Is your EU-EN realm also becoming a non-English speaking realm?

[Deleted]

Before I start I need to underline that is NOT a nation-bashing thread, so I won't name the countries that mostly seem to be involved.

There are a number of large EU realms that are changing for sometime now. They are listed as English realms but are for some years now slowly overtaken by non-English speaking players, that form their on guilds and also chat in the Trade channel in their own language(s), more and more.

My own realm has reached a point where people are starting to feel... lost? Maybe even stressed or angry at this happening.
It's getting harder to interact with other people that either don't want to speak English, or (even worse) perhaps can't even understand it all.

Are you seeing this on your realm as well? What's the impact of it on the experience on your realm?

[Morry]

Remember Molten Core, comrades!

And a bit more seriously: how many languages are in EU zone? And how many have their own realms? Realms "occupations" are normal course of events.

[QuiksLE]

Si

/10chars

[Triks]

Neptulon until Cata was the unofficial Bulgarian realm. Now I think Outland and Emeriss are the unofficial Bulgarian ones. Crushridge (or some ogre thing) along with Hakkar were the ones for Italians if I recall correctly.

I know it's impolite and it sucks for the rest of the population but there wasn't too many of us for Blizzard to make our own realms so we kind of took over others.

[Deleted]

Remember Molten Core, comrades!

And a bit more seriously: how many languages are in EU zone? And how many have their own realms? Realms "occupations" are normal course of events.

You have a point, but there might not be enough players left in Europe to warrant more realm-separation. So if we are going to play on the same realms in Legion, would be nice if English was more "enforced" on the EN-realms imo.

[Triks]

You have a point, but there might not be enough players left in Europe to warrant more realm-separation. So if we are going to play on the same realms in Legion, would be nice if English was more "enforced" on the EN-realms imo.

Problem is, a lot of the people that come to those realms don't speak English hence why you see the populations increase so much. I know it sounds stupid to play a game you don't understand - it is - but a localised version of the game would do wonders to help the situation.

[Morry]

I know it sounds stupid to play a game you don't understand

When there were no Russian realms (and no Russian game client obviously) I remember we had an addon which translated quest texts and many menu items, so it's probable they do understand the game (at least enough to play it), just not other players.

[Triks]

When there were no Russian realms (and no Russian game client obviously) I remember we had an addon which translated quest texts and many menu items, so it's probable they do understand the game (at least enough to play it), just not other players.

We (Bulgarians) don't have that as far as I know and I've seen players having problems with both the game and the players in general.

[Deleted]

We used to have that back when there were no Russian servers. A lot of our server's population, mainly on Horde side, was Russian back then and it created a messed up environment where the Russians behaved like asses towards the others and vice versa.

These days I don't really notice though, but I suspect that's mostly because I rarely interact with people outside my guild (which more or less spans the continent).

[Pua]

Not sure it’s an easy solution, to be honest. Players will generally migrate to where there are other people they can play and interact with, and there really aren’t enough players in Europe to justify a server for each European language – not to mention the reality that a lot of those players won’t want to move.

My main servers have been Argent Dawn and Kilrogg, and the language difference is only really apparent when I use one of the group finding tools and I end up cross-realming. There’s a decent Scandinavian population on both realms, but most Scandinavians speak flawless English and default to it when solely English-speaking players are involved with them.

I don’t think it’s that big a problem, really. Not in my experience, anyway.

[Cracked]

I don't think this changes very much, just try to avoid known national realms like Drak'thul or Dunemaul.. Though since BRF I've noticed Kazzak turning into an Arab realm, which is a bit puzzling, either way, I wouldn't play there anymore. Usually the old wowwiki pages about realms contain this info.

[Rainsorrow]

drak'thul EU is, for instance, the main czech realm

[Deleted]

Some countries are big, they are bundled with the EU region, and don't have their server. If they are the size of a few smaller EU countries, they can do it. Though I think lately /2 is much less important than it used to be so most people care about their guild and not so much the realm.

[ls-]

Ragnaros EU is sorta Romanian & Hungarian realm now... Some of them speak English, so /2 is quite lively, however, it may be a bit difficult to join guilds, you have to be one of them to join

[pyrogfx]

I remember Grim Batol was the unofficial Portuguese server back in the day; then they opened Aggra (dedicated portuguese server). When the realms connected, naturally they connected Aggra with Grim Batol.
I havent played there much, but I remember people complaining in trade chat about the portuguese talking everywhere... Tho in that case, it seems dumb to complain at all - they are on a dedicated PT server, after all.

[Triks]

To be honest, I kind of miss the massive amounts of flaming that would go on between us and the rest of the population when we started speaking in our own language. Then again Neptulon also had a lot of Romanians (if anyone from Vertigo is reading this, you guys were probably the best guild I have ever been in) and Scandinavians so there was always banter and lols to be had.

People say it is shitposting, I think it is community-building.

[Charge me Doctor]

Remember when russia didn't had servers of their own? I can't recall name of russian servers from the top of my head, but i remember being a part of raids on different servers when our server went down (and i'm sincerely very, very sorry for this). Fun times. But yeah, these things do happen and IMO it only proves that community is not dead in WoW

[tankbug]

Mine (Twisting Nether) went from turkish to english.

[Syri79]

Well, if there isn't an official realm for that language, or people want to play among friends who speak other languages, it's easy to see why they're using the EU_EN realms, as many will have English as a second language, to allow a little bit of outreach beyond their own linguistic community. I think there is one thing that these people could do though which would help a lot when speaking other languages on a server flagged as English speaking... Use custom chat channels. It's a feature that's been there from the start, and is probably woefully underused. If you want to speak Danish on a server, just "/join danechat" or whatever, trading in Swedish, "/join swetrade"...
It's a simple solution that, if word is spread around, would help communities find each other, and keep the elements that can't cross over separate, while still allowing joint cooperation and all that. It just filters things out a bit, and you can even change the colour of the text for custom chat, so anyone using that can easily see if someone is using their language outside of the channel, and invite them to join it.
Some might say it's a way of excluding people, but not really, it's just filtering out the parts that don't have any crossover. A Dane, Swede or whatever can still use the other channels, it'd just give them somewhere to use their native language without any arguments or misunderstandings coming out of it. Just an idea anyway, that might help clean things up... and obviously would apply to more languages than just Danish and Swedish, I just used those as quick examples that I know don't have their own language realms.

[Malagan]

If I recall correctly, Frostmane is mainly Swedish and Ragnaros is mainly Hungarian