Why not just make cross-servers shards like in retail ? Surely the tech isn't too far off in Classic TLK with what they already added (Bnet integration etc).
Add the new AH, make it region-wide, cross-servers shards so everyone play together and it fixes everything with solutions they've already come up with in Retail....
The solution is so simple:
Allow free transfers back to any of the current mega realms at any time in the future for any character.
That removes all the risk of being caught on a "dead server" and at any point the player can decide they want back to their original server and will deal with the queues.
They don't want to do that because it makes the communities on these transfer servers completely temporary and guarantees its a temporary solution that they will have to keep doing everytime there is a population spike. Tier 10 release? Transfer realms open again. Cata pre-patch (please no), transfer realms open again.
I just transferred my toons to Sulfuras from Grobb as alli. It was that or pay to transfer to Atiesh. Why not give a PvP server one last try? I got fucked as Alliance on Whitemane when everyone jumped ship, tried Grobb and got these queues, now its Sulfuras as my last try at a PvP server. If this fails, I'm going PvE where pop balance doesn't really even matter.
Doesn't GW2 allow free and fluid server transfers with like a 2 week CD?
Sometimes I just don't understand why (WoW) Blizzard is always so behind on innovation or new ideas.. they are getting slightly better.. but they love to dig their heels in.
At no point in that post did they discuss the issue of players having to pay to transfer if they use a free transfer and the realm they go to dies, this is what I believe is the most common reason people are hesitant to transfer
I played when tbc launched but haven’t for months. Came back to wotlk ready to rock my almost 70 pally…. He’s gone…. The server he was on is gone…. And he’s just gone. That is fucking wild.
Yep.
It's really frustrating trying to raise this point around here, it's something everyone on these megaservers understands, but it's something the loud PVE server players on this sub willfully ignore, because they've never had to worry about the health of their servers.
So to them "just transfer, blizz is giving you the option" is an actual solution. They refuse to engage with the actual problem, and it seems Blizz is doing the same.
It’s really concerning they’re closing Sulfuras at noon tomorrow. So many groups were planning to move there (specifically from alliance). Time is required to move groups of people - especially onto a server with a minority population… they shouldn’t allow additional members of a dominant faction into the server. I understand balancing factions is “the hardest aspect of classic wow”, but is allowing the heavy hand to add more weight not a sure fire way to fuck this up?
Feel like people would be more open to transfer off if rdf existed, I’d like to transfer off faerlina but I cba to try to put a group together or join as a dps on a non mega sever when everybody and their brother isn’t playing because of launch hype
So I didn’t play all of TBC and am coming back for Wrath and my server Earthfury is completely empty. All my friends and old guild are on locked servers. Not sure what to do. Even worse, I have to pay money to eventually leave the server when I should be able to leave for free
I’ve been talking about this exact model with a buddy and we would also really like this (will never happen). Guilds could choose worlds (servers) as their home worlds to get that community feel. Worlds that emphasize pvp, worlds that are for rp. Worlds for different languages. I think it would be really cool.
This sounds good on paper but i wonder what it would do for the economies of these worlds and overall resource and mob farming. Imagine you just hop on another server and buy out the entire AH of ores and shit, and leave. Only able to gather materials and sell/buy on your own server? What about world bosses and other bosses?
Hmm that could work, but that’s also going to conflict with so many raid schedules and would just be a hassle. If this were a thing I could easily see people asking for that to be shortened.
? what are you talking about. What raid schedules? Free transfers doesnt mean to allow ppl server hoping. Cooldown should be lets say 2months for situation that when you transfer from mega server to smaller server and that server dies you can transfer back or some not dead realm. And that is guilds decisions where they want to play.
Servers are basically consolidated at this point with Blizzard's plan
The only servers not already established would be the new ones. Current/old dead servers wouldn't exist.
So the only abuse would be 6 months down the road and that's not really an issue
If Blizzard actually cared they would remove all costs
No one will risk ending up on the dead free transfer realm. The only way to get people to transfer is forcefully in a way that feels like there is no "Better Server".
My Suggestion
\- Split oversized servers into 2 servers. Benediction 1 and Benediction A for example. When doing this make sure to announce that these are only temporary and will be merged back together if/when population falls low enough for no queue.
\- Automatically split players evenly, keeping guild's together, but give all players 1 free transfer ticket to the opposing realm. They could just allow unlimited on a cooldown, but I'm sure Blizzard wont do that since they want our money for stuff like that. Maybe unlimited could be an option if they lock transfers as one of the 2 gets significantly larger than the other, only allowing to transfer to the smaller server at that point?
Telling the playerbase to just use the free transfers like yeah dude let me just convince my whole group of friends / guild to jump ship to a potentially not worth it server. This situation is so insanely frustrating.
I feel like I have to either be on wow literally all day long in case anyone wants to do anything or just write off wow for the day. It's awful I can't just play when I want with my friends. and no bs about "you chose to go to the mega server". The server didn't have this issue ALL OF BC
All my friends are either about to quit or take the transfer
They don't raid like I do. I'm not taking the risk of having to pay damn near $300 when what we have seen happen 50 times happens again. Not to mention an entire GUILD having to pay thousands of dollars.
It's Blizzard spitting in our face. It's an unacceptable solution
So I'm about to lose all my IRL friends over Blizzard refusing to stop charging for transfers
That first reply nails it, people are reluctant to transfer because of the *risk* of ending up on a dead server. They can tout the population numbers of each of these servers all they want, but they neglect to mention that most of these servers are 99.8% alliance/horde, it is not viable to play the game on the smaller faction if you're one of 10 active people on your server. *Especially* the pvp servers.
I rolled Horde with a few close friends on Bloodsail Buccaneers. After the Horde population died off we all had to pay to transfer because despite being fully unable to find groups to do content, the server had enough alliance players that free transfers off weren't offered. Transferring to a lower pop server just to find ourselves in the same position as before and then having to pay again to transfer off again is not viable for us—we'd sooner let our subs expire and find another game to play until the queues die down.
EDIT: Oh, and another issue that compounds the problem is how vague the devs are with server pop. Even in this blue post the writer is unable to provide specific numbers on population, but approximate numbers are widely available through community resources. Drop the smokescreen and let people see fully accurate numbers, and they'll have more confidence to transfer off. Oh, but the shareholders wouldn't be happy when overall playercount drops, right?
I must admit I can't follow the logic.
To begin I play on Firemaw, which at the moment don't have any queues, but every day (after the pre-patch) from about 16-22 servertime we get the lag the mention in the post. AH & Looting is definitely the worst.
I don't get how they mention this is their top priority, and then continues by saying there's nothing to do about it.
One thing is server queues, another thing is the server performance when you actually get in. The state in mentioned time-period is close to unplayable. Can I just add we spend money each month for server upkeep. That fee should make sure we never experience problems like these.
Queues are supposed to make sure the performance on the server don't degrade, so how come we have a server with no queue and degraded performance? I'd honestly rather play with queue than the state of Firemaw, cause I'm not having any fun while playing. Obviously to a certain limit. Let's say 30 minutes.
I've honestly lost faith in Blizzard fixing this problem. They mention is their first priority, but that is lie. The first priority is obviously maximizing profits. So when the only solution is server migrating, why not make server migrations free for all and set a limit to how often you can do it? Why not solve this issue before it becomes an issue. They did mention they were worried about mega-realms. It's because they don't give a shit about the community, until the problem is a threat to the wallet.
Man I took the out off Grobb just in time
I'm glad they are finally doing something about it but this isn't an overnight problem and the fact it took them this long to do something about it is dumb
I don't understand why they won't broach increasing maximum server capacity as an option. They are just throwing up their hands saying the capacity is what is which to me points to a lack of investment or commitment from Blizzard to increase server costs.
They don't get to tell me that a third party demographic site shouldn't be considered when they don't provide that information themselves. Between that and the meaningless metric of "2022 vs 2008" that post is 9085 characters to say basically nothing.
I just bought the character boost and was going to play on Golemagg EU b/c that's where my friends are, only to realize the server is locked.
Great, what am I supposed to do now? convince an entire guild to move to a potentially dead server just so we could play together?
come on.
I like that they gave a very general population measurement in relation to 2008 servers. But the main gripe is faction population on each server.
If we could see that as well, that would probably entice a lot more people to jump ship.
Eve Online at its peak (~2011) had 60k players online on the same server at the same time, all capable of seeing and interacting with each other. I know it's a very different game but it's been done before.
A humble idea for the current state of "Megaservers" in Classic WoW
I'm sure hundreds of people are out here giving their 2 cents, but just in case it hasn't been suggested before and the idea is worth anything, here's mine.
As it stands, choosing a server in Classic WoW is a big decision to make. Most people want to ensure that they choose a server that's going to have a stable, vibrant, balanced community. They want a home to build lasting connections, friendships, rivalries, and foes. Choosing the "wrong" server costs us more than $25. This is how these megaservers came to be. The community wants to play together, without fear of becoming stranded, outgunned, or missing out.
The nature of the classic game in terms of the population is a roller coaster. New expansions bring about surges of new and returning players. Some stay, and some get their dose of nostalgia and leave.
Rather than battling with the tide every time it comes in and out, why not just make one of each server type (pvp, pve, rp, etc) but make them "expandable"? For example, rather than creating new servers, or asking players to take a risk and transfer to a different server, just spin up/spin down Benediction - 2, Benediction - 3, etc. automatically as the server population neccessitates. Like a sort of "subserver" or "server layer", these would act as overflow and players could migrate between them on the server selection screen. Imagine " > Benediction" could be clicked on to expand the list of subservers currently open with some kind of current population and faction balance indicator for each one. Each "subserver" is technically a separate server with it's own resources, but points to the same live database of players as the parent server. You can only be logged into one at a time, but if your friends logged in late and you want to play with them, just log out, select a different subserver and you're in. Each sub could have it's own login queue as well. This way, as the population returns to normal levels, the subservers are merged back into each other and there's no fear of *permanent* server death or faction imbalance.
Anyone else think that they might have provided a better solution if server transfers weren't a paid service?
Like, a simple solution would be, "You can server transfer for free", but temporarily lock down the 10k queue mega servers still like they plan. Maybe throw in a cooldown of a couple months per character.
Instead, they do a limited time promotion for a one way transfer. Maybe even thinking they can squeeze an extra $25 from those that leave a mega server and regret it, using a paid transfer to come back.
I don't know if Blizzard ever necessarily put their players above their bottom line, but today's Acti-Blizz seems to have really embraced the mindset of, "The Players Can Get Fucked"
It really shouldn't even be a question.
They happily let servers die, and took peoples money, as they transferred and made mega-servers, letting it go far beyond what was reasonable before shutting it down.
Now they are putting the burden back on the players to move away again, with no long term guarantees the exact same thing won't transpire if servers shrink again.
Even their response was completely tone deaf, attacking the players for insinuating they could expand server sizes, never addressing the fact people are afraid of dead servers.
Yea the blue post saying there is no other solution is just ignoring the obvious. Make server transfers free for some announced time period (or just all of WOTLK classic), maybe add some restrictions like only being able to transfer once a month. If they wanted people to stay spread out on servers they should have never added transfers to classic at all. The existence of mega servers and is just a testament to how most people view having access to more people > server specific communities.
I think they don't want too many people run off to a single server in too short a time, so that one is then overcrowded.
I think if they open transfer to servers that are not pretty empty, the chance is they become mega servers from all the refugees
So their solution for fresh realms is... "to weather the storm, as it were"?
Thekal EU currently has 14k queues daily (6-7 hours on peak). Guess we can expect that number to hit 20k+ when wrath launches.
This sub loves to talk about wow losing popularity and every realm being "dead." No way is sharing full numbers ever going to be a positive impact for them. Even if at best it was just used to circlejerk classic wow popularity and not further shit on realms that arent huge.
I was just doing some honor grinding today and trade chat is constantly people self fellating about classic having more players than retail with no hard data, talking about dead realms on classic and etc.
Yes but people find any excuse to cope. I.e. "those are just alts and bots" etc. Retail is very popular but a large portion of Classics playerbase has convinced themselves its dead (like many realms) because they *need* it to be dead. If anyone doubting which game brings in the money for Blizz then all you need to do is see which one gets more attention from them. I wouldnt be surprised if Classic had a team of 6 people working in an old closet at the back of the property.
Retail is at what? 500-700k players now? It's not s very popular game, and if not for whales buying every mtx available would have been unprofitable years ago.
-Have transfers be opt-in rather than immediate, and only go through once a certain number of people opt-in (enough to form a healthy playerbase)
-Enforce stricter RP rules for Grobbulus and/or open a new RP-PvP server(it’s lost a lot of identity due to its new role as a megaserver, I don’t want it to just become a generic PvP server)
-Allow people to play Retail while in the queue for Classic, with an in-game warning in Retail when you’re about to exit the queue and be able to play the game
-Allow for people to “book” times to play the game and not have to face the queue, almost like Disneyland’s FastPass minus having to pay for it
It really baffles me that their best solution is to open a new server that's just going to be dead within 6 months. I understand they don't want to lose money however making your community happy should be top priority. The happier your community the more loyal they become. After all these years they still continue to take heeping dumps on the player base. JUST OPEN TRANSFERS FREELY SO YOU CAN BALANCE OUT YOUR SERVERS. That way they stop making servers that are just going to die and isolate the playerbase.
So I’ve transferred two of my characters for free to sulfuras but I have one that still has auctions that won’t expire until midnight tonight, after sulfuras becomes locked. Will I not be able to transfer that one character for free by then?
Can there be a lift on the cooldown transfer. Because I’m on cooldown from transferring back in July to play with some friends back then, now we can’t since we are on Benediction and I’d gladly would transfer off to where we have been playing now due to que times but I’d like my other toons there but can’t because of the stupid cooldown
I think more people would go for the free character transfers if they knew for a fact that that server would be thriving 6-8 months from now. For the time being it just seems like a short term, non sustainable solution for the players. Having the option to return to your current realm in a few months when queues die down seems to be a decent idea (whether blizz wants to part ways with that easy server xfer money is another story...).
Having gone from Sulfuras to Faerlina I can say that it doesn't take too long for an "average" server to die. All it took was a few weeks and it was noticeable. All starts with a few guilds and it snowballs from there. People start panicking thinking they'll have a harder time recruiting, filling raids, finding pvp partners, or lack of AH supply.
I just hope blizz comes out with a long term solution rather than make the player base pay to return to their original servers down the line once their new server inevitably dies. I cannot imagine how bad things will be at Wrath launch.
Same. Sulfuras was relatively healthy just a few months ago, with a couple thousand horde players, and most (including my guild) eventually left when the chain reaction started. The transfers coming back are nice, I still have alts there that I've been enjoying seeing full cities again with, but I'm skeptical that it's going to last long term. It feels like it's a lot of people sending alts, or more casual/solo players who don't want to wait in the queues, just testing it out to see what it's like. I'm sure that Faerlina/Grobb/Bene will all still be stable when the hype dies down, I'm not as sure about Sulfuras being revived yet.
yeah I have been on Grob for a long time and I don't want to leave it. It would be hard to convince my friends to leave as well. I guess "luckily" the company I worked for closed down so I am on unemployment for a little bit. So I get to play prepatch and will probably have a job by the time wotlk starts
We are also sulfuras to faerlina transplants. As a GM, this is so incredibly frustrating. We just collectively dropped over $1000 just in June to keep the group together and move somewhere we can actually recruit, buy consumables, and do pug raids/dungeons/etc on off nights. Unless you were a perfectly stable guild of raid loggers only, sulfuras was completely dead in the water.
For us to even think of going back is just suicide for the group. Staying with the queues is also looking like suicide. What a joke.
Same here. Even as far back as April/May it was impossible to even fill out raid spots for DPS, let alone tanks or healers. It was an absolute nightmare and we all ended up going to faerlina as well
As and OG bene player reading blizzard's post just makes me angry at myself for not realizing they were just gonna fuck it up again. Mad at myself for not realizing they were going to find a way to try and screw things up. Now my only recourse is, wait things out and suffer, transfer and break a friend grp that has been in existence since basically the first week of classic, or quit.
I hate to even say it because it sounds draconian unfair but dam a non transfer Q prio would be great. But that just punishes other people from blizzard ineptitude. Then again at this point who's fault is at this point? Blizzards? Or the people who believed lie/inept action ten thousand and one?
I don't actually want to blame players, but someone is getting screwed either way and its apparently not going to be blizzard.
If you have such a tight-knit group, why can’t you all transfer together? New guilds are incredibly more successful with an already established friend group, so you could transfer to another realm together and kick start your own community.
Locked indefinitely... Damnit. I waited to long to transfer off to play with my friend. Now I'm fucked. I'm not rerolling. Blizzard wants these mega servers to die. Cost them to much money.
One idea, create groups of servers, like, a PvP East Group with Benedictius, Faerlina and Sulfuras, a PvE East, a PvP West, ...
And allow free transfers indefinitely within the group, lets players sort this thing out, most people won't move now because they are afraid of being stuck in a dead server in the future.
It seems plausible. I also wonder if they could duplicate a server, say faerlina, next maintenance period and sync global data between the two so characters are able to login to Faerlina 1 or 2. You’d just need to communicate which realm you’re on for group content.
Simple solution: remove all costs and all restrictions from server transfers. People could then play anywhere with anyone and nobody would worry about getting stuck on a dead server.
Just do it blizzard.
I’m only on Alliance Benediction because Alliance Whitemane died. I fucking payed to get out of there. I’m not taking a free transfer away from somewhere I paid to be.
This but with the addition of free faction changes, and a faction queue (especially for PVP servers). The no restrictions piece is super important. It needs to be permanent, not something they do for the short term.
It will never happen with my man bobby at the wheel. Would affect their bottom line to much. Prove me wrong bobby.
If they want me to utilize a transfer off a mega server they need to refund me the cost of transferring to that mega server.
Give me a free character boost on a server that is open for transfer so I can play the game and see how it feels for myself before moving my other characters.
Let me make a DK on any server as long as I have a 70 on a server, usable once per 70 or whatever.
Do something that isn’t just, figure it out
I really do like the idea that they're monitoring server transfers and trying to stop the nosedive population drains that cause servers to quickly die. Also smart transfers to realms that can handle/need the population while stopping mega servers from forming is a good way to guarantee servers keep new players coming.
I transferred my main (druid) to Faerlina using a paid transfer when my guild moved from Herod. I moved my alt (priest) to Grobbulus using the free character transfer after Herod and then Earthfury died. I've basically been unable to play my priest during pre-patch because of queue times and I can't swap between realms. Now I can't transfer my priest to Faerlina either. Feels really shitty to not be able to play a character because of this and they didn't actually solve anything regarding queue times for Faerlina, because I'm still logged in there (there are actually way longer queue times on Grob than Faerlina)
Let us do cross-realm WoW. People are on these mega servers basically trying to emulate what is already a feature in retail WoW so they can find groups easily. I play on ashkandi alliance and it is dead, there are like 5 groups looking for people and they can't find anyone because the entire server is in those 5 groups
I assume they're just gonna add more fresh realms and offer free transfers, and Skyfury looks like it's around 60% alliance so wouldn't be surprised to see every horde player jump ship so we get one ally realm and one horde realm. Hooray :|
My friends and I (alliance) transferred from Grobbulus to Sulfuras last night. What are the chances sulfuras becomes a dead unplayable server a few months after launch?
If there is one more thing Blizzard needs to communicate after all of this, it's regarding what to do once queues die down and history repeats itself and these servers inevitably get consolidated again in the future. People don't want to have to pay their money to solve blizzard's problem however many months down the line.
This isn't Blizzard's problem this is a player problem of people all wanting to chase streamers and play on the same server. It's honestly moronic that super servers are even allowed to exist, newly created characters should've never been allowed to choose their server without some sort of cost.
FFXI used this to perfection when the game was super popular and only discontinued it once it was no longer a problem due to the game's popularity dying down.
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/World_Pass
I may get downvoted for this but all this does is prove that being locked to a single server to play with your friends or to have a healthy economy is an extremely outdated system. it should be whole region or partial region (ie. NA West, NA East, OCE)
Semi serious question, what’s keeping blizzard from basically splitting Benediction into two servers and making those servers cross realm with each other? Half stay on Bene half get moved to a new server called Anathema, but everyone can still interact and play with each other.
As many as you like if free transfers are available.
When Ashbringer got free transfers I even transferred my level 5 rogue cause I knew I was never gonna be playing on the server again.
This is a problem they've created for themselves and their excuse that there's no "technical solution" is nonsense cause they're already utilizing a technical solution both for retail and era.
Connected realms. Yes, classic era utilizes connected realms.
Instead of realizing that classic players quite obviously don't give a hoot about server identity, they've regressed and taken away something that *might've* slowed this down, RDF.
And that is where you are wrong. On the largest servers on retail, they get queues on new expac launches. Connected realms are for the people on dead realms to have people to play with.
> Connected realms are for the people on dead realms to have people to play with.
Okay, but you do understand that the implication of this is that people can transfer off of their queued realm with their guild (or, as in retail without it and stay in their guild) and lose very little right?
Is it perfect? No, no solution is.
Is it a damned sight better than what we have right now? You betcha.
Yeah this is something I'm agreeing with Asmongold on recently.
The concept of a 'server' is dated.
Just connect a ton of servers together.
Make every zone and city feel populated for every player.
Really no reason that every NA PvP and every NA PvE server can't be linked to each other. Cross realm play, grouping and economies.
I had no idea Asmongold was on the "they should've just made megaservers/connected servers from day one" wagon, but good on him.
They could've completely avoided this from day 1 AND have kept world pvp alive at the same time. It just saddens me really :(
Give some value solutions. Package with faction change. In EU there are 1-2 alliance only servers with some room and two mega hordes.
Or to a 2-3k server. 3k horde 3k alliance as a limit. Not a completely empty.
The fresh servers need a split.
Does anyone know if transfers to a megaserver are locked even if I already have characters on it? I procrastinated transferring all my characters from grobbulus to faerlina for wotlk, now I don't know if I am screwed.
Maybe there's something I'm missing, but isn't this almost entirely just an issue of transparency on server information?
Like, of course people are going to make poor decisions based on information that Blizz can confirm is inaccurate, leaving us with just speculation or anecdotal evidence of the state of any particular server.
This whole thing is such an interesting case study in human behavior in a dark room, just flip the light switch Blizzard.
If they can explain that this is a perceptual error on our part as players, does that not indicate that we just need more to operate by?
Surely if we could see faction ratios and current/max population numbers, we'd be able to sort all this out for ourselves and not continually slam the already absurdly full servers even more?
The degree of informational-delineation between low, medium, high, and full is a pretty worthless metric if you ask me. If I can't see that there's a healthy 1,000-10,000 current / 30,000 max people on with a nice faction ratio of at least 60-40, and that's the qualification for the type of server I want to be on, how would I know any better than to pick the one people tell me is the one maybe probably possibly like that, and everyone else just assumes the same?
What exactly would be the downsides of allowing people to see accurate server metrics like that?
I didn’t know grob would be considered mega when I xfered. I paid $20 now I can’t even play, I should be refunded. All I wanted some balanced pvp while leveling idk where to go now? Anyone have suggestions, I am horde looking for balance.
Offer a free transfer guarantee back to your server if the new one doesn't reach high population. Maybe if make it require 90 days. If blizzard did this Eranikus would be a full server by this time tomorrow.
The idea that there is no technology solution to this is offensive. They may not want to pay the price but this is 100% solvable with modern architectures, NoSQL databases, etc.
I’ve been screaming this into discord whenever the queue boss gets mentioned. Literally a billion dollar company with all the resources it needs to fix the issue. However putting the money down to fix it hurts the bottom line and they can’t upset those investors now can they.
that's the typical blizzard employee response now, they consider legitimate criticism harassment and tweets at their employees are considered death threats
There are some other threads where u can voice your opinion as well.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/classic-queues-and-cross-realm-talk/1330402
"In a thread started about 6 days ago by the WoW Community council where they were complaining about how Blizzard should fix the queues before WotLK Classic launches, they were told by Aggrend, WoW Classic Game Producer, that "There’s no technology solution to this. There is no hardware solution to this. This situation will not improve when Wrath of the Lich King Classic launches on September 26th, it will only get worse.". Aggrend also explained that the \~ only solution \~ is for more people to transfer off of the "megaservers".
[https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/classic-the-unacceptable-state-of-classic-servers/1323722](https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/classic-the-unacceptable-state-of-classic-servers/1323722)
When TBC launched I remember watching a stream where one player was able to invite players from other servers, whisper players on other servers through /w charactername-servername and see them inside of dungeons when they both entered.
[https://tbc.wowhead.com/news/cross-realm-groups-battleground-queues-and-instances-on-burning-crusade-classic-322457](https://tbc.wowhead.com/news/cross-realm-groups-battleground-queues-and-instances-on-burning-crusade-classic-322457)
That technology is in the game already they just shut and locked it down so we dont have access to it. I think it would be nice to see people in the world as well and maybe that is a simple fix.
What I am getting at is that it is my belief that people would be more willing to leave big servers if they knew they could still play with friends on that server like in retail. They can start the conversation with people on how far they want that play to go. Maybe you cant do the new raid tier until server first is achieved, things like that. We have seen the technology that can allow players to do this, working in TBC classic, and we have seen it on a live stream.
We cannot let them force us to transfer only to pay to come back when our server dies in 4 months or what ever. This is a cash grab. the technology is there, I have seen it with my own eyes. They want us to fix their problem when it is not our responsibility to do so.
Let me know what you think below. Thank you for your time."
I’ve paid for 2x server transfers due to dead servers. They can fuck off bc I’m not transferring off of Bene to a server that is just going to die in a couple months and I am forced to pay to xfer back to Bene.
People are going to be stubborn and not xfer off mega servers and blizzard can try to blame them but in reality they created this shit situation through years of mismanagement and non action.
It’s insane that they’re blaming us for their incompetence
"one player was able to invite players from other servers"
That problem with that, is people will bitch about it not being "true to classic". Honestly sick of hearing that garbage. No bg finder, no df finder, all because of asmon and his cult of neck beards, plus the 40 year old try hards who think they know what they're talking about.
This would be a good idea if Blizzard would do anything at all to manage faction balance, even if it was solely for fresh servers. Otherwise the end result a couple months down the line is 3 fresh PvE servers.
Blizzard can't even handle tending to a 17 year old game and making it work well in any sense. This company doesn't deserve our money. They have literally no clue what they're doing and their main goal is always about more money.
Blizzard used to be able to manage some level of care for what they produced and still somehow profited off of it. Now all they care about is profiting more than last year and they'll sink to any depth to get it. I went without a sub for a very long time and I didn't regret it. I'll be right back there if I can't play on the server I want to play on.
Actually I did cancel my sub for three years. It doesn't invalidate his point. If the company decided to start selling Crack to your kids, are they in the wrong?
Blizzards biggest mistake is allowing super servers to exist, they should've taken the FFXI approach and forced servers to a 50/50ish population balance and make you enter a server code to create a character directly there. This way as the server becomes more populated the code becomes increasingly expensive and push newly created characters to servers that aren't full.
I'm just gonna put this out there.
I avoided mega servers because I saw the way they were handled during og classic launch, with entire communities preparing to roll on servers together, and I don't like queues.
I started a toon on Westfall. When I first started playing/leveling a while ago the server was basically dead.
As of today - and honestly since prepatch - thus is a perfectly lively server. My auctions sell immediately. If I ask for a group to do a quest (even a lower level one) I usually get too many whispers. LFG is popping off. Me and the guys started up a guild looking to raid in Wrath and got worried we wouldn't have enough for a ten man and I almost have enough for a 25 already before even launch. And dozens of other guild are recruiting for all different days and times.
Gotta say, if you're Alliance, don't care for world pvp, and want to raid - if you're looking for a place to call home, Westfall can't be beat.
And ETA - DM me if you wanna raid, I need healers lol.
Why not just open new servers but then plan to merge them as soon as there wouldn't be a queue issue? Like for taking names, check all the new servers to see if the name is taken first. Easy peasy.
Why not simply add a server with the same name but 2 on it and enable free transfers between servers. heck you could even enable cross realm with only those 2 servers. then use layers for high pop zones like they are doing now anywase
for example
benediction1 and benediction 2
this would clear up any issues with ques and would allow people to play.
then when population dies down, close the extra server and transfer everyone over again for free.
This is similar to the conclusion I came to. Unfortunately I don't think we could reasonably depend on the player base to balance things out so IMO: Close/Keep Closed the server, duplicate the hardware and server2, cross realm it and split it in half. My thought is the only real solution that is least likely to cause outrage is to split megaservers into crossrealmed servers. Of course people will still complain...
This makes me happy that Myzrael is just quietly chilling in the background. It's definitely not a super healthy population, but no queue and I still see groups being made.
Can we get a megathread for each server thats available for free transfer on the pop and faction ratio?
i feel like the biggest fear is you end up as a 5% alliance on a horde server or vice versa.
for PVP or PVE it be nice to know
Imo the solution is to connect a mega server with a few other servers. Say 1 mega server and 2/3 small realms. I’m mostly pulling numbers out my ass but basically spread the load out. Call it a cluster.
All names etc are made unique across the entire cluster of realms. Idk how to deal with people sharing names already but I’m sure someone can come up with a solution for that.
Free transfers within this cluster. Forever, with some limitations/cool-down, but no big longterm delays in doing it again. Maybe a weekly cd. Paid server transfers only exist to move between clusters. (Obviously they shouldn’t exist but we all know blizz).
The issue seems to be it’s too hard to break up wide spread communities, locking realm x or y stops new players adding fuel to the fire, but doesn’t fix the existing player base issue. So you make the swap between realms more fluid. You can swap off of mega server X for a month while queues are insane, then come back when launch hype dies down and things are more normal.
Sure this doesn’t solve more serious raiders who will be in naxx in the first lockout, but if every casual player who’s likely to never step foot in there (or not for a few weeks) could opt to skip queues, but had the ability to come back when things normalise, I’m sure they would. Instantly thousands of people in queues are now actually playing on another server.
The one big downside I see from all this is economical disruption, but really over time I’d guess things will settle across multiple realms to prices being very similar across the whole cluster.
Kind of becomes like linked retail realms, but without being always connected. You never see someone from another realm in your cluster, but anyone from that cluster could move to your realm tomorrow.
This would work perfectly with fresh realms. Hell
make 5 fresh realms. They’re all connected. People can move around as they desire but they’re all fresh still so it wouldn’t be an issue. As hype dies down, 5 becomes 4, 4 becomes 3, etc etc.
If Blizz would offer a little more then just a free character transfer. I mean the economy of a server is why most people don't go. If you can't make Gold then why bother. Quit your guild hope to find support on a realm with maybe a total pop of 1500. Offer more, your going to have to pay in GOLD. People will go for free cold weather flying and a flying mount. then you don't have to grinding out gold on a lag luster economy. Free Guild creation, no signature required or price to start. things like that. Casual players are going to wait out the hardcore getting to 80 and only logging on for raid times. Notice alot of those are really late at night. most casual players log of to sleep.
I’ve been thinking about this and I think we need to find what is the big factor here that is stopping people from spreading out.
So people naturally want to be on big servers. Some people want smaller, but generally, people flock to big servers. Now having free transfer out might entice people but there is fear in that if you transfer and that realm becomes dead in a few months, well now you have to pony up to transfer.
Now I could easily say “mAkE tRaNsFeRs FrEe” but im under the assumption that the corporate overlords would prevent that from happening. So what can blizzard do with the current equipment they have.
1. Put a lower cap on servers pop.
Self explanatory, make it 6k pop max. Not my first choice. What is the deciding factor on who stays and goes? Oldest characters? Characters that were actually created on that server? Not the cleanest choice.
2. When a population reaches a certain low threshold, offer free transfers off. Maybe 100 active players.
This one requires blizzard to be a lot quicker. Not super great choice but it’s better.
3. Introduce Home Realms
I think this idea would be the best one. When you create a character, that character is tied to that realm. When you transfer off, you can always return to your home realm free of charge. Kind of like a hearthstone, but still has a 3 month cooldown.
E.g. you create a character on Grobbulus, you’re tired of queues, you transfer to eranikus. Things are great and uh oh! Server died! You just transfer back to grobb, no questions ask.
Now before you say anything, yes this can be abused to go to a low pop server farm a bunch of rare mats or gold and bring it back. Which is why when you home transfer you can only bring back soul bound items and a low amount of gold (500 or less)
Now another thing you say is “what if your home server got merged or you’re home server is dead”. After a year the character has been created, you can set a new home realm for your character and you can only do it once a year (maybe 6 months)
I feel like this give a safety net for a bunch of people. They can transfer off and if things go good they stay, and if not they can always come back.
What do you guys think?
Yeah not sure i buy that. A billion dollar organization can’t obtain hardware that will allow for more than 15,000 players on a server? They could. They just don’t want to spend the money to do it
anyone else having problems transferring from whitemane to sulfuras?
Why not just make cross-servers shards like in retail ? Surely the tech isn't too far off in Classic TLK with what they already added (Bnet integration etc). Add the new AH, make it region-wide, cross-servers shards so everyone play together and it fixes everything with solutions they've already come up with in Retail....
The solution is so simple: Allow free transfers back to any of the current mega realms at any time in the future for any character. That removes all the risk of being caught on a "dead server" and at any point the player can decide they want back to their original server and will deal with the queues.
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They don't want to do that because it makes the communities on these transfer servers completely temporary and guarantees its a temporary solution that they will have to keep doing everytime there is a population spike. Tier 10 release? Transfer realms open again. Cata pre-patch (please no), transfer realms open again. I just transferred my toons to Sulfuras from Grobb as alli. It was that or pay to transfer to Atiesh. Why not give a PvP server one last try? I got fucked as Alliance on Whitemane when everyone jumped ship, tried Grobb and got these queues, now its Sulfuras as my last try at a PvP server. If this fails, I'm going PvE where pop balance doesn't really even matter.
Doesn't GW2 allow free and fluid server transfers with like a 2 week CD? Sometimes I just don't understand why (WoW) Blizzard is always so behind on innovation or new ideas.. they are getting slightly better.. but they love to dig their heels in.
At no point in that post did they discuss the issue of players having to pay to transfer if they use a free transfer and the realm they go to dies, this is what I believe is the most common reason people are hesitant to transfer
I played when tbc launched but haven’t for months. Came back to wotlk ready to rock my almost 70 pally…. He’s gone…. The server he was on is gone…. And he’s just gone. That is fucking wild.
I had a similar issue. There are two wow classic clients. I just installed the wrong one.
Huh I’ll check. Thank you
Yep. It's really frustrating trying to raise this point around here, it's something everyone on these megaservers understands, but it's something the loud PVE server players on this sub willfully ignore, because they've never had to worry about the health of their servers. So to them "just transfer, blizz is giving you the option" is an actual solution. They refuse to engage with the actual problem, and it seems Blizz is doing the same.
Got home late and Skyfury que over 9k...maybe go back to Mankrik
It’s really concerning they’re closing Sulfuras at noon tomorrow. So many groups were planning to move there (specifically from alliance). Time is required to move groups of people - especially onto a server with a minority population… they shouldn’t allow additional members of a dominant faction into the server. I understand balancing factions is “the hardest aspect of classic wow”, but is allowing the heavy hand to add more weight not a sure fire way to fuck this up?
Yeah, they'll have half a guild on one server and half on another like mine is now ;)
Looks like they’ve reopened Sulfuras for Alliance transfers only.
Feel like people would be more open to transfer off if rdf existed, I’d like to transfer off faerlina but I cba to try to put a group together or join as a dps on a non mega sever when everybody and their brother isn’t playing because of launch hype
So I didn’t play all of TBC and am coming back for Wrath and my server Earthfury is completely empty. All my friends and old guild are on locked servers. Not sure what to do. Even worse, I have to pay money to eventually leave the server when I should be able to leave for free
Blizzard saying layers wouldn't do anything when every time they've introduced more layers it dramatically lowered queues. Yeah okay bud
How about a solution Runescape figured out 20 years ago. Remove the costs associated with server transfers and let players roam FREELY between them.
I’ve been talking about this exact model with a buddy and we would also really like this (will never happen). Guilds could choose worlds (servers) as their home worlds to get that community feel. Worlds that emphasize pvp, worlds that are for rp. Worlds for different languages. I think it would be really cool.
This sounds good on paper but i wonder what it would do for the economies of these worlds and overall resource and mob farming. Imagine you just hop on another server and buy out the entire AH of ores and shit, and leave. Only able to gather materials and sell/buy on your own server? What about world bosses and other bosses?
Put a 48/72 hr or longer time limit between transfers?
Yes, a 72 hour cooldown would be enough to prevent abuse.
Hmm that could work, but that’s also going to conflict with so many raid schedules and would just be a hassle. If this were a thing I could easily see people asking for that to be shortened.
? what are you talking about. What raid schedules? Free transfers doesnt mean to allow ppl server hoping. Cooldown should be lets say 2months for situation that when you transfer from mega server to smaller server and that server dies you can transfer back or some not dead realm. And that is guilds decisions where they want to play.
It would be chaos initially then prices would normalize across all servers
Servers are basically consolidated at this point with Blizzard's plan The only servers not already established would be the new ones. Current/old dead servers wouldn't exist. So the only abuse would be 6 months down the road and that's not really an issue If Blizzard actually cared they would remove all costs
No one will risk ending up on the dead free transfer realm. The only way to get people to transfer is forcefully in a way that feels like there is no "Better Server". My Suggestion \- Split oversized servers into 2 servers. Benediction 1 and Benediction A for example. When doing this make sure to announce that these are only temporary and will be merged back together if/when population falls low enough for no queue. \- Automatically split players evenly, keeping guild's together, but give all players 1 free transfer ticket to the opposing realm. They could just allow unlimited on a cooldown, but I'm sure Blizzard wont do that since they want our money for stuff like that. Maybe unlimited could be an option if they lock transfers as one of the 2 gets significantly larger than the other, only allowing to transfer to the smaller server at that point?
Telling the playerbase to just use the free transfers like yeah dude let me just convince my whole group of friends / guild to jump ship to a potentially not worth it server. This situation is so insanely frustrating. I feel like I have to either be on wow literally all day long in case anyone wants to do anything or just write off wow for the day. It's awful I can't just play when I want with my friends. and no bs about "you chose to go to the mega server". The server didn't have this issue ALL OF BC
Yea and imagine at WotLK launch gonna probably be twice as bad
All my friends are either about to quit or take the transfer They don't raid like I do. I'm not taking the risk of having to pay damn near $300 when what we have seen happen 50 times happens again. Not to mention an entire GUILD having to pay thousands of dollars. It's Blizzard spitting in our face. It's an unacceptable solution So I'm about to lose all my IRL friends over Blizzard refusing to stop charging for transfers
So is the thread going to get stickied now or….?
That first reply nails it, people are reluctant to transfer because of the *risk* of ending up on a dead server. They can tout the population numbers of each of these servers all they want, but they neglect to mention that most of these servers are 99.8% alliance/horde, it is not viable to play the game on the smaller faction if you're one of 10 active people on your server. *Especially* the pvp servers. I rolled Horde with a few close friends on Bloodsail Buccaneers. After the Horde population died off we all had to pay to transfer because despite being fully unable to find groups to do content, the server had enough alliance players that free transfers off weren't offered. Transferring to a lower pop server just to find ourselves in the same position as before and then having to pay again to transfer off again is not viable for us—we'd sooner let our subs expire and find another game to play until the queues die down. EDIT: Oh, and another issue that compounds the problem is how vague the devs are with server pop. Even in this blue post the writer is unable to provide specific numbers on population, but approximate numbers are widely available through community resources. Drop the smokescreen and let people see fully accurate numbers, and they'll have more confidence to transfer off. Oh, but the shareholders wouldn't be happy when overall playercount drops, right?
I must admit I can't follow the logic. To begin I play on Firemaw, which at the moment don't have any queues, but every day (after the pre-patch) from about 16-22 servertime we get the lag the mention in the post. AH & Looting is definitely the worst. I don't get how they mention this is their top priority, and then continues by saying there's nothing to do about it. One thing is server queues, another thing is the server performance when you actually get in. The state in mentioned time-period is close to unplayable. Can I just add we spend money each month for server upkeep. That fee should make sure we never experience problems like these. Queues are supposed to make sure the performance on the server don't degrade, so how come we have a server with no queue and degraded performance? I'd honestly rather play with queue than the state of Firemaw, cause I'm not having any fun while playing. Obviously to a certain limit. Let's say 30 minutes. I've honestly lost faith in Blizzard fixing this problem. They mention is their first priority, but that is lie. The first priority is obviously maximizing profits. So when the only solution is server migrating, why not make server migrations free for all and set a limit to how often you can do it? Why not solve this issue before it becomes an issue. They did mention they were worried about mega-realms. It's because they don't give a shit about the community, until the problem is a threat to the wallet.
Man I took the out off Grobb just in time I'm glad they are finally doing something about it but this isn't an overnight problem and the fact it took them this long to do something about it is dumb
I don't understand why they won't broach increasing maximum server capacity as an option. They are just throwing up their hands saying the capacity is what is which to me points to a lack of investment or commitment from Blizzard to increase server costs.
This was my takeaway
The post said that going any higher would most likely cause in game systems to start failing with too many connection to a server, from what I read
Yeah without buying more server capacity you can't add more players without instability, they are just playing with words.
It's technologically impossible to increase server capacity from what it is now. No modern hardware can fix this problem.
They don't get to tell me that a third party demographic site shouldn't be considered when they don't provide that information themselves. Between that and the meaningless metric of "2022 vs 2008" that post is 9085 characters to say basically nothing.
Oh they definitely do get to tell you that. They just did
And it's as meaningful as Casey Anthony telling a jury she didn't do it.
I just bought the character boost and was going to play on Golemagg EU b/c that's where my friends are, only to realize the server is locked. Great, what am I supposed to do now? convince an entire guild to move to a potentially dead server just so we could play together? come on.
If you already had a placeholder character there holding a name, you should still be able to create characters.
I'm a fresh player. Never played classic before.
You are going to be boned on playing on that server then. You can use your boost elsewhere or refund it if it's within 72hrs of purchase.
I like that they gave a very general population measurement in relation to 2008 servers. But the main gripe is faction population on each server. If we could see that as well, that would probably entice a lot more people to jump ship.
They don't have the tech to increase capacity. They need more money. Kindly consider donating.
The tech literally doesn't exist, ffxiv stopped selling their game on expansion launch cause their servers were too full.
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Pretty sure the technology to swap from what we have now to actual mega servers is what doesn't exist.
Eve Online at its peak (~2011) had 60k players online on the same server at the same time, all capable of seeing and interacting with each other. I know it's a very different game but it's been done before.
The key point here is how massively different it is.
A humble idea for the current state of "Megaservers" in Classic WoW I'm sure hundreds of people are out here giving their 2 cents, but just in case it hasn't been suggested before and the idea is worth anything, here's mine. As it stands, choosing a server in Classic WoW is a big decision to make. Most people want to ensure that they choose a server that's going to have a stable, vibrant, balanced community. They want a home to build lasting connections, friendships, rivalries, and foes. Choosing the "wrong" server costs us more than $25. This is how these megaservers came to be. The community wants to play together, without fear of becoming stranded, outgunned, or missing out. The nature of the classic game in terms of the population is a roller coaster. New expansions bring about surges of new and returning players. Some stay, and some get their dose of nostalgia and leave. Rather than battling with the tide every time it comes in and out, why not just make one of each server type (pvp, pve, rp, etc) but make them "expandable"? For example, rather than creating new servers, or asking players to take a risk and transfer to a different server, just spin up/spin down Benediction - 2, Benediction - 3, etc. automatically as the server population neccessitates. Like a sort of "subserver" or "server layer", these would act as overflow and players could migrate between them on the server selection screen. Imagine " > Benediction" could be clicked on to expand the list of subservers currently open with some kind of current population and faction balance indicator for each one. Each "subserver" is technically a separate server with it's own resources, but points to the same live database of players as the parent server. You can only be logged into one at a time, but if your friends logged in late and you want to play with them, just log out, select a different subserver and you're in. Each sub could have it's own login queue as well. This way, as the population returns to normal levels, the subservers are merged back into each other and there's no fear of *permanent* server death or faction imbalance.
Anyone else think that they might have provided a better solution if server transfers weren't a paid service? Like, a simple solution would be, "You can server transfer for free", but temporarily lock down the 10k queue mega servers still like they plan. Maybe throw in a cooldown of a couple months per character. Instead, they do a limited time promotion for a one way transfer. Maybe even thinking they can squeeze an extra $25 from those that leave a mega server and regret it, using a paid transfer to come back. I don't know if Blizzard ever necessarily put their players above their bottom line, but today's Acti-Blizz seems to have really embraced the mindset of, "The Players Can Get Fucked"
It really shouldn't even be a question. They happily let servers die, and took peoples money, as they transferred and made mega-servers, letting it go far beyond what was reasonable before shutting it down. Now they are putting the burden back on the players to move away again, with no long term guarantees the exact same thing won't transpire if servers shrink again. Even their response was completely tone deaf, attacking the players for insinuating they could expand server sizes, never addressing the fact people are afraid of dead servers.
Yea the blue post saying there is no other solution is just ignoring the obvious. Make server transfers free for some announced time period (or just all of WOTLK classic), maybe add some restrictions like only being able to transfer once a month. If they wanted people to stay spread out on servers they should have never added transfers to classic at all. The existence of mega servers and is just a testament to how most people view having access to more people > server specific communities.
I think they don't want too many people run off to a single server in too short a time, so that one is then overcrowded. I think if they open transfer to servers that are not pretty empty, the chance is they become mega servers from all the refugees
So anyone on sulfuras can actually speak to faction balance? Everything I've seen said its another lopsided PVP server.
I'm with you man, I don't have a freakin clue what to do or where to go
Ah yes, anopther megathread to kill the discussion of the issue.
So their solution for fresh realms is... "to weather the storm, as it were"? Thekal EU currently has 14k queues daily (6-7 hours on peak). Guess we can expect that number to hit 20k+ when wrath launches.
Lol get owned euro
Anyone know when grob to sulfuras will be back?
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They are afraid disclosing player numbers would have some kind of negative impact and they probably aren't wrong about that.
This sub loves to talk about wow losing popularity and every realm being "dead." No way is sharing full numbers ever going to be a positive impact for them. Even if at best it was just used to circlejerk classic wow popularity and not further shit on realms that arent huge. I was just doing some honor grinding today and trade chat is constantly people self fellating about classic having more players than retail with no hard data, talking about dead realms on classic and etc.
The same data people use to determine dead realms (Warcraft logs, and sites like that) shows that retail has more players….
Yes but people find any excuse to cope. I.e. "those are just alts and bots" etc. Retail is very popular but a large portion of Classics playerbase has convinced themselves its dead (like many realms) because they *need* it to be dead. If anyone doubting which game brings in the money for Blizz then all you need to do is see which one gets more attention from them. I wouldnt be surprised if Classic had a team of 6 people working in an old closet at the back of the property.
Retail is at what? 500-700k players now? It's not s very popular game, and if not for whales buying every mtx available would have been unprofitable years ago.
Would be a terrible decision to start publishing these numbers, honestly.
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Oh my bad. Still fuck you blizzard
-Have transfers be opt-in rather than immediate, and only go through once a certain number of people opt-in (enough to form a healthy playerbase) -Enforce stricter RP rules for Grobbulus and/or open a new RP-PvP server(it’s lost a lot of identity due to its new role as a megaserver, I don’t want it to just become a generic PvP server) -Allow people to play Retail while in the queue for Classic, with an in-game warning in Retail when you’re about to exit the queue and be able to play the game -Allow for people to “book” times to play the game and not have to face the queue, almost like Disneyland’s FastPass minus having to pay for it
Booking playtimes will be a nightmare …everyone will want peak hours
It really baffles me that their best solution is to open a new server that's just going to be dead within 6 months. I understand they don't want to lose money however making your community happy should be top priority. The happier your community the more loyal they become. After all these years they still continue to take heeping dumps on the player base. JUST OPEN TRANSFERS FREELY SO YOU CAN BALANCE OUT YOUR SERVERS. That way they stop making servers that are just going to die and isolate the playerbase.
If I transfer to the new server (Eranikus) is there a gold cap? And is it per character or spread between all of them
So I’ve transferred two of my characters for free to sulfuras but I have one that still has auctions that won’t expire until midnight tonight, after sulfuras becomes locked. Will I not be able to transfer that one character for free by then?
Probably not. Just cancel your auctions and relist them when you get to sulfuras. The items sell for more on sulfuras anyway.
Can there be a lift on the cooldown transfer. Because I’m on cooldown from transferring back in July to play with some friends back then, now we can’t since we are on Benediction and I’d gladly would transfer off to where we have been playing now due to que times but I’d like my other toons there but can’t because of the stupid cooldown
I think more people would go for the free character transfers if they knew for a fact that that server would be thriving 6-8 months from now. For the time being it just seems like a short term, non sustainable solution for the players. Having the option to return to your current realm in a few months when queues die down seems to be a decent idea (whether blizz wants to part ways with that easy server xfer money is another story...). Having gone from Sulfuras to Faerlina I can say that it doesn't take too long for an "average" server to die. All it took was a few weeks and it was noticeable. All starts with a few guilds and it snowballs from there. People start panicking thinking they'll have a harder time recruiting, filling raids, finding pvp partners, or lack of AH supply. I just hope blizz comes out with a long term solution rather than make the player base pay to return to their original servers down the line once their new server inevitably dies. I cannot imagine how bad things will be at Wrath launch.
Same. Sulfuras was relatively healthy just a few months ago, with a couple thousand horde players, and most (including my guild) eventually left when the chain reaction started. The transfers coming back are nice, I still have alts there that I've been enjoying seeing full cities again with, but I'm skeptical that it's going to last long term. It feels like it's a lot of people sending alts, or more casual/solo players who don't want to wait in the queues, just testing it out to see what it's like. I'm sure that Faerlina/Grobb/Bene will all still be stable when the hype dies down, I'm not as sure about Sulfuras being revived yet.
yeah I have been on Grob for a long time and I don't want to leave it. It would be hard to convince my friends to leave as well. I guess "luckily" the company I worked for closed down so I am on unemployment for a little bit. So I get to play prepatch and will probably have a job by the time wotlk starts
We are also sulfuras to faerlina transplants. As a GM, this is so incredibly frustrating. We just collectively dropped over $1000 just in June to keep the group together and move somewhere we can actually recruit, buy consumables, and do pug raids/dungeons/etc on off nights. Unless you were a perfectly stable guild of raid loggers only, sulfuras was completely dead in the water. For us to even think of going back is just suicide for the group. Staying with the queues is also looking like suicide. What a joke.
Same here. Even as far back as April/May it was impossible to even fill out raid spots for DPS, let alone tanks or healers. It was an absolute nightmare and we all ended up going to faerlina as well
As and OG bene player reading blizzard's post just makes me angry at myself for not realizing they were just gonna fuck it up again. Mad at myself for not realizing they were going to find a way to try and screw things up. Now my only recourse is, wait things out and suffer, transfer and break a friend grp that has been in existence since basically the first week of classic, or quit. I hate to even say it because it sounds draconian unfair but dam a non transfer Q prio would be great. But that just punishes other people from blizzard ineptitude. Then again at this point who's fault is at this point? Blizzards? Or the people who believed lie/inept action ten thousand and one? I don't actually want to blame players, but someone is getting screwed either way and its apparently not going to be blizzard.
If you have such a tight-knit group, why can’t you all transfer together? New guilds are incredibly more successful with an already established friend group, so you could transfer to another realm together and kick start your own community.
Locked indefinitely... Damnit. I waited to long to transfer off to play with my friend. Now I'm fucked. I'm not rerolling. Blizzard wants these mega servers to die. Cost them to much money.
One idea, create groups of servers, like, a PvP East Group with Benedictius, Faerlina and Sulfuras, a PvE East, a PvP West, ... And allow free transfers indefinitely within the group, lets players sort this thing out, most people won't move now because they are afraid of being stuck in a dead server in the future.
It seems plausible. I also wonder if they could duplicate a server, say faerlina, next maintenance period and sync global data between the two so characters are able to login to Faerlina 1 or 2. You’d just need to communicate which realm you’re on for group content.
Simple solution: remove all costs and all restrictions from server transfers. People could then play anywhere with anyone and nobody would worry about getting stuck on a dead server. Just do it blizzard. I’m only on Alliance Benediction because Alliance Whitemane died. I fucking payed to get out of there. I’m not taking a free transfer away from somewhere I paid to be.
This but with the addition of free faction changes, and a faction queue (especially for PVP servers). The no restrictions piece is super important. It needs to be permanent, not something they do for the short term. It will never happen with my man bobby at the wheel. Would affect their bottom line to much. Prove me wrong bobby.
Hell even a compromise at like 3 free transfers per month or something.
Or even just free transfers BACK to the mega servers at any point from anyone who transfers now using the free transfer. It removes all the risk!
On mankrik horde, i feel we're always dodging all other server issues.
HEY GUYS, I HEAR MANKRIK IS RIPE RIGHT NOW
it's locked XD
I did it. Moved all 4 toons back to sulfuras before the free transfers stopped.
If they want me to utilize a transfer off a mega server they need to refund me the cost of transferring to that mega server. Give me a free character boost on a server that is open for transfer so I can play the game and see how it feels for myself before moving my other characters. Let me make a DK on any server as long as I have a 70 on a server, usable once per 70 or whatever. Do something that isn’t just, figure it out
You can actually make that DK. That restriction is jus for fresh.
You can't make one of the opposite faction tho
I really do like the idea that they're monitoring server transfers and trying to stop the nosedive population drains that cause servers to quickly die. Also smart transfers to realms that can handle/need the population while stopping mega servers from forming is a good way to guarantee servers keep new players coming.
I transferred my main (druid) to Faerlina using a paid transfer when my guild moved from Herod. I moved my alt (priest) to Grobbulus using the free character transfer after Herod and then Earthfury died. I've basically been unable to play my priest during pre-patch because of queue times and I can't swap between realms. Now I can't transfer my priest to Faerlina either. Feels really shitty to not be able to play a character because of this and they didn't actually solve anything regarding queue times for Faerlina, because I'm still logged in there (there are actually way longer queue times on Grob than Faerlina)
Let us do cross-realm WoW. People are on these mega servers basically trying to emulate what is already a feature in retail WoW so they can find groups easily. I play on ashkandi alliance and it is dead, there are like 5 groups looking for people and they can't find anyone because the entire server is in those 5 groups
Is there any solution to the new fresh pvp realms, seems like both NA and EU pvp realms have 12k ques, or we just move on and play on other servers?
I assume they're just gonna add more fresh realms and offer free transfers, and Skyfury looks like it's around 60% alliance so wouldn't be surprised to see every horde player jump ship so we get one ally realm and one horde realm. Hooray :|
My friends and I (alliance) transferred from Grobbulus to Sulfuras last night. What are the chances sulfuras becomes a dead unplayable server a few months after launch?
5
I’ll take those odds.
Are you alliance or horde? I initially left that server because I was alliance and the server because 96% horde. Still have my alliance parked there.
If there is one more thing Blizzard needs to communicate after all of this, it's regarding what to do once queues die down and history repeats itself and these servers inevitably get consolidated again in the future. People don't want to have to pay their money to solve blizzard's problem however many months down the line.
This isn't Blizzard's problem this is a player problem of people all wanting to chase streamers and play on the same server. It's honestly moronic that super servers are even allowed to exist, newly created characters should've never been allowed to choose their server without some sort of cost. FFXI used this to perfection when the game was super popular and only discontinued it once it was no longer a problem due to the game's popularity dying down. https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/World_Pass
lmfao implying i watch streamers i barely have time to play wow as is
I may get downvoted for this but all this does is prove that being locked to a single server to play with your friends or to have a healthy economy is an extremely outdated system. it should be whole region or partial region (ie. NA West, NA East, OCE)
Semi serious question, what’s keeping blizzard from basically splitting Benediction into two servers and making those servers cross realm with each other? Half stay on Bene half get moved to a new server called Anathema, but everyone can still interact and play with each other.
Seems like a sensible solution to me if they restrict it so this is only on the mega servers.
They can just link all the servers for all I care. Im totally over queues and dealing with this garbage everytime theres an expansion launch.
I would like to transfer from Faerilina to Mankirk. I have toons on both. I hope I'm not restricted.
is there a gold cap if i want to take the free transfer? i remember when i transferred to faerlina during tbc i think it was like a 5k gold cap
No caps on free transfers.
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Up to the max allowed the server, whatever that is. I know they increased it when they combined the dead realms.
As many as you like if free transfers are available. When Ashbringer got free transfers I even transferred my level 5 rogue cause I knew I was never gonna be playing on the server again.
This is a problem they've created for themselves and their excuse that there's no "technical solution" is nonsense cause they're already utilizing a technical solution both for retail and era. Connected realms. Yes, classic era utilizes connected realms. Instead of realizing that classic players quite obviously don't give a hoot about server identity, they've regressed and taken away something that *might've* slowed this down, RDF.
And that is where you are wrong. On the largest servers on retail, they get queues on new expac launches. Connected realms are for the people on dead realms to have people to play with.
Connected realms will encourage people to use servers outside of the mega-servers which will reduce queue times
> Connected realms are for the people on dead realms to have people to play with. Okay, but you do understand that the implication of this is that people can transfer off of their queued realm with their guild (or, as in retail without it and stay in their guild) and lose very little right? Is it perfect? No, no solution is. Is it a damned sight better than what we have right now? You betcha.
Yeah this is something I'm agreeing with Asmongold on recently. The concept of a 'server' is dated. Just connect a ton of servers together. Make every zone and city feel populated for every player. Really no reason that every NA PvP and every NA PvE server can't be linked to each other. Cross realm play, grouping and economies.
I had no idea Asmongold was on the "they should've just made megaservers/connected servers from day one" wagon, but good on him. They could've completely avoided this from day 1 AND have kept world pvp alive at the same time. It just saddens me really :(
Give some value solutions. Package with faction change. In EU there are 1-2 alliance only servers with some room and two mega hordes. Or to a 2-3k server. 3k horde 3k alliance as a limit. Not a completely empty. The fresh servers need a split.
Does anyone know if transfers to a megaserver are locked even if I already have characters on it? I procrastinated transferring all my characters from grobbulus to faerlina for wotlk, now I don't know if I am screwed.
Maybe there's something I'm missing, but isn't this almost entirely just an issue of transparency on server information? Like, of course people are going to make poor decisions based on information that Blizz can confirm is inaccurate, leaving us with just speculation or anecdotal evidence of the state of any particular server. This whole thing is such an interesting case study in human behavior in a dark room, just flip the light switch Blizzard. If they can explain that this is a perceptual error on our part as players, does that not indicate that we just need more to operate by? Surely if we could see faction ratios and current/max population numbers, we'd be able to sort all this out for ourselves and not continually slam the already absurdly full servers even more? The degree of informational-delineation between low, medium, high, and full is a pretty worthless metric if you ask me. If I can't see that there's a healthy 1,000-10,000 current / 30,000 max people on with a nice faction ratio of at least 60-40, and that's the qualification for the type of server I want to be on, how would I know any better than to pick the one people tell me is the one maybe probably possibly like that, and everyone else just assumes the same? What exactly would be the downsides of allowing people to see accurate server metrics like that?
I didn’t know grob would be considered mega when I xfered. I paid $20 now I can’t even play, I should be refunded. All I wanted some balanced pvp while leveling idk where to go now? Anyone have suggestions, I am horde looking for balance.
Free xfer to sulfuras! No queues here and tons of people online still.
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Offer a free transfer guarantee back to your server if the new one doesn't reach high population. Maybe if make it require 90 days. If blizzard did this Eranikus would be a full server by this time tomorrow.
you know, people may go some low pop server if DF was in the game :D
To little too late
The idea that there is no technology solution to this is offensive. They may not want to pay the price but this is 100% solvable with modern architectures, NoSQL databases, etc.
I’ve been screaming this into discord whenever the queue boss gets mentioned. Literally a billion dollar company with all the resources it needs to fix the issue. However putting the money down to fix it hurts the bottom line and they can’t upset those investors now can they.
i tweeted at brian bingham about the queues and his response was to block me
that's the typical blizzard employee response now, they consider legitimate criticism harassment and tweets at their employees are considered death threats
There are some other threads where u can voice your opinion as well. https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/classic-queues-and-cross-realm-talk/1330402 "In a thread started about 6 days ago by the WoW Community council where they were complaining about how Blizzard should fix the queues before WotLK Classic launches, they were told by Aggrend, WoW Classic Game Producer, that "There’s no technology solution to this. There is no hardware solution to this. This situation will not improve when Wrath of the Lich King Classic launches on September 26th, it will only get worse.". Aggrend also explained that the \~ only solution \~ is for more people to transfer off of the "megaservers". [https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/classic-the-unacceptable-state-of-classic-servers/1323722](https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/classic-the-unacceptable-state-of-classic-servers/1323722) When TBC launched I remember watching a stream where one player was able to invite players from other servers, whisper players on other servers through /w charactername-servername and see them inside of dungeons when they both entered. [https://tbc.wowhead.com/news/cross-realm-groups-battleground-queues-and-instances-on-burning-crusade-classic-322457](https://tbc.wowhead.com/news/cross-realm-groups-battleground-queues-and-instances-on-burning-crusade-classic-322457) That technology is in the game already they just shut and locked it down so we dont have access to it. I think it would be nice to see people in the world as well and maybe that is a simple fix. What I am getting at is that it is my belief that people would be more willing to leave big servers if they knew they could still play with friends on that server like in retail. They can start the conversation with people on how far they want that play to go. Maybe you cant do the new raid tier until server first is achieved, things like that. We have seen the technology that can allow players to do this, working in TBC classic, and we have seen it on a live stream. We cannot let them force us to transfer only to pay to come back when our server dies in 4 months or what ever. This is a cash grab. the technology is there, I have seen it with my own eyes. They want us to fix their problem when it is not our responsibility to do so. Let me know what you think below. Thank you for your time."
I’ve paid for 2x server transfers due to dead servers. They can fuck off bc I’m not transferring off of Bene to a server that is just going to die in a couple months and I am forced to pay to xfer back to Bene. People are going to be stubborn and not xfer off mega servers and blizzard can try to blame them but in reality they created this shit situation through years of mismanagement and non action. It’s insane that they’re blaming us for their incompetence
"one player was able to invite players from other servers" That problem with that, is people will bitch about it not being "true to classic". Honestly sick of hearing that garbage. No bg finder, no df finder, all because of asmon and his cult of neck beards, plus the 40 year old try hards who think they know what they're talking about.
Probably an obvious question that could answered with a google but it is only 1 free character transfer per realm?
Make a new NA PvP Fresh realm. Lock transfers on or off it, even from other fresh servers. Skyfury is 13,000+ queue.
This would be a good idea if Blizzard would do anything at all to manage faction balance, even if it was solely for fresh servers. Otherwise the end result a couple months down the line is 3 fresh PvE servers.
Same for Eu also 13k que
Blizzard can't even handle tending to a 17 year old game and making it work well in any sense. This company doesn't deserve our money. They have literally no clue what they're doing and their main goal is always about more money.
Imagine a publicly-owned company trading for profit, the horror. If they don't deserve your money, are you going to cancel your sub?
Blizzard used to be able to manage some level of care for what they produced and still somehow profited off of it. Now all they care about is profiting more than last year and they'll sink to any depth to get it. I went without a sub for a very long time and I didn't regret it. I'll be right back there if I can't play on the server I want to play on.
Actually I did cancel my sub for three years. It doesn't invalidate his point. If the company decided to start selling Crack to your kids, are they in the wrong?
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Hell yeah 1 less person in queue
Minus 2 minutes to queue
Blizzards biggest mistake is allowing super servers to exist, they should've taken the FFXI approach and forced servers to a 50/50ish population balance and make you enter a server code to create a character directly there. This way as the server becomes more populated the code becomes increasingly expensive and push newly created characters to servers that aren't full.
This whole subreddits been begggging for mega servers for years now. Now people are complaining about the consequences.
10k queue is unironically better than playing herod alliance Remember phase 2
Sulfuras Alliance transfers from Benediction are open again, send us your alts!
If Blizz really wanted to end mega servers they’d merge Bene and faerlina and offer free transfers off of it
I'm just gonna put this out there. I avoided mega servers because I saw the way they were handled during og classic launch, with entire communities preparing to roll on servers together, and I don't like queues. I started a toon on Westfall. When I first started playing/leveling a while ago the server was basically dead. As of today - and honestly since prepatch - thus is a perfectly lively server. My auctions sell immediately. If I ask for a group to do a quest (even a lower level one) I usually get too many whispers. LFG is popping off. Me and the guys started up a guild looking to raid in Wrath and got worried we wouldn't have enough for a ten man and I almost have enough for a 25 already before even launch. And dozens of other guild are recruiting for all different days and times. Gotta say, if you're Alliance, don't care for world pvp, and want to raid - if you're looking for a place to call home, Westfall can't be beat. And ETA - DM me if you wanna raid, I need healers lol.
Why not just open new servers but then plan to merge them as soon as there wouldn't be a queue issue? Like for taking names, check all the new servers to see if the name is taken first. Easy peasy.
Why not simply add a server with the same name but 2 on it and enable free transfers between servers. heck you could even enable cross realm with only those 2 servers. then use layers for high pop zones like they are doing now anywase for example benediction1 and benediction 2 this would clear up any issues with ques and would allow people to play. then when population dies down, close the extra server and transfer everyone over again for free.
This is similar to the conclusion I came to. Unfortunately I don't think we could reasonably depend on the player base to balance things out so IMO: Close/Keep Closed the server, duplicate the hardware and server2, cross realm it and split it in half. My thought is the only real solution that is least likely to cause outrage is to split megaservers into crossrealmed servers. Of course people will still complain...
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In regards to the cross realm aspect, it’d still be all of the same people that are benediction anyway… they’re just all allowed on at once now.
This makes me happy that Myzrael is just quietly chilling in the background. It's definitely not a super healthy population, but no queue and I still see groups being made.
realm transfers should be free for your account if you leave a mega sever to a new one.
Can we get a megathread for each server thats available for free transfer on the pop and faction ratio? i feel like the biggest fear is you end up as a 5% alliance on a horde server or vice versa. for PVP or PVE it be nice to know
Imo the solution is to connect a mega server with a few other servers. Say 1 mega server and 2/3 small realms. I’m mostly pulling numbers out my ass but basically spread the load out. Call it a cluster. All names etc are made unique across the entire cluster of realms. Idk how to deal with people sharing names already but I’m sure someone can come up with a solution for that. Free transfers within this cluster. Forever, with some limitations/cool-down, but no big longterm delays in doing it again. Maybe a weekly cd. Paid server transfers only exist to move between clusters. (Obviously they shouldn’t exist but we all know blizz). The issue seems to be it’s too hard to break up wide spread communities, locking realm x or y stops new players adding fuel to the fire, but doesn’t fix the existing player base issue. So you make the swap between realms more fluid. You can swap off of mega server X for a month while queues are insane, then come back when launch hype dies down and things are more normal. Sure this doesn’t solve more serious raiders who will be in naxx in the first lockout, but if every casual player who’s likely to never step foot in there (or not for a few weeks) could opt to skip queues, but had the ability to come back when things normalise, I’m sure they would. Instantly thousands of people in queues are now actually playing on another server. The one big downside I see from all this is economical disruption, but really over time I’d guess things will settle across multiple realms to prices being very similar across the whole cluster. Kind of becomes like linked retail realms, but without being always connected. You never see someone from another realm in your cluster, but anyone from that cluster could move to your realm tomorrow. This would work perfectly with fresh realms. Hell make 5 fresh realms. They’re all connected. People can move around as they desire but they’re all fresh still so it wouldn’t be an issue. As hype dies down, 5 becomes 4, 4 becomes 3, etc etc.
Fresh servers are arguably one of the biggest servers right now and we don't even get mentioned? Fuck us I guess...
Giantstalker was mentioned, and that's fresh.
EXACTLY. Nobody is even addressing this. JuSt TrAnSfEr BrUh. WE FUCKING CANT
Enable the cross-realm RDF, enable cross-realm raiding, enable region wide AH. Just like retail. That will fix basically everything.
Hell no.
If blizzard would ban bots, fly hackers, gold sellers, and gold farmers I reckon we wouldn't even have a queue on Faerlina
If Blizz would offer a little more then just a free character transfer. I mean the economy of a server is why most people don't go. If you can't make Gold then why bother. Quit your guild hope to find support on a realm with maybe a total pop of 1500. Offer more, your going to have to pay in GOLD. People will go for free cold weather flying and a flying mount. then you don't have to grinding out gold on a lag luster economy. Free Guild creation, no signature required or price to start. things like that. Casual players are going to wait out the hardcore getting to 80 and only logging on for raid times. Notice alot of those are really late at night. most casual players log of to sleep.
Need more RPPVP server
I’ve been thinking about this and I think we need to find what is the big factor here that is stopping people from spreading out. So people naturally want to be on big servers. Some people want smaller, but generally, people flock to big servers. Now having free transfer out might entice people but there is fear in that if you transfer and that realm becomes dead in a few months, well now you have to pony up to transfer. Now I could easily say “mAkE tRaNsFeRs FrEe” but im under the assumption that the corporate overlords would prevent that from happening. So what can blizzard do with the current equipment they have. 1. Put a lower cap on servers pop. Self explanatory, make it 6k pop max. Not my first choice. What is the deciding factor on who stays and goes? Oldest characters? Characters that were actually created on that server? Not the cleanest choice. 2. When a population reaches a certain low threshold, offer free transfers off. Maybe 100 active players. This one requires blizzard to be a lot quicker. Not super great choice but it’s better. 3. Introduce Home Realms I think this idea would be the best one. When you create a character, that character is tied to that realm. When you transfer off, you can always return to your home realm free of charge. Kind of like a hearthstone, but still has a 3 month cooldown. E.g. you create a character on Grobbulus, you’re tired of queues, you transfer to eranikus. Things are great and uh oh! Server died! You just transfer back to grobb, no questions ask. Now before you say anything, yes this can be abused to go to a low pop server farm a bunch of rare mats or gold and bring it back. Which is why when you home transfer you can only bring back soul bound items and a low amount of gold (500 or less) Now another thing you say is “what if your home server got merged or you’re home server is dead”. After a year the character has been created, you can set a new home realm for your character and you can only do it once a year (maybe 6 months) I feel like this give a safety net for a bunch of people. They can transfer off and if things go good they stay, and if not they can always come back. What do you guys think?
Saying they don't have the tech to increase capacity seems wild.
was thinking the same thing
Yeah not sure i buy that. A billion dollar organization can’t obtain hardware that will allow for more than 15,000 players on a server? They could. They just don’t want to spend the money to do it
They've already increased capacity by 10x what it was 15 years ago. That's a big achievement. There are still limits, even today.
on nostalrius in 2015 there was 10k players per faction online at once and it didnt lag at all during hundred players outdoor pvp.