Anyone in the EU noticed they tampered with server population levels?

[Khallid]

Since late WOD until around 2 days ago you could see in EU most servers as "low" due to "increased capacity" they implemented before Legion. Recently I noticed the amount of servers marked as low was diminished and even dead zones tumbleweeds rolling like Moonglade EU (low pop RP PVE server) are marked as "medium". The only server still marked as low among many low pop servers where I hold alts is Darkmoon Faire (another dead RP PVE server) there are others but I never played on these, while several servers ascended to "full" status (Silvermoon, Draenor, Argent Dawn, Kazzak, Twisting Nether). Some servers are marked as "high" even though I sincerely doubt so, like Azjol-Nerub (https://www.wowprogress.com/pve/eu/c...ed-azjol-nerub).

Why do you think it's so? Did they remove the increased capacity because it's no longer needed? Are they preparing for more merges so they don't want returning for BFA players to join Full / High servers? Are they trying to mask the problem majority of servers are deserted and players joining these are making themselves are huge disservice that will bite them down the line? Do you think on inconspicuous morning of 8th of June suddenly a million player joined and population levels rose? (I don't believe that, it's not even prepatch yet)

I'm wondering if anyone else noticed this or is it just something weird with my client.

There's nothing else I hate more in WOW and Blizzard management than holding people hostage on low pop servers under extortionate transfer fees and killing any community these servers could have. Especially if anyone read last week's "mythic raiding feedback" official forum threads, you'd see at least half the posters have problems recruiting for their guilds due to being either on unfavourable faction (Alliance) or small server, and therefore being unable to field 20 people even for casual progression.

Last thing we need is Blizzard hiding head in the sand and claiming "population levels and number of server clusters currently are fine", the situation has been atrocious for at least 1,5 year, and probably more like since mass exodus of people during WOD.

It probably just leaves a bad impression of the game being dead if all the servers have "low" population.

The situation is not atrocious enough that they don't make money, or they would stop making more expansions. If they don't expect a massive surge of new players then the "low population" servers would never change their status. The only way to make them look less dead is to lower the cap.

[Marrilaife]

If they don't expect a massive surge of new players then the "low population" servers would never change their status. The only way to make them look less dead is to lower the cap.

How about more merges / connections and fixing the situation instead of masking it. We haven't had any for 4-5 years now. Makes me sad when the same common crafting mats I sell regularly on the "full" servers return unsold for weeks on the other servers because ofc no one is buying anything there, the economy is dead. Without raiding guilds there's no need for consumables, with no need for consumables there's no need to craft stuff, so neither mats nor the crafted goods sell.

Low pops were cool when you could go farm rares for mounts or tame rare hunter pets with no competition. That's gone due to CRZ. What's not gone is the crippled economy these servers have.

[Khallid]

How about more merges / connections and fixing the situation instead of masking it. We haven't had any for 4-5 years now. Makes me sad when the same common crafting mats I sell regularly on the "full" servers return unsold for weeks on the other servers because ofc no one is buying anything there, the economy is dead. Without raiding guilds there's no need for consumables, with no need for consumables there's no need to craft stuff, so neither mats nor the crafted goods sell.

Low pops were cool when you could go farm rares for mounts or tame rare hunter pets with no competition. That's gone due to CRZ. What's not gone is the crippled economy these servers have.

Yeah merges is another way around it, I forgot about those. I'm a raider so I purposely go into high population realms, so I can't really say much about it.

On a random note, since you mentioned it, CRZ doesn't work well to tame rare hunter pets. You don't switch realms if you're the only person of the party in a given zone, no matter that you joined a group from another server. So any rare that spawns on a dead location with no people around prevents CRZ from happening. I've tried it

[Marrilaife]

On a random note, since you mentioned it, CRZ doesn't work well to tame rare hunter pets. You don't switch realms if you're the only person of the party in a given zone, no matter that you joined a group from another server. So any rare that spawns on a dead location with no people around prevents CRZ from happening. I've tried it

They nerfed realm hopping at the end of WOD due to rampant abuse, I myself joined the club of realm hop addon abusers when I wanted my predator title.

But what I mean is: before CRZ existed, you had no competition on low pops, people weren't zooming in and out to "steal" your rares, you could camp TLPD, rare spirit beasts, Aeonaxx etc. and get it 10 times easier than on high pop. That's completely gone with CRZ. You go out in the world and the world is sharded, if area has low pop, it automatically fills it up cross server, I can play in full realm but if I go to some godforsaken levelling zone no one picks, I will see cross realm people even without them grouping into my server - just as Blizzard mechanism to "keep the world populated". After server restarts I can enter class hall and see tons of cross realm people even though during prime time it'll be mostly my own server.

So yeah, you can't realm hop, but if you go to Twilight Highlands or Hyjal to camp rare spirit beasts... Be sure you will see cross realm hunters camping it, as they're placed in a CRZ phase, not each of you in your own realm. Less people in zone = more realms auto CRZ in by Blizzard, without addons or any input of yours.

Currently rare campers try to abuse the last remants of "no CRZ" which are RP realms, especially in EU you can group into french / german RP realms that have no CRZ on their own (but you can zone into one using a friend / multibox char on that realm), and yeah, you can group into non English realms even with English only client.

I reckon the EU English RP realms are CRZ with each other (as there are 3 clusters) but they are not auto CRZ with non RP realms unless you group into them.

I remember trying to find unborn valkyr pet (still didn't find one) back in WOD when realm hopping was in full force, and whole Northrend would have literally 1 copy of instance across all English pve and another 1 copy for English pvp, but you wouldn't find 20 different "realms". You could up your chances trying the other language clusters, but generally if you play on low pop hoping you go somewhere and be alone uncontested... forget it.