There’s probably many other in-game mechanisms that could be tweeked. Sounds like Blizzard has had this problem for a long time, so it would be worth investing the time into testing these things out.
Without being technically inclined when it comes to servers and big data, have you considered having two primary types of servers: 1) Horde and 2) Alliance? You could make a little more granular with Alliance-PVE or Horde-PVP. You could then think of the possibilities of what is and isn’t possible from there. Handles the point that servers naturally gravitate toward this state over time anyway, and allows the communities that form to remain in static server. The tricky part would be integrating the two servers so players from each faction can integrate into a layer or similar temporary state when appropriate i.e. world PVP. Don’t know if the world merging concept would be viable, just a thought.
You don’t need 50/50. I don’t care about 50/50, I was always fine with 70/30 or even 80/20 as long as I had an intact community. My problem was always that 80/20 turned into 99/1.
It would support it. By adding incentives for “some” players to prefer the smaller faction. Scaling that incentive inversely to the imbalance would further pressure things away from collapsing. Currently, all the incentives point away from minority factions, so it’s not surprising that things trend this way.
I also think removing paid transfers entirely would help slow server collapse. But its obviously too late for that in TBC.
I was in a spot of trying to figure out what to do with my alliance a few months back. So I researched and I researched.
I found that, for me, Benediction is basically the equivalent of playing on Retail. People in pugs are what you’d find in LFD and you never expect to see them again, people aren’t really nice to each other and flake out or guild hop all the time, many people on Benediction alliance say themselves that there is no community and they miss the servers they transferred from, the Discord and the chats I found both of those boring for such a large server.
Then on top of that one of my friends transferred there and quit soon after because they hated the server and others started only raid logging because they hated the server culture.
So what’s the point of playing money to play on that? Might as well play Retail, it has more content, and you just click a button for fast groups.
I actually hate being mean about these mega servers because it’s fine that some people enjoy them. but attitudes like this are all over the forums. it’s always about the money etc, it couldn’t be anything else. There’s no care or thought at all for what that person wants out of the game. Frankly, that’s exactly what I expect from one of the players who love Benediction. No care about or thought for others.