What is the downside of having servers with a predetermined plan to merge?

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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I read these comments from the Devs:

  • Community is very important in Classic, so keeping the number of realms reasonable to ensure a healthy population is important.
  • The team really really wants to avoid having to offer transfers or merging Classic realms later.

And the only word that pops into my head is “WHY”?

Why??? What is the gain here?

What is the downside to having realms that are predetermined to merge in a few days time? What is the loss, besides the cost of hiring the equipment, of having Arugal and Arugal (Temporary), and announcing a plan to merge servers in a short period of time?

What is the functional difference between this and layering? Here are the differences that I can see:

  1. You can’t choose to party with people on the other server until they merge. This is a short term and avoidable problem, where people who want to play together will usually attempt to join the same server anyway, and those who choose to split up for short term gain will quickly be reunited anyway.

  2. You won’t run into people randomly that you might have otherwise run in to.

The thing is, though, neither of these things happen when 10k people at a time can’t log in AT ALL either.

Community is important to classic. We all get it. I even agree with it. But when the option is choosing between playing with just half of the people who will eventually be on the server with me and not playing at all, I just cannot believe that you guys think the better experience for hype and for long term interest is by garnering this sort of first experience (or second first experience, I guess, for most people).

So again, I ask: What is the downside to making temporary overflow servers with the express intention to merge them into their parent server in the very short term, so that everyone has a good first day AND has a healthy population into the future?

If it’s just money, say that. People won’t like it, but at least it makes sense. Trying to pretend that the current plan is good for the community, by locking half the community out at a time, just comes across as nonsense.

I should note here that I got into the server after about an hour and played for about 8-9 hours today, and I was looking toward logging for the day anyway. This doesn’t come from a place of salty what-about-me-ism; I’m truly confused about the context of the decision that merging servers is a bad idea, and the only reasons that make sense to me are financial or difficulty in the merge itself.

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It takes away from realm identity/community when there are players with duplicate toon names after the merge and you see your chat filled with different realm names.

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Name duplication is a ridiculous excuse. It wouldn’t be rocket science to just query the original server at the character creation screen to avoid two identical names.

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From experience…
When Azgalor was merged with Ashara and then Destromath and then Thunderlord, it did not become one big community. Maybe it is ok now all these years later, idk. You put too much faith in gamers if you expect that. Look at the complaining on this forum now and tell me you believe people would get along nicely. “Get off our server!” “YOU were merged to us, not the other way around!”

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So players are forced to rename their toons when they get merged?

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It’s not the same thing.

All of those servers were servers in their own right for a lot of time before merging. They all had identities and communities well formed long before any plan of merging.

In this case, it would be two servers predetermined to merge into one, in a short period of time. If you join a server called Arugal 1 or Arugal 2, having read a sign saying “These servers will be merged within the next week”, you aren’t going to grow attached to Arugal 2 to any real degree in that time.

Make the servers share the naming server so that the names can’t be duplicated at the time of character creation. Again, these would be servers that are predestined to become the same server, not two separate servers that later merged into one without planning going into it.

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So, you’re basically asking them to add more layers to each realm?

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Clearly not, since layers don’t fix login queues. If they can just double the layers and fix the queues, then absolutely, do that. I sure hope that isn’t the problem, because if it’s just that they actively chose to screw over a lot of players today.

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They can do that, but then players won’t move off overpopulated realms.

They’ll have trouble turning off layering later on.

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Not just the name issue, its also the faction issue. Ive rolled alliance on yojimbo. If the servers are merged im completely locked out of rolling horde (my intended main) on arugal. This would be rather annoying.

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Same answer as naming; these servers would be made in the context and clear understanding that they are functionally the same server, temporarily separated for the sake of fixing congestion.

I’m not saying they shouldn’t also have made Yojimbo; despite Yojimbo existing Arugal continues to have 10k+ queues 12 hours after release, which means that right now (and for the last ~5 hours) it’s literally impossible to log in before maintenance later tonight.

I’m not talking about not making more servers; that needs to be done too. But in specific cases where servers are essentially locking out half of their populations, overflow servers should be used to alleviate the problem.

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But youre kind of missing the point. I am rolling on the second server in completely good faith. I assume my progression on this server is bound to this server and nowhere else. In return, im helping filling up the server and making it an attractive option for other people to roll on.

If two weeks later while im trekking around in badlands blizzard says ‘oh, didnt you realise? This was never supposed to be a ‘real’ server, its just an overflow from day 1’ i’d be a little irked. I’d be left with the choice to lose two weeks of progression (or even two months if they decided to do it then), or be forced to go alliance when my entire plan was to roll horde. If they open a server it needs to be for real. Not just to contain a very temporary problem that will solve itself in a few weeks anyway.

Ah, perhaps im missing the point after all, just re-read the title. Still, i would argue my point stands. If players roll on that server, are they duty bound to follow the forums and blue posts. Especially if that decision locks them out of their preferred faction.

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That’s the same as asking Blizzard to increase the number of layers on each realm, but they’ve explained why they put a cap on it.

It’s a lot easier for players to switch realms right now when they haven’t leveled their toons yet.