WoW Retail - New Realm Connections for Low-Population Servers
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker)
World of Warcraft is best when you have a community of other players around you, and while numerous ways to participate in cross-realm play have been added to the game over the years, there are still many aspects of the experience that are realm-based. From your history with your guild to your interactions with the economy around you, a realm with a healthy population provides more opportunities, and it’s been several years since we last connected some realms.

We’ve now completed a comprehensive study of realm populations for every realm in the world. Over the next 2-3 months, we’re going to connect the low-population realms to other existing realms. This process will take place during scheduled maintenance, connecting a few realms each week, until we’ve connected every low-population realm in every region to a substantially larger population of players.

As this project unfolds, we will post notices in advance of each week’s connections in the appropriate regions and languages. During each maintenance period, everything will be automatically combined for the affected realms. When maintenance is complete, players on affected realms will log into Battle for Azeroth and find that they’re now part of a larger connected-realm community. At the same time, we’ll merge the appropriate realm discussion forums.

Please keep an eye out for notifications here as we proceed through this project. Again, we’ll let you know here in advance when realms in this region are about to be connected.

Thank you very much!
This article was originally published in forum thread: WoW Retail - New Realm Connections for Low-Population Servers started by Lumy View original post
Comments 134 Comments
  1. Dopplegager's Avatar
    I asked them for realm mergers during the wow Q and A last year. Bout time. Took them long enough.
  1. ClassicPeon's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Onikaroshi View Post
    And that's how you get people to quit.

    I know many people that if they were forced to rename their character they've had for 10-16 years they'd just flat out quit and never come back.
    If thats the case they wherent playing much if any already.

    You dont quit a game you play a lot because you have to switch your virtual characters name.

    And before you try to convince me some people do. No. They dont.
  1. Feigr's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ClassicPeon View Post
    If thats the case they wherent playing much if any already.

    You dont quit a game you play a lot because you have to switch your virtual characters name.

    And before you try to convince me some people do. No. They dont.
    When I create an alt it can take months for me to craft a suitable name. The characters I play, including my main, have had the same name since day 1 of WoW release. If I were forced to change any of those names I would seriously consider not playing any more. Names are enormously important to the connection you have with your character.
  1. Onikaroshi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ClassicPeon View Post
    If thats the case they wherent playing much if any already.

    You dont quit a game you play a lot because you have to switch your virtual characters name.

    And before you try to convince me some people do. No. They dont.
    Guess you forgot about the RP players.
  1. TheRevenantHero's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Solero View Post
    You dont understand the concept of speed runs. I dont care if its hard or not hard. I only care to compete for the fastest kill times. Every single thing in classic is harder than retail except for raiding. Retail wow is at his worst state since ever and I hope shadowlands is going to change that.
    You are 100% wrong. Nothing in Classic is harder than retail. Literally nothing. Classic is just more time consuming, not more difficult.
  1. delus's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Cavox View Post
    I wonder how many people stopped playing the game and how many guilds disbanded after a migration from low to a higher population server. Most of the time some people refuse to pay such an absurd price (for a fully automated feature that costs Acti-Blizz $0 and takes few minutes) and it ends up with some people migrating and some people staying. You're losing a customer who pays a sub and quits the game, because he lost his main reason to continue playing (people he likes to play with), but hey - you get a quick buck from suckers who migrate just for the opportunity to escape a dead server. What a great deal.

    Migration should be free (on a cooldown if you must protect the server's economy) to whatever server you want, not chosen by Activision-Blizzard "free migration" to low pops nobody wants to play on.
    Should we really be concerned about protecting economies when loopholes exist such as battle pets and character migration?
  1. ClassicPeon's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Onikaroshi View Post
    Guess you forgot about the RP players.
    Who doesnt? Such a small % of people shouldnt be catered to.
  1. Onikaroshi's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ClassicPeon View Post
    Who doesnt? Such a small % of people shouldnt be catered to.
    It's enough that blizzard cares, they can't be ostracizing a whole subset of players. Every time something affects the RP community they work to fix it.

    Why do you think RP servers are only CRZ'd with RP servers?
  1. delus's Avatar
    What does it even matter if more than one person has the same name? Let the players work it out for themselves.
  1. Daevied's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Solero View Post
    You dont understand the concept of speed runs. I dont care if its hard or not hard. I only care to compete for the fastest kill times. Every single thing in classic is harder than retail except for raiding. Retail wow is at his worst state since ever and I hope shadowlands is going to change that.
    I leveled a mage, rogue, priest and warrior to lvl 60, fully completed tier 1 and 2, leveled 4 professions and still am yet to find anything that is "harder" than retail, it is just something with lower UI quality and that needs more grind/ time to get your stuff done, what i did like is that there is a point that you can call it quits since you get the feel that you already beated the game at some point when you get a decent bis set, beat the last boss, epic mount and have all the professions recipes you want.
  1. Enter Name Here's Avatar
    seems like they tried to merge EU-Aman'Thul and EU-Nazjatar resulting in missing guilds and duplicated auctions (=dupes)

    let's heat up the popcorn
  1. Esploratore's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Enter Name Here View Post
    seems like they tried to merge EU-Aman'Thul and EU-Nazjatar resulting in missing guilds and duplicated auctions (=dupes)

    let's heat up the popcorn
    Yes, they completed that connection, still some guild issues around atm, they failed the todeswache and natchwache connection, in fact they managed to merge only bmah, so you got more competition there without being able to send mail, join guilds etc., and they failed the russian one + no communication about the problem anywhere but a single apology in russia, so still no info about new connection, that's great for planning!
  1. RobertMugabe's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Azerate View Post
    I imagine there's plenty of technical limitations. The easiest one being...people having the same names on 2 servers. What happens then? Just force name change them? Many might not like it very much.
    They could extend the name lenghts and give you the ability to have last names and what not. GW2 for example has that.
  1. tmamass's Avatar
    Until I see a post with an exact date and which realms are gonna be connected I wouldnt care about that announcement at all.
    they announce something like this now and do it in ~3 years probably when no one is left in wow anyway

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