Is Blizzard going to do something with low pop and highly unbalanced servers?

[Daedius]

CRZ is in it's infancy stage, I'm willing to still give it a chance.

[Mormolyce]

CRZ was never intended to fix the issue with low pop servers. It mitigates some of the problems but that's just a happy accident. CRZ was designed so that the sub-90 zones weren't deserted and you play a Massively Multiplayer game for 89/90 levels completely solo. They've said this numerous times. They're still trying to decide what to do about low pop servers (which they've been saying as long as I can remember, at least as far back as Wotlk).

There is also a psychological reason for not merging the servers, the moment that is announced Blizzard admits WoW is past it's peak.

There have been imbalanced servers and threads like these since WoW was in its "prime". In fact probably since Vanilla. It has nothing to do with how fast subs are going up or down. Imbalanced servers are created by players. Everyone wants to be where everyone else is, so people flood to high pop servers and flee low pop servers. This means that over time slight imbalances in server pop become major ones, and low pop servers become deserted while high pop servers get more and more crammed.

The only way Blizzard can REALLY fix the problem is forced migrations followed by disallowing further migration of those characters. Nobody would like that, that's the real problem.

[Galaddriel]

CRZ was never intended to fix the issue with low pop servers.

It sure was sold that way:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...920?page=6#103

Zarhym
Having said all that, yesterday we discussed low-population and faction-imbalanced realms with our developers. They have some pretty bold and spectacular plans for addressing this in anticipation of implementing some of the features we plan to in Mists. I just don't have a lot of information to share with you at this stage of programming and development.


They won't do a merge, they make too much money off transfers. Much more than losing those say 10 players on your server, Moshic.

/create level 1's on Crushridge

/who Stormwind
/player 1
/me
/run Censusplus - 6 alliance total

172 total auctions!

/who Orgrimmar
/player 1
/player 2
/player 3
PUG HoF? lol


Crossrealm zones really made a difference, thank you Blizz! /sarcasm

[Elysara]

I believe Blizzard is currently pointing to CRZ as the "fix" for that problem. Maybe something better will come along at some point. Who knows.

They said CRZ is a temporary fix not the final solution to it. But for now it works well enough. Don't really understand the hate for it. I would rather have 3 other level 68 people in Shadowmoon valley to help me with quests than bugging my level 90 guild mates who have better things to be doing.

[Teokis]

Merge Illidan and Kel'Thuzad US.

Make it a mega server, higher pop and able to support that many players.

And let the world pvp begin!

[BenBos]

They said CRZ is a temporary fix not the final solution to it. But for now it works well enough. Don't really understand the hate for it. I would rather have 3 other level 68 people in Shadowmoon valley to help me with quests than bugging my level 90 guild mates who have better things to be doing.

The hate comes from the usual Blizzard haters. Because ... They KNOW very well that cross server play in the open world without loading screens is something of an MMO bomb.

With a fully integrated cross server play in open worlds (guilds, economies etc...) you'll no longer have population problems ... Ever.

WoW could loose 95% of its population over the next 10 years and player wise you would have 10 times MORE players around you then the biggest single WoW server could ever hold ...

So CRZ and cross server economics will render all "dying" threads meaningless, because even playing with 100k players you'll have all these players around you instead of spreading them out on thinly populated servers.

CRZ and also HOW it is implemented (seamless and without loading screens) is pretty much the Holy Grail of MMO's for the next decade.
Also of note: the competition stands nowhere in this seamless technology.

Just be sure Titan will be designed from scratch with this in mind. The possibilities are endless on this one: ONE server (cluster), huge populations in every world zone, no matter how big the world or the level you are...

The one huge server cluster was one of the Eve mainstay achievements, but Blizzard could create it in a landscape based MMORPG. The fact it is seamless across servers in realtime is breath taking. I never tought they could do this on a legacy system like the WoW realm system: hold on to what you are gonna see in a new MMO like Titan !!!

---------- Post added 2012-12-10 at 08:58 AM ----------

2008 article. Even much more improved technology since then.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2008/09...-server-model/

EVE can do it with a few hundred thousand subscribers, WoW can't do it with tens of millions in revenue each month. EVE is even older than WoW.
The only difference between the two is the leadership. With CRZ, we know it's possible for each zone to run on a different "shard", or even a different physical server, to balance loadings. So why aren't they researching it?

What a joke of a post. Eve doesn't have these trivial things like ... A landscape, gravity, forests to walk in, cities to fly over or a lake to swim in.

Eve is pretty much empty space with avatars sitting in their cockpit chairs ... Forever... And with ALL these things NOT found in empty space it lags like hell with a few thousand players in one sector of the Galaxy.

BLIZZARD added seamless cross server open world play without a loading screen in sight and all this in a real landscape based MMORPG, so stop being silly.

[Thallidomaniac]

Doubtful, as some of their free realm transfers actually caused some realms to become wildly imbalanced. One example was when Kel'Thuzad-US (which was Alliance dominated) was offered free transfers to Alterac Mountains-US to ease queue times, all the Horde used that to get out of KT, thus making Horde pretty much rare spawns now there.

[BenBos]

Now being honest, I don't get why they don't do a trick:
-merge 20 servers into 5
-make 2 new servers

You now have 7 servers where you before had 20.

-say that new servers use new technology so they decided to increase population cap and as such some servers were merged to .... /snip

And there. Done.

Merging is an OLD technology that does not solve empty worlds: you may merge 3 servers into one and ALL your leveling zones up to max lvl will STILL be empty along with lower economies.

Cross realms permits actively to populate all world zones and all content in a scaled manner.

Hear this: in cross server technology in the future you'll have the equivalent of 10+ servers in EVERY content offered throughout the whole game.

And open world CRZ is not "an accident". BG became cross server in 2006, dungeons in 2009, now it is open world, soon guilds and economies will follow.

The fact Blizzard could achieve this in a seamless way without loading screens is simply awesome and it puts them MILES over any other MMO.

[Galaddriel]

Blah blah future this future that, how about you get back to us when they get this mess sorted, eh Ben?

No one is interested in paying for these broken, dead, unbalanced realms while Blizzard ponders future technology. We were promised a fix with MoP that did not happen. We are tired of being blamed for it and told to pay transfer fees or abandon our characters to start over on a server with a working population.

Blizzard's ocean of dead servers is the laughing stock of the gaming industry. They need to quit bullshitting and start doing something about it.

[Highlord Hanibuhl]

I play Alliance on EU Kazzak, high/full pop server. Yes, it is full of Horde. There is about 3 - 5% Alliance. I don't have credit cards to pay for Char migration, so I am forced to continue playing my 3 lvl 70 + chars on this server. I don't care, if there is so few of us (Alliance), but I do care about other things. When I want to buy something on AH, glyphs for example, prices are usualy 10 times higher then on the Hordes side or higher Alliance pop servers, like Sylvanas EU. Also, I couldn't sell a thing. Noone wants to buy my minerals, leather ... My bank and inventory is full od stuff, which I couldn't sell. The same situation i find on low pop servers.
I think that Blizzar should do something about it.
Sorry for english ...

Sounds like it could have been written by me. Also playing Alliance on Kazzak. I feel your pain. I got my bankalt's bank FILLED with stuff I cannot sell for a good price, because only 5 people are playing.

It sucks. But as I've said before.. if they come with another free migrate or make migrating free in general, I'm OUTA HERE

[Arbs]

Get everyone to stop paying for transfers and quit lol. That's the only message they understand.

but that will never happen, so that plan is out the window I guess

---------- Post added 2012-12-10 at 04:41 AM ----------

Merge Illidan and Kel'Thuzad US.

Make it a mega server, higher pop and able to support that many players.

And let the world pvp begin!

You do realize Illidan will eat KT alive & the PvP players will run away to Tich or Darkspear.

---------- Post added 2012-12-10 at 04:47 AM ----------

Merging is an OLD technology that does not solve empty worlds: you may merge 3 servers into one and ALL your leveling zones up to max lvl will STILL be empty along with lower economies.

Cross realms permits actively to populate all world zones and all content in a scaled manner.

Hear this: in cross server technology in the future you'll have the equivalent of 10+ servers in EVERY content offered throughout the whole game.

And open world CRZ is not "an accident". BG became cross server in 2006, dungeons in 2009, now it is open world, soon guilds and economies will follow.

The fact Blizzard could achieve this in a seamless way without loading screens is simply awesome and it puts them MILES over any other MMO.

Ben don't bother, people don't understand that merge isn't easy nor is a good way to fix population problems, Server merging is only menat for game losing population faster than the water down the Niagra Falls. WoW isn't this cituation, people bring in all this negative news to try to start something & make it seem like WoW is dying when its doing perfectly fine.

CRZ is a good idea, but needs to be implemented, but we already know the whinners on the forums will never stop complaining until they get there way, almost like a 6 year old who wants this 5 dollar toy car & when he can't get it throws a tandrum until he gets his way, Even if it lasts a week or so.
People are so stubborn & wont let Blizzard try to fix anything unless once again its the whinners way, "cause supposely there all game designers & see something Blizzard doesn't see /sarcasm"

[Deleted]

i'd like to say they will but it seems that they believe that their whole cross realm zone fiasco is a fix to it and not just a band aid one. Unfortunately, with most games, the media and players go into a frenzy when servers are merged together that "the game is dying" and so Blizzard is probably on the same bandwagon (as its shareholders probably are aswell).

So we shall see, but i would not hold my breath on it happening.

I wish people would stop claiming the reason behind CRZ was to fix low populated servers issues... It wasn't. It was to fix the issue that even on a full server, you could be completely alone in a low-level zone because everyone else was in the city waiting for their queues. It was because new players didn't really ever encounter anyone else in the world, and it felt dead and boring. They remember the old days when you saw people all the time in all zones, and wanted that feeling to return. That, was the main reason behind CRZ. Not to "band aid" low populated or unbalanced servers.

To the OP, I wouldn't expect any "fix" anytime soon. Blizzard is in overall working towards "merging" all servers together into one huge pool of players (cross realm raids, battlegrounds, auction house, servers), if they continue like they have it will hopefully be "fixed" in time. But I wouldn't count on any magical solution to be coming along even in the next expansion.

I would suggest that if you're unable to pay for a server transfer, and really don't like the state of your current server, that you reroll on a new one. Yes it would suck that you lose all of your gold, all of these wonderful things you have on your characters etc etc etc. But really that is the only way, if you feel your server is simply that terrible, a fresh start might be exactly what you need.

I currently play on a low populated server, it's really, really dead. You can't find anything on the Auction House, and barely sell anything on it either. I don't really mind though as I get everything I need either by myself, or from the people in my guild. So that's a solution to you as well. If it's about making gold I have to ask, what do you even need it for? I don't spend any of the gold I have and am pooling up on more and more from daily quests and the like every day. Other than possibly the Black Market I see nothing you would even need gold for. So for as long as you have people you enjoy playing with on the same server, I don't see the big deal about playing on a low populated/unbalanced server. And if you don't have that, I would really suggest you to reroll.

[Balazaar]

The real problem for Blizzard is perception ... and it's not easy to fix.

Merging servers may give the impression the game is dying, but in actuality the number of servers is meaningless. What matters is subscribers. If you have 10 million subscribers on 150 servers or 10 million subscribers on 300 servers, it's the same thing.

Blizzard can combine servers if they wish, but they won't because (A) people will think WoW is dying and that could affect subscriptions and (B) they make big $$ off transfers.

No amount of complaining will change these facts. Don't look for server consolidation anytime soon.

[stresskiller]

They do free server transfers, but people don't want to leave their servers so they stay on the high pop servers. This is generally easier to notice on PvP servers where players don't want to move away from certain servers (Such as Outland and Stormscale for EU). Funny thing about it though, is when they complain on forums that they can't login/

the allow only to transfer from high populated to low populated and only from pvp to pvp or pve to pve , they don't give the option to transfer off the low populated ones to higher populated ones.

[Deleted]

The real problem for Blizzard is perception ... and it's not easy to fix.

Merging servers may give the impression the game is dying, but in actuality the number of servers is meaningless. What matters is subscribers. If you have 10 million subscribers on 150 servers or 10 million subscribers on 300 servers, it's the same thing.

Blizzard can combine servers if they wish, but they won't because (A) people will think WoW is dying and that could affect subscriptions and (B) they make big $$ off transfers.

No amount of complaining will change these facts. Don't look for server consolidation anytime soon.

You're forgetting a couple of reasons for why they aren't doing it:
3: When you merge servers you will run into issues such as name collissions, people who have to move from server A to server B are verly likely forced to get a new name, for all of their characters. Not many would like that all that much. Even guilds might have to get entire new names.

4: Some people are really happy with the current state of their server, even if it's low populated. Forcing a change such as closing their server so they have to move to another might cause them to lose contact with friends and the like that they don't have the real ID of, but perhaps often chat with in-game.

Please stop making claims that money is the only thing Blizzard thinks about. It is definitely one of them as with all companies, but not their only concern. I would argue that the Blizzard staff cares a great deal more about their players than several other games I've played, otherwise their customer support wouldn't be as good as it is.

[Deleted]

I strongly disagree with this. Before you read this, I want to clarify that I am not a WoW hater. I think MoP is a great expansion. However Blizzard customer support is an absolute joke compared to the vast majority of MMOs that I've played. And I've played a lot. I've had tickets that have taken over a week to get a response. I've been told that a problem I'm having with the game (completely glitched out quest phasing in Krasarang Wilds) is not currently fixable, locking me out of half the zone. The ridiculous price on server transfers is a testimony to how much Blizzard cares about money. It's not a complicated or labor intensive service to provide. Every time I've purchased one, my character has transferred in less than 10 minutes. Rift and Guild Wars 2 offer free character transfers because it's not difficult to do. Blizzard has some of the most horrendous customer service I've ever experienced.

I've had the opposite experience. Each and every time I've contacted them about an issue the wait time has been less than 24 hours, the last time was actually yesterday. Each and every time they could either resolve the issue immediately, or give me good information of why it can't and if it can further down the line, when.

When I compare their customer support, to that of other games, there is no other game that I have played that comes anywhere even close to it. Other times I have had to wait for a week or even more, and the response I got didn't help at all. They couldn't even help with the issue, or perhaps didn't understand it because they barely knew any English (in an English speaking game).

Maybe you have been really unlucky, because my understanding of the general idea of Blizzard's support is that it's great and people often get really good help really quickly, compared to other games.

[Ciddy]

I'd rather see free server transfers than anything. I think that'd be the best way to solve this problem. It wouldn't do away with unbalanced/low pop servers, but at least then the people playing on said servers would have no real excuse to complain. Unbalanced/low pop servers aren't necessarily a huge problem anyway. Some players actually like them, which is fine. I just think the ones who don't should have some option besides paying extra money or rerolling. Also, people who play on PvP servers and hate the gankfest that CRZ brought to them would be able to more easily transfer to PvE servers and not have to deal with it.

Although Blizzard makes money from character services, so I'd say it's very unlikely they'll end up making any of those free.