What Should Blizzard do about Low Pop/"Dead" Servers?

[Pua]

While you may not like that answer--many don't--it's the last thing I can find from Blizzard about the subject. I remember in the past they have mentioned the problems with guild names, player names and the general feeling that some people like small servers and their opinions need to be considered as well.

I don't like or dislike the answer, my only gripe with CRZ is that it leaves the actual problems of a low-populated server untouched; namely, recruitment and the auction house. Essentially, CRZ's are basically a fancy way of doing absolutely nothing.

Maybe I should have phrased my earlier question better:

What, if anything, can be done about bad recruitment and poor auction houses without server merges/free migration?

[Deleted]

Give me and my guildies a completely empty server and I'm happy. I hate random people with passion, transfer the people from a 'dead' realm to my current realm ;(

[szandos]

Grow a pair and merge them. But as said, it's an admission of a tail-off in subscriptions. Get their PR department to come up with a positive spin on it, and do it.

Do like SWTOR and others and say they invented MEGA servers that can handle many more users. That way you can merge without admitting you lost subs.

Problem still remains for servers like Draenor-EU where there's a queue to log on, but alliance is empty. In those cases you really need mega servers. Or allow for free faction transfers on servers with a large discrepancy in A:H ratio.

[Fishyface]

Give me and my guildies a completely empty server and I'm happy. I hate random people with passion, transfer the people from a 'dead' realm to my current realm ;(

Then why play mmos at all? Wouldnt you be happier playing a co-op game? Massively multiplayer suggests that you will run into random people.

Alot of you would be very happy playing warhammer online or any of the smaller mmos.

[Maester]

I don't think it's laziness, I think it's fear that merging servers could generate bad press and give ammunition to the "WoW is dying" folks.

You can't seriously believe Blizzard cares about that, can you? They have 10 million subscribers. At this point they only need to put the absolute minimal effort into attracting new customers. Bad media attention due to merging servers? It doesn't matter.

What they need to worry about is keeping the 10 million happy. And what would make us happy? Merging servers.

[Bearshield]

My stance on this have always been to merge the servers.

This right here is and always has been the answer. But as long as Blizz can charge you $25 a toon for your main and each of your alts to move you off your dead server to one of the 10 high pop ones, they won't be merging anything.

[MoanaLisa]

I don't like or dislike the answer, my only gripe with CRZ is that it leaves the actual problems of a low-populated server untouched; namely, recruitment and the auction house. Essentially, CRZ's are basically a fancy way of doing absolutely nothing.

Maybe I should have phrased my earlier question better:

What, if anything, can be done about bad recruitment and poor auction houses without server merges/free migration?

I think that something like cross-realm guilds may actually happen. And I suspect that something like merged auction houses might happen as well although GC has been openly skeptical about it. People sometimes tend to view cross-realm zones as some sort of game feature which they can like or dislike, much like LFR or something. I tend to view the cross-realm stuff as a network technology that will allow them over a period of time to restructure the game world entirely which is a much more profound thing than simply adding X or Y to the game.

It won't happen all at once though because Blizzard will simply slow walk it into being. If they continue to expand it as I think they will, the talk about merging servers will simply become irrelevant at some point. If Blizzard can save more money by reducing the size of their infrastructure in this way while making the game feel bigger and more populated, they'll happily dump the server transfer fees.

[eldritchforeshadow]

I would like free realm transfers as well. Let those who like low pop servers stay and those who want more pop realm transfer for free. Give us all a choice.

[TheNightAngel]

Felt as if this thread should probably see more of the against opinion, or even middle ground opinion, as so far its been overwhelmingly one side.

As someone who has played on both high pop servers (Mal'Ganis) and low pop (Farstriders), PvP servers and PvE servers and RP servers (I've done a lot of moving), my favorite has been Farstriders. Yes. I'm serious: one of the worst raiding servers in North America, with literally 4 groups last tier at 16/16 and not one at Cutting Edge: Will of the Emperor, I prefer it. The market isn't bad, not like some others, but its also not as strong as high pop servers. I started playing on Farstriders because the people who got me into WoW played on it, and its where I hit my first max level character and began raiding (with pugs that had trouble downing Halfus even after ZA/ZG release). Afterwards, I transferred to Arthas to join a better raiding guild, and this guild eventually transferred as a whole to Mal'Ganis. Even though we were doing Heroics, we were a top 200 guild in the raid tier at the time, I found I preferred Farstriders. Not because I liked the difference between high and low pop, but because I had spent the most time there, became part of the community there. It has its share of trolls, yes, and sometimes trade was a bunch of flaming, and it had its downfalls, but I felt far more integrated into that community.

Eventually I quit the raid team and came back to Farstriders and instead took up a more casual raiding experience. It was a trade that I was willing to make, and I believe the choice was best for ME (but someone else may not think so, as they may prefer to only focus on bleeding edge raiding). I am not any particular rare hunter, I got Glorious because I'd kill a rare if I came across it, but I don't particularly care for it. I have no farming toon, and am generally pretty poor for a 90 (hovering around 10-15K gold total at any one time). Those aspects of low population servers don't come into play for me: actually, no part of population is a key factor in my decision.

Many people say that server community is dead. I say its not. Maybe its weaker and looser than vanilla, but it definitely still exists. My guild has close relations with the other top guilds, and we have friendly competitions to see who can down say Horridon first. There are about I'd say 20 well-known guilds but then many smaller ones (and I mean well-known by Farstriders standards. So if they've downed any bosses raiding normals, people know about them). The standards on Farstriders for "decent player" and "casual" are different than other servers (and by what every elitist on this site would say, significantly worse). Our community is different. And I enjoy that. That's the part I want to preserve.

All of this would be throw away with server merges. All of a sudden our community is forcibly meshed with like 4 others, population has exploded, and everything is clustered. It would feel exactly as it did for me when I was on Arthas or Mal'ganis. I wouldn't have nearly as much fun. Well maybe I'd have it, considering that the Farstriders community still exists, its just been forced into a larger one. I wouldn't know if it would survive the merging. I'd rather not take the risk. Neither would most of the people on Farstriders. Whenever some troll comes into our trade, we defend our server. We know we are a bad raiding server. We know we can't pug for our lives. Most of those who wanted either of those have already left the server. But that doesn't mean none of us feel pride in what is Farstriders.
(As a point for this, 3 friends and I hosted the Oondansta kill on our server, made 4 groups. We had literally just enough people to keep the groups grounded in Farstriders. Had a few Farstriders people left, we'd most likely have had groups zoned to another server. We wiped twice and killed it on the third try, and on the second wipe, we had many people leave because 'nothing will die on a **** server like farstriders')

I can understand, however, people's frustrations about truly dead servers. Only 1 page of auctions total, only 7 people online at once. This needs to be fixed. But I don't think flat merging of servers would work, as just as many people or more would hate it as those who were happy with it.

If server merging did occur, and it does have many positives to it I agree (I just think they don't outweigh what I find important), there would be many issues. One, who'd be the host server? If its not an all new server, the original people on that server may feel like they should get priority (if its not obvious, my opinion is that all new servers would have to be created). How would servers be merged? To what extent? There are obviously people who want the low pop for low pop benefits. How do we treat them?

As someone who is against merging and would prefer it not to happen, here are some things that I would view as required to make it even OK to do:

1. All new servers. Not 5 being sent to an old one. No priority.
2. Free transfer to another realm per character, so players who absolutely want low pop can go to a server created specifically to keep low pop.

How do we also fix the issue of character identity? I personally have spent money on a name change, because the characters name really is important to me. I don't want to lose that identity. As an example, I looked up some toon names on Emberstorm battlegroup. 2 of the characters were both 90, one was obviously a main and the other an alt, they were (seemingly) created in the same patch, although maybe one guy took an incredibly long time to level to 90. What if both of these guys take their characters identity seriously? Who gets priority? First made? In this case, this makes sense. The game can't identify an alt and a main.

But what about a level 90 Xandris (made up) and a level 14 Xandris? What if the level 14 belonged to an active account but was just an abandoned alt? Should the level 14 get priority, even if it was created first?

What if a person has a level 70 twink in a twink guild, who's had his character for longer than a 90. Should the 90 get priority?

Maybe the best option is just a free for all. All names are reset upon coming to the new server, first come, first serve. But then what about the guy who played in vanilla, and then got his name snatched 2 minutes ahead of him?

What about a last name system, so no one has to give up their name? But then your alts are tied to your account, something you may not want.

To be honest, I feel as if truly dead / imbalanced servers should be given free realm transfers / faction changes. Hell, maybe we can even merge 2 servers together (so if we have 40 low pop, now we have 20 medium / low pop, based on faction balance). This would upset server community, but it would be easier to merge with only a single other community than 5 or 10, and it would help very imbalanced servers.

This issue isn't two sided: for or against. There are 20 different viewpoints that need to be addressed by blizzard. This is why I believe they are trying so hard with CRZ and real ID raiding in non-current tier. I think personally extending this past those and into battlegroup auction economies, would help solve another small piece. Cross server guilds may do something, but this would disrupt community as well, something I am against.

Currently, I think offering free realm transfers to servers that need them is the smartest course of action while CRZ is being worked on to actually make an impact. Flat out merging servers, I do not think would work unless its kept to a small degree.

Tl;dr: stuff isn't black and white. There are a lot of issues to address in this complex problem.

[Fishyface]

Wall of text i didnt want to requote (no offense it just bloats the page if i do that).

I can agree with you on other issues where there is alot of grey area like what to do about lfr, cross realm zone pvp, making classic servers etc. But this for many people is a black and white issue. There is one way to handle this, and it is what countless games have done in the past, which is to merge servers. The challanges facing blizzard are not any different then those faced by other mmos.

Ive spent over 200 dollars moving my characters off dead servers, and that is completely unacceptable for any gaming company. If i wasnt so into wow at the time i would have never spent that kind of money and would have bought an xbox or a really nice office chair with that money. So to prevent other people from falling into this money pit that blizzard has made they need to merge the servers, plain and simple.

Sometimes a cigar is just that, a cigar, and needs to be dealt with like a cigar.

[TheNightAngel]

@ Fishyface:

You coulda just quoted the TL;DR. But yah, I probably should have been more concise.

Many games have done flat merges in the past. And yes, it has worked. My post wasn't so much as why we should never do a merging, but why it hasn't been done yet, and why it may not come in the near future. Just because something has worked in the past doesn't mean their is not a better option out there. The issue is, right now, while searching for a better option, a lot of realms are genuinely suffering and need aide. While they are exploring CRZ, stuff like free transfers would (I hope) alleviate some of the pressing feelings on this matter. If it comes down to it, and the only genuine way to fix server populations is to do large merges, then yes, we should probably do it, as the benefit of the whole obviously will outweigh that of individuals such as myself.

I am hoping, however, a better solution can be found, and I assume this is what Blizzard is searching to do. We don't know if there any other successful options because other games really haven't explored them. Which is why I think CRZ should be expanded on, and in the meantime free realm transfers should be given to give immediate relief. I agree the fact you had to spent 200 bucks to fix a problem you shouldn't have had to deal with in the first place was a huge injustice. That is something Blizzard does need to address pretty much as soon as possible.

Really, the only thing I disagree with is the idea that merging servers in large quantities right now is what absolutely must be done, and that if it is done, it should be done more carefully than slapping 4 servers together. Something should be done right now, but I am against that particular measure without trying out other things first which may appease a larger amount of players.

[ringpriest]

You can't seriously believe Blizzard cares about that, can you? They have 10 million subscribers. At this point they only need to put the absolute minimal effort into attracting new customers. Bad media attention due to merging servers? It doesn't matter.

What they need to worry about is keeping the 10 million happy. And what would make us happy? Merging servers.

Yes, I do think they're worried about media attention. Activision-Blizzard is a publicly traded company. And like basically every other such company, their executives and board members are obsessed with stock price. And if you think those trading the stock don't care, look at the large jump in both volume and price immediately following the most recent quarterly report; it didn't even say anything particularly significant and it still moved the stock quite a bit.

And if potential bad press from merging servers doesn't matter, and it will make more players happy, then why won't they do it? Would the one-time inconvenience actually be worse in terms of PR or tech support needs than the constant stream of, "look at all these dead servers" complaints? Why spend time and resources implementing the divisive CRZ functionality before merging servers?

Maybe I am wrong, but can you (or anyone else) provide a good alternative explanation for why they won't merge servers? I don't buy the "it would be too much work for hosting" or "too many players would be upset" arguments. What else is there? Sheer greed? Server transfers are basically pure profit and there are certainly quite a few of those driven by the continuing server population imbalance...


Edited to add: As for the idea that they're looking for a better solution than just merges: I'll believe that right after I see the much-prophesied Next Banwave.

[Fishyface]

Merging or shutting down realms isn't possible because many players like their realm, have a character name they like, and don't want to be forced out or to change their name.

Just happen to catch this on the front page from a recent dev interview. Heres an accurate reason why design decisions are killing the population in the game as they neglect people, like alot of the people in this thread for example, that know what has to be done.

People are not going keep paying to bring their chars to another server just because they dont want to ruffle the feathers of an incredibly small % of the population.

Makes me glad i havent played in quite a long time.

[ariakul]

Serious question. I know some of us enjoy the Low pop servers at times, and CRZ's has been a bandaid fix for them, but the fact remains, there are just too many servers in this game. I play on US Scilla, and that server is about as dead as it can get. So my question to you is what should Blizzard do, if anything, about all the low pops? Free transfers off of low pop to medium? Free transfers from medium/high to low pop? Absolutely nothing?

I have to admit as a player on said server it's extremely frustrating to log on and see the same 5 people on everytime because the server is so dead.

Why would Blizzard do anything? They make $25 a pop for people to transfer their toons off.

[judgementofantonidas]

offer free transfers TO them.
remove shared raid lockouts for the time it takes to balance out pops.
you would see some movement then.

[Galaddriel]

So much for the Bold and Spectalura plans they had for MoP to fix low pop realms. They are back to "investigating" and will not merge.

Low Population Realms
Low population realms aren't fun. WoW is designed to be played with friends!
Blizzard is investigating making it easier to move all of your characters to a new realm.
There aren't any easy solutions, especially when players hear that Mal'ganis has a good raiding community or Tichondrius has a good PvP community. This results in players transferring or creating characters on high population realms, making popular realms grow faster, while lower population realms die faster.
Merging or shutting down realms isn't possible because many players like their realm, have a character name they like, and don't want to be forced out or to change their name.