Would Cross Realm or Megaservers be that bad?

TLDR - would the ability to group cross-realm using modern WoW’s group browser be so bad? I totally understand that it’s not the model the original used, and that introducing modern conveniences is a slippery slope… but I’d rather be able to PLAY the game than stick to an empty world of nochanges

I’m asking a legitimate question for feedback here on the pros and cons, not trying to start a flame debate of whatever. The bottom line is three things…

  1. Player behavior in combination with modern features like boosts has resulted in broken servers and experiences
  2. It’s just not possible in many cases to play the game in its original condition with the way the population works now. People congregate on certain servers because they don’t want their time to be devalued by investing in a dead one (I’ve got 4 characters on dead realms as is). This problem is heavily mitigated in Live via the ability to find group members from outside your realm, making the need to congregate all on one much less important.
  3. Even the high pop realms like Pagle have issues in finding groups for leveling 1-60, and 60-70, finding groups for Normals, finding groups for Kara (which I may point out, in original TBC people still ran Kara for the duration of the xpac).

For instance, I rolled a new character (the one I’m posting on) on Benediction just because of the absolute frustration of being unable to play the game as designed elsewhere. On my other servers, groups for anything other than the top end are non-existent. Elite quests, dungeons, PvP… there’s no one. On Benediction of all places I rolled a Tank and a Healer and specifically still cannot find legit Deadmines, Stockades, or SFK runs that aren’t just boost sellers. I actually want to play the game as designed, not just PAY-FK my way to the endgame grind.

“But TBC starts at 60!”
Except that the Classic Era servers are merged and dead too.

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I think there are actually two questions here (and I am not going to answer either of them in my first post in this thread).

The first question, is would modern (or even next expansion WotLK) QoL grouping tools be a good or a bad thing? There has been much debate about LFD. I am not familiar with current retail options, so I can’t really speak to that functionality. I don’t think there is much debate that the LFG tool that they implemented is severely lacking and is actually less helpful than the available addons. This is actually the same way it was the first time around.

The second question - and this is where most people make the mistake of combining the two questions - is about whether it is a good or bad idea to implement these things cross-realm?

I think a lot of people may be on board for the first, but may not so much for the second.

For sure. For clarity for the post (for other readers, not in response to your comment), I’m against the automated dungeon queue for TBC. I suppose it’s kinda inevitable for WotLK because it did exist then. I’m purely talking about Retail’s LFG tool which I honestly use all the time in that.

I personally don’t think that it becomes all that more helpful without a cross-realm component. The biggest issue I see is finding players that want to do the content. I think more players would feel encouraged to do more activities in more places if there wasn’t this sense of dread that you could invest 100 hours into something and then stall out because your realm doesn’t have the support for the content you were excited to do.

As for Realm mergers, or linking… I don’t think that solves anything without applying other options for easing imbalances. Merged realms will just see people transfer to / roll on the majority side and become even more the super power than they were before. Great for PvE I suppose. When I look at Retail or other prominent MMOs, it occurs to me that I haven’t had that nagging feeling of “Is playing on this server futile?!” for almost 10 years… but with the advent of Classic I’m again shelving toons and quitting because I can’t get to the people that’re interested in doing the same things as me.

I can’t personally say that I’ve experienced that sense of server identity like in original WoW. It Retail, it doesn’t matter if someone I played with is on my server or not. If they’re good or friendly, I send them a friend request and that’s that - we can play together whenever.

I think it is a real concern for a lot of people (including me), but I think it could all be solved with a checkbox of “My realm only”. I always wished for this during WotLK with LFD. No reason to restrict people that don’t care if it could be solved with a checkbox.

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I don’t think it would be terrible if it it was the group finder tool that retail uses, but definitely NOT LFD.

I would not expect Blizz to ever implement cross realm group tools, why? Well then why would people pay for server xfers? No money in that.

As someone who works in the online services industry - we may WAY more money off of happy customers who give us monthly recurring payments than we do our one-time service fees.

I would think it’s more lucrative for Classic to maintain a healthy, happy playerbase over time than to cash in a couple transfers here and there… and then people still ultimately quit out of frustration. Case and point, I’m playing on the absolute highest population server I can find and still can’t find groups as a Tank… at this point there’s no transfer that’s going to solve the issue for me so I feel like just dropping Classic. This is the 3rd character since it launch that I felt like I’m losing steam on because of a lack of ability to engage the group content in a satisfying way. (paying people gold to carry me is not satisfying).

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Blizzard is making an absolute ton off of server transfers. There’s maybe 200 total players on Incendius and that used to be a medium-high level server. Over the summer, every guild but like three transferred off. Maybe some people quit, but at $25 a crack for all those guilds with their mains and alts…they just don’t care about the recurring subs.

What you are describing is already in the game

Its called mega servers with layers.

I think these tools diminished realm communities to an extent. That said, if a realm is barren, and players cannot reasonably play the content, something needs to be done.

I am more of an advocate of connecting lower pop realms. I guess I am not opposed anymore to x-realm LFD/LFG for TBC or Classic Era.

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I don’t want mega cross realm servers, that’s part of the reason many play classic is cuz it’s not mega crosss realm. Servers are supposed to have identity. However things are pretty bad atm, consolidating servers should be the plan of attack. There’s just too many servers atm

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No one and I mean no one really knows what’s happening there as far as data and facts. All we know is what they allow us to know. It’s very little when it comes to the game data.

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It would reduce the necessity for community-driven solutions, such as Dungeon Leveling guilds being a thing, potentially.

A large part of socialization with others, and forming relationships comes through shared experiences. The way it currently is, there is incentive to be friendly and actively build relationships with others at similar levels, with similar playtimes. This is more or less _the quintessential factor that separates Retail from Classic for me, and precisely what I enjoy about it.

May I suggest taking some initiative and forming a Dungeon Levelling guild, such as we have done on Faerlina, Horde?

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