I was very excited to rejoin the game when Wrath was announced.
I played through classic vanilla and a bit of TBC but stopped due to personal reasons.
I decided that this time I will go with my heart and opt into RpPvp type Realm.
I passed on that opportunity once in order to play with people who didn’t share my view but later regretted it and even played there for a short while and enjoyed what little I experienced.
I am very fond of world PvP and would never consider going PvE. I do find the Rp community much more calm and accepting and I also enjoy mild RP at times (though it might not be correct RP, I have little knowledge of that).
To my surprise there is no such realm in the EU region, Zandalar Tribe was consolidated into a non PvP realm and with the fresh servers coming up there is no sign of a new one.
I am not sure why EU doesn’t deserve this type of realm. The US realm might be more populated but I don’t mind playing with less amount of people if those are the right people for me.
The very least blizzard could have done was to leave Zandalar-Tribe and watch if it comes back to life and maybe offer transfers further down the line (although I am sure it wouldn’t be necessary).
Blizzard decides to completely remove that option for the Eu player base speaks volumes to the amount of commitment they have towards us. I am sure no one would be happy if they removed his preferred server type.
TLDR
Blizzard deleted the old RpPvp realm and left Eu with 0 realms of that type.
EU should be treated equally and have at least 1 RpPvp realm even if its not big.
We pay the same price and we deserve to be given the same options.
Long story short: Blizzard made a “whoopsie” and didn’t realize they were annihilating both RP and RP-pvp servers in Europe with their benevolent free server transfers. Eventually they decided that there had to be at least one RP server in EU, and since it is easier to get people on RP-pvp servers to move to an RP-pve server than the other way around they decided to keep Hydraxian Waterlords rather than Zandalar Tribe (even though historically ZT was the more active server of the two).
But yes, it sucks. It’s the grandest failure of TBC classic; the way Blizzard handled the servers. The way they allowed players to migrate freely and create one-sided mega-servers, kiling off perfectly stable medium-sized servers by caving into hyperbolic whinging.
OK, so one development that you’ve missed or not seen is that PvP servers have (literally) become servers with a single faction on them. While I’m not certain if Zandalar would have met a similar fate, the sad state of the game with its servers is that if you ever hope to do world pvp then you have to roll on a PvE server. They are the only servers in which you will encounter the opposite faction.
When I started this journey servers were pretty balanced overall, my initial realm started tilting towards horde when phase 2 hit. I was actually happy with it as I am enjoying being the underdog faction, sadly it is not a shared view which leads you to question people motives when they choose a PvP server.
What initially was a 55:45 balance turned into 60:40 and towards the end of the expansion to 85:15, It was still OK for me, the thing which made me move was the fact the amount of alliance was around 200 and I made my move into firemaw.
When I left TBC it was still balanced and was considered the most balanced populated in EU.
Coming back and seeing servers are pretty much 1 sided is a blow, I do hope the fresh ones will be composed of people who learned their lesson and roll PVE if they can’t take the heat.
People who claim most world PvP is not fair (2v1/higher level/ambush during mob fight) are absolutely right, so please don’t expect it to be .
People who on the first sight of drop in their faction pack their things and leave should understand PvP server are not likely to be 50:50.
If you leave a 60:40 populated server for a 1 sided realm you are a PvE player and rolling on PvP will damage the realm in the long run.
The fact all servers are unbalanced which makes all of them effectively PvE is a sad reality and still Ill rather roll PvP even if that means being massively outnumbered as long as there are people to play with.
The irony is that PvE servers seem to hold balance better over time since people does not suffer from the PvP side effects.
I think an RpPvp might also have similar advantages as the people who opt for that type usually have more established reasoning to rolling a certain faction and a preference for that specific server type, making them unlikely to transfer because of meta/balance issues.
I kinda quited TBC due lack of wpvp and servers being only 1 faction populated. Not even moving to Wotlk due I am sure they not gonna fix it anyhow as none really cares, not even players themself as they raidlog. RIP ZT tho, best WPVP experience in classic at least.
Sadly, I did not get to enjoy ZT world PvP.
I did enjoy the world PvP at firemaw (when I left it was balanced).
I would get a chance to engage in it with every activity I did, be it daily fishing quests, Ogri’la and Sha’tari Skyguard dailies, Guild farms, completing all the quests for some spare change or just helping others.
This is by far one of the selling points to me and partly why Fresh is attractive as well.
Sadly it seems EU has lost all hope for a decent PvP server, I wish for the new ones to flourish.
I do think there is a place for RpPvp even if just for giving us the option, so many PvP and PvE server died, it would be wrong to just point at this one as an excuse.
PvP realm will never work in a long run. Someone gets ganked once or twice and they are furious and transfer over and when such problem affects a guild most of the faction transfers out.
Firemaw held for long but at some point crashed, mostly due to size and Blizzard not looking into the amount of available resources after closing and banning bots
Blizzard is refusing to implement solutions to mitigate this issue. Such as faction queue or introducing transfers when they are needed and in non exploitative way.
Instead of doing that, they are doing the opposite, aggravating the problem by giving people an option to opt out, enabling transfers in such ways that allow for it to happen.
(similar to what happened in Firemaw)
I can only hope future realms balance will be dealt with in time and kept healthy by both blizzard and the player base (which I hope learned from past mistakes, but doubt it).
Roll PvP only if you can tolerate it, being disadvantageous and frustrated at times is part of it .
I think over the past 3 years, but especially in phase 2 of Classic, people learned that they in fact do not want to play on PvP servers. If there ever is another iteration of WoW Classic, I would hope the majority would go to PvE and the remaining die-hards can grief each other on a couple PvP realms.
I know for a fact if I ever choose to play again, I won’t repeat the mistake of rolling PvP.
When we originally analyzed realm populations and decided which to close, we were focused on applying the same logic to every realm being examined but regrettably, it initially escaped our notice that RP realms would be completely removed from the EU ecosystem with this course of action. That was quickly pointed out, and we agreed, that a region without a place for RP players to congregate would be objectively incorrect.
Which would not work. From one side people are accepting megaservers queues and from another if you block people from playing they will start leaving the server and usually as a guild domino effect so majority leaves and minority becomes the new majority and the server lost a lot of it population.
The thing is people do not. They pick PvP because usually it has bigger population, or because they want to WPvP but only when they are winning.
I am not sure how people both accept the queue and at the same time leave because of the queue, but if some accept and some leave it works well. Determined people will stay, others won’t.
If you implement queue from the start it will simply redirect some people who have yet to make attachment to the server to choose a different one.
Which happened at launch, I switched servers seeing the queue on the on I chose. Mine developed a queue later when people did what I did, but I have already made up my mind at that point and stayed. I believe using one later is also better than not.
I think its ironic to admit that they have saw the need for at least one RP server (which might not be active) but not the need for RpPvp one.
I don’t think the crowd for RpPvp is leaning more towards RP than to PvP, its a mixed bag. Some with the absence of one might roll RP others PvP or not at all.
Blizzard belittle us by simply saying “well you have one RP server left so just go there and enable PvP or give up the RP and go PvP”.
No one who wants to PvP will accept such offer.
They are giving the option to US but not for us, even if the server doesn’t ends up as a mega server or less populated, its still something people rather play on.
They only decided by numbers, and all 3 EU RP realms were way too low pop
The only reason why they left Hydraxian Waterlords, was the reason, that RPer (people who want to RP more then anything else) have a place to gather.
And it´s not just PVP player who are out of luck.
And Cele was even more active.
From the three EU RP realms, we had in the end still the most active players, the most active RP.
And this despite the fact that Cele went online in late OCTOBER 2019 and couldn´t attract it´s whole target audience.
Many who would have rolled on Cele didn´t come anymore because it was too late.
And now Hydraxian does not even benefit from it, because most germans didn´t speak english well enough to roll on Hydraxian Waterlords and decided to play on german PVE.
What means, german RP also not there (at least not as it used to be) anymore.
gnarr bangs her head against the wall in frustration
They should have left us alone with our RP realms.
That’s why I point to their simple solution which they implement regardless of the circumstances.
They finally decide on transfers to balance and provide an out of ghost servers, enabling it all at once, creating loopholes such as Horde mass exodus out of Firemaw with a connection server.
This lazy type of solutions sometimes do more harm than good.
You pointed leaving 1 RP for the Rpers, I don’t see a reason why RpPvp is different. I have pointed before that this type of realm caters to players who otherwise won’t necessarily roll RP server.
I also believe ZT would have recovered on its own with the upcoming expansion which will never now happen since they insisted on removing that type of server for good.
Sometimes I wonder if they should interfere at all (If they can’t provide solutions that were put more thought into them), might be better to just let servers die and people pay for transfer or start on a new server, this way we might be left with somewhat balanced servers and all types of realms.
That is actually a good question that whas multiple times discussed during closure but there where realy conclusion.
“Why is RP-PvP different?”
If it is as you say not then if the critical mass is not reached then RP-PvEler and RP-PvPler from the same language could just play together on one Realm. Because the main point of an RP-Server is to bring RP interested Players together.
I think this is the same as telling people who play PvP to go for PvE and flag themselves, the main game exists in both, so the main overlap justifies the logic, in truth it doesn’t.
I am not sure why people who prefer to roll on RP server are forced to play on a PvE one, if they are both inactive at least let us play on the one we choose.
Also it misses the point that this in-activeness might be due to the fact that players put more weight on PvP aspect, that doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy the RP element.
RpPvp is its own type, its not RP nor PvP, its both. Assuming players who chose it prefer one is wild.
To me, PvP is part of the RP. Warcraft is about the war going between the two factions (Humans vs Orcs originally) and shouldn’t be separated.
The fact countless PvP/PvE/RP servers died when Blizzard is contributing to that does not mean much.
Most PvP servers are one sided, should we just pull the plug on PvP type servers?
or maybe we should take a different approach on how to keep the balance instead? (examples are given in the thread)
There is a lot of reasons which explain why things happened the way they did (we gave examples), making flat conclusions and low effort solution is what causing it.
Having the option for at least 1 server of each type is the bare minimum.
I understand all the things you say, but truth is people only want to be on a PVP server if they can win easily.
It happened on ALL servers, that whatever server had the largest population there, it just grew, and the smaller population would shrink.
Even on Zandalar Tribe, the RP-PVP server you are talking about, and I was on too, the horde just bolted off, even while the balance was only 55-45 or so, it really wasn’t that big a difference, and definitely not compared to the earlier PvP servers.
Yet the horde fled. And then for some reason even while still having close to 3000 raidlogs on alliance side, we got a free transfer and took it.
Note: I have been on ZT for a very long time and never ever ever ever have I seen any RP. Not in cities, not in parties. By comparison, on Hydraxian Waterlords, where this character I type on now originated, RP took place, I occasionally did some, other did some, as a side interest. There were RP guilds who did their own RP secludedly in places like Aszhara or Moonglade or whatever. Good for them. But at least it existed.
So ZT was just a normal PVP server by all means, and a new RP-PVP server is very likely to become too. And I don’t miss ZT either, ES is just as good.
(though it might not be correct RP, I have little knowledge of that).
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