a similar choice?*

^ That response right there resulted in the biggest fivehead slap of all time, and is why the server mess will never be fixed. Thats exactly how transfers should have worked, and the only way it should have worked.

You wont try something that has no short or long-term downside because you just assume nobody would want it? How about the players on dead servers? You dont think they would want a free transfer literally anywhere else? Why not give the option of PvE->PvP to a minority faction? People have been asking for that for a while. And guess what
 when people see a server that was 80/20 turn into 70/30, that makes it even more desirable.

But you wont try it


Had this been done from the beginning there would be no problem right now. Had this been the original focus, players would have no choice but to either play on balanced servers or transfer to help balance another one.

But Blizzard in its infinite lack of wisdom did the exact opposite; letting the minority faction leave anytime they wanted to, kickstarting the downward spiral we’ve witnessed only get worse 
 all because of trying to appease the complainers that dont want to deal with any inconvenience, ever. “If you try to please everyone you’ll please no one.”

So you got exodus of the minority factions, bigger imbalances, dead servers, mega servers, and no end in sight 
 all because you were chasing dollar signs with a recklessly implemented transfer system.

Quit blaming the players for giving them options that never should have existed. You make your bed and we will make our bed, and we should lie in them. Stop trying to appease every Goldilocks, because not only is it impossible but its just making the problems worse.

7 Likes
#2

better to just link servers and balance layers imo
the ship has sailed on transfers being any sort of solution

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#3

Something that really bothers me about this situation overall is that the only addressed faction imbalance concerns in the community forums are about PVP server experiences.

PVE servers that have had their faction size dwindle face the exact same problem that the Devs have said they want suggestions to factor in - and one of their stated design goals; They want to avoid people not being able to play the game. When you are logged into a character on a ‘dead’ server with a smaller pool of players, you become locked into a cycle where the inability to progress your character is prevalent. You can spam LFG for hours and never get a group because they just don’t exist.

I work from home and am logged in a good portion of the day watching LFG, asking if anyone wants to run dungeons and get no bites outside of whatever the daily heroic is. When I log into a megaserver, I have to expand my chat buffer to filter through LFG to find the dungeon I want because it’s scrolling so fast with folks looking to do things.

You cannot solve this problem by incentivizing people to roll new characters on an imbalanced server. Dungeon finder doesn’t exist in TBC. Literally the only solutions that makes sense is to connect realms, and during their analysis paralysis they need to offer free transfers so people can migrate to megaservers that want to or off servers that they want to, so they can actually play the game.

Give everyone a level set to move their characters wherever they want (full server char option), then proceed once the dust has settled. This goes for both PVP and PVE. The community could plan which servers to target for a 50/50 pvp distribution (just like they did with servers before SoM was released), or decide they want PVE megaservers, or balanced servers. Blizzard could literally provide live population distribution numbers to assist with this community driven balancing.

That literally puts the power in the players hands to decide how they want to play the game, allows for guilds to move where they want, and choose how they want to play. If their ‘identity’ (name) is more important to them than the server they are playing on and the population balance, then they simply stay put - and they have expressed their choice based on their priorities.

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#4

Sadly agree. Two years of backwards policy has done too much irreversible damage. I just hoped a little self-reflective hindsight would have them admitting their mistake. Instead they pretend they did nothing wrong.

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#5

i didn’t get that vibe from the post tbh, it seemed he was kinda just explaining reality and what they have to consider. Easy for us to throw around solutions but they have to implement it and deal with the consequences. I like that he mentioned that crossrealm in some limited form is being talked about

3 Likes
#6

The notion that they (the devs) need to be the ones to resolve the problem in one action is what’s holding them back from serving the community writ large.

Give players the power to move freely for a time (single full server char transfer), so nobody can say that they are stuck in a situation not of their choosing. Once the dust has settled from whatever moves the players themselves choose, the devs can take action to connect realms if that is still needed, or seek alternate redress to the remaining populations concerns.

They (the devs) could enable this by giving live population statistics of level 70 character distribution across the realms during this time, and the community could coordinate what servers they want to go to.

#7

Same post mentions opening up cross-realm play. Talk about being about as anti-Classic as you can get. It’s the same intentions as was done originally when Blizz added dungeon finder cross-realm and lfr and crz. How did that work out? WoW turned into a game of strangers. Is that really what the Classic experience should be? A lobby game that shuttles you off to group with random people you don’t know, will never see or talk to ever again?

3 Likes
#8

I was part of a community of players leaving dying minority alliance faction servers that came to Faerlina intentionally to be on a less-dead minority faction server. We want to have more horde to wpvp with. I would assert that many players would perfer the 40 over the 60 on a 60/40 server.

The problem is that many of us want to raid as well, and raiding guilds were simultaneously opting to transfer away. So we ended up leaving a 99/1 server for a 99/1 server which is not what we wanted.

1 Like
#9

Right from the start - blizz didnt give a crap about the game or balance - paid character transfers were the goal for the game, Any post otherwise to try to cover it up is just lies.
They could have implemented faction balance Qs, merging low pop servers, and only offering transfers off high pop servers to balance this out - but they chose the path of profit. screw the game, get paid. I had to pay to get off my server because our pop went from about 8k down to less than 1000, and we were a target realm to transfer TO. No free transfers for us though, and all raiding guilds left. I love “We did actually invest in developing tech to allow us to queue each faction independently and considered rolling this out in Season of Mastery.” Private servers have been doing this for years, its not new, and not something they “developed”. what a joke

2 Likes
#10

Here is what needs to happen connect all the pvp servers to four pvp servers. One pvp East, One pvp West, One pvp East that has faction balancing queues and one pvp west that has facation balancing queues. Connect the PVE servers to make one Pve west and one pve East. Easy problem solved. If ppl cant maintain the facation balance queue servers then we will just have 4 mega servers. It is headed into that direction anyways.

AGAIN BLIZZARD FIX YOUR SERVERS!!! (Ill be banned again for this post fyi).

#11

SoM still does not have server transfers. This is at least one data point that indicates Blizzard is not entirely seeing transfer fees as quick payout.

Based on the blue post from Aggrend (his 60/40 20% argument) it seems that the some developers still see paying for transfers as a disincentive system more than entirely a revenue source. However, they may have grossly over-estimating its roll as a disincentive given TBCC history. Again they appear to have changed course in SoM, but some people are raking them across the coals for this.

1 Like
#12

The “separate queues” solution is also kinda meaningless to most servers. I haven’t seen a login queue in months on grobb and they’ve opened us up as one of the transfer to realms which of course only alliance are taking up on because it’s even an option. So They’re hesitant to destroy gameplay for already broken realms but fully ok with breaking healthy realms by allowing alliance (or horde) to transfer to them. Grobb was 50/50 before transfers opened and the longer server transfers are available the more skewed it get as all the alliance refugees come here and the less appealing the server becomes for horde to transfer here. Nearly all the DD alliance guilds came here with the latest free transfers. None of the DD horde guilds did. We’ll be lucky to be 80/20 before too long thanks to unrestricted transfers to the alliance side.

They already restrict transfers and character creation to full servers. There’s no harm in doing the same to lopsided factions. If a horde heavy server has free transfers off for horde and there’s no way to recruit outside of the realm, guilds will eventually take it. If they cap faction balance so it doesn’t get to these 90/10 situations, going to a 60/40 realm is not a bad thing.

The problem is they haven’t done anything yet so many servers are grossly lopsided. They need a solution to fix that before any of these smaller solutions make sense. Open up free transfers to/from all realms for the lopsided factions and force a balance. Do merges, etc. If the server can’t reach a balance in a given timeframe “There were not enough alliance heroes to stop Lady Prestor’s (or whomever) plans and Kadghar had to open a portal to a new realm for everyone to escape. Leave now or perish!” and force the realm closed due to a cataclysmic event only the opposite faction could know to prevent.

Any change you make will piss people off and you’re likely to need a combination of many of the suggested options. Doing nothing will destroy even more realms though. It’s only “inevitable” if you allow it to be.

#13

I feel like they kept bringing up the faction balance issue, and that some people want to play on skewed servers. No one that actually likes PVP wants an imbalanced server. I wouldn’t concern myself with players that don’t want balance. If they want a lobsided experience they don’t actually want PVP and can play on a PVE server. PVP servers should always be actively balanced, otherwise its basically a PVE server anyway once it hits 65/35.

Open up transfers off of imbalanced PVP realms from the dominant faction to either PVE servers, or to PVP servers under balanced for the faction transferring from. Then let incoming players on overwhelming factions transfer to under pop servers for their faction. If balance isn’t able to be achieved through character transfers, then oh well. Merge the servers and force people into balance. If they don’t want balance at least they have the option to leave for a PVE server where it really doesn’t matter anyway.

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#14

Server balance isn’t a problem.

Anyone who cares about server balance just wants something to be upset about. Hardly anyone cares about world pvp. It’ has always been a meme.

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#15

Not just pvp it also means less players to interact with which is a much bigger deal

#16

This is the actual problem that they don’t address in their responses.

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#17

PVP servers are a meme. Nobody actually wants a fair balanced pvp server. You think you do, but you don’t. The current state of the realms proves this.

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#18

i agree, allow free transfers from every realm to every other realm. it will be like musical chairs for a minute but eventually it will settle into some natural balance

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#19

“I love my world PVP being outnumbered 3 to 1, how else am I supposed to show off my epic pvp skills”. Sure you do buddy, sure you do.

They are like the dudes who always imagine themselves rushing into the fire to save the puppy. They know darn well they would be standing there with the rest of us, they just like to imagine(and act like) they wouldnt be.

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#20

It’ll never be fixed because players will break the balance no matter what Blizzard does or does not do.

It is a player-driven issue and quite simply, the playerbase as a whole has no interest in resolving it, despite the few loud folks here claiming otherwise. The majority of players (who do not ever come to the forums) just do not care about this “healthy balanced realm” idea and will screw it up even if Blizzard magically fixes it.

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