Sorry my post/topic lead to interesting responses! I was just curious if a single soul at Blizzard reads these questions and/or had an answer.
Both. Some are restricted because they’re already a mega-server, and some are restricted because their population puts them at risk of BECOMING a megaserver if Blizzard allowed transfers to those servers to stay open much longer.
The only big server I can think of that isn’t transfer restricted is Pagle, to which, I agree. It makes no sense why Pagle is unlocked but servers with less of a population are still locked, example would be Sulfuras. Sulfuras is still locked to transfers but Pagle has a higher overall population.
My only guess would be, they’re not going based off overall population, they’re going based off of ACTIVE population Which makes the most sense. There’s no reason the keep a server locked if the overall population is 20k players, but 15k don’t even play anymore and haven’t logged in for a while.
Pagle may have let’s say 15k players as their overall population, and Sulfuras may have 13k overall population, however more people are logging in on Sulfuras over x period of time than they are logging in on Pagle over the same x period of time. Pagle may have that 15k overall population, but only 9k are logging in across a 24 hour period, where as on Sulfuras, their overall population may be 13k, but 11k players logged in over a 24 hour period. Thus on Blizzard’s end, it appear Sulfuras is the more popular server. If that makes sense.
The same way it’s been going down for the last 5 months. They don’t always make announcements, they don’t care about feedback. What you’re imagining is EXACTLY what HAS ALREADY happened when tried to dissolve megaservers 5 months ago. They ninja opened/closed servers without warning and even on the transfer bluepost stated that server transfer status could be turned OFF without warning. Which is exactly what happened. This lead to a lot of people separated from their guild, friend group. HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE GOT STUCK. Blizzard still did nothing about it. This has already happened, and no doubt will be the way they continue to handle it.
it’s not hard, they just have no desire to. Why because we are not their main priority. For example for DF they gave a roadmap to the players to show exactly what was launching in each phase. They are actively adding more and more content. 100 more people were hired onto the team for DF, yet they can’t hire 10 additional GM’s for Classic. Games that make them THE MOST MONEY are their priority. There’s much more money to be made on Retail and Overwatch than Classic Wrath, as such, their time, money and resources get allocated to other titles where they can profit much more from their investment.
But they literaly allowed free transfers to some restricted servers so they are helping them stay or get to a mega server level. Isn’t that in contradiction to their supposed goals?
The disolving worked while queues were an issue. Who would ever want to transfer off a big server that has no queue anymore? Cuz of the weekly lag in Dalaran? I’d doubt it
Could have lowerd the cap so that we still had queues to get people to migrate something similar. Nothing seems to make sense anymore to what they are doing about this “issue”.
Be that as it may they are still putting in work for classic. All this population monitoring, cross realm for pvp players, recent buff to Ret paladins, faction change and soon race change, regular hot fixes… Some will gain profit some won’t but there are still people working on classic and giving updates on it, everything aparat from transfers. It’s been 5 months now one person could have been looking into it (at least to somehow update the process so that alts can be transfered or anything) and would gain them some nice profits. Could have even alocated one person to manualy check for that and flag certain chars as ok for some trasfers that are restricted, by now there would be far more satisfied people xD
Just super frustrating cuz nothing is being said or done for such a long time and many people are wishing for it for a while.
Can you give me an example of from what server was being transfered FROM and what the available transfer options were? Otherwise, I can really only go on an assumption here. But I also don’t understand what you mean by “they’re helping megaservers stay or get to megaserver level” so I can’t really provide anything useful here without understanding what you’re trying to say. Mind rephrasing what you mean by this?
No one. That’s why no one IS transfering off of megaservers NOW. However, plenty of people DID transfer off megaservers 5 months ago to avoid queues, most did so under the impression that they would be able to transfer BACK to their original server later, once queues were no longer an issue.
Many people speculated that’s what they did in order to entice people to transfer off megaservers to begin with. I can’t say for a fact if that’s something that happened or not. However what I can say as someone who transfered off Benediction to play on Sulfuras so I can game without the queues, I assumed I could transfer back to Benediction when queues were no longer an issue. We knew the servers would be locked for a little bit, but a week later, they slipped in a part that said servers will be locked ‘indefinantely.’ Had many of us known they’d be locked indefinately, most of us wouldn’t have taken the transfer.
Also something else to consider, I wouldn’t be surprised if they actually DIDN’T low the cap to cause bigger queues. I really do think there was just that many people online that there wasn’t enough room for more people and here’s why: I think that people drastically underestimated just how many people would use 3rd party software in order for them to remain logged in even while they’re at work or sleeping, that way, they never had to be in a queue and could play whenever they want. People wanted to get online and STAY ONLINE. No one wanted to sit in a 15k player queue on Bene, so many people started using remote desktop software to stay logged in even though they weren’t playing, and wouldn’t be playing for another 9 hours when they get home from work.
Well, this is why I said we’re not their main priority. Obviously, they do still have to work on Wrath. But, they are doing the absolute BARE MINIMUM to keep people happy and playing. Are they doing anything super meaningful? They doing anything about the bots? What about the HUNDREDS of bugs that were in Beta that are STILL in the game? How about hot-fixing spell and ability for CLASSES that still don’t work as they should like druid’s wildgrowth? What about bosses that bug out and don’t award loot to the raid? Those people aren’t being contacted by support and awarded the loot they should have recieved, they’re straight up just never getting it.
They main things they do is hotfix game breaking bugs… but that’s about it. They are doing BARE MINIMUM, and that’s because they are not willing to allocate the required resources to a game that is not making them nearly as much money as Retail or their other titles. We don’t even have a real moderating system, it’s automated which is leading to people being banned/silenced unjustly. Retail gets a whole road map of what’s to come and we couldn’t get a bug fixed that’ been in the game since beta?
Wrath in an absolute mess and it’s because BLIZZARD DOES NOT CARE about Wrath as much as they about their other titles.
This is a much bigger request than you think it is. You can’t move alts to locked servers you’re playing on because the system responsible for server transfers (shop system) is also responsible for all transitions done across all Blizzard games and their merch shop. It doesn’t just affect Wrath. They said this on either the community council board, or the customer support board… I don’t remember which. But yeah, it would require being entirely recoded, and since the shop system also goes through Bnet, it would require a whole recode and overhaul of the Bnet launcher as well. That’s a lot of time and money needing to be invested into fixing something that’s only affecting one of their games, and not even something that’s affecting the entire population of that game.
It wouldn’t. They’d likely spend more money on recoding and redesigning a new system for ALL OF THEIR GAMES, than they’d make back in Wrath server transfers.
That’s not possible because of above. The system isn’t designed to tell if pre-existing character exist or not. A single human can’t override that manually. That’s something that has to be ingrained the the system via coding.
You’re right, but why would they worry about spending time and money satisfying people when they’re not losing too many people. This is evident by those that complain on the forums about how terrible their experience is, but yet they stay subbed and log in once a week to raid. No reason to satisfy the masses when they’re still spending their money, despite being unsatisfied. Now if more people boycotted Blizzard until they actually put effort into improve Wrath in a more meaningful and consistent way, I guarantee if they see the subs plummet THAT MUCH, they’d do something.
Excluding the fresh realms since they have different policies - Skyfury, Venoxis and Mograine are restricted for transfers AND accepting free transfers. So are they mega server level and if they are why encourage people to transfer there.
I’m sure someone could figure out some hot fix that might not be the prettiest but would still get the job done with not what big of an effort but that’s just my opinion.
Skyfury is one of the Freshstart realms, which is why it’s only recieving transfers from another free start realm. If you’re not on a fresh start realm, can’t transfer there. But yes Venoxis and Morgraine are at the population where the server is too big, and thus, Blizzard probably fears they’ll become megasevers.
While not accurate data, ironforge.pro is a good way to see what the population of each roughly is. However, Ironforge.pro only tracks those who raided, it does not count anyone who logged on and didn’t raid.
Data from Feb 1st-Feb 7th
Venoxis- 22060
Morgraine - 16,112
Even though these servers are large, I bet they were the picked destination realms because the servers that could transfer to them were so small in number that their transfer wouldn’t make much of a difference to overall pop and server stability. Now I really don’t know why these servers would be given as a destination if they’re not receiving character transfers, if I had to guess, these servers used to be open to transfers and then people took those transfers, Blizzard shut off the transfers to those servers, and simply forgot to update the list. But I’m honestly not too sure. /shrug.
Another idea for alt transfers: buy a transfer token from the store (like the faction change works now?) you can then be used by the game. So that seperates us from the whole store system or w/e, and then add a game spacific feature that can indeed check if you have max lvl char there or similar. Obviously this uses up the token.
Be it a transfer or something like the feature you have on PTR or the end of classic that you copy a char to your desired main. A week or so after the char on the origin server (for safety) gets deleted.
As similar features already exsist seems that it would be rather simple to implement.
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The only issue I see with this is they don’t want people to transfer. The whole store thing only matters for those that are “Let me transfer my alts to a server I already have characters on.” Introducing a transfer token wouldn’t just be for those people, that’d be open to everyone, which entirely defeats the purpose, at that point, they could literally just turn on incoming transfers, it’d be no different.
Adding a feature to detects pre-existing characters also kind of doesn’t make sense when they could quite literally just do that already. There’d be no difference between the new feature to detect pre-existing character and then you use the transfer token, VS just buying a straight up transfer. At that point they could just create the feature to detect pre-existing characters, and there’d be no need for the token. Problem is, that feature doesn’t exist.
I remember they spoke about potential faction balance incentives to get people to move to balancing servers, etc. At the end of the day, just let people transfer and allow quicker free transfers. When they drag their feet it just gets awful.
When you were making new chars on locked realms it could check if you have chars there alredy.
How is that different than when you buy a transfer it can check to see if you have character’s there?
Cuz this would be an feature that’s tied to wow itself as it already is. It wouldn’t need to be added to the store system that supposedly very hard to do.
Not sure you’re understanding me. If that feature were to exist they could implement it, and there’d be no reason for the transfer token like you suggested. People could just buy a transfer right from the shop and then the feature you suggested could scan if alts exist or not. You don’t need a token, you just need to be able to tell if character’s exist, which is what they’re lacking to begin with.
It doesn’t matter if they add a token + the feature OR if people buy a transfer + the feature… It’s the FEATURE that’s non existent. Even if they add it, the transfer token then becomes pointless when there’s now a feature that will scan for pre-existing characters, meaning people could just straight up buy a transfer instead and there’d be no issues now that a feature like that in place. That’s what I’m tryna say.
The shop system can’t tell if there are chars that’s the main issue. But the game can. If the transfre was a game related feature that could be done then easily. That’s what I’m suggesting. The token is just so they don’t have to make seperate charging process. Buy token with exsisting system → game checks if you have a token → game checks if you have characters on destination → transfers/makes a copy.
Right but what I’m saying is if that feature was implemented, there’s no reason not to implement it and then it could just be used by a transfer. If this still isn’t clear enough, I guess we just aren’t going to understand each other, thus no point continuing here.
What I’m saying is how is:
“Buy token with exsisting system → game checks if you have a token → game checks if you have characters on destination → transfers/makes a copy.”
Any different from:
Buy transfer with existing system →Game checks if you have have bought a transfer→game checks if you have character on destination→transfers/makes a copy.
It did in fact. Sorry, you have an alliance char on this pvp server. you can’t have a horde one.
that code just needed to be expanded as an option as I see it.
You said that the shop system (which is used for transfers) is not capable of knowing if you have a character. So in place of thst I suggested a combinations of features that are already available in the game (not dependant on that system) that could give desired results.
Not just that. While servers were locked you could have made new characters if you had some on that realm alrady.
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I struggle with the entire situation.
Blizz allowed free transfers off of dying realms TO Faerlina and Benediction.
I was on Bene (horde) at the time. It completely disrupted the balance of the server. It was still unbalanced at the time (think like 70/30) but was manageable. As more ally came over, it got worse and horde members left especially during SSC.
Quite a few guilds (my previous included) migrated to Faerlina. We had already been screwed, some of my fellow guildies twice from a server before Bene, then Bene, they ended up going to one of the transfer only servers during the long queue times.
I am an officer in my current guild. One thing i’ve noticed from chatting with other officers is that almost all of the guilds (semi HC and below) are searching for raiders. They cant fill rosters. We have friends that want to come play with us but they cant transfer. Not everyone wants to start from 1. Starting from 1 doesnt fill an immediate raid spot either. guilds are collapsing and being forced to merge.
This is a really bad knee-jerk reaction to their oversight and refusal to get better server tech they claim doesnt exist.
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Right but if they developed that feature, there’s no reason they can’t impliment it for tranfers on it’s own. Sure maybe the shop doesn’t scan for existing characters, but this feature that’s attached to WoW could.