So why isn't mythic raiding cross realm yet?

[Kralljin]

I am saying the feature would of died in its crib if wrath heroics resembled tbc heroic. The difficulty was lowered... cata showed how easy it is to break such a system. Players making their own groups is fine but automated groups are always trash.

Your argument again misses the point.
Ion said in the recent interview that the friction of the "pre LFD" days were actually good for the game, not how it necessarily interacted with a given content.

That's just the thing, it made people around you disposable because you could just hit a button to remove them and replace them with new ones if their attitude or playstyle didn't suit you.
Similiarly, people can just leave a group if it doesn't suit them.

And i predict a similiar situation here:
It makes the community easily disposeable, people think they're being held down by other people in their raid, hop to another one, the previous raid now needs to recruit new people, re learn the fight with those people, progress becomes ever slower, more people start to ditch the raid and so forth.
This can easily turn into a vicious cycle.

That's the one touching point of your argument: It only works in very easy content where basically anyone is able to participate, not a difficulty where Bosses requires up to 300 attempts with 4/5 being there since Pull 1.

Here's the unpopular opinion of me: Requiring a modicum of commitment is better for the longterm health of a game mode and its respective community.

Yeah, I saw this happen first-hand when they made arena rating personal instead of team-based. People actually tried to work through issues and get better together when rating was stuck to a team. Immediately after that change, people had absolutely no reason to get better together. People now just leave and find other people at the slightest sign of losing.

Yeah, altough having a single person holding the crown in an Arena team is also shit.

Friend of mine lost like 3 Rank one titles because leader kicked him out of the team shortly before Season end.
To be fair, said friend has a bit of an attitude, altough that's not exactly rare among highend PvP'ers.

[goldlock]

Your argument again misses the point.
Ion said in the recent interview that the friction of the "pre LFD" days were actually good for the game, not how it necessarily interacted with a given content.

That's just the thing, it made people around you disposable because you could just hit a button to remove them and replace them with new ones if their attitude or playstyle didn't suit you.
Similiarly, people can just leave a group if it doesn't suit them.

And i predict a similiar situation here:
It makes the community easily disposeable, people think they're being held down by other people in their raid, hop to another one, the previous raid now needs to recruit new people, re learn the fight with those people, progress becomes ever slower, more people start to ditch the raid and so forth.
This can easily turn into a vicious cycle.

That's the one touching point of your argument: It only works in very easy content where basically anyone is able to participate, not a difficulty where Bosses requires up to 300 attempts with 4/5 being there since Pull 1.

Here's the unpopular opinion of me: Requiring a modicum of commitment is better for the longterm health of a game mode and its respective community.


Yeah, altough having a single person holding the crown in an Arena team is also shit.

Friend of mine lost like 3 Rank one titles because leader kicked him out of the team shortly before Season end.
To be fair, said friend has a bit of an attitude, altough that's not exactly rare among highend PvP'ers.

I would argue it isn't that easy to leap frog guilds as they examine logs quite closely but then I am talking about guilds that full clear the mythic tier fairly quickly. I have little experience anymore of the mid tier mythic guilds so you could be correct.

[Hellobolis]

big problem with xrealm mythic is that you can't trade items. kinda big deal for BoE drops, and there is always someone who needs to borrow a flasks/tome/potion/food.

that's fine for old content or the occasional person who joins, but an issue with real progress. so i don't see it happening until they get rid of servers themselves.

[Firebert]

Probably the same reason Normal raids/Rated BGs haven't had an LFR-style queuing system added to them; Blizzard aren't attentively looking at QoL.

[Relapses]

Got to have some reason for the whales to be constantly transferring around to chase "look at me" clout. Why throw away the income.

If you think the number of Mythic raiders transferring realms during the first two or three months of Mythic progression represents a meaningful amount of income for Blizzard I'd love to sell you some oceanfront property in Denver, CO.

OT: This is the same circular argument as "Why doesn't Blizzard just make megaservers?" And the answer to that is easy: Blizzard doesn't make megaservers because Blizzard doesn't want megaservers. That's why. And Blizzard doesn't allow cross-realm Mythic off the bat for similar reasons. Realm identity does matter (even if in your humble opinion on the internet it doesn't) and completely nullifying something like that is not a direction Blizzard wants to take the game. Sorry guys, daddy Blizzard isn't giving out handouts for you to leave your dead/dying realm for free.

[goldlock]

If you think the number of Mythic raiders transferring realms during the first two or three months of Mythic progression represents a meaningful amount of income for Blizzard I'd love to sell you some oceanfront property in Denver, CO.

OT: This is the same circular argument as "Why doesn't Blizzard just make megaservers?" And the answer to that is easy: Blizzard doesn't make megaservers because Blizzard doesn't want megaservers. That's why. And Blizzard doesn't allow cross-realm Mythic off the bat for similar reasons. Realm identity does matter (even if in your humble opinion on the internet it doesn't) and completely nullifying something like that is not a direction Blizzard wants to take the game. Sorry guys, daddy Blizzard isn't giving out handouts for you to leave your dead/dying realm for free.

I mean... the ship on realm identity sailed a long,long.long.long time ago. Even on high pop servers you see a dozen other servers running around.

Even if its not it weirdly only matters to mythic raiders and no one else?

[klogaroth]

The main thing player-wise preventing mythic raiding from being cross realm is that early progression is a lot easier to organise if people are on one realm (or realms that are connected). You can trade with each other, you can use a guild bank, you are part of the same economy. Now these things aren't impossible to overcome. If everyone does their own thing you won't notice that much of a difference, but if you're very cooperative there are a few barriers.

Anything else kinda doesn't matter. Realm identity is a meme at this point. There are no server firsts. The mythic raiding population is very concentrated on a handful of servers. There's a world wide leaderboard for Hall of Fame despite regions being locked. Hell there's even a player created foreign exchange and export market to move gold and items between servers. Realms are just hassle, nothing more. A relic of a solution to an old problem, that has been solved in a different way in the years since.

That said I understand that there's little incentive to move beyond realms for Blizzard if they were to go down the route of merging. It would be a sizeable undertaking, cost a fair bit, a bunch of people would moan, they wouldn't be able to sell server transfers any more, and there likely wouldn't be any noticeable increase in players from doing it.

Just opening stuff up, I don't really see why it'd be that much of a problem though on Blizzard's end. Guilds that want to compete for Hall of Fame will almost certainly be on one realm because it's easier logistically. Anyone going in after that gets done with has access to cross realm anyway.

I do think that if guilds and communities become one and the same that the name guild should be retained though. It's the older term, and the more fitting for in-game.

[Relapses]

I mean... the ship on realm identity sailed a long,long.long.long time ago. Even on high pop servers you see a dozen other servers running around.

Even if its not it weirdly only matters to mythic raiders and no one else?

Because nobody has ever judged a realm by the number of decent guilds it houses, right?

Again, this is an issue that's easy to pretend is hugely important on forums but has a very easy practical solution in reality: If it means so fucking much to you, transfer your fucking toon. The financial cost of transferring is to prevent people from abusing the tool not to fill Blizzard's coffers as forum-goers often frame it.

So assuming they don’t do it for the money as you claim, then why is there a fee? Why not like a 6 month timer before you can switch back or something.

I've actually suggested this in prior threads about this subject -- I'd be perfectly fine with Blizzard allowing every player who remains consistently subscribed for a year to get a free realm transfer. The reason Blizzard doesn't do this is because they'd rather roll out patchwork compromises like Connected Realms instead. I don't necessarily agree with this approach because it really is just a stop-gap measure to prevent the inevitability of megaservers but I can at least understand the reasons they don't. (None of them are financially motivated.)

[Halicia]

So assuming they don’t do it for the money as you claim, then why is there a fee? Why not like a 6 month timer before you can switch back or something.

I know you like that daddy blizzard line because I’ve seen you post it before but there’s no “why” there. What’s their motivation if not money? Why not let us get off the dead servers?

I've been arguing this point since Rift launched. Blizzard is clearly prioritizing negative impacts to gameplay because the money they gain by players wanting to overcome that negative experience outweighs the money they lose by customers they alienate.

[majinbebi]

Your argument again misses the point.
Ion said in the recent interview that the friction of the "pre LFD" days were actually good for the game, not how it necessarily interacted with a given content.

That's just the thing, it made people around you disposable because you could just hit a button to remove them and replace them with new ones if their attitude or playstyle didn't suit you.
Similiarly, people can just leave a group if it doesn't suit them.

And i predict a similiar situation here:
It makes the community easily disposeable, people think they're being held down by other people in their raid, hop to another one, the previous raid now needs to recruit new people, re learn the fight with those people, progress becomes ever slower, more people start to ditch the raid and so forth.
This can easily turn into a vicious cycle.

That's the one touching point of your argument: It only works in very easy content where basically anyone is able to participate, not a difficulty where Bosses requires up to 300 attempts with 4/5 being there since Pull 1.

Here's the unpopular opinion of me: Requiring a modicum of commitment is better for the longterm health of a game mode and its respective community.


Yeah, altough having a single person holding the crown in an Arena team is also shit.

Friend of mine lost like 3 Rank one titles because leader kicked him out of the team shortly before Season end.
To be fair, said friend has a bit of an attitude, altough that's not exactly rare among highend PvP'ers.

I see that as neutral to slightly positive. Maybe people could behave and try to be personable on their way to improving. There should be repercussions to toxic behavior, just as in real life jobs. You don’t just be a butt to everyone at work and expect them to give you a bonus when it’s Christmas time. Just a thought.

[Relapses]

I've been arguing this point since Rift launched. Blizzard is clearly prioritizing negative impacts to gameplay because the money they gain by players wanting to overcome that negative experience outweighs the money they lose by customers they alienate.

Because declaring certain servers "dead" and allowing players to freely transfer off of them while they evaporate into the ether is somehow better for the game? How exactly do you explain a realm literally disappearing from existence to a player who may be returning after a few years? "Oh, sucks to be you but a few people on the forum thought we were greedily forcing them to transfer off this realm so instead we just shut the whole fucking thing down." Like... really? Really now?

[Halicia]

Because declaring certain servers "dead" and allowing players to freely transfer off of them while they evaporate into the ether is somehow better for the game? How exactly do you explain a realm literally disappearing from existence to a player who may be returning after a few years? "Oh, sucks to be you but a few people on the forum thought we were greedily forcing them to transfer off this realm so instead we just shut the whole fucking thing down." Like... really? Really now?

Why would a realm disappear from existence ? If you're gonna strawman an argument, at least make it somehow relevant to the thread or my post.

Its just absurd to suggest that the only alternative to charging for character transfers is to shut the game down entirely.

Like... really? Really now?

[Relapses]

Why would a realm disappear from existence ? If you're gonna strawman an argument, at least make it somehow relevant to the thread or my post.

Its just absurd to suggest that the only alternative to charging for character transfers is to shut the game down entirely.

Like... really? Really now?

Uh huh. And there's absolutely NO WAY anybody would abuse the server transfer tool if it was free. Nope. Wouldn't happen. You're right. WoW players are scrupulous, great and upstanding human beings who care about the integrity of the game and under no circumstances would they ever misuse a feature which allows them to completely vanish off a server.

[Halicia]

Uh huh. And there's absolutely NO WAY anybody would abuse the server transfer tool if it was free. Nope. Wouldn't happen. You're right. WoW players are scrupulous, great and upstanding human beings who care about the integrity of the game and under no circumstances would they ever misuse a feature which allows them to completely vanish off a server.

Server transfers have been around for.... a decade? ... now... and it hasn't caused this "total shutdown and disappearance of WoW", as far as I can tell.

[Relapses]

Server transfers have been around for.... a decade? ... now... and it hasn't caused this "total shutdown and disappearance of WoW", as far as I can tell.

They're not free? Hello? What are you even arguing here?

[exochaft]

I mean, you'd basically bury the last bastion where the concept of a "guild" actually matters.

Also, it while it would lift barriers to enter a Mythic guild, it would make them far more unstable because people might just fuck off the moment they're stuck on a certain boss, because they don't have to transfer 3+ characters to another server.

While it would be an obvious QoL change, i'd rather see them reinforce the idea of guilds actually mattering again (in general, not just Mythic guilds), because a lot of the "Meta" related issues might resolve itself to some extent once people start to play with people they want to play rather than just strangers because it's more convenient.

That aside, people transferring 3+ characters when they join a Mythic guild is basically worth of someone subbing for 4-5 months.

It's a scenario of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" at this point.

Currently, there is almost no reason to have a guild in the game for activities, and that's a direct result of Blizz's design over the years. Mythic raiding literally is the last activity that you probably need a guild (for most players) in order to complete, heroic and below you can pug the first week with random people. Same goes with arenas and M+, and any solo-driven experiences obviously don't need guilds to function. If you take human behavioral tendencies into account, most of the content in the game drives people away from guilds and being social.

Which leads into the conundrum: what does Blizz have to do to fix that? One option is to just kill the concept of guilds off with the rest of the 'server identity' they tend to bring up often (at which I laugh every time as that has been dead for a while for most players). It doesn't necessarily means social interaction will just drop to nothing, as guilds have taken on new forms in some respects (the social aspect at least), such as Discord servers. Regardless, it's probably not the most ideal scenario.

Another option is to fundamentally change the game to where you need to have guilds and socialization to do most activities in the game. SL design looks like it's trying to head in that direction, which is partly why there's so much friction between the players and the devs right now. Blizz has pampered the player base over time to make most of the game solo-achievable, given them way more than they probably should've had, and once they start taking things away the players are going to throw a fit. However, in terms of the health of the game, this probably needs to happen. When it comes to mythic raiding, recruitment has been harder and harder because aside from killing the actual mythic bosses, all other reasons people typically raided the highest raid content have been mostly replaced by easier/less social experiences like M+. Pretty sure the devs had said this, because it's just human nature: players will take the path of least resistance to achieve what they want, so the existence of gearing paths that are relatively easier, faster, and almost just as good (or just as good/better from weekly chests)... of course raiding at a higher level will decline.

Now, I'm not necessarily against making mythic raiding cross realm immediately, but the interactions between realms needs to be on the level of merged servers. We can make groups in the same UI as the guild pane without all the restrictions that guilds have right now. I've always been hoping one day Blizz could move away from the physical server concept more, think of it like merging realms on a much larger scale. As it stands, most of the cross realm interactions are heavily disposable, because there's no way to make them more permanent if they aren't in your specific group. If realms as a form of identity are dead and mostly just used for population purposes, why not allow guilds to transcend realms as we know it? The tech already exists in the game to allow this, perhaps Blizz was thinking along these lines for in the future. This change by itself can't solve the problem, as other actions would have to be taken in tandem.

Someone mentioned server hopping, and from my experience the last few expansions that even in the mid-tier mythic raiding guilds it's way more common that it probably should be. As an example, I have some chars on a server that used be full-time high population as an Alliance heavy server in WoD/Legion, and nowadays in BfA it's always low pop and empty... mostly because people/guilds kept transferring to higher population servers and/or Horde servers. As more and more people transfer to 'greener pastures', the player pool for mythic raiding dries up to the point where anyone that wants to have a chance at mythic raiding has to leave the server. It's another social aspect of the game that gets lost when you can avoid all hardship and social interactions to work with your server by just easily moving to a 'better' environment for some money. If there were no paid server transfers allowed, I guarantee that people's dedication to their servers and server groupings would be a helluva lot higher than they currently are. The downside is that the damage has already been done, and leaving the current server structure as is wouldn't facilitate an improvement to the situations. However, the relative ease of just hoping servers on a whim is just too great to ignore, as any attempts by Blizz to curb the activity probably haven't work (such as not being able to get the realm first achievement for some time after transferring, which is silly since I guarantee the large bulk of people transferring don't care about it).

Simple version: there is no single magic bullet to fix the scenario, and most of this is a result of Blizz's design over the years killing the social aspects of WoW by allowing the player base to avoid social interactions and adversity increasingly over time.

[dewd]

mythic raiding is the last hope for some kind of server identity since everything else can be cross realm

[Halicia]

They're not free? Hello? What are you even arguing here?

Correct, maybe you should read what you quoted if you've forgotten what I said.

[Relapses]

Correct, maybe you should read what you quoted if you've forgotten what I said.

The cost of a server transfer has absolutely nothing to do with financial remuneration on Blizzard's part. You very clearly suggested that Blizzard would rather lose somebody's subscription than give them a free transfer off their realm. That is definitely not Blizzard's reason for charging for server transfers so I really have no fucking clue what you actually think a reasonable solution would be.

[munkeyinorbit]

Hey look, another person over-romanticizing the difficulty of TBC. Must have also thought Classic was hard I'd imagine. I remember waltzing around completely destroying all heroic dungeons with my guild about 30 days after BC launched. Most stuff was killed incredibly quick (skipping mechanics) and the longest part of the dungeons is what the longest part is on Classic (and still in on Retail): the actual running time to get through it. LFD could be argued good/bad for a high number of reasons, but the difficulty of the dungeons themselves is definitely not one of them.

But not everyone raid leads for Method, buddy. BC heroics were harder. That's just a fact. Blizzard themselves said they intended to make heroics shorter and easier in WotLK and they did. They also put barriers in place to top the undergeared from even entering the dungeons. The difficulty of the dungeons is factor for or against the LFD system