Virtual realms? How exactly does this work for high unbalanced populations?

[Laeryn]

I understand that low pop realms will be strung together into one, sort of deal.

My question is, for example, I'm on Mal'ganis horde side, which is like 100,000 characters, and alliance has like .. 10 people, lol.

Will we be virtual realmed with say, Kelthuzads alliance? So we're basically all on the same server? or will servers with HUGE inbalances in population still be screwed? Or even more screwed in this case since crz is gone.

[ablib]

Official information hasn't been released yet to answer your question. So this thread from here on out will be full of speculation.

And CRZ isn't gone. I don't see it going away. Virtual realms will still be CRZ'd with other realms/virtual realms.

[Saffa]

Ask in Blizz forums where Blizz employees answer that than here which is a fan site

[Togarox]

Most likely they will try to combine high pop alliance realms with high pop horde realms but it is too early to tell.

[Gags]

Most likely they will try to combine high pop alliance realms with high pop horde realms but it is too early to tell.

This would be the logical way about it. Otherwise the faction playing on the lower side of the unbalanced server would still effectively be playing on a low pop server. There seems to be plenty of majorly unbalanced servers around so if they've got the tech to do these virtual merges then I can't see why they wouldn't do it this way.

[Valnoressa]

Ask in Blizz forums where Blizz employees answer that than here which is a fan site

You're aware that Blizzard frequents these forums, right? Not always to answer questions but... *Sci-Fi Music*...they are among us.

[lokithor]

As far as I understand it (which i could be wrong on), only low pop designated servers are getting merged. It's nothing to do with faction balancing.

[mistahwilshire]

One would logically assume that the system aims for a theoretically desired population threshold and does its best to even out the factions by matching the appropriate realms that would do so. It's all just math.

[Gethe88]

As far as I understand it (which i could be wrong on), only low pop designated servers are getting merged. It's nothing to do with faction balancing.

VRs is the perfect opportunity for Blizz to make an attempt at balancing factions. To say that they would not is very short sighted.

[Laeryn]

Ask in Blizz forums where Blizz employees answer that than here which is a fan site

because the main forums are absolutely awful. I see tons more intelligent posting here than on the wow forum.

anyway itd be nice if it took faction balance into account too... id love to have some city raiding going on a gain.. and some world pvp in the middle of orgrimmar.

[lokithor]

VRs is the perfect opportunity for Blizz to make an attempt at balancing factions. To say that they would not is very short sighted.

Well they also said it was for low pop servers

Patch 5.4 adds Virtual Realms, which will essentially merge lower population realms. This will allow you to keep playing on your current realm, but do arenas, raids, and dungeons with people in your realm group, as well as use a merged Auction House and trade with other players in your realm group.

Frtom the 5.4 notes here on MMO champ

[Gethe88]

Right, but that does not exclude faction as a factor when matching realms. But as mentioned earlier, this is all pure speculation at this point.

[Valnoressa]

I'd really like my realm to have a balance Horde to Alliance ratio because of this.

People will piss and moan about:
"Omg, I cant do this and that because Horde/Alliance keeps stealing this or farming that. Virtual realms r killin da wows blizz"

News Flash: You can't have a populated world with balanced factions and a functioning economy AND have the PvE/questing benefits of a dead realm. I fear too many people on dead realms have forgotten what it feels like to compete for quests/kills/pvp because they're so set in their ways.

Bring on the competition I say. This game needs a shot of adrenaline for the "out in the world" aspects. Please let this fix faction imbalances regardless of realm size.

/rant

[threads]

I highly doubt they will combine multiple high pop servers based on faction imbalance. Virtual realms are also merging AH, guilds, etc. Would cause chaos for already high pop realms.

[MoanaLisa]

There will be more known about it at some point soon. Whether or not they address faction balancing is a pretty good question. I'd say no at first but yes once they have it up and solid. I'd look for them to begin to do something about it and gradually move toward something more starting with the next expansion. Since there's really no practical way to beta test it, the first month or more of 5.4 will probably be the beta.

[mistahwilshire]

There will be more known about it at some point soon. Whether or not they address faction balancing is a pretty good question. I'd say no at first but yes once they have it up and solid. I'd look for them to begin to do something about it and gradually move toward something more starting with the next expansion. Since there's really no practical way to beta test it, the first month or more of 5.4 will probably be the beta.

It would seem logical to me that right from the get go they would do their best to create VRs with relatively decent faction balance since the math is so simple and right in front of them already. If you've got Low Pop Realm 1 with a 85:15 faction split and Low Pop Realm 2 with a 20:80 split, it would just make sense that those two realms should be grouped for VR (along with others but you get the basic premise).

It's not like there's that much more that really needs to be done other than just intelligent grouping of which realms get matched with who based on current population and faction representation data that they already have. Of course we're all just speculating here but it seems way too simple to not try and kill two birds with one stone here.

[Deleted]

Well they also said it was for low pop servers

Patch 5.4 adds Virtual Realms, which will essentially merge lower population realms. This will allow you to keep playing on your current realm, but do arenas, raids, and dungeons with people in your realm group, as well as use a merged Auction House and trade with other players in your realm group.

Frtom the 5.4 notes here on MMO champ

You can't base all the speculation on Read As Written interpretation of the patch notes. If you were to do that, you might as wells ay that "lower popultion realms" is not the same as "realms that are tagged as Low Population" because they use the word "lower" and not "low"...

[MoanaLisa]

It would seem logical to me that right from the get go they would do their best to create VRs with relatively decent faction balance since the math is so simple and right in front of them already. If you've got Low Pop Realm 1 with a 85:15 faction split and Low Pop Realm 2 with a 20:80 split, it would just make sense that those two realms should be grouped for VR (along with others but you get the basic premise).

It's not like there's that much more that really needs to be done other than just intelligent grouping of which realms get matched with who based on current population and faction representation data that they already have. Of course we're all just speculating here but it seems way too simple to not try and kill two birds with one stone here.

I think they will do that but there are some really large servers high population servers that are badly faction balanced too. Those were the ones I was thinking about. What it mainly depends on is how many people do they intend to have at first in a virtual realm. If they can stuff high-pop server A that's 90-10 favored Horde with another high-pop server that's 90-10 favored Alliance they may well do that right off the bat. I didn't mean to imply they would ignore it but there might be more complicated situations that wouldn't be simple to solve. I would guess those will wait until stability, peace and harmony---yeah, right---are achieved.

I'm guessing that to start with they have some target population in mind plus or minus 10%.

[loki504]

because the main forums are absolutely awful. I see tons more intelligent posting here than on the wow forum.

anyway itd be nice if it took faction balance into account too... id love to have some city raiding going on a gain.. and some world pvp in the middle of orgrimmar.

true. but they released verry little info about virtual realms so far. so its all speculation about what people hope to see.
but people hype to much about stuff so far. just look at the amount of people that are beating flex raiding to death. same will happen to virtual realms once blizzard releases the info.

[Normie]

I suspect it will eventually be applied to more or less balance all faction populations. The giant 90:10 and 10:90 (and 99:1 and 1:99) PvP realms are just begging to be mated to one another.

And because it will be possible to more or less balance factions no matter where anyone goes, that will pretty much end the problem of transfers to get away from or to exploit a faction imbalance.