There are no longer any healthy servers left to play on

[Cepitore-thunderfury]

Blizzard needs to incentivize new players into picking servers and factions that promote server health.

[Zalanii-faerlina]

@Mootwo-earthfury

Did you predict that Herod was going to die too?

it went the way of low-med pop by late AQ and dipped again when naxx came out. Most of us assumed it would die by sunwell, we were a phase early

[Gforce-emerald-dream]

Grobb is 63/37. No matter what you want to think, it’ll be 100% alliance and then completely dead by phase 5. Transfer to benediction.

[Phobicc-faerlina]

@Cepitore-thunderfury

Blizzard needs to incentivize new players into picking servers and factions that promote server health.

Yes. Absolutely. They need to study this and add some levers that make minority faction desirable.

We have years of data that suggests that, on a long enough timeline, the population for most PvP realms will tend to skew towards one faction or the other and that this skew often starts as the result of more incoming players joining the majority faction, rather than players leaving the minority faction.

Yea… seems like someone should figure out what’s going on there. How many years of data do you need?

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Phobicc-faerlina

Yes. Absolutely. They need to study this and add some levers that make minority faction desirable.

There really aren’t any levers that can be pulled there, what would you suggest?

They could merge realms in such a way as to try to balance pops.

[Ruroki-grobbulus]

@Gforce-emerald-dream

Transfer to benediction

I’d sooner quit.
Without Grobb community there is no point.

[Phobicc-faerlina]

@Ziryus-pagle

There really aren’t any levers that can be pulled there, what would you suggest?

I wrote out one suggestion here: Classic Community Competition

There is another suggestion here:[BCC] Community Council Dart Board - #143 by Fullsquat-whitemane

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.

[Cellahdor-darkspear]

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.

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Phobicc-faerlina

@Ziryus-pagle

There really aren’t any levers that can be pulled there, what would you suggest?

I wrote out one suggestion here: Classic Community Competition

There is another suggestion here:[BCC] Community Council Dart Board - #143 by Fullsquat-whitemane

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.

Neither of those encourage 50/50 pvp servers.

Your suggestion seems to be pve focused. The other, yeah tenacity was tried.

[Ruke-jom-gabbar]

Honestly - the only thing that would promote balance is only have 2-4 servers.

But that’s prob never going to happen

[Gforce-emerald-dream]

Then join the 20% who quit instead of paying

[Phobicc-faerlina]

@Ziryus-pagle

Neither of those encourage 50/50 pvp servers.

Your suggestion seems to be pve focused. The other, yeah tenacity was tried.

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.

[Ziryus-pagle]

Why do you think your suggestion would encourage a 70/30 community?

[Ruroki-grobbulus]

Because the 20% is not a healthy intact community

[Phobicc-faerlina]

@Ziryus-pagle

Why do you think your suggestion would encourage a 70/30 community?

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.

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Phobicc-faerlina

@Ziryus-pagle

Why do you think your suggestion would encourage a 70/30 community?

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 obviou sly too late for t hat in TBC.

But couldn’t that also be solved by simple merging the realms and then not allowing xfers that create the same problem again?

[Phobicc-faerlina]

@Ziryus-pagle

But couldn’t that also be solved by simple merging the realms and then not allowing xfers that create the same problem again?

Sounds like mergers is 100% no-go from blizzard. It’s kinda odd that this comes down to player names, but whatever.

I don’t think incentives have been tried, so it seems worth at least investigating.

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Phobicc-faerlina

@Ziryus-pagle

But couldn’t that also be solved by simple merging the realms and then not allowing xfers that create the same problem again?

Sounds like mergers is 100% no-go from blizzard. It’s kinda odd that this comes down to player names, but whatever.

I don’t t hink incentives have been tried, so it seems worth at least investigating.

Why do you think linked realms are a no go?

[Kôbra-thrall]

My 3 step solution is simple.

1. Allow free transfers to realms which you are the non dominate faction.

2. Remove paid transfers or put limitations on them after phase 3 is released.

3. Introduce a server wide voting station that these topics may be voted on as individual servers. Allowing each servers to be a bit different.

My 2 cents @blizzard

[Ruke-jom-gabbar]

@Kôbra-thrall

Remove paid transfers or put limitations on them after phase 3 is released.

Fairly certain there are limits on paid transfers.

That’s part of the problem.