The woes of dead realms, connected realms and the Paid Realm Transfer.

[Giscoicus]

Except that people constantly whined, complained, and screamed that they wanted paid transfers until Blizzard finally agreed to it. It's all the players fault. It's the grass is greener syndrome. Players always think that's whatever problem they are having with the game will be magically solved by moving to a new realm. The raid team here won't take me, it's because they suck not me better find a new realm. Everybody on the realm thinks I'm a trade troll, It's the idiots on this realm not me better find a new realm. Nobody wants to join the new guild I just made, better find a new realm. I've gotten bored after playing a game for 10years, Hey bet if I transfer to a new realm I will magically not be bored anymore. Whining about people moving to larger realms is like whining about people moving from rural areas to the city. Some will find a better time, but most get there, realize it's just a different kind of suck and just live with it secretly wishing they had never moved.

This. Blizzard didn't decide one day "hey! lets put in paid transfers and milk people for more cash" like some believe. What happened was Blizzard said no, reroll on a different server, and then the playerbase cried more and more that they wanted PAID TRANSFERS rather than rerolling and releveling.

Blizzard listened to the players who wanted to move for money, and this happened. Blizzard said no but the players insisted, and expecting Blizzard to now go back on the service, thus being unfair to future players who would seek to use such a service, or more importantly make it FREE after they had intended to never have it in the first place is ridiculous.

Blizzard allows you 50, count them 50 characters. You are allowed to level up on any realm you want. Everybody has the same opportunity to play the game, its choices you make like rolling on lower realms that you are responsible for. The playerbase as a whole is responsible for realms dying out by taking realm transfers, but the same thing would have happened if people had quit their realm of manually rerolled.

[wych]

This. Blizzard didn't decide one day "hey! lets put in paid transfers and milk people for more cash" like some believe. What happened was Blizzard said no, reroll on a different server, and then the playerbase cried more and more that they wanted PAID TRANSFERS rather than rerolling and releveling.

Blizzard listened to the players who wanted to move for money, and this happened. Blizzard said no but the players insisted, and expecting Blizzard to now go back on the service, thus being unfair to future players who would seek to use such a service, or more importantly make it FREE after they had intended to never have it in the first place is ridiculous.

Blizzard allows you 50, count them 50 characters. You are allowed to level up on any realm you want. Everybody has the same opportunity to play the game, its choices you make like rolling on lower realms that you are responsible for. The playerbase as a whole is responsible for realms dying out by taking realm transfers, but the same thing would have happened if people had quit their realm of manually rerolled.

"Hey it looks like that realm you joined 5+ years ago has really started to die, through no personal fault of your own."
"Yeah it really sucks, can you merge it"
"NO STFU SCRUB, REROLL OR GIVE ME MONEY TO FIX THE PROBLEM"

It was never acceptable and individuals shouldn't be made to suffer for things they didn't do.

[Captiosus]

Do you really want to go down the route of forced transfers ?

Yes because at least it gets the damn job done instead of pussyfooting around with band aid fixes that just kick the can down the curb. CRZ and coalesced realms are non-committal "fixes" that haven't fixed anything. These two "fixes" have caused more headaches than forced server merges would without providing an actual increased community like actual merges would.

I'd rather they go through with merges similar to that which Bioware did with TOR. Yep, those hurt because you could lose your name, legacy name, or guild name. However, the health of the overall game comes first. People will get over the loss of an avatar or guild name.

[rhorle]

Yes because at least it gets the damn job done instead of pussyfooting around with band aid fixes that just kick the can down the curb. CRZ and coalesced realms are non-committal "fixes" that haven't fixed anything. These two "fixes" have caused more headaches than forced server merges would without providing an actual increased community like actual merges would.

What is the difference between forcing everyone from a group of servers to merge onto one, and merging that entire group into one server? Its funny that you want mergers the way Bioware did because that is exactly what Blizzard is doing with connected realms. It is a server merge with all the benefits but none of the usual downsides. Your server is being merged but you get to keep your name, your guild name, and anything else that was unique on your previous server. So you can have two Bobsyouruncle's on the new mega-server.

Why is that a bad thing? Why is it a bad thing that you won't be forced to change your name if someone already exists with that name?

[Huehuecoyotl]

This. Blizzard didn't decide one day "hey! lets put in paid transfers and milk people for more cash" like some believe. What happened was Blizzard said no, reroll on a different server, and then the playerbase cried more and more that they wanted PAID TRANSFERS rather than rerolling and releveling.

Blizzard listened to the players who wanted to move for money, and this happened. Blizzard said no but the players insisted, and expecting Blizzard to now go back on the service, thus being unfair to future players who would seek to use such a service, or more importantly make it FREE after they had intended to never have it in the first place is ridiculous.

Blizzard allows you 50, count them 50 characters. You are allowed to level up on any realm you want. Everybody has the same opportunity to play the game, its choices you make like rolling on lower realms that you are responsible for. The playerbase as a whole is responsible for realms dying out by taking realm transfers, but the same thing would have happened if people had quit their realm of manually rerolled.

Can we get rid of this myth please? I can only guess the Blizzard PR department has spun this line of bullshit so many times that people are starting to believe it.

Nobody. NOBODY, was asking for PAID transfers. They may well have been asking for transfers, but no way were they clamoring for a PAID service to be offered. And this is the problem, because if the transfers were on a LONG cooldown for each character (lets say around 6 months or a year) then people would be able to move their characters if they needed to, without having to find $150 to move all the alts that they had built up on a server. By allowing transfers, then making it not only paid but stupidly expensive, Blizzard created the situation we see today.

Paid services in a subscription game. Never a good idea.

[Mormolyce]

They're working through the list of servers to connect. Is it really so hard to wait? Hasn't your server been dead for years? What's a few more months or whatever?

I get that it's frustrating.

[Deleted]

Wow reached a peak a couple of years ago and now they have to face the problems with the subs going downhill... Empty servers. It is really easy to solve. Just merge some servers and give them a new name/merged name whatever. But that would be bad PR. Admiting that the game is going downhill and that they are forced to close down servers. So they came up with this 'connected realm' shizzle. They could easily mass transfer all horde on a empty server and all alliance to another one and shut down the left over but no... Now we are 'connected'... Much better! -_-

[Metta World Peace]

Blizzard listened to the players who wanted to move for money, and this happened. Blizzard said no but the players insisted, and expecting Blizzard to now go back on the service, thus being unfair to future players who would seek to use such a service, or more importantly make it FREE after they had intended to never have it in the first place is ridiculous.

Why in gods name would Blizzard turn down a money tree? In any business, money talks and that's what they listened to...

Your argument reminds me about how Rob Pardo said that "players asked for the auction house" for Diablo 3. And what do you know, his PR stunt worked!

[Tharkkun]

Yes because at least it gets the damn job done instead of pussyfooting around with band aid fixes that just kick the can down the curb. CRZ and coalesced realms are non-committal "fixes" that haven't fixed anything. These two "fixes" have caused more headaches than forced server merges would without providing an actual increased community like actual merges would.

I'd rather they go through with merges similar to that which Bioware did with TOR. Yep, those hurt because you could lose your name, legacy name, or guild name. However, the health of the overall game comes first. People will get over the loss of an avatar or guild name.

They've been doing 5+ servers a week again. If you expected connections to continue throughout the holidays you're high. Since they started with the lowest pop servers the overall effect will be slower. Some of those servers had 50-100 people total online during prime time. So it might take 20 before they reach medium but they will get there.

Plus with 100 million unique accounts, up to 50 toons per account, you have a potential for a lot of pissed off players when all their names are taken and their addons are f'd because their character's name has changed. Returning players would be met with a shit storm of issues that could potentially cause them to toss their hands in the air and quit again.

That's why they didn't do forced mergers. They actually care about their players. (Incoming negativity)

[Ytlayol]

I would honestly unsub at this point if you are on a dead realm. They are incredibly slow at updating their own game, so who knows when your realm will be taken care of.

[Tharkkun]

Can we get rid of this myth please? I can only guess the Blizzard PR department has spun this line of bullshit so many times that people are starting to believe it.

Nobody. NOBODY, was asking for PAID transfers. They may well have been asking for transfers, but no way were they clamoring for a PAID service to be offered. And this is the problem, because if the transfers were on a LONG cooldown for each character (lets say around 6 months or a year) then people would be able to move their characters if they needed to, without having to find $150 to move all the alts that they had built up on a server. By allowing transfers, then making it not only paid but stupidly expensive, Blizzard created the situation we see today.

Paid services in a subscription game. Never a good idea.

At the time paid transfers were implemented it was standard in the MMO industry for paid transfers. People were begging for paid transfers as the game expanded and friends were on the wrong servers.

[cFortyfive]

Why in gods name would Blizzard turn down a money tree?

In general certainly but I wouldn't be that sure without seeing the actual numbers if giving people no way out from those shit servers but paying or quitting really worked out in their favor especially when they started to get competition on the online market.

[Deleted]

and who is at fault? blizzard some how made "blah blah" realm "best for pvp" or "best for pve" ?


of course not, people wanted a way to move their character to those "blah blah" realms so they gave it to them @ a cost cause other wise people would do it all the time.

Of course not - but they are to blame for allowing people to leave their realms to join community-favored realms by throwing money at them. For example - Talnivarr EU would have not died if over 3/4 of the players didn't run off to Stormscale. It was a healthy realm like a lot of Horde PvP realms but once FC came out slowly the fullest 3 or 4 PvP realms just absorbed a large amount of the pvp community from Medium PvP realms.

[MoanaLisa]

Trying hard to imagine who in this thread would be outraged if Blizzard had been telling them "too bad, so sad" if they wanted to leave their realm but couldn't after nine years. Somehow I don't think the cast of characters would change very much.

[arcaneshot]

Can we get rid of this myth please? I can only guess the Blizzard PR department has spun this line of bullshit so many times that people are starting to believe it.

Nobody. NOBODY, was asking for PAID transfers. .

Hate to break it to you, but people were asking for paid transfers.

[rhorle]

because if the transfers were on a LONG cooldown for each character (lets say around 6 months or a year) then people would be able to move their characters if they needed to

If you don't want to talk about myths you shouldn't try to create one yourself. Any person that is knowledgeable on the subject would clearly see that people would then ask for the cool down to be shorter. Or for a way to transfer before the cool down is up by spending real money. There is nothing inherently wrong with paid services in a subscription game.

If paying for services is bad, it would be bad regardless of the revenue model for the game. Because the service being offered is the same regardless of how people pay (or dont pay) to play to your game.

There was also originally a 6 month cool down, that was shortened to a month, and then 3 days.

- - - Updated - - -

Of course not - but they are to blame for allowing people to leave their realms to join community-favored realms by throwing money at them. For example - Talnivarr EU would have not died if over 3/4 of the players didn't run off to Stormscale. It was a healthy realm like a lot of Horde PvP realms but once FC came out slowly the fullest 3 or 4 PvP realms just absorbed a large amount of the pvp community from Medium PvP realms.

But why is it wrong for Blizzard to allow the community to go to community favored servers? Why is it some how better to have forced 3/4ths of a servers population to remain on a realm that they did not want to be on just for the sake of it?

[ComputerNerd]

Blizzard put in paid transfers. Lots of people used paid transfers, resulting in servers with low populations or imbalances. Because of the problems with low/imbalanced servers, more people ended up having to pay for transfers to get the gameplay that their subscription SHOULD provide for them. Servers get worse, resulting in more people using the paid service. And so on.

Lets go back to the start of that little sequence shall we? Blizzard put in paid transfers. Blizzard. Everything else followed from there.

Yet according to you people are "stupid" for blaming Blizzard for this problem. This is a "player problem". I would suggest you rethink this point of view, since the facts don't appear to support it.

A realm is dead or well populated for one reason, players migrated away from or to it.
Yes, it is a player problem.
That is a fact.
Blizzard did not move a player, they did.

If a realm community sucks so much that people move away from it, who else made it that way but the players in it.
Something makes players move away from a realm in the first place, something that does not happen on every realm.
Therefore it is players that start the ball rolling in the first place.

What would happen if transfers were not an option ? How many would simply stop playing if they had a substantial time investment in one or more character on a certain realm and had no option of getting out without starting again.

Transfers cost as it should not be a trivial decision.
But the fact that realms can be hit so substantially as to kill their population shows quite clearly that the cost is acceptable to enough of the playerbase.

[Pann]

A realm is dead or well populated for one reason, players migrated away from or to it.
Yes, it is a player problem.
That is a fact.

It wasn't the players that drove almost half the player base away in two expansions.

[Huehuecoyotl]

A realm is dead or well populated for one reason, players migrated away from or to it.
Yes, it is a player problem.
That is a fact.

You may wish to invest in a dictionary. "Fact" does not mean what you think it does.

[rhorle]

It wasn't the players that drove almost half the player base away in two expansions.

The irony is that the players are the ones who made the decision to stop paying.

- - - Updated - - -

You may wish to invest in a dictionary. "Fact" does not mean what you think it does.

Paid transfers routinely hit their queue limit when they were first released. People wanted to transfer, paid or not. Why is it wrong that Blizzard charged for it? Even though it is all digital information demand on servers still costs real money.