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  1. #41
    Legendary! Fenixdown's Avatar
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    But there's an additional problem to the server population misguidings.

    While the population is "medium", and that is likely not a false assumption, what it also does not take into account is the server's faction balancing. As an example, I will use my old server, Skullcrusher (US).

    Skullcrusher is a medium population server. There is decent activity around peak hours. However, the server's faction imbalance leans favorably towards the Horde. If you look at the guild progression in terms of raiding on the server, you will see what I mean.

    http://www.wowprogress.com/pve/us/skullcrusher

    Of 59 guilds that have recorded any progress in current tier content, nine of them are Alliance guilds. Of those guilds, I can confirm 100% that one of them (Wrath) has ceased all raiding activity for months. So, the actual list is eight out of fifty-eight guilds that are on the Alliance side. All of these guilds currently are 10-man guilds. Horde has one 25-man guild confirmed (Reckless).

    Therefore, based simply on raid size alone, the population of raiders is 80 to 515. This is not factoring in other circumstances such as additional raid teams any of these guilds may have and bench players.

    Now, if you roll on Skullcrusher, which is listed as a medium population server, you are actually getting two different server types in one. If you roll Horde, the population actually is "medium". However, if you roll Alliance, the population description would be "low", and that's probably an overestimation.

    Not only does Blizzard need to bite the bullet on merges (I don't care if you don't want to change your name, other people want to play the game the way it should be played...you can deal, honestly, and your name is probably stupid anyway), but they need to do it in a way to fix faction imbalances. If you merged Skullcrusher with, say, Blackwing Lair (a low population server with a very heavy Horde imbalance), it would do nothing for either server as a whole, it would simply bring more Horde together. However, if you merged it with say, Dark Iron (which has a heavier Alliance population), it would give greater overall benefit to both sides and fix all of the glaring issues at once.
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  2. #42
    Quote Originally Posted by Gurbz View Post
    I actually agree with you that players who are unhappy have a solution available to them, and are probably better off utilizing the service already offered rather than wait for Blizzard to do something else. But it is not an ideal solution really. What should a player on a very low pop realm do if they have 11 characters on that realm? It is not reasonable to expect such a player to pay $275 to move all of their characters off the dead realm. Nor is it fair to tell that player that they just have to choose one character.
    See, the fuzzy area is honestly the movement of more than 1 toon. I agree myself since I despise leveling, I wouldn't want to pay $100 to move my toons but if that was (essentially) the only way to do it, so be it.

    I think there would truthfully be more of an uproar if Blizzard offered free transfers for a service that other people have had to pay for.

    ---------- Post added 2013-02-20 at 01:25 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Fenixdown View Post
    Not only does Blizzard need to bite the bullet on merges (I don't care if you don't want to change your name, other people want to play the game the way it should be played...you can deal, honestly, and your name is probably stupid anyway), but they need to do it in a way to fix faction imbalances. If you merged Skullcrusher with, say, Blackwing Lair (a low population server with a very heavy Horde imbalance), it would do nothing for either server as a whole, it would simply bring more Horde together. However, if you merged it with say, Dark Iron (which has a heavier Alliance population), it would give greater overall benefit to both sides and fix all of the glaring issues at once.
    The only problem is, the game you are playing the game isn't "broken" to where Blizzard is responsible to "fix it". You can quest, farm, lfg, lfr. You have access to an AH. It's not like something on your server is "broke". It really comes down to not wanting to pay for an additional service that has a fee to it. It's shitty if you have more than 1 toon, I know, but it's the fact.

    There isn't really a way to "balance" factions. DaoC tried something like that with giving boosts to the other 2 factions (and it did list which factions were needed) but no other game has really tried to do that, afaik.

    Trust me, I'm sure if I was in a situation like having a dead server I'd have a different outlook, but I wouldn't expect Blizzard to give me something they provide for a fee, for free.

  3. #43
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    I had a similar problem myself, although the population wasn't as extreme as in your case. I had played horde for about 2 years on one server, having raided regularly on my warlock, also had several other characters lvl 80-85.

    Rather than transfer my character(s) I just decided to reroll completely from scratch on the opposite faction. It felt like a fresh experience, rolling completely new races, as I'd never played Alliance before. Also with the new account bound achievments/ mounts, it makes you feel a little less bad as you will still have a large amount of your achievments as well as all your pretty mounts you spent hours doing achievments for. (Netherdrakes, ICC mounts come into mind)

    P.S if you cba to start completely from fresh you could just stick all your heirlooms on one character and xfer them to a new server.

  4. #44
    Legendary! Fenixdown's Avatar
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    Well, the alternatives are people quit the game, which I would suspect is a portion of their annual subscription loss. Is it enough to warrant such an action? I would assume not yet, as they haven't seem to have really entertained the notion. Could it be somewhere down the road? Most definitely.

    In my opinion, if something CAN be a problem in the future, the best time to fix it is in the present before it becomes a problem. It's better to fix something out of precognitive analysis than to fix it out of a hastened attempt to correct something that was allowed to get out of control.

    See also : LFR loot design. They made a system, saw how it had flaws, and fixed the flaws. Currently, some servers have very glaring flaws. The solution to fix those flaws is server merges. Why wait?

    Off topic edit : 5k, baby! Aw, yeah!
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  5. #45
    Blizzard could surely enable all new characters created on a 'dead faction' side to have 300% XP gain enabled until level 85. (at least for a number of months)

    That way maybe some more people would migrate there, or certainly try levelling a charcater on the opposing (dead) faction's side.

    It would be an incentive for people who were suffering already on the quiet realms, and it would bring new players to the realms, thus bringing more mats etc.

  6. #46
    Quote Originally Posted by Fenixdown View Post
    Well, the alternatives are people quit the game, which I would suspect is a portion of their annual subscription loss. Is it enough to warrant such an action? I would assume not yet, as they haven't seem to have really entertained the notion. Could it be somewhere down the road? Most definitely.

    In my opinion, if something CAN be a problem in the future, the best time to fix it is in the present before it becomes a problem. It's better to fix something out of precognitive analysis than to fix it out of a hastened attempt to correct something that was allowed to get out of control.

    See also : LFR loot design. They made a system, saw how it had flaws, and fixed the flaws. Currently, some servers have very glaring flaws. The solution to fix those flaws is server merges. Why wait?

    Off topic edit : 5k, baby! Aw, yeah!
    Prove that people are quitting over this then you have an argument. According to all the data out there the fluctuation in subs is primarily from the Eastern markets and China specifically with perma bans and the high turnover from their per hour sub model. If this was as big of a problem as players think it is Blizzard might have done something about it already IMO. But like most other issues it is a lot of hyperbole created by the player themselves rather than real problems.

  7. #47
    Quote Originally Posted by Beefhamer View Post
    Prove that people are quitting over this then you have an argument. According to all the data out there the fluctuation in subs is primarily from the Eastern markets and China specifically with perma bans and the high turnover from their per hour sub model. If this was as big of a problem as players think it is Blizzard might have done something about it already IMO. But like most other issues it is a lot of hyperbole created by the player themselves rather than real problems.
    Prove that they are not. What data points to the fluctuation is subs are due to WOW China? Where did you get this data from? How do you know how many people being banned in China? How do you know the rate of subscriber churn in China?

    Undoubtedly people quit over dead realms the lack of action from Blizzard points to the fact the number is not high enough to spend money addressing the problem and potentially disrupting the income from paid for services.

  8. #48
    Offer free realm change is probably a good idea. They are doing it already, but they need increase the frequency.

    Merge realm is a terrible idea.
    The effect of realm merge is pretty much the same as CRZ in addition to name change (also a problem of who should change their name, since no one wants to be that guy).
    And we all know how CRZ went...
    Million of complain threads each day.
    Some people like dead servers I guess, no world PvP, no fight over rares, etc.
    Last edited by Exorte; 2013-02-20 at 09:05 PM.

  9. #49
    23 people online between levels 1-89? No way...

  10. #50
    Personally I always thought it would be a much better idea to let the servers just die out slowly by blocking new character creation on them. Once the population reaches a certain level, then you open up free transfers and close the server. It minimizes the number of players that would be affected and at the same time keeps brand new players from being on a server that will give them a bad experience.

    There is no elegant solution to it, but its a problem that needs to be fixed eventually.

  11. #51
    Quote Originally Posted by alturic View Post
    See, the fuzzy area is honestly the movement of more than 1 toon. I agree myself since I despise leveling, I wouldn't want to pay $100 to move my toons but if that was (essentially) the only way to do it, so be it.

    I think there would truthfully be more of an uproar if Blizzard offered free transfers for a service that other people have had to pay for.

    ---------- Post added 2013-02-20 at 01:25 PM ----------



    The only problem is, the game you are playing the game isn't "broken" to where Blizzard is responsible to "fix it". You can quest, farm, lfg, lfr. You have access to an AH. It's not like something on your server is "broke". It really comes down to not wanting to pay for an additional service that has a fee to it. It's shitty if you have more than 1 toon, I know, but it's the fact.

    There isn't really a way to "balance" factions. DaoC tried something like that with giving boosts to the other 2 factions (and it did list which factions were needed) but no other game has really tried to do that, afaik.

    Trust me, I'm sure if I was in a situation like having a dead server I'd have a different outlook, but I wouldn't expect Blizzard to give me something they provide for a fee, for free.
    I don't mind paying a fee for the service but having to pay for every toon is gouging. They could say hey pay us 25 bucks and move however many toons you want to server X. That I would have no problem with. As for the service. I'm not sure if you have ever used it but I have twice and both times the toon was moved over before I could even load up the game and log in. Given how quickly its done I would say its all automated and doesn't cost blizzard any man hours.
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  12. #52
    Spam Assassin! MoanaLisa's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by alturic View Post
    I do think providing a one-time per account coupon code for a free transfer would be a decent (overall) solution to the "problem" that does already have a solution in place to fix. Simply not wanting to pay an additional fee is not cause for saying "it's on Blizzard" to fix it. They did give a way to goto another realm, you just don't want to pay for it.
    Except that this wouldn't solve anything in a real way. 30 days or less after they issued such a thing people would still be posting on forums proclaiming that Blizzard needs to merge servers because whatever they did wasn't enough. Mind you I think a once-a-year BOA server move is a good thing. And I'm sure that people would welcome that unless all of a sudden they raised the monthly rate (not raised since day 1 which people rarely mention when complaining about how greedy Blizzard is).
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  13. #53
    Herald of the Titans Aeriedk's Avatar
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    I certainly agree. Blizzard really needs to take action regarding this subject. It has been a hot topic since Cata and little has been done or said.

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  14. #54
    Easy fix to the name problem. Allow players to have a Surname (or second/family name). Thus when you log into a new character after a server merge, it asks you to add the character's surname.

    Then add an option to turn off surname display to avoid screen clutter.

    After merges, limit first names again to one per server. Thus you should only have two or three people max with the same 'first name' post-merger.

    Easy. Get on that, Blizzard. Breath life into dying servers, and give people on dead servers a new reason to play.

    Or, if you're determined to get our money for server transfers, how about a package transfer deal that lets you move all your characters to a new realm in one go? Say 50% more then a single character transfer. Thus people might be willing to spend money on it, rather then not spending any when they realise moving all their characters is about a year's subscription in cost!

    I don't care how arguments like "it makes the game look like its failing". That's stupid, subscription numbers tell a better story. And I'm pretty damn sure subscriptions will go up if they merge dead and dying realms together.

  15. #55
    Banned docterfreeze's Avatar
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    Never gunna happen, Blizzard doesn't like accepting there aren't as many players as there used to be.

  16. #56
    The Patient AnotherInternetOpinion's Avatar
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    Yeah blizz need to do more than just provide a game! Omg blizz do more stuff seriously!
    you want to transfer? Then transfer.
    population hardly matters when everything with the exception of the AH is cross realm.
    wow players, what have you become? Cry about anything and everything. Just play the damn game for what it is.

  17. #57
    Quote Originally Posted by AnotherInternetOpinion View Post
    Yeah blizz need to do more than just provide a game! Omg blizz do more stuff seriously!
    you want to transfer? Then transfer.
    population hardly matters when everything with the exception of the AH is cross realm.
    wow players, what have you become? Cry about anything and everything. Just play the damn game for what it is.

    exactly how do you play the game for what it is on a dead realm? all you can do is lfd/lfr and old raids if your lucky

  18. #58
    Herald of the Titans Orangetai420's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by killidan View Post
    I find that very inelegant as a solution.

    If they care about the name more than server pop, just let them stay.

    I'd rather have voluntary free transfers than forced mergers.
    Same here, server transfers should just be free with a "cooldown" on each character and maybe a max number per month.

    ---------- Post added 2013-02-20 at 09:01 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by AnotherInternetOpinion View Post
    Yeah blizz need to do more than just provide a game! Omg blizz do more stuff seriously!
    you want to transfer? Then transfer.
    population hardly matters when everything with the exception of the AH is cross realm.
    wow players, what have you become? Cry about anything and everything. Just play the damn game for what it is.
    Arena? current raids? <-- Two of the biggest endgame play types are unavailable to players on dead realms...
    MMO-C, home of the worst community on the internet.

  19. #59
    The Patient AnotherInternetOpinion's Avatar
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    So yeah, transfer? One things for sure though, mentioning it here will do nothing ​for you.

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