This is no way intended to be a flame thread. So please refrain from trolling and what not!
Everyone knows of the concept, the rich become richer. This seems to be going for the populated realms as well. The populated become more populated (and often unbalanced), while the small realms grow more and more empty.
Over the past few months we all have seen the amount of threads "help my realm is dying", "where is everyone?!", "please fcm to our realm, we need Alliance/ Horde!". This due to the realms growing empty or the balance becoming worse and worse.
In some cases Blizzard/ Dev's listened to us. They were kind enough to open up FCM to those realms that struggle. This mostly from overpopulated realms that are in a position that they are actually having queues to get in to the game. This is all well meant and probably a better solution in the eyes of blizzard, but what does it actually do? People often don't want to transfer from a high populated realm to a low population realm with a horrible AH and most of the time a lack of player pool to recruit from.
Ofcourse the only numbers we, the community have, are the numbers we see on WoWprogress and various other sites. The raiding/ PvP guilds are the ones suffering the most, or the guilds trying to set up raiding or PvPing. There's hardly anyone that wants to transfer voluntarily to an empty realm, no matter how good the guild is. I bet Method might be one of the few exceptions that might get members in, but I think even they might struggle a bit. Simply because, if they fail their trial, there is no option to go to, because there's no other raiding/ pvp guild (a bit of dramatization, but it's the case on a lot of realms with having 1 or 2 good raiding/ pvp guilds).
Sure from a company's point of view it's best to let it plod along, because hey, people will pay if the situation gets too unbearable right. Imagine a guild transferring, all that money. From the communities point of view. Alot of people don't have the money to transfer their toon. Or they transferred in the past and spend a bucket load of money before and they simply just want to go to a realm that doesn't die out. I'm one of those people myself and I know plenty of others who have spend alot of money to transfer, only to see the realm going from active to pretty much a ghostrealm.
Sure FCM can solve the problem, but most of the time those people will transfer back or stop playing altogether.
These are the realms taken from WoWprogress, the English realms. The balance is made up from level 85's who at least killed Magmaw on normal or their guild has. The reason I'm focusing on these numbers is that, just because a server might have a lot of low level alts, it doesn't do anything for the realm. Those people often don't want to raid or PvP or don't get past level 40. See the unbalance on several realms with high and low population. See that if you were to actually put realms together or let realms with a high alliance/ horde population transfer to a realm where there is alot of unbalance going on might actually be a much better way to have people to keep on playing. Give the low populated realms a chance to actually go somewhere that isn't on the edge of dying out. Instead of the high populated realms a transfer to some place that's growing more empty by the day, cause they will not take it.
(Go to Wowprogress -> Realms (drop down EU) -> Click on EN to see the list. I can't link it for whatever reason.)
Like I said from a company's point of view this is no way an interesting something. Sure people can yell "just do a paid character transfer - big deal". In my opinion, if you go to an active realm, that seems to be dying slowly, I think the company should say and step up "now it's time to fix this, because this is unfair to the ones involved".
With the drop in subscription and the people around me quitting, I don't even think it would be that much of a bad idea to open up new realms - don't get me wrong there. Have people from unbalanced realms get a free FCM there from one of the sides. Or however you could actually solve it, realms put together with H 1: 0.2 A with realms who are H 0,4: 1 A stuff like that. Anything to keep things balanced, but yet not too crowded on the realm. I'm sure something like that would be possible. It might look like a bad thing at first from a company's point of view, but I'm positively sure the community might be grateful and that you will see this in the numbers of the people who keep playing. As I know alot on our realm are just quitting and I know from other people their realms are suffering the same.
Just think about it. A small sacrifice might look bad, but could be a flourishing future.
Don't hesitate to drop your opinion about the subject or any ideas, or how your realm is suffering from any of the above problems.
Thanks for reading.
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Quoted for emphasis! The discussion has become rather heated, which of course is understandable since this is a topic that is very important to quite a few people. I know that it is easy to get carried away when you are discussing a topic that you feel very strongly about, but please try to voice your opinions and provide your feedback in a calm and constructive manner. Now, to get back on topic. I'm afraid there is little new information that we can share with you at this moment in time, but I feel it important to repeat what was posted by my colleague Zarhym over on the US forums to make sure that everyone here on the EU forums get a chance to read it as well: Yesterday we discussed low-population and faction-imbalanced realms with our developers. They have some pretty bold and spectacular plans for addressing this in anticipation of implementing some of the features we plan to in Mists. I just don't have a lot of information to share with you at this stage of programming and development. I realize that this is not what some of you want to hear, that you want something a little more immediate and tangible, but unfortunately there is not much I can say right now to address that. Hopefully you are aware that we are not just ignoring the issue, and that it is a matter that we take quite seriously. |
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We do provide information when we are able to do so, but there will always be questions that have no clear answers. I know this more than most, and I can agree that it is both frustrating as well as unfortunate when you can't get an answer that you really want or need. We have already mentioned in previous posts that there is no easy and simple solution to this issue, and this is no lie, neither is it an attempt to ignore the issue... even though that many of the suggestions provided by people in this thread sound simple enough and straightforward, I can assure you that they are not. I also know that this is where you want the details on what exactly makes things so difficult, but at this point in time there is no such information that we can share with you. When we are ready to properly address this issue, you will know about it. Until then, we can do little else than acknowledging your concerns. We thank you for the constructive feedback and suggestions you have posted so far, and we hope that you will continue to post in this manner. Rest assured that we are reading your posts, and that we are constantly forwarding your feedback. |
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We do realise that this system does not address all of the issues affecting low population and faction imbalanced realms, but we do feel that it will improve things quite a bit. This is a brand new technology being developed for World of Warcraft, with the purpose of bringing life back to the more barren parts of the world, so this is only the start. What needs to be understood with the cross-realm zones technology is that it opens more doors to future systems that could help with those other matters as well.
This system will actually assist you in finding players to PvP and PvE with, not to join your guild, but they can join you through the cross-server groups and raids features. While levelling up you will once again have more players in the world to interact with. With friendly players, you will be able to interact with them and maybe end up on each other’s friends’ lists, and grouping up again later for either PvP or PvE. With more players of the opposite faction running about, you will also have more world PvP too :) This technology and the systems surrounding it are still in development and as such your feedback on them is greatly appreciated. We hope to have more innovative technologies and systems coming in the future that will keep improving the World of Warcraft experience for everyone! ^^ |
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Clearly not totally ignored. After all they expanded it to beyond the 50 page limit. I just wanted to quote this for emphasis. I just posted in a thread relating to this just recently, we are not ignoring this and we do care about the entirety of the community. It is better for us to not post in a thread when we do not have information available on the topic at hand as it does not help further the discussion in any way. We are always keeping up to date on what is posted here and will, as we have in the past, post as soon as we have new information. Lastly, as was stated by Andrai: we have extended the posting limit on this thread to allow you to channel your feedback and comments on this topic. The other threads made on this topic are also not locked because we want them ignored, but to ensure that all of your feelings are posted here so that none them are missed and it can be sent to those it is pertinent to. |
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I'm afraid we have no new information to add to threads on this topic, but as we have said before in previous related discussions, we want you guys to know that we are aware of the situation and that we are looking into ways that we may be able to help in the future. We acknowledge that this is quite an important topic that many of you feel strongly about, but please don't interpret the lack of blue posts as a sign that we are ignoring it. We are constantly reading your feedback and your concerns, and we will let you know as soon as we have new information to share with you on this topic. |
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We have indeed seen plenty of good posts and ideas coming from the community, and we would most certainly like to say thank you to everyone who have posted their thoughts and feedback :-) Unfortunately there is no such thing as a quick and simple fix to this, and it will most certainly take a lot more than merely flicking a few switches, swapping some cables, and changing the hamster wheels. We are currently not in a situation where we are ready to provide specific details though, but rest assured that we are taking this topic quite seriously. |
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In case anyone missed it this was in the Q&A from yeday ! Just blue-tagging this to make sure that more people will take note of this. I know you guys would have liked something more specific about what we are planning to address this issue, but we do not yet have information on this we can share with you. We will of course let you know as soon as we can. I cant link the official source coz on my phone and got it from wowinsider article :) sooo maybe there is a tiny bit of hope for us :) You can also find a full transcript of the CoverItLive Developer Q&A here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/9576259/ |
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That is because I was not trying to add anything to the discussion, the purpose of my post that you are referring to was to ask you guys to continue the discussion in the existing thread on the topic.
I know that you guys really want some more concrete information than what we have provided so far, and I would totally give you that information if I was in a position to do so, but the fact is that we are not ready to share such specifics right now. When we can share more information on this, we will, but right now all I can do is to try and reassure you guys that we are not ignoring this. |
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So blizzards solution to this was to lower the transfer fee to 10€? Just to set the record straight. The special offer we have right now for Character Services is not meant to be our solution to the low population realms issue, although I can understand why some of you may have jumped to such a conclusion since we have yet to share more specific information on the actual things we are working on to address this issue. Hopefully it shouldn't be too long now before we are ready to make an announcement. We have seen quite a few requests for a discount on character services recently, and the purpose of this special offer is simply to meet those requests. https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/status/343792833767030787 https://twitter.com/mumper/status/343144828424572928 These developer tweets were linked to by others in this thread already , but I just wanted to repost them to re-emphasise that we are not ignoring this issue. |
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All FCMs currently on offer are to medium/high population realms, as it was clear no one wanted to move to realms with low populations, we've been saying this for some time. Low and many medium population realms are in the process of being connected with other realms. We're proceeding as quickly as we can while making sure things continue to run smoothly and no new queues are created in the process. |
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Not many are connected yet, things will be different ^^ |
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With the exception of busy periods, e.g. when we have patches going out like last week, we connect several realms each week. See next week's schedule for example: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/8427764143 |
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Firstly, I appreciate your efforts to remain constructive while clearly feeling frustrated by the topic. This time around, we opened up FCMs to the minority factions as well, so they can move away from realms with queues if they want to, as you suggested. The main reason for FCMs right now is to relieve queues, so it makes sense to allow as many people to move as possible. Previously, we tried to help with faction balance on realms with queues by only offering FCMs to players on the dominant faction. To help with faction balance on the destination realms too, these FCMs would generally place people on a realm where they would now be in the minority faction. This wasn't working. So, to make FCMs appeal to more people, in some cases we're now opening FCMs between realms with similar faction balance, e.g. from a horde-dominant realm to another horde-dominant realm. We're keeping tabs on the situation, people still may not take the offer, but we'll see how it goes. As I said, our current main goal is to reduce queues so people can actually play. There's a lot going on at the moment, what with Connected Realms happening. Populations and faction balances are fluctuating across the board. Right now, our focus is making sure as many people as possible can get online to play without having to queue. However, when things have settled, we hope to be in a position to help with other factors. |
