If i create new char for instance on Frostmane, I see around ppl from Outland Grimbatol Silvermoon and many other realms.
But if I create char on Stormreaver the ppl will from other realms, for instance from Eonar , Doomhammer , Burning Legion and others.
Apparently all realms divided in some way, ppl say its crossrealms.
The question is what the cross realm groups is?
It’s not a fixed situation, they try to mix & match players so that people don’t end up on dead shards, but also don’t suffer from massive lag/overcrowding. That and try to balance the factions a bit on Warmode-enabled shards.
But with everyone being able to create a (raid)group at any time, and importing potentially another few dozen players over to their shard, results aren’t all that much in Blizzards hands (nor ours).
Which realms your (home) realm is likely to be matched with, can vary over time. Blizzard obviously has certain links set up (similar to the old BattleGroup model), so you will start to see some patterns over time (as you have), but there’s no reason those could not be different next week.
Also, just because you see players from a few other realms around, does not mean there weren’t enough players from your realm. It’s possible that some of your local guildies all end up on different shards, merged with different people from other realms. Basically your realm just doesn’t mean much anymore out in the (especially warmode-enabled) world.
RP realms are kept seperate from regular realms (if we ignore players making cross-realm groups).
I think most former-PvP realms are still likely to rub shoulders with other former-PvP realms, and likewise for PvE, but i can’t say this with certainty.
hi Sandsh.
Exactly. certainty is that isn’t enough here.
I have bad latency on all realms from, lets call it Stormreaver group.
All realms, Stormreaver, Doomhammer, Burning Legion … no matter where i create new char have bad latency.
From other hand realms like Frostmane Revenrest Kazak Grim batol … all of them have slightly better latency. Each of these group have their own players around me, so i guess they are the different servers. Physical different.
In many online games player can switch between servers. I don’t understand why blizzard hiding it?! For instance World of tanks eu have 3 server now and i can log into each of them when i want. I pick up sever with better latency and logging in. In WOW my characters bound to the realm that i don’t want to be. And they don’t allow me to transfer it for free. Especial if it isn’t matter for them what server i playing. What a stupid thing.
I think those are the Scandinavian ones (Stockholm), whereas the others you mentioned are Paris and Frankfurt. I’m not sure if that makes sense to you (maybe you’re located in northern europe?). Those locations are to the best of my knowledge anyway, i’m not aware of any up to date list on realm to data center mappings.
Other games (vs wow)
As for other games, yea there’s a combination of thing to account for that. For one thing, while there have been many changes, wow is still somewhat tied to a system that was designed/developed 2 decades ago.
If the game was being made from scratch today i’m sure we’d end up with a model much more similar to other games, or perhaps effectively a regionwide megaserver. The whole concept of realms is definitely very dated, which is why we’ve slowly but steadily moved more and more away from it. At the moment, for most players, their realm is fairly insignificant for anything but guild-options.
Only paid transfers
Yea i get that that will feel unfair if you’re dealing with a bad connection to the realms. Ordinarily though, since the realms do not really move, if the connection is fine when you create a character on a realm, it’s normally to be expected that you’ll always have a semi-decent connection to that place, aside from during temporary network problems.
Bad connection
Assuming you’re physically in Europe yourself, and you have a common broadband type connection (or better), i find it hard to imagine that the bad latency is really due to the distance/route to the realm servers as well. (If it was an extra 20ms or the like sure; but reading between the lines i imagine you’re talking a more noticable difference instead).
More likely that something else is going on. Either with those realms themselves (or atleast the shards you’ve been tossed into), or just a routing problem between your ISP and that datacenter maybe. Or some covid related saturated network nonsense 
No idea, but it doesn’t sound like it is as should be expected.
I don’t know how long you’re already suffering from these issues though, nor if other people on the same shards as you are having the same problem,
You may find this page interesting, it’s a very old (probably a decade out of date) listing of the realms → battlegroup → datacenter mappings.
https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/EU_realm_list_by_datacenter
Hi Sandsh.
I like ur english mate. im originally isn’t native english speaker, so i hope im not insulting u much.
I started play from WOLK . Then I created 4 first my chars and in Cata already had moved them once, from horde realm to alliance. Now I have all classes characters plus some professions in total i want to move on new realm 15 chars! All my guild, one ppl guild, and create new guild on new realm. 600 eu plus sub that is what blizzard want from me to play only month, really??? And who knows what the new realm will! Im not playing like year or something because ive got bored with all gearing stuff and all ppl around on my realm. Moreover simple haven’t time for drama etc, but will be glad to play once per week. But I don’t.
SO Im free-to-play now. Yes of course, i want to buy new expansion. But i dont need new char, i dont want new char, i have all of them already. So play in the place that i dont want to be, with ppl that i dont want to be, just to have a look on new expansion and drop the game like i did ? why blizzard?
Character Transfer service consists from three different action: moving characters to other realms, moving in different World of Warcraft accounts, or from one Blizzard account to another.
I dont need two of them , i dont want to tach any other accounts, only that i need it s moving from realm to realm, inside my own account.
It is three DIFFERENT services! Completely different. Im not going to sell chars. I want move chars inside my account, only.
Lets look on situation in general, guy started to play on fogoten realm with dead Auction House and zero raiding guilds. He raise characters from the scratch, then searched here there and everywhere. Now he knows there r better realms with more guilds and better AH, and want keep those chars , just move all of them in the same account to other realms… ta da da da 40 eu per char , why ??? Why Auction house isn’t global for all realms and both sides, like in eveonline(ok it isnt good example to that is going on into WOW,but no such matter) ???
PS
Sandsh write more, i like to read ur posts, realy, no kidding here.