Connected Realms Update- 9/25

Update: We have completed maintenance to join Boulderfist and Bloodscalp into the first pair of Connected Realms. These realms should now be live once again, and we sincerely appreciate your patience during this maintenance period.

We would like to take the time to make players aware of a couple of known issues that we are currently investigating. The first of these is that players who do not have their macros cached locally may need to re-create those macros. Additionally, we have received reports of the guild message of the day not being displayed for some characters. At this time we’re unaware of how widespread these issues may be, and will investigate and resolve these issues before connecting any additional realms.

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Update: In order to implement our first Connected Realms, Boulderfist and Bloodscalp will be taken down for an extended maintenance beginning Wednesday, September 25, at 3:00 a.m. PDT until approximately 4:00 p.m. PDT. During this time these realms will be unavailable for play. Additional realm connections are planned for the near future, and we’ll be posting a full list at WorldofWarcraft.com as soon as we’ve finalized the details.

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We wanted to update everyone on the next steps for the implementation of Connected Realms. We plan to begin the rollout of this feature with just a couple of realms, and have determined that the first realms that will be connected will be Boulderfist and Bloodscalp—we’ll provide another update once we’ve finalized the date. Beyond that, we are in the process of determining a complete realm-connection schedule, and will be releasing more details as we progress.

For more information on Connected Realms, please read the preview blog post here.

09/11/2013 02:22 PMPosted by Kipery

I hope it can breathe some life into Earthen Ring. =)

We're not entirely dead! :)

Looking at the two realms above though it seems they're both fairly (3:1) Horde dominated. My data may well be out of date though. Is faction balance not an important consideration for PvP servers?

I think it's best to take outside data with a grain of salt. I don't have data on the faction balance on those realms myself, but it's worth noting that often enough, outside data is skewed a bit from what we have.

Only request I have on this feature is that RP servers get merged with other RP servers.

We intend to keep like matched with like as much as we possibly can. I think once we get a "complete" list and schedule out to everyone, there will be less theory crafting or conspiracy theories ... then again.. maybe not. ;)

We'll just try to keep everyone in the know as well as we can.

We wanted to update everyone on the next steps for the implementation of Connected Realms. We plan to begin the rollout of this feature with just a couple of realms, and have determined that the first realms that will be connected will be Boulderfist and Bloodscalp—we’ll provide another update once we’ve finalized the date. Beyond that, we are in the process of determining a complete realm-connection schedule, and will be releasing more details as we progress.

For more information on Connected Realms, please read the preview blog post here.

Hey Nethaera i have a question.... along with the type of server being matched together, will evening out horde to alliance ratios be another goal of connected realms? so a realm with that is horde favored be matched with another alliance favored server to bring the two together?

I'm not sure as of yet. The caveat to doing this is there's no guarantee that once those realms were connected, that the balance wouldn't skew again. We'll see how it goes though.

09/11/2013 02:49 PMPosted by Kipery

Hey Nethaera i have a question.... along with the type of server being matched together, will evening out horde to alliance ratios be another goal of connected realms? so a realm with that is horde favored be matched with another alliance favored server to bring the two together?

I know I'm not a candle but ...

Q. Which realms will be connected as Connected Realms?

A. We haven’t decided yet which realms will be made part of a Connected Realm, or which other realms they’ll be connected to, though realms will only be connected to other realms of the same type (e.g. PvE to PvE, PvP to PvP, RP to RP). In the end, we’re considering a number of factors, including Battlegroup, population, and faction balance.

quote]is from the FAQ linked by Neth.

Faction balance is a factor but how important is it? Another consideration is are there any that fit in the same server cluster (I'm assuming this is the #1 consideration) where a merge would balance them out?

Elaborating on that a little if you had a (5:1) Horde dominated server would linking a (4:3) Alliance lead server actually help anyone? The Horde would now dominate the former competitive server. Alliance on the second server would feel put out and might leave in droves. The Horde on the second server would see far fewer "play mates" running around. The first server wouldn't see any real change.

This is still correct. I just want to caution people that faction balance may not be the ultimate reason for a connection, so I don't want to say it's weighing anything heavily and have people unhappy if it doesn't play out that way. It's a bit of a slippery item.

Soo, any eta when we are going to get a list of those realms already connected? When the restart started this morning, I got 2 messages as of the 5 minute mark: Connected realm restart in ?? and Realm restart in ??

Does that mean Lightbringer is now connected to another server?

Realms aren't connected as of yet. What you're seeing is some of the work that needs to be done in order to begin making connections.

Thank you for the update Neth. Your communication is appreciated.

More than happy to. We know people have been waiting to hear more. We'll do what we can to update as soon as we have the rest of the picture to share with you.