Patch 5.4 Feature Preview: Connected Realms

[Aerisot]

Multiboxing hasn't stopped.

Ok you're right, but won't this allow a full team of multiboxing :P

[Killmaim Deathbringer]

Summed up into a nutshell: Holy shit guys, we're losing too many subscribers. We need to make it look like all the realms are still busy and bustling! QUICK. MERGE THEM!

[Shudder]

Did you bother to actually read ?
This avoids name clashes, and being non-permanant allows them to be shuffled around again should a faction representation or population go screwy.
A big assumption that the low population realms were THE primary reason people left.



As far as I can tell, connected realms should effectively function as one, allowing mail to be sent between those characters whichever traditional realm they came from.
Therefore if your characters on separate traditional realms form part of the same connected realm, then mailing items between them should be possible.
Given how interaction like auction houses, guilds etc are intended to be possible, it makes sense for mail to be included and I would say pretty essential that it is.



Blizzard hinted there were many big features in 5.4, and you could pick and choose your favourite.

I would say that Connected Realms, Flex Raiding, Proving Grounds and the Arena Team changes are the bigger changes coming with the patch.
Functionally it is Connected Realms and Flex Raiding that are the biggest imo.

It's hilarious that you scold someone for not reading and you didn't bother to read it yourself. It's permanent, there will be no shuffling, that would destroy all the guilds.

[mvaliz]

OK - so... if this happens, can they get rid of the friggin forced CRZ on PVE realms then?

[Verain]

They won't unmerge. The merging is permanent.

I want to know the timeline.

I NEED TIMELINE

I NEED TO KNOW REALMS SO I CAN RECRUIT

[Lefach]

I like the idea of this. HOWEVER, my one and only complaint with the game is that I wish they could implement something in the game to where you do NOT have to be in a group with people from spanish speaking servers (such as Ragnaros). Those are by far the worst people to play with, as they don't understand how to play. The worse LFR/LFD groups I have been in have been with these groups, and I'm not the only one who feels this way.

I played on a Spanish server (long story) but what I saw there was if I was with a Spanish speaking friend in a group and they spoke at all (in Spanish), they would be kicked immediately, but if I ended up in a group with only other Spanish speaking players and said I didn't speak Spanish, they would go out of their way to accommodate me....just saying...

[Deleted]

Providing they don't roll this out across all realms, this might have some merit.
However, it doesn't half piss me off to see (as a progression-oriented player) things like Challenge mode "Realm" best times are held by cross-realm realid groups consisting of one person from my realm and four from another.
This could completely destroy competitive progression on a realm-by-realm basis if you're competing with one or two other realms worth of players.
That being said, I'm happy to wait and see how this progresses.

[shadeth]

My realm has been somewhat dead this last year so I'm looking forward to this! It's almost impossible to sell anything except common trade goods on the AH because the pop is so low. I'm REALLY looking forward to a merge that will bring more buyers and sellers to the AH to make the economy more interesting. I'm sitting on a lot of crap that I can't sell because almost no one is playing or leveling.

About the only thing I'll miss from playing on a low pop realm is the amazingly easy access for hunting rare mobs, although even on my ghost town server there's always someone camping the Time Lost Proto Drake spawn point!

[Thornrayn]

22 characters per "realm" now.... I can dig it

[Redwyrm]

*sniff* so long chance of seeing Poseidus/Camel/TLPD

[Verain]

About the only thing I'll miss from playing on a low pop realm is the amazingly easy access for hunting rare mobs, although even on my ghost town server there's always someone camping the Time Lost Proto Drake spawn point!

Northrend is CRZ. So crossrealm folks will take that.

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*sniff* so long chance of seeing Poseidus/Camel/TLPD

These have ALL been CRZed since their inception. Even large servers get CRZed. When I run around I see Illidan (one of the biggest horde PvP servers), Sargeras (one of the biggest alliance PvP servers), and a number of medium and small servers. Obviously, they would not "server merge" all of these, but they are melded with CRZ.

But all cata zones, all northrend zones, have been CRZ. You lost your chance at these things when CRZ rolled out.

[Pacster]

They won't unmerge. The merging is permanent.

I want to know the timeline.

I NEED TIMELINE

I NEED TO KNOW REALMS SO I CAN RECRUIT

And that is exactly why I think this will be another failure like "crz" to help dead servers. They will use the fact that they can not unmerge again to do the merge reeeeeeally slowly. My server is DEAD...there are often not more than 10(!!!!) players online(funny fact is that the server shows as "middle" at the very same time. Yeah, whoever they want to fool.)...if they would merge my entire server pool it would likely not be a halfway full server. Now if you start merging with the idea in mind "let's not merge too many cause we can't go back again"...then you can imagine that we are likely at least a year away from having a halfway decent playing experience...and by that time the subscriptions on our server will likely decrease by another 50% due to frustration. I'm afraid the merged servers will die faster than they will be merged....

I mean, look at it....it was scheduled for 5.4. Now it's already somewhere after 5.4....next time we hear about it it's likely christmas.

[Azrile]

Isn't this just almost exactly the same as merging 2 realms? :s

Anyway, it's a good change. I just don't see the difference between 'connected' and 'merged', looking at the description.

they answered this directly. 1. they don´t want to force name changes and guild name changes and 2. They don´t want returning players to be confused if their realm is suddenly missing.

I know tin-foil hat people won´t buy it, but they are two very valid reasons. Also, Blizzard announces their subscription numbers every 3 months. They aren´t hiding anything just because they chose this technology rather than a straight merger. If they were being sneaky at all, then we wouldn´t get subscription numbers every 3 months from them. Server mergers in other games have been messy mainly because of guild names and stuff like that, there are always people who are angered.. this solves that.

[taylor20k]

If blizzard was smart they would merge some of the horde only servers with alliance populated servers so there is a similar populated on both sides. Makes more competition on the server for both factions for raiding and server firsts. Servers get boring when there is only 1 good guild that gets the servers first, make them work against other guilds as good.

They already said in the blue post that faction balance is one reason they're doing this...or did you not even read the post.

[Azrile]

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.

hey blizzard you fools should have done this YEARS AGO. except ACTUAILLY MERGE REALMS instead of waiting for "new technology" to do it you know... back when you started hemorraging subs because people diddnt want to pay to play on a server thats not stupid dead? yeah...

They announce their subscription numbers every 3 months. They haven´t avoided any ´bad PR´.. people know exactly what is going on. They also announce their revenues every 3 months, which are higher now than they were last year.... so good luck with trying to prove your ´hemorraging (sic) theory.

The new technology started with LFD, then went to LFR, then went to CRZ.. this is just a natural progression to that. If you don´t see this as new technology, great... show me another MMO that has any type of cross-server LFD system.

The problem with low-population servers started back right before BC was launched. About a month before BC, they added about 15% more server to NA and EU, and stupidly, they made many of them PVP. They overestimated the growth rate of the game based on what it had been doing in Vanilla, and I think they also overestimated the number of players who would start over on a new realm. In Vanilla, whenever a new server opened, a TON of people would start over on that server. Once we got into BC, there just were not as many people willing to completely start over because most of us had a ton of developed alts.

[GhostSkull]

Im looking forward to seeing which realms are merged with firetree!

It'll be the people in your LFR. If your realm is under-represented it'll be one of the ones that are overrepresented.

[Azrile]

I wonder if you can mail "account bound" items to characters on the "connected" realms. Or maybe we still have to pay for a transfer to send a toon as a mule to get the "account bound" items where we want.

There were some datamined strings about a month ago that indicated you would be able to mail stuff to connected realms.

Also, technologically it seems they almost have to do it because of the AH. If the AH is connected, then basically you are mailing a sold item to a person on a different server. On the string thing, I believe you will type in something like this Azrile#Shadowmourne which would send an email to Azrile on the Shadowmourne server.

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I know everyone wants everything sooner, rather than later, but the fact remains that it is coming. I'd rather them take their time and try to get it right. You'd be more pissed off if they pushed it out and messed up the one feature you're looking forward to.

Yeah, this is a bit like CRZ.. it is a huge tech change.. they probably don´t want any bugs to be muddled into the other bugs that come with 5.4 They probably want to have 5.4 content very stable and THEN be able to implement this slowly. One of the reasons CRZ wasn´t liked was because it came with MoP and the bugs weren´t fixed quickly enough ( chat bugs, mounts etc).

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With connected realms in play I really hope they'll get rid of CRZ.

They won´t. They fix two very different problems. CRZ was not implemented to fix server populations problems ( ie AH, Raiding, Guilds).. CRZ was implemented to fix the issue where almost all players are in Pandaria, not in the lower zones.

[Deleted]

*sniff* so long chance of seeing Poseidus/Camel/TLPD

Try RP-PvP realms. In EU they are all pretty much dead except for Defias Brotherhood and not CRZ'd with DB. Sporeggar is CRZ'd only with Ravenholdt, both are dead realms.

I don't think anything will happen to those realms after patch.

[unholyness]

Imagine this though, you merge with a horrible server of bad's and you are still screwed trying to build a bench for your raid team. Xsferring to a good server will still be preferred.

[Azrile]

"connected realms"? Blizzard, why dont you say it for what it is, you are merging serves.

And another person that fails 3rd grade reading. Go talk to the people from Warhammer and ask them how fun it was to have to change your name every 3 months because your server got merged. Or how guilds were totally angered because a server merge caused a smaller, newer guild to get your guilds name because your server merged onto their server.