Connected realms - fancy way to say realm mergers?

[wow2011]

I think so. Connected realms are basically a years-long technical project to avoid having to publicly say, "realm merger".

And ESO's "mega server" is a multi year, million dollar project to avoid having to publicly say "our game will never get popular enough to need multiple servers"...

Connected realm is NOT the same thing as realm merger. Connected realm is simply allowing players to trade, share AH, raid, be in guild etc regardless of which server you are on. Blizzard could one day connect all 100 (or however many active servers there are) into a single connected realm. Good luck merging 100 servers worth of characters into a single server.

For those who still aren't clear: The concept of 1 realm = 1 server is ancient (yes, 30 years in computer age is ancient). Have you heard of cloud computing? Blizzard is going to the concept of 1 realm = many many servers (connected realm) and leaving the 1 realm = 1 server idea behind. Blizzard is moving ahead while you are still very much stuck on the 1 realm = 1 server mentality.

[MoanaLisa]

And ESO's "mega server" is a multi year, million dollar project to avoid having to publicly say "our game will never get popular enough to need multiple servers"...

Interesting way to look at it. It's true that MMO's that start with mega servers are praised for being ahead of the curve and that it's a great model for managing player populations. Blizzard moves in that direction to replace older technology with something new and it becomes a face-saving thing. Yawn.

[gee]

Yes, it is the much needed server mergers.

WoW lost almost half of the players and may be in terminal decline.

Server mergers came only too late. Guilds disbanded because they could not recruit, entire realms withered, long-term players quit because their guilds and friends were all gone, it was a chain reaction of quitting on some dying servers.

Blizzard is trying to salvage what they can at this late stage of decline.

[Normie]

In other MMOs, when you have low population realms, they get merged together. In WoW, when we have low population realms, they get "connected". Is this just semantics or am I missing something?

It is essentially a merge, but it lets players retain their server identity, and more importantly, their character names.

So far it looks like it will just be a win-win-win for everyone.

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Blizzard is trying to salvage what they can at this late stage of decline.

Obviously when a game is the largest MMO in the world by a huge margin, the best way to characterize its health is "late stage of [terminal] decline."

[tehdef]

In other MMOs, when you have low population realms, they get merged together. In WoW, when we have low population realms, they get "connected". Is this just semantics or am I missing something?

Nope, not a fancy way of saying realm mergers. In realm mergers you get a higher population base, but you have to deal with cramming everything together, which inadvertantly causes some issues with shared character names. You were Ziggy on day 2 of your realm, but this guy was Ziggy on day 1 of his. He wins. You lose your name you've had for 4 years.

Yeah, so this doesn't happen on realm mergers. There is no violent shake up that occurs because the entirety of 2 realms were smashed together. This is a seamless experience where your realm is still your realm, but much like Battlegrounds you share it with people from other realms, which is indicated by the Name (Realm) you see in BG's. You share auction houses, you can group together. Entirely seamless, just not as barren.

In fact, this is probably the BEST way to handle mergers that I've ever seen in any game.

[eschatological]

They're not the same because I can see the 3-letter abbreviation of what server they originated from, and mock Bloodscalp/Boulderfist/Maiev folks for not having been on US-Dunemaul, OG for life.

/shotsfired

Other than that, yeah, it's the same.

[Deadite]

In fact, this is probably the BEST way to handle mergers that I've ever seen in any game.

I agree but they are still mergers. No sure why people are getting so upset about saying the M word. They have lost 5 million people. I find it odd that they would do it this way tho. Are running servers so cheap these days that they would just keep them open and use the connected thing instead? Sounds odd to me.

[Axelond]

Not really, If a mmo had over 20 different servers and 5 years later created a tech that allowed them to put all players on a gigantic server (Phasing and whatnot) merging all 20 and creating one server thats 20 times bigger that's does not necessarily mean the mmo is in a decline

[Itisamuh]

Well, it's not really the same thing though. A proper server merge would be of lesser quality due to forcing players to name change and all other duplicative issues that would occur.

Connected realms are an improvement on the standard server merge concept, taking 100% of the positives and eliminating the negative technical side effects.

Irrational blind hatred aside, this is clearly a superior design choice. I know it's a lot to ask people to be logical.

Apparently so, since nowhere did I say it was a bad idea, and yet you decided I was irrationally and blindly hating on it.

[gee]

Nope, not a fancy way of saying realm mergers. In realm mergers you get a higher population base, but you have to deal with cramming everything together, which inadvertantly causes some issues with shared character names.

No.

It is just semantics. There is no rule for losing names in a server merger. You could filter multiplicates and auto-change them to reflect their server origin.

[judgementofantonidas]

In other MMOs, when you have low population realms, they get merged together. In WoW, when we have low population realms, they get "connected". Is this just semantics or am I missing something?

Right now it seems it is just a fancy way to give pvp weenies a bigger playground.