The state of Stalagg, Heartseeker, and the damage caused by unofficial census reports

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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UPDATE 2 11/8/19
It would seem Blizzard has decided to make this an issue again. So I am bumping this thread.

Since launch there have been several attempts to get an idea of what server pops look like. From reddit polls to tracking people using the Wowhead addon.

Generally it was helpful for people who hadn’t yet decided on a server. But I believe that with the addition of free server transfers those numbers have caused a lot of problems.

Yes, we now know that Wowhead tracking wasn’t that accurate, especially with transfers on-going. Yet those earlier numbers, and the sentiment generated by them, are still circulating.

Lets use this graph linked to the Wowhead census in early September as an example. Specifically Stalagg.

https://wow.zamimg.com/uploads/screenshots/normal/867949.jpg

Now when this was linked in the unofficial Stalagg discord it didn’t take long for people everywhere to start talking about it in-game. A few days later the discord post was removed because it was decided that the information provided wasn’t accurate. And that the realm population was most likely more balanced to the point of 45/55 at the very least. Of course all of those posts have now been deleted (hopefully for the purpose of not confusing people.) Unfortunately the damage was already done, and continues to worsen.

Since transfers to Heartseeker opened up, we have seen a large exodus of Alliance players off of Stalagg.

We can at the very least confirm that a lot of raiding guilds and their communities have left. The sentiment in world is that a lot of people have/are moving which is making others think that it is now something to consider.

The result? Stalagg is now legimitely looking like its becoming very Horde heavy. And since the newer servers aren’t seeing the flood of newbies like the initial servers, Heartseeker is looking Alliance stacked to the point where the Horde there are probably only a 5th of the overall pop.

Now I could be wrong with any of this of course as I have no concrete evidence without official numbers. But what I can say is that I know of many communities that have left. The sentiment has likely affected others too. And that now Stalagg, which was one of the PvP servers with the highest queues at launch, now never has a queue. And despite it still having some of the more “hardcore” NA progression guilds like Grizzly, which can attract like-minded players, goes below the population of Rp-pvp servers sometimes.

Now for the point of this post. I don’t expect Blizzard to do anything about it. They’ve probably come to terms with having to allow for paid transfers once layers are removed.

But my hopes are that the people who still play on Stalagg see this and understand that transfering to Heartseeker is NOT going to solve every problem. You trade one issue for another. If you wanted to never run into Horde for pvp then you should have rolled on a PvE server. And come phase 2 Heartseeker will end up dead due to their extreme imbalance. Yeah we’ve been dealt a lose/lose worse situation and nothing will be done about it. So please stay on Stalagg.

Everyone else on other servers also need to be careful when thinking about moving. We might be the more extreme case but the same can happen anywhere.

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Classic case of a self-fulfilling prophecy in action.

As a Stalagg Horde player, I salute your persistence, and will honor your sacrifice by killing you with no mercy. Not because you don’t deserve it, but because I believe you’re strong enough not to need it.

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The sentiment that blizzard has this planned and is planning to make a fortune off paid transfers is pretty cynical and honestly I don’t believe it.

However for the solution without blizzard, the ball is in the Horde’s court there is not enough Alliance on stalagg and not enough horde on Heartseeker. It’s pretty obvious what needs to happen.

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I love being Horde on the Alliance heavy Heartseeker.

More of them for me to run into and kill, more PvP as I level. Less testosterone pumped horde jumping in to take away my 1v1.

It’s all a perspective, really. You can complain about being on the smaller side, or see it’s advantages. I guess this thread was made from an alliance perspective though, and we know how they like to see the glass… Half full of Horde bias by Blizzard

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They really need to start funneling factions to specific servers instead of all transfers. Balance factions to balance pop.

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Sounds to me like all the Alliance on Heartseeker just have to transfer back to Stalagg!

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That solution has to be granted through blizzard, I was proposing one without a blue hand, that being said does anyone truly believe blizzard is that cynical?

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The problem is that it’s never going to happen. Being vastly outnumbered in this game makes it a total nightmare to do anything, and Heartseeker is the only alliance favored PVP server there is. The odds of any significant number of horde transferring from top of the food chain to the bottom is next to nothing.

Blizzard ruined it by allowing transfers with no restrictions, and now its too late to really do anything about it. This alone is going to kill off a lot of potential Classic players long term, when they get sick of being outnumbered 5:1 everywhere.

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Agreed. Draenei were a mistake that should never have happened.

#saynotoblue

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Nice Netherwind almost 50 -50

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I don’t think that was anyone’s problem when they were fleeing ally side on Stalagg. It’s more that not very many people want to be on the dead side of a biased realm. Been there, done that for the last 13 years in my case. It was a matter of not wanting to do it again. And when I transferred, these unofficial censuses were putting heartseeker as a fairly balanced, yet still ally leaning realm at that point.

Regardless, your plea for people to stop transferring out to Heartseeker is moot at this point as they closed the transfers from Stalagg a couple hours ago.

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Thank you for that I haven’t seen that post yet. I’ll update the OP.

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Long title, longer post

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The folks who want faction balance (and I mean genuinely care about it) are outnumbered by those that just want to be on a realm where they have a large pool of likeminded players with lots of opportunities at endgame. It’s true for both PvP and PvE servers, though obviously it’s felt more on PvP servers a lot more since the outdoor world experience is negatively impacted when imbalances become too much.

Prior to CRBGs being confirmed, I figured BGs being single-realm would have been a way (a flawed one, sure) of somewhat encouraging players to seek balance on the servers they play. Now that they’re cross-realm, it’s less of an issue overall, though ranking will be effected anyway.

I played on Blackwing Lair as Alliance until late TBC, and the bleeding of the faction and growing disparity just made it unplayable.

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We’re more concerned with having a healthy playerbase to recruit from. I’m happy to be on a Horde heavy server otherwise.

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Well, Bloodelves had more to do with the spike in H pvp dominance. Akama, had a nearly 1to 1 ratio. When BE’s came, people who wanted to pvp as a pretty race now could on the horde, we went 1 to 1, to 75 / 25 % almost overnight

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To increase the chances of our voices being heard i encourage those concerned to tweet blizzard @ https://twitter.com/WarcraftDevs

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feels like 10 to 1 in alliance favor. Transferred to this server to avoid queues and to sit on a nice medium pop server - got stuck with a full server where ally attack in swarms camping every neutral flight path.

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Blindfully following the trend, they urged themself to take the boat out of skeram to hearthseeker. I trying to warn them that the margin of error was probably way over the roof with that addon, but it was to late, the fear as took over their ability to reason. They took the boat leeding to the “Promised land” of 50/50 and left behind the real chance they had to get a balanced home. Anyway, the damage is done and there is nothing i can do to reverse it now…

I’ll take my loyal fishing rod, head out to the docks with my empty backpack in hopes of getting back home with plenty of Oily Blackmouth, in preparation for the storm to come.

Thanks to those of you who tried to.

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it’s not that PvP’ing on a lop-sided server isn’t fun.

it’s that PvP’ing isn’t fun… griefing is.

simply killing someone in the open world doesn’t get that dopamine rush anymore, you have to camp flight paths / boat with a group, MC people off boat, root people in lava, kill hunters pet or find creative way to make them take durability hit…

We need phase 3. quick.

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