Are realms even relevant anymore?

[Burnick]

So I was watching Thete Gamings latest video, Titled "Legion Issues That Are Breaking Some Raiders in World of Warcraft" And he mentioned varying population as realms as one of the reasons, and honestly its one of his only points I really agree with.
There are tons of issues with realms. Low population realms, hard too recruit/find guilds on said realm, its hard to progress on those realms. The economy are rather 'ass' honestly. Alot of my friends that I have that complain about the game are on very low populated servers, And not everyone can afford too server change (Bills, Children, In general life)
So, Im asking what do you guys think? Are realms still relevant? Or are they a cop out way for blizzard to make cash and they dont really care?
I personally don't believe realms are any longer necessary, back in the day sure due to technology maybe, but now? Their are tons of MMOs that do not have realms.
The video which made me bring this up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRzKp7D-28c between 3:19-5:00


EDIT: I like the idea that a few people have mentioned, 4 realms pre-region, all of which can connect with which other as they can today with LFG/battlegrounds/arenas
For example
All RP/PvE servers condensed into one RP-PvE server, same with RP-PvP, PvP, and PVE servers. They can also do this for language barriers as well.

It would solve the PvE players not wanting to be forced into world PvP, RPers would have their realms still(An it would actually benefit them as they'd have far more like minded people), And PvP players can still have our world pvp etc.

World bosses /rares/chest/quest items / etc wouldnt be an issue with how blizzards phasing technology works now. I went through the legion leveling process with 0 issues in terms of connectivity, being able to gather, kills, etc. It was very smooth with the phasing technology.

I honestly don't see it having a long lasting negative effect on the game, and the only negative affect being the people who are nostalgic over their realms etc, or would just wanna kick up a fuss about anything.

[Relapses]

Blizzard makes almost zero income from server transfer fees. They exist mainly to inhibit players from guild hopping every fucking week just because they can. I agree that there are plenty of God awful shit servers out there and Blizzard should do something about them but removing server transfer fees would do more to harm the Mythic raiding community than help it.

Additionally, inter-realm progression is still very much a thing on populated servers. I play on Stormrage-US and there is still plenty of activity and discussion on this realm about other guilds with similar times/progression as ours. And while this isn't the case on lower-populated realms, completely removing realms from the raiding equation doesn't really solve anything. It simply caters towards players who are too lazy or too stubborn to fix the issue themselves and transfer off of their dead fucking realm.

[Spotnick]

The minute Blizzard try to solve realm population, you have people complaining about having too much people on their realm and having to compete to kill rares, quest mobs or get rare mounts.

There is just no way to win on this one.. some people want to play on dead realms for some reason.

[Burnick]

Blizzard makes almost zero income from server transfer fees. They exist mainly to inhibit players from guild hopping every fucking week just because they can. I agree that there are plenty of God awful shit servers out there and Blizzard should do something about them but removing server transfer fees would do more to harm the Mythic raiding community than help it.

Additionally, inter-realm progression is still very much a thing on populated servers. I play on Stormrage-US and there is still plenty of activity and discussion on this realm about other guilds with similar times/progression as ours. And while this isn't the case on lower-populated realms, completely removing realms from the raiding equation doesn't really solve anything. It simply caters towards players who are too lazy or too stubborn to fix the issue themselves and transfer off of their dead fucking realm.

How are they lazy if life simply doesnt allow them too afford it ? I think that is very ignorant too say.

The minute Blizzard try to solve realm population, you have people complaining about having too much people on their realm and having to compete to kill rares, quest mobs or get rare mounts.

There is just no way to win on this one.. some people want to play on dead realms for some reason.

Im pretty sure they solved that with phasing technology alone time again.

[the boar]

with legion going full CRZ only a couple weeks after launch, and having been raiding with a cross-realm guild group for over a year now.. yeah i don't see much point in realms existing.. except the obvious pve/pvp and maybe the rp realms too.

i'd like to be able to do a mythic raid while it is relevant (without spending £ / gold on a transfer or six (esp not to the pvp realm my group is based on. pvp world quests sounds like the worst thing possible)), but other than that i'm not bothered by it too much. at least being on a dead realm keeps the auction prices low~

[Deleted]

Not any more. Back in the old days there was server pride and designated servers for groups/nations etc. It was a small community, we know each other and the top raiders by name and /inpect -ed them at Ironforge to see those insane epics. I remember when they sold the old server blades (real hardware) and everyone went crazy to get theirs. It was unthinkable for me to play on another server, it felt like home

But now it's just words you click on the first time creating a character

[Relapses]

The minute Blizzard try to solve realm population, you have people complaining about having too much people on their realm and having to compete to kill rares, quest mobs or get rare mounts.

There is just no way to win on this one.. some people want to play on dead realms for some reason.

Realm population is a very real concern but I simply don't think removing realms from the equation is the best answer. Server merging is a better solution but Blizzard is seemingly apprehensive towards this after the "connected realm" idea they had was met with almost universal backlash. It's a difficult subject to grapple but until Blizzard begins having an open discussion about it with players, I doubt it'll be handled any time soon. In the meantime, the introduction of the ability to buy character services with in-game currency does help alleviate some of the financial burden on players.

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How are they lazy if life simply doesnt allow them too afford it ? I think that is very ignorant too say.

Seeing as you can use in-game currency to transfer toons, there's no other way to describe players who stay on dead/dying realms and whine at Blizzard to fix a problem which is almost exclusively their own.

[Mormolyce]

Honestly I think realms have always been bad for the game, and they should be effectively eliminated.

[Burnick]

Realm population is a very real concern but I simply don't think removing realms from the equation is the best answer. Server merging is a better solution but Blizzard is seemingly apprehensive towards this after the "connected realm" idea they had was met with almost universal backlash. It's a difficult subject to grapple but until Blizzard begins having an open discussion about it with players, I doubt it'll be handled any time soon. In the meantime, the introduction of the ability to buy character services with in-game currency does help alleviate some of the financial burden on players.

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Seeing as you can use in-game currency to transfer toons, there's no other way to describe players who stay on dead/dying realms and whine at Blizzard to fix a problem which is almost exclusively their own.

I know alot of players who do not have very much gold, mostly because they dont have much time outside of raiding too play the game, because of life.

[Tradu]

Blizzard makes almost zero income from server transfer fees. They exist mainly to inhibit players from guild hopping every fucking week just because they can. I agree that there are plenty of God awful shit servers out there and Blizzard should do something about them but removing server transfer fees would do more to harm the Mythic raiding community than help it.

Additionally, inter-realm progression is still very much a thing on populated servers. I play on Stormrage-US and there is still plenty of activity and discussion on this realm about other guilds with similar times/progression as ours. And while this isn't the case on lower-populated realms, completely removing realms from the raiding equation doesn't really solve anything. It simply caters towards players who are too lazy or too stubborn to fix the issue themselves and transfer off of their dead fucking realm.

It has nothing to do with laziness and everything to do with massively overpriced automated services. And spending like 500k to move 1 character to another server(not including another faction) is way too high as well.

OT: No, they're not. Some people might care about realm ranks, just like some people care about region/country ranks, but in the end world rank is what's important and that can be tracked regardless of server.

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Realm population is a very real concern but I simply don't think removing realms from the equation is the best answer. Server merging is a better solution but Blizzard is seemingly apprehensive towards this after the "connected realm" idea they had was met with almost universal backlash. It's a difficult subject to grapple but until Blizzard begins having an open discussion about it with players, I doubt it'll be handled any time soon. In the meantime, the introduction of the ability to buy character services with in-game currency does help alleviate some of the financial burden on players.

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Seeing as you can use in-game currency to transfer toons, there's no other way to describe players who stay on dead/dying realms and whine at Blizzard to fix a problem which is almost exclusively their own.

Connected realms were great, mostly because you weren't limited to 10/11/12 characters anymore, but rather some multiple of that depending on number of connected realms in the cluster.

[Relapses]

I know alot of players who do not have very much gold, mostly because they dont have much time outside of raiding too play the game, because of life.

If you have enough budget to afford $15/mo, how much more of a hassle is it to put aside an extra $5/mo for a few months then eventually transfer off? How broke do you have to be to sit on a realm and have a miserable fucking experience because you refuse to spend money to fix your own problem? Yeah, I get it. It's unfair that you have to give Blizzard more money to fix a problem you didn't create but I simply cannot sympathize with players who still pay money to play the game but cannot fathom spending any more than the bare minimum. That's life and sometimes life sucks. But since Blizzard isn't likely to fix this issue any time soon, why champion a cause which will negatively affect far more people than the ones who refuse to transfer off of dead/dying realms?

It has nothing to do with laziness and everything to do with massively overpriced automated services.

They're not massively overpriced. They're priced to prevent people from abusing the service. Blizzard makes very little cash from server transfers when compared to monthly subscription fees.

[kaelix1]

Low population realms

It should be know by now that blizzard change the capacity of their servers, the low=old medium and medium=is the old high

[Chrno]

Blizzard makes almost zero income from server transfer fees. They exist mainly to inhibit players from guild hopping every fucking week just because they can. I agree that there are plenty of God awful shit servers out there and Blizzard should do something about them but removing server transfer fees would do more to harm the Mythic raiding community than help it.

Additionally, inter-realm progression is still very much a thing on populated servers. I play on Stormrage-US and there is still plenty of activity and discussion on this realm about other guilds with similar times/progression as ours. And while this isn't the case on lower-populated realms, completely removing realms from the raiding equation doesn't really solve anything. It simply caters towards players who are too lazy or too stubborn to fix the issue themselves and transfer off of their dead fucking realm.

comming from a low-pop server, i can guarentee you that it's also very much a thing on my realm.
http://www.wowprogress.com/pve/eu/connected-aerie-peak/

Comming from Haven myself there is very much a friendly competition going on

[Tradu]

If you have enough budget to afford $15/mo, how much more of a hassle is it to put aside an extra $5/mo for a few months then eventually transfer off? How broke do you have to be to sit on a realm and have a miserable fucking experience because you refuse to spend money to fix your own problem? Yeah, I get it. It's unfair that you have to give Blizzard more money to fix a problem you didn't create but I simply cannot sympathize with players who still pay money to play the game but cannot fathom spending any more than the bare minimum. Life sucks but since Blizzard isn't likely to fix this issue any time soon, why champion a cause which will negatively affect far more people than the ones who refuse to transfer off of dead/dying realms.



They're not massively overpriced. They're priced to prevent people from abusing the service. Blizzard makes very little cash from server transfers when compared to monthly subscription fees.

There would be no abuse if there were no servers, and in what possible way is being able to change guild without spending an absurd amount of money a bad thing? Then there's the part where you agree that Blizzard fucked up and that it's unfair that it costs money to work around it... just before going back to whiteknighting Blizzard's absurd pricing. Also, they can just implement some kind of "cooldown" on using transfers rather than the extortionate pricing they use currently.
And they definitely make an insane amount of profit compared to the cost of running the automated services systems.

[Chrno]

It should be know by now that blizzard change the capacity of their servers, the low=old medium and medium=is the old high

ehm ..... i don't think anyone cares about what they are called. The problem is that the realms are 'EMPTY'

[Relapses]

comming from a low-pop server, i can guarentee you that it's also very much a thing on my realm.
http://www.wowprogress.com/pve/eu/connected-aerie-peak/

Comming from Haven myself there is very much a friendly competition going on

That's a good thing! Friendly competition between guilds is a huge positive reinforcement for players. (Hell, even unfriendly competition can be a motivation.) But I don't see how removing this completely from the equation would do anything other than put guild recruitment into an absolute shitshow freefall.

[kaelix1]

ehm ..... i don't think anyone cares about what they are called. The problem is that the realms are 'EMPTY'

Really? never seen such things and i play on 3 different servers, low one, medium one and high one, always full of people, both horde and alliance cities are full of people

[Chrno]

That's a good thing! Friendly competition between guilds is a huge positive reinforcement for players. (Hell, even unfriendly competition can be a motivation.) But I don't see how removing this completely from the equation would do anything other than put guild recruitment into an absolute shitshow freefall.

100% agree with you.
that said, i do wish my realm was twice as big .... then maybe ... maybe, we'd actually see some guild progress further in raids. What happens now is that anyone that's decently skilled just transfers to a different realm

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Really? never seen such things and i play on 3 different servers, low one, medium one and high one, always full of people, both horde and alliance cities are full of people

join Bronzebeard EU and be amazed son

[Relapses]

There would be no abuse if there were no servers, and in what possible way is being able to change guild without spending an absurd amount of money a bad thing? Then there's the part where you agree that Blizzard fucked up and that it's unfair that it costs money to work around it... just before going back to whiteknighting Blizzard's absurd pricing. Also, they can just implement some kind of "cooldown" on using transfers rather than the extortionate pricing they use currently.
And they definitely make an insane amount of profit compared to the cost of running the automated services systems.

"No servers" isn't a solution and while it's obvious they make profit off of server transfers in the most benign, literal sense, you're still missing the point... if there wasn't a paywall people would abuse it. Further, a "cooldown" would be seen as an unnecessary deterrent from using an optional service.

As an example, I personally don't see the harm in Blizzard giving players the option to get a "free" server transfer once a year for staying subscribed. But again, I don't see the complete disestablishment of realms as the best solution.

[kaelix1]

join Bronzebeard EU and be amazed son

If you say so little man