Realm Consolidation

[ToyKalibur]

So in the last month, I've noticed a huge decrease in chatter (trade chat), AH postings and raids. Taking a look at the big picture, there just doesn't seem to be a whole lot going on and the folks your used to seeing come on are hardly ever on now. I even went to an old realm to see what was going on there and it was pretty much dead. No trade chat for 15 mins and this was a Full/Large server. Well what ya think? Start some consolidating of realms? Free transfers? or just watch the Langoliers eat away at our realms...?

I know it will probably never happen just really bored atm.

[Conscious]

It will probably happen when it -absolutely- has to happen.

Realm consolidation would definitely be welcomed by most of the dead / dying servers, however it would send more of a message of Blizzard admitting defeat to the community, than it would being a 'smart move'.

[jsz]

Jeez what backwater realm(s) do you play on?

[Brett Skullcrack]

Blizzard makes more money from a single transfer out of a dead server than a monthly fee. Doing realm consolidations would cost them effort, cause bad publicity and lose transfer fees, so it's not going to happen. They care more about the short term profits than about their customers' enjoyment.

[Nasriel]

I for one would definately welcome a realm consolidation. My server is getting less and less active and these days if I do see activity in trade it's just a bunch of retards talking rubbish. My alliance server on the other hand is always busy. I'm always seeing interesting looking pugs going, whether for N DS or the older raids... I recently tried to find a new server for my main as i'm sick of my horrible dead server of overpriced AH and idiots talking rubbish and what did I find on other servers for the horde? Either trade so dead I could stand there for a good 10mins and not see a darn thing said or other servers which had just as much, if not more rubbish being posted in trade channel and nothing worthwhile. (i'm talking Oceanic PVE servers)

I don't even want to look at US servers due to the big time differences, that and the mostly Aus populated US servers are PVP. Not interested

[Eroginous]

Blizzard makes more money from a single transfer out of a dead server than a monthly fee. Doing realm consolidations would cost them effort, cause bad publicity and lose transfer fees, so it's not going to happen. They care more about the short term profits than about their customers' enjoyment.

This is a pretty ridiculous post, do you even play wow? Typically they like to open up free realm transfers from high population realms to go to low population realms, allowing people to move in order to 'alleviate' the massive population servers a little and start to fill up the low population servers. It's pretty dumb to suggest that they would never do anything for free because all they care about is money.

Especially when they've opened up free realm transfers numerous times within the last 7 years.

[Deleted]

Blizzard makes more money from a single transfer out of a dead server than a monthly fee. Doing realm consolidations would cost them effort, cause bad publicity and lose transfer fees, so it's not going to happen. They care more about the short term profits than about their customers' enjoyment.

You assert this but it could also be the case that they lose more money from people stopping their sub rather than transferring. The transfer fee is only a couple of month's sub.

It's been clear since TBC that they will do everything they can to avoid closing realms. I would agree that it's more about bad publicity than anything else.

[barkles]

try reading trade chat on kel thuzad. if I'm looking for pugs, I have to /join trade, LFM BLAH BLAH BLAH, /leave trade immediately unless I switch whispers to a different tab...it flies by SO fast. we get more and more transfers in every day, too...it's busier than it's ever been

[namtlade]

I have characters on Argent Dawn EU and Scarshield-legion EU. Argent Dawn is one of the highest pop EU servers, while Scarshield is one of the lowest.

It makes me really sad that some of my favourite characters are essentially "stuck" on scarshield. I've got some good friends on there, and recognising the same people and guilds around is nice. But it's just so quiet most of the time. Doing a /who in orgrimmar only hits the 49 player limit during peak time, most of the time it's below that. Trade chat is silent most of the time, rarely see any pugs going, and if you don't do BH before the weekend finding a group is nigh on impossible. And we often have a small group of allies invade orgrimmar to kill npcs and mess around but that is pretty funny.

Then I swap over to AD for a bit, trade chat is full of people looking for groups (and of course trolls), the auction house is stocked, there are people everywhere.

I would love to move my characters, but I don't want to split them up. So moving server would cost me £60 alone, just to move my 85s.

[Aous]

Yeah KT's chat is pretty hard to follow these days.

[Deleted]

I somewhat agree with the OP, my realm also seem to be dying and we could really use more people.

This is a pretty ridiculous post, do you even play wow? Typically they like to open up free realm transfers from high population realms to go to low population realms, allowing people to move in order to 'alleviate' the massive population servers a little and start to fill up the low population servers. It's pretty dumb to suggest that they would never do anything for free because all they care about is money.

Especially when they've opened up free realm transfers numerous times within the last 7 years.

I dont agree with you, yes they open free transfers but they only open free transfers to the very lowest populated realms while there are about 100 or so realms out there who could use it.

I play on Bloodhoof EU and it is now impossible for us to recruit people, we dont get any people applying to our guild anymore and the only way of getting new players is by stealing them from the other guilds who are suffering from the same issue.

We need server merges and we need a lot of them, probably so many that the number of servers are cut in half.

[Emane]

I have characters on Argent Dawn EU and Scarshield-legion EU. Argent Dawn is one of the highest pop EU servers, while Scarshield is one of the lowest.

It makes me really sad that some of my favourite characters are essentially "stuck" on scarshield. I've got some good friends on there, and recognising the same people and guilds around is nice. But it's just so quiet most of the time. Doing a /who in orgrimmar only hits the 49 player limit during peak time, most of the time it's below that. Trade chat is silent most of the time, rarely see any pugs going, and if you don't do BH before the weekend finding a group is nigh on impossible. And we often have a small group of allies invade orgrimmar to kill npcs and mess around but that is pretty funny.

Then I swap over to AD for a bit, trade chat is full of people looking for groups (and of course trolls), the auction house is stocked, there are people everywhere.

I would love to move my characters, but I don't want to split them up. So moving server would cost me £60 alone, just to move my 85s.

Before I moved my chars to a new realm, I did /who <class> <1-85> to get a better picture of what the population was. For example
You start with:
/who - Gets all the people on the server if you reach 49. Go to next
/who class (I.e /who Druid) - Gets all the Druids on the server, if you reach 49. Go to next
/who class level (I.e /who Druid 85) - Gets all the level 85 druids, repeat until you don't get 49. Repeat with every class. Then you will notice how many players you have.

I did this on Executus EU before moving. During peak hours, it was 200 players online, from level 1-85. If I only counted 85s it was around 40.. this was only Alliance side thou.

[Fiana]

Well, it looks pretty different for me.
We have 600+ ppl queues in the evenings with average 40-60 minutes of wait time.
Dead tradechat? Well, its definitely dead because no one can read it - there are more than 20 messages per second.
Auction house have over 250000 active auctions all the time.

Its not about world of warcraft population decrease, its about people who don't want to play on dead servers. They will always transfer to more populated ones.

Its useless to merge realms because they will become empty soon again. Adding 1 server with 1h progression to another server with 1/8h progression will still result a server with 1/8h progression, making all players who care about at least somewhat enjoyable pve raiding leave this server as fast as possible.

But cross-realm raids can be an option. If you can live on one real but play in hardcore guild/static from another realm there will be no reason for you to swap realms.

But blizzard should remove DS restriction and let people invite players from other realms without using real id feature - just like this: /invite imbawarriortank@EU-Jaedenar

[Aspect of Death]

It will probably happen when it -absolutely- has to happen.

Realm consolidation would definitely be welcomed by most of the dead / dying servers, however it would send more of a message of Blizzard admitting defeat to the community, than it would being a 'smart move'.

It will be a "smart move" if they dont want the entire next expansion to suck and be pointless. They did say that MoP had alot of faction war etc.
So my server is so full that it crash all the time due to 1 "million" ppl in orgrimmar, it takes 3min to mount and buy something from ah or vendor, same with mailbox. But! there are total of 10 alliance players online.

The server used to be 50/50, but faction change came so things started to change. Alliance is dying a slow death, and i dont blame them for leaving the server/going horde.. They cant do anything, they sure cant do dailys, move around in the "world". Pff they are not even safe from death in their major city.
So these people might just quit because its soooo much "fun" for them to play.. (or pay what, 25$?)

[Deleted]

Well, it looks pretty different for me.
We have 600+ ppl queues in the evenings with average 40-60 minutes of wait time.
Dead tradechat? Well, its definitely dead because no one can read it - there are more than 20 messages per second.
Auction house have over 250000 active auctions all the time

Right now my trade chat gets about 5 messages per min, arround 20 per min in peak hours and the AH have 21000 auctions.

[TJ]

If you're really that bothered about it, i would pay to switch realm, if not then dont play because unfortunately blizzard isnt really on your side when it comes to these problems because its a potential loss of money. They do offer free transfers at some points, but its always to crappy or unbalanced realms you wouldnt dream of going to (i.e. alliance outland eu to al akir eu, 0.04 alliance ratio..).

I switched to silvermoon eu from a dead realm and its badass, proper economy, always pugs going on (even for some old things you wouldnt think people would do), and loaaaads of guilds. As i said it depends how much you care, because imo me moving to silvermoon was money well spent.

[Aspect of Death]

Its useless to merge realms because they will become empty soon again.

Why will they become empty? My server have been "full-locked" since i started playing in vanilla.. We just dont have alliance on the server, witch makes the server booring imo, and it will kinda make MoP pointless with the "faction wars"!

[Deleted]

If you're really that bothered about it, i would pay to switch realm, if not then dont play because unfortunately blizzard isnt really on your side when it comes to these problems because its a potential loss of money. They do offer free transfers at some points, but its always to crappy or unbalanced realms you wouldnt dream of going to (i.e. alliance outland eu to al akir eu, 0.04 alliance ratio..).

Speaking as a EU alliance player I would love to transfer to Silvermoon EU theres just a multitude of problems when considering a move. First of all I want to keep playing with my guild so I would have to convince 25 players to move with me. Second of all I have 10 characters in order to have 1 of each proffesion, if I were to move I would want all proffesions on the new realm.

[Fiana]

Why will they become empty? My server have been "full-locked" since i started playing in vanilla.. We just dont have alliance on the server, witch makes the server booring imo, and it will kinda make MoP pointless with the "faction wars"!

But in the same time it makes such servers world top pve servers because it effectively doubles the amount of guilds and good pve players.
I guess people that transfer to such servers understand that they are not going to get any world pvp activity anyway. Everything has a price. Especially hardcore pve progression.

[Eirangel]

try reading trade chat on kel thuzad. if I'm looking for pugs, I have to /join trade, LFM BLAH BLAH BLAH, /leave trade immediately unless I switch whispers to a different tab...it flies by SO fast. we get more and more transfers in every day, too...it's busier than it's ever been

I can vouch for this as well, KT is packed full, and is not decreasing in any way shape or form. We are the biggest Alliance PVP realm so, and I also picked KT for that reason. I knew it wasn't gonna to slow anytime soon, as my old servers did. I love seeing lots of people in the world (expect SW, ORG) leveling or just w/e. Makes it feel like an MMO :P