If all similar realms merged do you think it would be healthy for social aspect, game

[Eleccybubb]

The number is irrelevant you think people would be just on 1 server but it would be as it is right now. Think of it as every thing is connected with a bunch of clusters hell i can stand next to a guildie and not see them tell we group

Actually it is relevant. All the games with severely less populations have implemented a Megaserver tech due to that rapidly declining population. WoW and FF14 are the two I know that haven't. All that WoW has is connected Realms and CRZ and FF14 will be adding a cross server party finder in the next patch in January.

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and they fixed it

Did I say they didn't? It still happened lol. And Dalaran is still a bit of a lagfest for a few people because of how sharding works. It's inevitable.

[ComputerNerd]

No.
The connected realms we have are not simply "improving" the communities simply because of bigger number
Being social is a choice.
Forced proximity alone never made it that.
The daily dalaran heroic used to involve the minimum amount of chat needed to form a group,and rarely any more beyond that unless someone put the effort in.
I can yell obscenities at my neighbours or smash their car to force interaction, but that is called anti-social for a reason.
People need to get over the silly argument that proximity or interaction are social inherently.
They are not.
It is the decision to do something without an agenda.
It is about something other than what someone can do for you, but what you can do for them.

Social is the choice to interact positively, not because of a need to.
But you want to.

[Eleccybubb]

And the long ass loading screens are part of that tech and is a form of lag.

They aren't. Why that isn't fixed yet I don't know. Pain in the fucking ass it was having nearly 1 minute load times.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Wouldn't really change much. Everything is already this way, effectively.

[Saeran]

Yes it does.

Actually, no it doesn't. CRZ is fine.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

Ok so there's a lot of things to consider here.

1 - Not everyone likes high population realms
2 - World of Warcraft was made with a range of active players in mind on a given server. Mega servers would simply blow that away, making the experience bad for everyone.
3 - Trade chat/General Chat would be too clustered to have active discussions and would most likely look like a twitch chat.
4 - Gathering professions would die out.
5 - PvP servers would be constant hell, with no way of leveling out in the world.

I don't think mega servers are something WoW would win with. Too many people would literally clog the social aspect of the game. You don't want that in a mmo. If you want something similar, head over the almost-permanent "full" servers on the game. It should give you an idea of what would happen if these mega realms were merged with all the other high/med and low servers.

[Eleccybubb]

Ok so there's a lot of things to consider here.

1 - Not everyone likes high population realms
2 - World of Warcraft was made with a range of active players in mind on a given server. Mega servers would simply blow that away, making the experience bad for everyone.
3 - Trade chat/General Chat would be too clustered to have active discussions and would most likely look like a twitch chat.
4 - Gathering professions would die out.
5 - PvP servers would be constant hell, with no way of leveling out in the world.

I don't think mega servers are something WoW would win with. Too many people would literally clog the social aspect of the game. You don't want that in a mmo. If you want something similar, head over the almost-permanent "full" servers on the game. It should give you an idea of what would happen if these mega realms were merged with all the other high/med and low servers.

Megaserver isn't a bad tech. Just WoW is a long way off from even considering using it. But yeah agree with you especially on point 2 and 3. I enjoy my low pop realms too. I play on Zodiark and Lich with alts on FF14 and for WoW I had alts on Saurfang and other low pop realms.

[Thereaperszone]

Actually, no it doesn't.

We can agree to disagree

[Rudkobing]

2 million players in Elwynn Forest/ Durator sounds like SO MUCH FUN.

The server crashes.
Trying to complete a quest.

/sarcasm off

[Thoughtful Trolli]

There is no social aspect, there never was.
When offered to chance to avoid contact people do so.

Forcing people to depend on others for shit as mundane as "Don't let this *one* boss mechanic kill you" was their solution and they fail to see how that just escalates it, lol

[Spiral Mage]

Yes it does.

No it doesn't as it wouldn't solve any problem.
Each server, especially RP ones, have their own cultures and knowledge.
And many communities would not mesh well with others.
Even if you perceived this to be helpful, you'd still be a "speck of sand in the desert", which lead to selfish and greedy behavior based on "I'll never see these people again".
Smaller communities are why people cared and didn't want to be singled out.
Mega Servers are what we have already, in a matter of speaking.
It'd also really F' over their hardware.

[Halicia]

imo, free server transfers with a weekly cooldown would accomplish everything a unified server would, with minimal impact on hardware or changes needed.

then again, maybe blizzard's trying to phase out guilds entirely. the emphasis on friendslist raiding and groupfinder tools while introducing pretty much nothing to make raiding with an actual guild easier to manage makes that seem likely.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

Megaserver isn't a bad tech. Just WoW is a long way off from even considering using it. But yeah agree with you especially on point 2 and 3. I enjoy my low pop realms too. I play on Zodiark and Lich with alts on FF14 and for WoW I had alts on Saurfang and other low pop realms.

There could probably be ways to make it work. Sharding/Channels could be possible, although that would require a complete revamp of their internal server system. But a simple merge would quite literally break the game. I definitely agree on the fact that megaservers aren't inherently bad. ESO did it and it works very well - same for BDO. It keeps the community healthy in a way.

Wow's just not there yet.

[Ghrog]

I think if they just merged more of the low population realms together, that would fix the problems that exist currently. Honestly, even now it's not all that bad, and any such thing I would put a decent way down the list of things I'd like to see them do. (but it IS still on the list)

[Zyky]

Megaservers are the norm now for other games, so I don't see it being much of an issue. Personally, i like smaller servers.

Meanwhile every game that does megaservers end up dying out or going ftp lol.

[Axaion]

What they need is to merge servers so faction balance is closer to 50/50, on my server its closer to 90/10 (im on the 10 side)

Of course, people will flock to whatever faction has the most players, which is what caused this in the start anyway..

[Kallisto]

Each server, especially RP ones, have their own cultures and knowledge.
And many communities would not mesh well with others.

This is a big one here. Especially in the RP community it's not going to end well if you merge the servers. While on a personal level MG/WRA and others are fine with each other. The server communities as a whole, forget it. They do not play well together.

Not just that but each realm has it's own "lore" for lack of better term which for multiple guilds. What might work for MG server lore might be opposite for WRA. While neither actively contradict established written lore in game, books, chronicles etc. Merging RP realms will likely end in disaster. Especially people who have a close tie to their character names and be forced to change.

[Crimewave]

Nah, we just need to force-merge a bunch of realms. There are just too many of them for current playerbase.
Many guilds are struggling to recruit at this point and cost of transfer is unbearable.

[Kelthos]

I dunno... I play on Wyrmrest Accord and we'd be merged with Moonguard and there is a lot of animosity between our servers. It would be interesting to see how that goes, I guess. XD

[Kallisto]

I dunno... I play on Wyrmrest Accord and we'd be merged with Moonguard and there is a lot of animosity between our servers. It would be interesting to see how that goes, I guess. XD

Well one bright side would likely be that Horde and Alliance will have a bigger balance if there was a merge. Since it seems WRA is 70/30 for horde and for us on MG is same but for alliance.

While interesting I don't think it could work. Or if it did there'd be a hell of a lot of growing pains to get through.