Dead Servers and Raiding

[Kaver]

Dead servers are a problem in general. Nobody likes to walk around in a ghost town. However, my biggest issue with Dead servers is the lack of raiding guilds.

Personally I would not pay 200+ dollars to move my characters from one server to another. Therefore, I would quit the game if there were no more raiding guilds on my server. I think it's a sad way to quit the game, but it is either pay a lot of money or quit.

I'm interested in hearing from you either:

1) Have you already moved multiple characters from a dead servers in order to join a raiding guild?

or

2) Would you be willing to pay a lot of money to move your characters from a dead server to join a raiding guild?


Of course I think Blizzard should find a solution to "fix" dead servers.

[Tech614]

Blizzard can fix dead servers by dropping the last charades pretending they're separate at this point. Which is just guilds and mythic raiding. Allow people to join any guild in their region and do all raids with them. We already know they have the infrastructure for this and the servers already behave like this in every other way. They even got rid of the wall between pvp and pve servers with war mode toggle.

[Relapses]

Sadly, there aren't many elegant "fixes" to the problem you present. Connected realms were collectively rejected by the community and failed to revitalize servers in a meaningful way. (In fact, one could argue it was detrimental to community building more than anything else.) Merging realms would be even more polarizing. Shutting down servers would be yet even more telling. (This solution would require Blizzard to acknowledge "dead realms" are even an issue to begin with.) Transferring is an option, albeit pricey... especially for those with multiple toons (though this can be offset by converting gold into a B.Net balance).

The idea I've floated is to allow players one free server transfer for every 12 months of recurring subscription. Not a perfect solution but at least gives players an "out" that doesn't require them to spend their own money to fix a problem that Blizzard can't easily fix themselves.

- - - Updated - - -

Blizzard can fix dead servers by dropping the last charades pretending they're separate at this point. Which is just guilds and mythic raiding. Allow people to join any guild in their region and do all raids with them. We already know they have the infrastructure for this and the servers already behave like this in every other way. They even got rid of the wall between pvp and pve servers with war mode toggle.

Cross-realm guilds would defeat the purpose of realms. This isn't likely to happen any time soon.

[Tyrilion]

They used to have free transfers from dead servers but i think that went with cross realm raiding which i assume was their fix.

Sometimes its not the sever thats dead though could be the faction ... if your horde playing on an alliance populated server then you will have a rough time..

For me ive never experienced an issued with dead servers. I was careful with where i played server wise

[Tech614]

Cross-realm guilds would defeat the purpose of realms. This isn't likely to happen any time soon.

The purpose of realms is already gone in an era of sharding, war mode toggles, cross realm everything else.

Nice try though. Guilds and Mythic raiding are literally the only things pretending your realm now matters, the rest of the game ignores it entirely. Like I said, it's time to drop the charade.

[Tyrilion]

The purpose of realms is already gone in an era of sharding, war mode toggles, cross realm everything else.

Nice try though. Guilds and Mythic raiding are literally the only things pretending your realm now matters, the rest of the game ignores it entirely. Like I said, it's time to drop the charade.

This is true but it would definitely affect the economy which i feel is the last reason for realms. They dont want you to be able to trade items between realms ect.

[Tech614]

if your horde playing on an alliance populated server then you will have a rough time..

Why are we still pretending like it's 2012 or something? This isn't true at all and your realm literally has nothing to do with the amount of players you will see in the world.

[Relapses]

The purpose of realms is already gone in an era of sharding, war mode toggles, cross realm everything else.

Nice try though. Guilds and Mythic raiding are literally the only things pretending your realm now matters, the rest of the game ignores it entirely. Like I said, it's time to drop the charade.

>the only thing that makes WoW different from other MMO's doesn't matter

Nice controversial opinion, dude.

[Tech614]

>the only thing that makes WoW different from other MMO's

Uhh you mean the thing they literally copied from every other MMO?

And the thing they have drifted further and further away from as time go's by?

Yea, this gets 11 LULs out of 10 from me dawg.

[Knaar]

First they need to offer free transfer from the lowest servers (liek the 25% lowest pop server) so people (or entire guild) can move to a bigger server.
Second they should just merge all these dead server into one for the people that likes to play on dead server... If you merge 50 server with only a handfull of people playing on them, that will still make a small server after all the merge.

There is what, 200 something servers in the game right now? They need to cut that number down by alot.

[Wilfire]

Blizzard's marketing strategy is squeezing cash out of the few remaining raiders by forcing them to transfer to non-dead servers. No surprise people are quitting in droves when Blizzard is milking the shit out of loyal fans instead of making the game actually fun so that more people come back.

[Tyrilion]

Why are we still pretending like it's 2012 or something? This isn't true at all and your realm literally has nothing to do with the amount of players you will see in the world.

I was more i inferring he'd have a rough time with raiding guilds although reading back that wasn't clear

[Relapses]

Uhh you mean the thing they literally copied from every other MMO?

And the thing they have drifted further and further away from as time go's by?

Yea, this gets 11 LULs out of 10 from me dawg.

Mythic raiding is the single thing which WoW does that no other game can even hold a candle towards. If you think dismantling the single feature which sets the game apart is a good idea there isn't much of a point in having a discussion with you. You're delusional.

[Marrilaife]

Blizzard can fix dead servers by dropping the last charades pretending they're separate at this point. Which is just guilds and mythic raiding. Allow people to join any guild in their region and do all raids with them. We already know they have the infrastructure for this and the servers already behave like this in every other way.

Another problem is economy / auction house. Selling / buying anything on low pop is a torture, stuff doesn't sell due to lack of potential buyers, but if you actually want to buy anything, there's always that one monopolizer that buys out everything and relists at stupid prices. On high pops "market resetters" are quickly drowned in undercuts because the volume of items posted is high. On low pop they can continue their antics and hold the whole server hostage.

I remember when class mounts came out in Legion and some of them required 2 of specific potion or gems, and whole small servers were held hostage by packrat-relisters that would just deny people access to the items (and not everyone is alchemist, and procuring specific gem from prospecting is subject to rng). And people usually shrugged and said "well just ask a friend who is alchemist / jc", but the issue is on small servers often guilds are dead and things like community / friendship network are completely derelict.

P.S. And basically CRZ killed the biggest appeal low pop servers had which was easy rare camping (like Zandalari Warbringers for mounts). The only people who still support dead servers are AH / BMAH exploiters.

[KaPe]

I'm still not sure why blizzard stopped connecting the "dead" realms. It's not like their situation has magically fixed itself and everything is fine now. I remember back in WoD, where our backwater server finally got connected to something... it didn't help at all, since combining two dead servers doesn't create a healthy one. Sure, one might argue that it gives them extra money due to server transfer... but for other people, it might be the last straw that makes them quit WoW altogether. In my cases, the whole guild changed servers - but I can only imagine what my old realm looks like nowadays. Plus losing a full roster of leveled alts was quite a nuisance and seriously hurt my enjoyment of the game.

"Economy" isn't an argument either - servers without healthy raiding population lose one of their main AH customers, so that part of game is pretty much dead as well. I'm honestly baffled that they completely ignored this issue for years. Worse, there's zero indication that things are going to improve.

[quite an expert in wow]

I have invested around 3 transfers in the past to find a more alive realm. WoW is one of my hobbies and I don't think it's a problem to spend some money on it. If my server would suddenly die I would however not pay to transfer all of my characters. Maybe one or two.

[Turboblaat]

Cross-realm guilds would defeat the purpose of realms. This isn't likely to happen any time soon.

If you don't raid Mythic top250, you can make or join a community?

[Temp name]

Mythic raiding is the single thing which WoW does that no other game can even hold a candle towards. If you think dismantling the single feature which sets the game apart is a good idea there isn't much of a point in having a discussion with you. You're delusional.

How would opening it up so you can do it with other realms sooner dismantle it..?

They let you do mythics cross-realm anyway, opening it up from the start would just make it easier

[Mamercus]

This is true but it would definitely affect the economy which i feel is the last reason for realms. They dont want you to be able to trade items between realms ect.

Not having a good notion of how to do this without wrecking realm economies is what devs have said is the main block to making 'mega servers.' IMO they should just allow xrealm guilds and xrealm mythic from day 1 and leave the realm barriers for economy but maybe that would also have unintended effects. If WoW2 were remade now it'd probably just have a single big server like EVE or ESO.

[shyguybman]

Illidan has more guilds 8/9 or higher than my entire server does raiding period. We literally have 51 guilds TOTAL with any progress in BoD, and only 3 of them have killed more than the 1st boss on mythic. My guild is the highest at 8/9M and we've been on this server since Day 1 Vanilla so I don't think there's a chance of us ever transferring.

My realm used to show Medium in MoP after they connected 4 realms together and now it says "New Players" in the server list. I have no clue why they don't just cluster more realms together, there is basically 0 downside.