Patch 5.4 Feature Preview: Connected Realms

[Alexor]

nice job with the name change bliz,.. virtual realms was a poor choice for the name,.. you couldn't tell what it was from the name as all realms seem to be virual.'
but connected realms is good,.. better still would've been realm groups like battle groups

[Necrotica]

I'd like to see them allow ingame mailing for account characters... Why can't I send something to a toon on another server and just mail to Necrotica-ServerNameHere

Wham bam! Check please!

[Deleted]

They don't have to say it's server merging because just reading the method they are using is saying the game is losing population slowly. Also I'm never for these Cross Realm things because some people want to be on a low/med pop server away from others. Rares become more annoying and for someone like me who would spend some hours hunting rares I just couldn't deal with everyone so I simply quit.

You know something's wrong when the best way to do an achievement is to start a DK on another server...

[Sughs]

I wonder what they will make with my server, Aggra EU. It's the only Portuguese server and it definitely needs more activity.

[Time Sage]

You know something's wrong when the best way to do an achievement is to start a DK on another server...

They've explained this. The mail system is so heavly encoded into the core of the games systems, that when they start makeing changes other things just start falling apart. I assume work on such a system is thus very slow going

[Revak]

The only negative thing I see with this is that it's being touted as a 5.4 feature but it's not being added on the release of 5.4.

Questions:

1. If you have 2 or more realms connected that means you are getting another 11 character slots per those realms, right? So you could have 22, 33, etc. to work with on the realm you play.
2. BoA items should be mailable if you created toons on each of the connected realms since the economy, ah, etc. are all linked. Or am I missing something?
3. Are they only merging low-pop realms. Mine is considered medium population but the activity is more on par with low pop realms. It is dead. Hopefully we get at least one other realm merged with ours.
4. Is this in essence a "forever" merger? If you can have guildies and things like that b/c they are merged but on different servers then "un-merging" would remove those members of your guild. Seems like it would have to be a permanent link b/t the servers they choose to merge with each other.

Exciting though. I hope this works like they say it will.

[Rennadrel]

You know, WoW used to have a good community back in Wrath, before Blizzard started all this cross realm nonsense, back then the realm forums were worth using. The more Blizzard tries to merge servers and player communication, the further they sink the nail into the already sealed coffin that is the game's community. For low population servers, this might be a good idea, for everyone else it's just further destroying the community.

[Marema]

Glad to see this finally happening. I'd be curious though if they'd contemplate combining 2 high pop servers with major faction imbalances to even things out a bit. Of course that would be done well after the low pop realms were combined but it's just some food for thought!

[Nivena]

Q. When will Connected Realms be available?
A. We haven’t yet determined when we’ll be creating the first Connected Realms, but we expect it will be some time after the launch of Patch 5.4.tb

No reason for me to resub untill that feature is on live servers. My realm is dead, all guilds which raided left during the 50% promotion. Frostmourne-EU was one of the first german realms to go live and we were a full server up to Wrath; now there are around 10 people online in Orgrimmar at Saturday evening.

[Skronk]

So they get to merge realms.... without having to say they are shutting down any realms,... meaning they dodge the bad PR from that. lol.

or maybe they are doing it this way to avoid thousands of people being forced to change character names and the drama that would unfold surrounding who gets what name? As well as what to do with the multitude of inactive characters associated with each realm, allowing them to avoid a Age of conan style deletion of characters that are innactive.

personally, i'm glad they are doing it this way, i have a hard enough time as it is coming up with names for new alts nvm potentially losing names i've been known as for years and having to come up with new ones

[Nivena]

It makes perfect sense. The tech will go out with the 5.4 release, but the realms themselves won't be connected until a bit later into 5.4. I don't see a problem with the wording at all.

Let's hope that is the case.

[Spl4sh3r]

They forgot the biggest question...what about names? Can you use same name as another player in the Connected Realms but is from a different home realm?

[hiragana]

good news but too late for millions of players, if theyd done this a couple of years ago im sure i would still be playing but its taken a staggering subloss for them to finally get of their asses, shame.

[Deleted]

My characters are all on completely dead servers. This and flexible raids would really push me towards resubscribing. As much as I dislike some things which Blizzard are doing, I really like the look of these features.

[Matty710]

So basically it's server merging without using the phrase "server merges", which allows the fanboys to completely ignore the fact that this is just another form of server merges.

Well Blizzard, at least your marketing/PR people deserve a raise.

[Miakisaki]

How they could have simply merged the servers in a few easy steps.

1. Implement a surname system like many other games have. This would allow you to keep your current name, and even spice it up a bit more. Give people a week to choose new names.
2. Begin server merging process. Select one medium population realm and several low ones.
3. Disallow new AH posts and new mail on the low population realms for a period of 3-7 days, letting people on that realm know they must empty the AH and mailbox before merges
4. At the end of that period, merge the low population realms into the medium one. Doing it this way will allow for less guild name clashes.
5. In the event of a duplicate guild name, the guild with more members will win the rights to the name. The other will receive a free guild name change.

So there's no real point in using fancy terms like "connected" realms. Just merge the damn things.

[Necrotica]

The only negative thing I see with this is that it's being touted as a 5.4 feature but it's not being added on the release of 5.4.

Questions:

1. If you have 2 or more realms connected that means you are getting another 11 character slots per those realms, right? So you could have 22, 33, etc. to work with on the realm you play.

That'd be cool, allow me to start doing alliance toons on the same "server" too...

2. BoA items should be mailable if you created toons on each of the connected realms since the economy, ah, etc. are all linked. Or am I missing something?
3. Are they only merging low-pop realms. Mine is considered medium population but the activity is more on par with low pop realms. It is dead. Hopefully we get at least one other realm merged with ours.

On mine, the Alliance side is very healthy, the Horde side is very dead... Our server is considered "medium" but... Horde is Low Pop easily.

4. Is this in essence a "forever" merger? If you can have guildies and things like that b/c they are merged but on different servers then "un-merging" would remove those members of your guild. Seems like it would have to be a permanent link b/t the servers they choose to merge with each other.

Exciting though. I hope this works like they say it will.

Prob have to be a perm thing.

[Razamith]

The only negative thing I see with this is that it's being touted as a 5.4 feature but it's not being added on the release of 5.4.

Questions:

1. If you have 2 or more realms connected that means you are getting another 11 character slots per those realms, right? So you could have 22, 33, etc. to work with on the realm you play.
2. BoA items should be mailable if you created toons on each of the connected realms since the economy, ah, etc. are all linked. Or am I missing something?
3. Are they only merging low-pop realms. Mine is considered medium population but the activity is more on par with low pop realms. It is dead. Hopefully we get at least one other realm merged with ours.
4. Is this in essence a "forever" merger? If you can have guildies and things like that b/c they are merged but on different servers then "un-merging" would remove those members of your guild. Seems like it would have to be a permanent link b/t the servers they choose to merge with each other.

Exciting though. I hope this works like they say it will.

1. The names aren't merging. You can still have 11 slots on Windrunner and 11 slots on Wyrmrest if they merge those two (or more) together; you just get lucky with having 22 that can mail each other items. Still limited to 50 total chars or however many it is.
2. You can mail BOA to same linked server. If you couldn't then you couldn't mail items to guildies on same linked server either -- wouldn't make sense. You likely still cant mail them cross server until they figure out something else with that.
3. Probably merging anything medium or lower with others to create high-pops. Seems like the purpose is to get pools of people together, with a side benefit of server balancing if possible. High-pop one-sided servers may still be in trouble. Your guess as good as mine though.
4. Besides the word "permanently" in the description yes it will be a forever merger unless new tech/paradigm came out. You cant expect to join a guild and then unmerge and not have access to guildies or guild bank, amongst other logistic issues.

[Sughs]

How they could have simply merged the servers in a few easy steps.

1. Implement a surname system like many other games have. This would allow you to keep your current name, and even spice it up a bit more. Give people a week to choose new names.
2. Begin server merging process. Select one medium population realm and several low ones.
3. Disallow new AH posts and new mail on the low population realms for a period of 3-7 days, letting people on that realm know they must empty the AH and mailbox before merges
4. At the end of that period, merge the low population realms into the medium one. Doing it this way will allow for less guild name clashes.
5. In the event of a duplicate guild name, the guild with more members will win the rights to the name. The other will receive a free guild name change.

So there's no real point in using fancy terms like "connected" realms. Just merge the damn things.

I agree with this.

[usiris]

subtle way of saying "were merging realms"