Which I sincerely hope changes, and people learn from their past mistake and roll PvE.
Its not the most fun to play on 1 sided server, I hope blizzard doesn’t offer anymore transfers which are not needed.
I don’t think its only the strict RP that pull people towards this type of server, as was written by others, it tends to attract more calm and mature players who seek like minded players.
From what little I played on ZT (Horde) I did enjoy the company and the players were much less “in a rush” and would engage in conversations compared to other realms I played on.
I don’t think world pvp was part of the reason why the Horde bolted from Zandalar Tribe at all. I never heard anyone cry about it – in fact, world PvP kind of died down on its own once everyone got flying mounts. Even in Phase 2 when new daily areas were opened up I had expected there to be some bloodshed, but nope. It’s not that people didn’t do dailies, but there just weren’t enough opportunities for conflict.
The complaints I heard on horde side revolved around difficulties finding groups and difficulty for raiding guilds to find new recruits. And those complaints were legitimate. Then there’s the issue I have not heard anyone talk about, and that’s the issue of content drought for anyone who isn’t riding the 25man content wave. I don’t think this was a problem for only Zandalar Tribe, but in the game as a whole. Why else would they rush through Phase 3 and 4 so quickly? Many people (myself included) stopped playing because we ran out of things to do, but I had every intention of returning to the game once there was new content for me.
To say that RP-pvp killed itself is an oversimplification and we can’t know what the population of Zandalar Tribe would have been today had Blizzard never opened free transfers in the first place. All we can do is speculate.
I think this was the intention.
The RP is more important then the PVE/PVP, and therefore leave on RP.
Most PVEer wouldn´t play on PVP, but PVPer (like me) on PVE, therefore it was HW.
We HAD some RP-PVP on Celebras.
But it´s not the same as back then on my german rp-pvp, during retail…
Some Celebrations left last year due to the difficulty to fill their raids.
But recently, during the realm murder, i talked to one and he said: Yes, it´s ok on my new realm now, but i would have preferred to stay on Cele.
We all knew, there would be player who come back. Blizzard expects that many, that they open new realms and warn, that “full” realms could get queues again.
In the early days of the server, we had rp PVP related to a stolen Christmas tree and also a caravan near Ratchet as well. It always ended up with the Horde being cut to shreds (Horde was smaller, had worse gear and were often lower level), but we kind of always fixed that problem in our stories later.
But of course it is propably harder to organize rp pvp on an rp pve server. But if there are a bunch of pvp players, that might change.
I hate to look like defending the abomination blizzard but…
Your RpPvP is gone because of lack of interest on EU. Yes there are ‘‘very’’ noisy/vocal minorities from zandalar tribe, but data shows that that server was unhealthly inactive.
Defending a playstyle you like and dont want to lose it is nice but i think they made a correct choice because classic was already suffering enough from very low pop realms lying around.
I don’t look at it this way.
I understand there are a lot of things that impact the server population, be it : Content drought / Faction balance / Blizzard opening multiple transfers.
It is to be expect that the player base of a realm will drop over time just as it will rise again towards the end or a new patch.
If you offer people free transfer making it look like the server is dying… they will take it and the people who return will do the same after seeing that others have transferred while they were gone.
On EU English PvP realms you will not find a balanced server, most are one sided if anything. So I guess PvP failed and we should convert all to PvE. Or we will seek to understand what lead to such events and try to prevent them.
RpPvP is unique as you said, there isn’t any other choice for people who seek it.
Also I do believe that with the surge of new players the one server that stood to gain its crowd back was ZT.
ZT was populated, it didn’t start low and died, it struggled at times like any other non mega server and was sabotaged by Blizzard interference which not even mega servers are immune to (look at Firemaw).
I don’t believe in the new meta which is “only mega servers are legible”.
Yeah all servers where sabotaged by Blizzard. The problem is, even on Celebras with his 200-250 average active people it whas feelable not enough. And Celebras whas from all realms more populated then all the other realms that got shot down together. So while I not think that the servermord itself whas the right thing, I think at least with ZT they took the right decicion. I do not not know what the Retail RP Realm situation is for EN except Argent Dawn but in DACHL we have right now beside Die Aldor two more RP Serverclusters and where everyone is one opinion is that those two should be connected and some even say that Die Aldor should be included too. More important is some people do not want the guys from Die Aldor because there is Goldshire Bordell and RP Elitist that give you everything from “Your RP is bad and you should feel bad!” to “You are nothing more then a hazzle so please do everyone a favour and kill yourself.” but that is right now not important.
The important thing is, even in Retail people came to realize, that the small group of RPler should not get divided more then needed (as with languages) so in Classic this should be done too. Because even more in Classic with its server gameplay it is better to have four dozens of players together then only two dozen.
There are other tools you can use such as faction queue, such as designated free transfers to low population servers to bolster them not to kill them. There is correct use of transfer (I wrote it all before) so to not allow more harm with this tool, which sadly happened a lot, people would use transfer to chain move.
Except the last sentence I agree with you.
You expect that there is ONE customer group. But just like they tried before there are multiple groups with different ideas and desires.
Now the point is to decide what they want to deliver and how to achieve it.
If they would have wanted the classic experience from back then they would have put an upper limit of 20.000 per Server where it is automatically closed because even if they are pessimistic and think after the hype phase only 10% remain it would still be enough for a full classic server back then. Additionally they would have needed to implement the old servertransfers where you could only pay to get to servers with lesser population category so instead of going from Medium to High you could only to Low while a High could go to Medium and Low.
But in the end they decided to make this hybrid of Classic and retail where they even supported anonymous massservers with their free transfers from lower realms.
Personally I rather they would have at least with TBC way early introduced cross realm RDF to allivate problems because you still need your server for raid and trading but at least dungeons can make them happier and support twinking.
The problem isn’t letting players do what they want it’s not letting them do what they want enough. People want to play on megaservers. The only thing that puts people off is a queue.
So theres literally dead servers because blizzard uses queues.
Edit: what I was originally going to say was in response to the title “Blizzard cares more about US?” which is obvious, they literally update the game in reverse time US>Europe>Asia as opposed to how it should be
Why are there dead servers because of queues. That is like saying there are dozens of empty clubs because all people want in one club but the bouncer is not letting more in that there is space.
What I think is really making people to go there is because so many people are there for dungeons you should the least waiting time for getting a group or to stay with the club allegory because so many people are in this club the owner has the leasure to play more often well liked songs instead of only not so much liked songs or even none.
To solve this problem they should like I said in my post above yours had introduced the RDF way earlier. While I begrudgingly accept that in Classic it whas deemed to much of #NoChanges (but allowing servers way what whas possible back then is fine) at least in TBC they should have brought him earlier. And about Raids I think this is something that should stay Classic where because of server limitations you have to find a group and play together with them.
