Connected realms - will people come back?

[Ethes]

As always, there is not a single 'fix' that can be done to 'save' world of warcraft. I expect some will return to see how it changed wow and some will hate it and quit.

[dokilar]

realm population isnt/wasnt a factor for me leaving the game in the first place so its not a feature that appeals to me, to each their own though!

[championknight]

Depends on how they will connect the low pop realms

The undesirable one is of course to connect a low pop Ally and Horde server to another server that is low pop ally but high pop Horde, people simply do not like Cho'Gall alliance style server factions

CRZ was a bandaid fix that didn't really do anything for low pop servers

[yeryerdude]

I don't think it will bring many people back, it should certainly improve the playing experience of a lot of players on dead realms though. Well unless you like to play solo and see everyone else as your enemy and competition rather then someone to play with.

[lawow74]

It might get a few people to pop back in on a free promo and see what their old stomping grounds are like now, but I doubt it. Like others have said, it's just shoring up the leaky dam at this point.

[MoanaLisa]

CRZ was a bandaid fix that didn't really do anything for low pop servers

Read through this and you'll see it was not meant to really do much for low pop servers except to get some additional people into leveling zones:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6679517893#1

Probably not fair to criticize it for not doing something it wasn't intended to do.

Two relevant sentences from the link:

Cross-realm zones are the first step toward improving the play experience when leveling on a low-population server.

Cross-realm zones won't fix economy-related issues for lower populated realms and it wasn't intended to.

Connected realms are clearly the next step.

[Deleted]

Connected realms are clearly the next step.

Yep, CRZ (although it had goals) was just a way to test the tech on a smaller scale before they ramped up zones to servers.

As to the OP's question "will people come back?"

Depends, from personal experience moving from a pretty much dead server to a full one was amazing, it changed the game for me.

If they can give people that kind of experience without it costing them any money it can only be a good thing and the closer to patch day (when people jump back on to see what's new) this happens the more likely it is that they can re-hook people back into the game.

[Darkstrike]

Im really interested if people will start to come back when connected realms go live.
There must be a LOT of dead servers and players with characters there might wanna come back if there actually will be people in the world.

Would do you think, will they come back or is it too late? Some realms are dead for years....

yes people will come back, i quited back in Cata because my home realm (Xavius EU ) died , then came back when blizzard gave free transfer with scroll of ress (atleast i got my main character to a better realm Ravencrest EU ) .

People will return for new expansion anyway , if they keep their sub thats another story.

[Fatherfork]

Im really interested if people will start to come back when connected realms go live.
There must be a LOT of dead servers and players with characters there might wanna come back if there actually will be people in the world.

Would do you think, will they come back or is it too late? Some realms are dead for years....

Dear god I hope so. My realm is so dead. If it weren't for lfg/lfr, i'd never be able to do any content. At any given time, even peak times, there are maybe 10-20 players max in org/shrine, and most are low level alts. I can who 1-90 and often come up with less than 50 people...

Nazjatar-US

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My guess is that it will make the people on less populated realms less likely to quit due to the fact of population problems

I can say from experience on a low pop realm (which I've been on since Classic). There is only 1 ONE heroic raiding guild, and THREE normal raiding guilds. They have their core team, do not accept any other players, and run only one group each. So that is 40 people on my entire realm that raid. There are zero pugs (as evidenced by a silent, literally silent trade chat).

9/10 times I check who, there are less than 50 people online. Were it not for cross realms, I would never encounter a single person in the world outside org/shrine.

During wrath, my guild had over 400 active players daily. Now, I'm lucky if I see 3 or 4 people on when I'm on. Guild is now down to under 50 players who log on once a week.

I go into high pop realms, and there are people all over hte place, so many that I lag a bit in org when I log in. This feature I do beleive will at least stop all sub loss bleed, if not bring people back, and will help retain new players (surprisingly there are quite a bit of people who are still joining up for the first time).

[Anjerith]

The irony here is that resubscribing is more or less the cost of transferring.

[Fatherfork]

as far as economy on low pop. Let's just say it is a seller's market. I can easily get 100g for a stack of linen, but if I need anything, it's up to me to farm it. There is very little to mats on the AH at any given point, and if someone sells something cheap, it is instantly bought and resold at 100x it's price. Average greens from 10-80lvl go for a few hundred.

So this is great if you want to make money, but if you are trying to level any profession, you might as well go spend the hours and farm yourself. It also makes it a pain in the ass if you want or need an extra gear item for an alt to raise your ilvl to get into, per se, heroic mop dungeons. Last toon that I didn't feel like questing on to get items to get into regulars, I spent nearly 8k on chest, legs, hands, and feet. For freaking greens.

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The irony here is that resubscribing is more or less the cost of transferring.

Well not true. If you were to resub now and transfer, you'd be paying $30.

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So what happens if subs come back and realms are now too populated? Would blizz split up guilds?

[Deleted]

Connected realms = Realms Merge

[Fatherfork]

Connected realms = Realms Merge

In theory but not in practice. A true realm merge would mean any two characters with the same name, one would have to change their name. Connected (or virtual) will simply connect realms. you will still be sirbootyasspirate from Warsong, and your friend will be fillmacrackin from Area 52.

[Iseeyou]

Yes connected realm is a huge improvement for me.

More world pvp and more friends/players to meet.

Really hope they dont ruin this feature.

I would resub and tell my old mates to do so if it rocks.

[Alexor]

People are constantly returning,.. especially with changes and new content.., waves of them returning,.. but they will be significantly outnumbered by the mass exodus of people leaving,.. this will continue till the population stabilizes,.. spoiler alert,. we are far from that,. I know its hard but try not to be surprised too much if you see wows numbers continue to drop .,. when it gets under 1.5 mill then start to discuss,

[Fatherfork]

People are constantly returning,.. especially with changes and new content.., waves of them returning,.. but they will be significantly outnumbered by the mass exodus of people leaving,.. this will continue till the population stabilizes,.. spoiler alert,. we are far from that,. I know its hard but try not to be surprised too much if you see wows numbers continue to drop .,. when it gets under 1.5 mill then start to discuss,

I don't see it dropping that low. currently at 7.7M. Most of that from asian realms that never technically "subbed" but instead pay per play time, etc. We were at roughly 6M at the end of vanilla, I see that as the stabalizing point.

[Revak]

Doubtful it will bring many back. The dead-server issue has been going on a long time. Seems like a lot of people have quit the game based upon the lack of activity on their specific realms. For these people I think it's too-little-too-late of an effort from Blizz. They did not seem to take it seriously for a long time and just wanted the $$$ for transfers and the people who did transfer went to the large realms.

I do think it will help keep some players though. I know that if my medium size (labeled by blizz though very few people are on at the same time) realm gets merged and has more activity it will help out a lot. There are people there waiting for this and excited about it b/c of all the increased activity it will bring.

[drasconis]

They need to get this rolled out to as many realms as possible quickly after the patch. There is always a bump in activity following the patch by people who come back to see if it interests them. If you are going to retain those people their realms need to be alive and active. If they take to long then they may actually lose people from realms that thought they would be "saved" by this when 5.4 hit. (Yes they have made it clear that it is not coming out the day of - but many people got their hopes up with the initial announcement)

[Darkstrike]

The irony here is that resubscribing is more or less the cost of transferring.

transfers should be FREE (with some limitations ) , most of us have many alts and for sure we wont pay 100 + euros for transfers ... i never payed for a transfer in my life and i will never pay ... after i transfered my main char (with scroll of ress ) i made a referall account and lvled new alts with it (for a total cost of 5 euros )