Should Blizzard implement a realm merge for Low populated realms, poll.

[Barcasaur]

YES!

I miss the game, and would love to play but I am stuck on Detheroc-US (1. 90, 8. 85's, and a 30 monk)

My old guild left, 100% of my friends either quit or left (then some even quit after leaving)

I want to play quite badly now Its been about 5 months now for me but I can't justify paying 15 bucks to play a single player game were all I can do is level my 85s, Achievement hunt, Pet / Mount hunt, and just be a completionist (which by the way I totally want to do.)

But Id like to be on a sever were I can actually play the AH, MAKE NEW FIRENDS!, Raid normal modes with said friends. please....

They created CRZ as a solution to this issue and what has been the result? Constant whining and complaining about having to share the world with others. There are really two lessons we can draw from this; 1) People whine about anything and everything. 2) The people that play on lowpop servers largely do so because they enjoy small population realms where camping rare spawns or having low raid competition is the norm.


There is nothing wrong with that, I just wish people could admit it rather than finger pointing at how Blizzard has ruined the game *yet again* by giving them an easy way to play with others.

This makes since but I should not have to pay 300 bucks to move, on a game I have spent thousands on already. Just give us 1 free transfer a month even idgaf, do something! If those people that love playing on these severs REALLY LOVE IT lets make it better and give the people who cant even do what they want to do without jumping thru a million hoops the option to leave. Then we will see just how much Jim, Bob, and Joe, like being on a sever with no one.

[RicardoZ]

No. They should leave low pop realms alone and opt them out of CRZ (at least the PvE ones), that way if you want to be in a place where you can quest and farm in peace, you have the option. More options for different playstyles are always a good thing.

[killidan]

YES !!!

My realm wasn't great to start with even in vanilla/TBC. But since then, it went from having 5-6 serious raiding guilds to just 1. Outland used to be full chock of players, Northrend still had some life in it. In the beginning of Cata, server pop reached a low that impacted my gameplay, hence I quit. Now, in MOP, it is abysmal. Raiding guilds can't recruit, two of our best guilds with almost all their players left for other realms. Several guilds downsized to 10-man with the main excuse being they cannot recruit on the realm. Once the server pop went below a certain level, it turned into a death spiral with accelerating losses and whole guilds emigrating.

I am unhappy with MOP in general and with the low server pop. It is Blizzard job to make the game enjoyable. It is a subscription based service ffs, if they don't, people unsub. They lost on my >$250 sub fees in the last two years. I will not pay them a dime for toon transfer, I just cancel and go play my old games or watch movies. I cannot transfer ALL my 10 toons to a new realm, that is prohibitively expensive for my gaming budget. I would spend that money on new games instead. If Blizzard wants my and others' money, they have to yield to the building pressure and merge the low pop realms.

---------- Post added 2013-03-13 at 01:22 PM ----------

No. They should leave low pop realms alone and opt them out of CRZ (at least the PvE ones), that way if you want to be in a place where you can quest and farm in peace, you have the option. More options for different playstyles are always a good thing.

We did NOT opt to be on low pop realms. Realms died throughout the past several years. Several of us want to be in high pop realms, but the transfer fees for 10 toons add up to a prohibitively expensive sum.

At least, they should offer free transfers from dead realms.

[Dezminion]

Damn, just remembered, why originaly I planned four options to the poll, the fourth was ment to be, No, but offer FCM from few lows to spesific medium realm.

[Ishayu]

Of course they should.

There is a problem with naming disputes though. However they can just give free unlimited name changes on the new, merged servers for a week so the community an sort things out. After this point there will likely be so few naming disputes left that GM's can easily handle it.

[icausewipes]

No.

I played swtor when they merged the servers and it was a pita.

[Tal72]

Yes they should. However, there are some players who like a low pop realm. In this case, I recommend merging most of the low pop servers (Lets just say 80%) and keeping the rest. But, there is a 90 day window to free transfer off those low pop realms if you want to. This way, those who want low pop servers (and it is a niche market), get it and the rest get a medium-high server pop.

Would also like to see some low medium pop get merged as well.

[Enosh]

yes long time ago
but server mergers are very bad press so I doubt it will happen

[Flaks]

They need to merge low pop realms that have blatantly obviously not gotten any better since server xfers were allowed.

They also need to allow xfers off of high pop realms (which they do pretty often) but only to the higher pop faction to make sure faction imbalances are toned down.

There's so many ways to address these exceptionally major concerns. Instead they got busy on CRZ to make lower pop realms shittier than ever.

[Tehgypsy]

Yes, they should.. will they, no.. $$

What they should also do is offer for "one price of a transfer", the option of moving as many chars as you want from realm a to b.. its an automated process, why it costs per char and not per move of x number of chars, i have no idea... oh, yes i do.. $$.

As a money making machine, they want to make money.. obviously.. the happiness of the customer is purely secondary (same for other companies, not just bli$$ard), and until people stop paying for transfers or cancel altogether, you got no chance of FCM on low realms to mediums, or merges.. no chance at all.

[boseguy22]

Yeah, its time. I sadly am leaving my starting realm because it is dead. We lost a healer in our 10 man (decent progress 16/16, 3HMSV, 1/12 ToT) and because it is a low pop server, we couldn't replace her. Logged in last night on raid night and the GM and officers were in process of a server transfer to a high pop server.

I have 11 toons on the server 7 90's, 2 geared for raiding (490 ilvl+), and 4 more 85's (one of each class). I obviously need to leave but leaving behind 10 toons is going to suck.

[Deleted]

Doubt it will happen.

They have already subtly merged realms (band-aid fix) without having to actually merge realms with the CRZ feature.

Merging realms & closing servers is bad for public image whichever way you look at it. Server closures indicate a decline in playerbase, investors pull out, player morale is affected etc etc.

Let's not forget about the money they make from the character transfers when people inevitably cough up $$ because their server is pretty much dead. Blizzard has their player-base by the balls.

[Vokal]

Yes, they should.. will they, no.. $$

What they should also do is offer for "one price of a transfer", the option of moving as many chars as you want from realm a to b.. its an automated process, why it costs per char and not per move of x number of chars, i have no idea... oh, yes i do.. $$.

As a money making machine, they want to make money.. obviously.. the happiness of the customer is purely secondary (same for other companies, not just bli$$ard), and until people stop paying for transfers or cancel altogether, you got no chance of FCM on low realms to mediums, or merges.. no chance at all.

^ This pretty much.

[Deleted]

Yeah, CRZ is realm merging lite and to the chagrin of many people it has worked and brilliantly so. I guess Blizzard wants to distance itself from the inevitable sensationalist headlines of "WoW is merging servers, is the end of the decade long fantasy franchise!?" And other such nonsense. It's a good idea but they made CRZ to stop server merges, it's just not quite the same thing though.

[TJ]

Yes, definitely. Or something to help low pop realms at least.

I didn't stop playing because of it but my guild moved servers because of how dead Haomarush is/was. The overall experience of a new, high populated realm is much better imo. It felt awesome to be on Silvermoon, always people on, groups going for loads of cool stuff (raids, old raids, and random achievements). The overall experience of being on a populated realm is much better than a low one for many reasons. It's not fair that some people should miss out because a lot of people have stopped playing or moved realm, leaving their realm essentially dead.

[Tziva]

I think probably the best compromise between a healthy population and the issues like name duplication is doing something like making server clusters for linking low population realms so they all share auction house/trade/major channels/etc, have CRZ between them in major cities and new zones, and permit cross realm raiding even in the current tier.

People could keep their server identity and character and guild names, but without all the downsides of their current low pop realm because in practice the world functions like they've all been merged together.

[Deleted]

It felt awesome to be on Silvermoon, always people on, groups going for loads of cool stuff (raids, old raids, and random achievements)

Once this is how my realm was too. Lots of LFM messages for all sorts of stuff, now it's only one WTS message every 10-15 mins, so sad. I wish to experience all that again without having to pay ridiculous amounts for realm transfer. Sadly i doubt it'll ever happen because this problem exists for years now and blizzard are well aware of it and are choosing not to do anything. Cash>>>customer satisfaction i guess. So i have cancelled my sub and will play out my remaining time and take a break till they decide to solve this problem or for good if they dont. I've invested too much time in my toons to start all over again on some other realm without guarantee this wont happen again, and dont want to waste year worth sub money for a transfer.

Loyal customer since 2007, now apparently discarded by blizzard.

I think probably the best compromise between a healthy population and the issues like name duplication is doing something like making server clusters for linking low population realms so they all share auction house/trade/major channels/etc, have CRZ between them in major cities and new zones, and permit cross realm raiding even in the current tier.

People could keep their server identity and character and guild names, but without all the downsides of their current low pop realm because in practice the world functions like they've all been merged together.

This is a great idea, the only thing it's missing is guild could be cross realm too, you could join any guild from your cluster even if isnt from you home realm. Maybe even better idea than a merger because it's as you say without downsides mergers would bring.

[Dezminion]

We, who think, that this ignorance has lasted too long should somehow get somekind of conversation with Blizzard, since atleast the huge thread at EU is totaly ignored by Blues.

[Deleted]

Polls and petitions won't do.
Not enough are affected by this problem by the nature of dead realms and will participate.

Instead
1. Use /who or the Census addon to count player at prime time
2. Go to recently active low population thread on the official forum
3. Post population, date, faction and server
4. Use a template text to explain your reasons why CRZ and FCM to your server is not a solution to the population problem, whenever you post your cencus

Why?
100 different player on 20 server complain about their dead server over 1 year. Blizzard can just continue to ignore it. Few can relate to the problem as a whole. The problem appears to affect at least 100 player on several server
100 different player on 20 server continue to post the population exposing hard facts over 1 year. Blizzard can not just push it off the table like a few gamers complaints. The problem will appear to affect at least 20 entire server factions.

[Deleted]

mine is just terrible, all the guilds left, down to one semi raiding guild (10man)basicly... can't even get 40 people if oondasta spawned... and with new oondasta change, it'll just be awesome...