Mass Server Transfers and Server Health ?

[Ryjax]

I've played WoW off and on since the beginning. I made a few server transfers in TBC / LK and ended up on a populated server with lots of friends. I've built up 12 characters over time that are still on the same server, but . . . now this server is dead and very few of my friends play

Has Blizzard ever offered any sort of "Mass Character Server Transfer" and do you expect anything like this to happen? I remember the free transfers they offered from high pop to low pop servers, but not anything else. I definitely wouldn't pay $300 to transfer 12 characters.

It seems sharding is Blizzard's solution to server imbalances (and server performance, arguably), but I wonder how serious they are considering other solutions, such as closing low pop servers or allowing free transfers. I enjoy WoW. I enjoy both live and vanilla. I maintain a sub for live and have been playing private servers since Nost. One of the bigger reasons I enjoy Vanilla is for the server health, community, and the overall experience playing the game with other people, even though some of the systems are lackluster. I'm not ragging on Legion, because there is a lot I like about it, but it feels more like a single-player game. I've been thinking about different changes Blizzard could make that would grasp the traits I love about Vanilla and help incorporate them into live WoW. What you guys think?

[Deleted]

I definitely agree with you.

I hate that they seem to ''fix'' this issue through sharding because it's really not fun or ideal. I hate sharding. I also dislike connected realms as they feel pointless, like why not just merge X amount of realms into 1 realm instead of letting them all stay and be connected? The only reason I can see with connected realms is that you can have more characters after having 12 already, just create the other characters in the other realm that is connected with your current realm. However, they could just increase the limit on how many characters are allowed per realm so people won't have to bother with connected realms.

It really looks bad, especially for a new player, when you scroll down this list of realms and there are so many! A lot of them are Low populated which means people will just play on realms that are either Medium or High, meaning the other realms won't increase in population.

So I definitely agree with you. In my opinion, they should have a lot less amount of realms, merge the Low realms into one, two or more depending on how big of a population all these Low realms make together. This way, the game looks more healthy and there are more high populated realms and each server feels lively.

[Zephre]

Sharding is a shit solution though, it might spawn more players into the world but how does it help economies or boost recruitment? They could help server health a lot by simply connecting/merging more realms.

I recall they said at gamescom they're now capable of connecting realms, the question was, which realms to connect, previously to this they had said it wasn't possible due to new tech introduced with legion.

[Lahis]

Unlikely they'll do anything to this. For Blizzard, sharding and connected realms are a fix to all of this.

Besides, they'd like to have that $300 if you ever wanted to truly change servers.

[Ganksinatra]

I definitely agree with you.

I hate that they seem to ''fix'' this issue through sharding because it's really not fun or ideal. I hate sharding. I also dislike connected realms as they feel pointless, like why not just merge X amount of realms into 1 realm instead of letting them all stay and be connected? The only reason I can see with connected realms is that you can have more characters after having 12 already, just create the other characters in the other realm that is connected with your current realm. However, they could just increase the limit on how many characters are allowed per realm so people won't have to bother with connected realms.

It really looks bad, especially for a new player, when you scroll down this list of realms and there are so many! A lot of them are Low populated which means people will just play on realms that are either Medium or High, meaning the other realms won't increase in population.

So I definitely agree with you. In my opinion, they should have a lot less amount of realms, merge the Low realms into one, two or more depending on how big of a population all these Low realms make together. This way, the game looks more healthy and there are more high populated realms and each server feels lively.

Agreed. I also wonder what the point of posting the server population levels at the server select screen. I mean, I get that you want to tell people that there are lots of people on X server, but the problem you described is what happens because of that; you end up with a handful of SUPER populated servers, and a ton of unpopulated wastelands. They need to combine servers into one. Period. Give people a lot of warning, and offer free transfers to other servers if the servers they are combining end up making the player have more than 11 toons on one server so they don't have to delete them. THEN, you have a lot of moderately to highly populated servers. The problem would be making sure that there aren't insane queues at xpac launches, etc.. And then what do you do if you haven't played in a long time and have a combined 22 characters on two servers that are being combined? Do they just delete 11? Or do they not allow you to play until you use the free transfers to move 11 off server? There are some logistics to work out.

[Tradu]

Sharding is a shit solution though, it might spawn more players into the world but how does it help economies or boost recruitment? They could help server health a lot by simply connecting/merging more realms.

I recall they said at gamescom they're now capable of connecting realms, the question was, which realms to connect, previously to this they had said it wasn't possible due to new tech introduced with legion.

All of them. With the new PvP toggle and huge amount of sharding they do anyway, they might as well. But they won't, because it'd lose them money from transfers.

- - - Updated - - -

Agreed. I also wonder what the point of posting the server population levels at the server select screen. I mean, I get that you want to tell people that there are lots of people on X server, but the problem you described is what happens because of that; you end up with a handful of SUPER populated servers, and a ton of unpopulated wastelands. They need to combine servers into one. Period. Give people a lot of warning, and offer free transfers to other servers if the servers they are combining end up making the player have more than 11 toons on one server so they don't have to delete them. THEN, you have a lot of moderately to highly populated servers. The problem would be making sure that there aren't insane queues at xpac launches, etc.. And then what do you do if you haven't played in a long time and have a combined 22 characters on two servers that are being combined? Do they just delete 11? Or do they not allow you to play until you use the free transfers to move 11 off server? There are some logistics to work out.

They could just stop limiting you to 11/12/16 characters per server and let you spread your 50 cap(which I'd also like to see increased) across servers in any way you see fit.

[Razorice]

This is an issue for me too, however I'm working on fixing it. To transfer and faction change my 12 characters i'll need around 600 Euro and since I'm not keen on paying that much I'll just buy it with Tokens. I'm half-way there

[Deleted]

The biggest problem with merging servers is character names. No doubt there's gonna be loads of the same names used on the low pop servers and if merged into one only one character could have the name. Stuff like max character slots per server prob isn't such a big concern. But what do you do with overlapping names? You can't just randomly pick one guy and make the rest change. Imagine if you logged into your account one day and your main had to change his/her name because the servers merged?

While not at all ideal I think the connected realms are the best solution. They allow for an effectively larger population and we can join guilds on those connected realms. They function as one, but we all get to keep our names.

[Gwiez]

I also dislike connected realms as they feel pointless, like why not just merge X amount of realms into 1 realm instead of letting them all stay and be connected? The only reason I can see with connected realms is that you can have more characters after having 12 already, just create the other characters in the other realm that is connected with your current realm.

1. So players don't lose their names when realms are merged, if the name is taken on the other realm.
2. So players with more characters than are allowed on one realm at the time of merging don't have to delete characters.

Connected realms are essentially merged realms. Being able to make more characters per realm for connected realms (after the time of merging) probably wasn't a reason for implementing merged realms as connected realms.

Blizzard hasn't offered a "mass transfer" yet, but if they figure out that a "transfer X for the price of Y" would net them more money, without messing up their product for the rest of their customers, they'll do so.

[Lahis]

The biggest problem with merging servers is character names. No doubt there's gonna be loads of the same names used on the low pop servers and if merged into one only one character could have the name. Stuff like max character slots per server prob isn't such a big concern. But what do you do with overlapping names? You can't just randomly pick one guy and make the rest change. Imagine if you logged into your account one day and your main had to change his/her name because the servers merged?

While not at all ideal I think the connected realms are the best solution. They allow for an effectively larger population and we can join guilds on those connected realms. They function as one, but we all get to keep our names.

Flag all characters with the same name for a name change, and first one to take the original can keep it.

[Ryjax]

I think the benefits of focusing on healthy realms and making whatever changes necessary to achieve this, would far outweigh any of the downsides I've seen here. I would change every one of my characters names to be able to play on realms with better pops and better server communities/activity.

I can only speak for myself, but the "single player" aspect of live overrides most the other factors as to why I get bored and unsub periodically. WoW's the game I love and losing my character's name seems really insignificant a sacrifice to get the servers back.

As far as the character limit per servers, there are many simple solutions to this.

[Puri]

They tested server connection on the last PTR, and they hinted that there will be more server connections coming.
There are so many dead servers around - even already connected servers - that this will be a very likely change coming in the months before the new xpac. And don't forget that with the coming PVP changes they also can finally connect PVP and PVE realms, which probably also was a limiting factor for the available merges (and probably one of the reasons they got rid of this server type distinction in the first place).

Alternativley they obviously could remove the remaining server limitations (make region wide AH and allow cross server trading and cross server guilds and mythic raiding) and together with the sharding technology we'd have one giant server.

[krl]

Nothing prevents you from playing on the server of your choice. You can level a new character.
Anything more is entitlement and that's Blizzard's opinion. So they feel entitled to your money even though the cost is 0 (running a lame, non-resource intensive script somewhere in their cloud).

The balance between the price being a deterrent and a shameless cash grab is a thin one.

Imho, no mass transfer sale will ever happen. Altoholics' zoo of characters can stay where they are.

[faithbane]

Has Blizzard ever offered any sort of "Mass Character Server Transfer" and do you expect anything like this to happen? I remember the free transfers they offered from high pop to low pop servers, but not anything else. I definitely wouldn't pay $300 to transfer 12 characters.

There is no mass transfer but maybe:

What I would recommend for you is to pick a "main" to transfer which has the highest amount of reps, achievements, rare/iconic gear, collectables etc.. Then pool all your gold and mats onto that guy and transfer him to the server of your choice. If you don't want to pay, you can probably afford to buy tokens from mission gold of 12 chars to transfer him.

Then you can use the downtime between expansions to raise more characters to 110, if you have heirlooms if will probably take 1 long afternoon each or 2-3 each weekend. If you are a collector, you might discover a lot of missed mogs/items/quest along the way that leveling as well so its not just waste of time. There is also an expected long gap between the last raid tier and new expansion so you will have plenty of time to do it. Its a bummer if you hate leveling but it is a cheap option. Also, you will get one free 110 with the new expansion, won't have a hard time with DK/DH because of the higher starting level and get to play different race/class combinations... Bright side?

[Ryjax]

@faithbane - Good suggestion mate. One of the reasons I like all characters on one server is because I enjoy the economy/market aspects; I have every profession and loads of gold across my toons. Unfortunately, the economy isn't so great on dead servers ha ha. I've been in the same guild since TBC, but the only actives are me and two other mates from our original group. Maybe it would be a good time to do it when Blizz makes the leveling changes.

Regardless, I don't think I would make any serious server changes until Blizz fixes the current server/sharding issues. We'll see.

[Deleted]

Sadly no. That's the reason I stopped transfering at some point and instead always bought another wow copy around christmas for 5-7€.

When needed I would multibox/raf level all classes I want within the 2 months I get for free (I normally pay for one additional month to get the raf-gift). The best expansion for that was obvious WoD: RAF lasts till 90 then buy 2 exp potions and level to 100 within 2h.

[Poysonivy]

The biggest problem with merging servers is character names. No doubt there's gonna be loads of the same names used on the low pop servers and if merged into one only one character could have the name. Stuff like max character slots per server prob isn't such a big concern. But what do you do with overlapping names? You can't just randomly pick one guy and make the rest change. Imagine if you logged into your account one day and your main had to change his/her name because the servers merged?

While not at all ideal I think the connected realms are the best solution. They allow for an effectively larger population and we can join guilds on those connected realms. They function as one, but we all get to keep our names.

Are the guilds with the same name not the issue here?

My character is in: https://www.wowprogress.com/guild/eu...mer/Absolution

But there used to be a https://www.wowprogress.com/guild/eu...yon/Absolution
Which is disbanded as far as I know. Doomhammer is connected with Turalyon.