Oceanic servers need to be un-merged with US servers for PvP immediately, the oceanic community was not consulted on this decision, I guarantee the vast majority of Oceanic players do not want this, and it was absolutely not necessary given the healthy state of the Oceanic PvP community.
To preface this; consider that not one trending post was made throughout the entire duration of classic asking for Oceanic to be merged with the US… that clearly indicates this change wasnt being requested or even desired by the playerbase.
In spite of this; by implementing this change, what you have literally forced on the Oceanic community is a situation of unplayable lag, making both melee and spell leeway not only helpful but a mandatory necessity just to even hit or reach targets.
This is not only detrimental to competitive but also casual gameplay; players immediately notice a massive drop in the quality of gameplay and latency on oceanic servers the second they join any form of instanced pvp, in stark comparison to gameplay on their respective server, an effect which will reduce the overall engagement of oceanic pvp because logically who would want to play an inferior version of the game, while everyone you are fighting against is playing seamlessly with no lag.
This change absolutely destroys any semblance of competitive gameplay within the oceanic community, anyone hoping to pvp competitively will without choice be forced to play with a 200-300 MS lag handicap, a reality which depreciates the overall skill and what is achievable by the entire region; this change does not promote competition or the health of the game, it is irrefutably terrible in every aspect.
Dissecting this change it fairly blatantly was taken as a means to reduce server costs rather than to actually improve gameplay. Oceanic had fine and sustainable PvP queues with multiple instances of all Battlegrounds running daily especially throughout the pre-patch. Furthermore Oceanics for the most part want to play against… well other oceanic’s, not only due to the established sense of community already present among oceanic servers; but because the only way to actually achieve relevant and “better arena match making for oceanic players” is to allow them to fight against players on the same latency, not force all oceanic players onto US servers where they have 200-300 ms lag fighting against US players with no lag.
This is quite literally the most damaging and game breaking change which I have seen introduced to classic since its launch, and this change needs to be reverted immediately, I mean hell; they literally performed it during the middle of the night while the Oceanic Region was asleep during US times with no prior warning or discussion, that shows how little consideration or regard was given to the Oceanic Community; which they assert this was intended to benefit.
This change needs to be reverted in full, and in reality the member of the blizzard team who suggested it should be removed from any decision making role, as they quite clearly have no understanding on how to better the experience or health of the game.
Regards,
Grand Marshal Archeon.