Dead servers MEGATHREAD - Ghostlands/Dragonblights plea to Blizzard

Community General Discussion
61

I would love to see that!

The removal of PvP realms has opened up a lot of possibilities that just didn’t exist when they did the original merges.

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62

I did this, I think it is so wrong that people have to pay for moving from a dead realm when it isn’t their fault it died.

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63

In the end, I think most players will just glaze over the odd accent in a name. If you don’t focus on them, nobody else will - and if you’ve got an incentive for it, e.g. everyone you know cleared off from your old server and a move makes sense, it’s certainly nothing I’d worry about too much :slight_smile:

Although it is kind of nice to have some highly desirable name tagged from the ancient days. I used to have a level 10 rogue called Trouble somewhere, but I think she succumbed to the 2-year activity limited and got flagged for rename :joy:

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64

This really varies depending on person playing. Like i said earlier, if i would be forced to move server and lose my characters name in process, i would quit. For me it would just wipe that character and make it unpersonal and not the same. My friends have not cleared off from my server either, some of them still play there and some have quit wow totally. None of them have moved to other servers. So there would be no benefit for me at all from move. I support whole heartedly connecting more realms together (like they did with Ghostlands and Dragonblight) or solution like eu wide AH and crossrealm guilds, but not closing server and moving characters by force.

My names are not special in that way, they are just special to me because of history of the character. Those characters have had their names for 14 years and those names are huge part of those characters.

Sorry that i keep explaining this over and over again but i do it because i know there is many others who feel the same about character names and it is very important thing to remember when thinking of different ways to find solution for low pop realms.

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65

I have race changed/name changed this gal many times in 12 years… she is still my first character I ever made whatever happens :slight_smile:

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66

ER/Darkmoon Faire is serving its 10 year anniversery as a dead realm this year.

To be honest, Blizzard should shut down all of these ghost realms, and merge the ones that are still populated. Kill CRZ and sharding in the process. There, we can form communities again.

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67

Quite ok, it’s a discussion that needs to be had. Ideally with Blizzard involved, but if the community at least knows what to ask for that will help :slight_smile:

I have no problem with connected realms, but in my case I wanted to try out AD. Ain’t nothing ever being connected to that!

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68

It is like playing a single player game.

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69

there are a couple of ideas that could be thrown out there, but because we dont know whats possible, we dont know what ideas are good ideas, and what ideas are impossible. changes made at the start of legion/end of WoD meant that (as far as i believe) the way servers and all the tech works now is just different to how it was. i dunno how much it costs to maintain a single server, but is it REALLY worth keeping the dead servers open which only house maybe a couple hundred ACTIVE players? is it not cost effective to move them to another server and shut down the original one? this server could then be used to host a classic server, or just shut down completely to save money. saved money = profits up!

some ideas:

  • 1 linked AH (or a small number of linked AH’s) like GW2 has.
  • 1 main name: your “account name”. similar again to GW2.
  • give your original server name as your “surname”. that way no one has to change their name if they are forced to move.
  • free move for ALL characters and guilds on the lowest population servers to a mid range server. that way, all players can stay with friends/guilds when they move. leave this open for say 3 months, then auto move the rest of the (what would be inactive) toons there. this will save on maintenance of “useless” servers. free transfers never worked before cause they were from high populated realms TO low pop. that wont fix anything, you need the move from LOW pop to MEDIUM pop, that way the medium server gets bigger, the high server doesn’t get more crowded, and the low pop server is retired. everyone wins.
  • cross realm guilds/AH.

and while these ideas below wont help the main issue at hand, they’re worth noting:

  • better guild finder tool. current one is next to useless.
  • 2 types of “guild”. a) banker guilds, no more than 10 toons allowed, same functionality as any current guild. listed as a BANKER, not a guild. and b) your standard guild as of now, with the only restriction it must have 11 or more toons in it.
  • sharding and CRZ need to be looked at. they are being handled terribly. how much do people actually enjoy them? cause if its universally despised, along with them working badly, maybe the WHOLE sharding/CRZ situation needs to be scrapped and started from the start.
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70

I would like to add idea of one megaserver combining all servers on regions language group. Everyone would have as hidden second name their original server name and sharding system would use this as guideline when placing players to different shards (so people would still see people from their “old realm”). All trading (including manual trading and AH) and guild forming would be possible with anyone on whole region.

Naturally don’t know if this would be possible with their tech, but it would solve the problem permanently with no need to later do another server connections or such when popularity of servers fluctuates further. Server that is now medium or high population might turn into low pop some other time and people will again want to move. I remember even Dragonblight had in some point free transfers to then lower pop realms (to Vek’nilash and i think some point also to Saurfang) so situation is not stable it changes.

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71

@Gráinne: Working on it, but this is a BIG thing… and complicated, too.

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72

That is a very good point!

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@All: Indeed. However, it means that my task is expanded as well, as there are more possible avenues to consider. This means that even though I have already spent several hours refining my plan, I am probably less than 15% overall done so far. I intend to have eight different sections for clarity and I have only fully finished two of the smaller ones, two others are close to compeletion and remaining four require a LOT more actual work (=calculations).

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Know, that while you keep chugging away, it is very much appreciated by us.

Hell, I even started uploading data to warcraftrealms because of you (even though they never seem to activate my account!!! shakes fist :p).

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75

If you have all classes at high lvl and dont want to lose your char name as is my situation then transfering is not really an option

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76

this. i personally have 16 horde toons ghostlands, and 16 alliance toons on silvermoon. after the flustercluck that i’ve experienced with ghostlands, i made sure not to have the same issue with alliance, although i started the game in 2007 with alliance, and even got 5 of them back including my first toon, on nagrand, another server that is not healthy, though not as bad as ghostlands i think.

i will not pay to move ever. moving one horde would cost £19. thats 2 months game time. and they want me to pay this for all 16 horde i have? £304? 32 months game time? almost THREE years? no thanks. and while 16 alts may be a lot, i know many players with 5-10 toons on the server. thats still £100-£200.

all for an issue that we never caused, and could be fairly easily fixed, in the short term at least, by offering ALL low pop servers free transfers to medium pop servers, and add the original server name as a suffix, like we see atm.

again, i cant blame players for moving, but its a lot of money for something that wasn’t our fault. even if its only 1 toon, £19 aka 2 months gametime, is too much. there should be no charge when leaving low pop servers. none. no matter how many alts/guilds you move.

and i do wonder what the cost ratio is for keeping all these dead servers going? is it really more cost effective to have several servers open that are basically only supporting a couple hundred players? surely in my tiny mind its more efficient to just shut these servers down and move the players.

and name changes shouldn’t be an issue. like i said, just add your original server name at the end. lets say i get moved to tarren mill (just an example, as they are high pop and prob not a good idea to be moved there), i remain vintoleth - Ghostlands.

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77

Any move from dead realms should be at the expense of Blizzard.

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78

i can only give you one like for that, but it deserves so many more :slight_smile:

people might choose different servers as well. casual friends and guilds may split up.

also, guilds should be allowed to move at the expense of blizz. our guild is over 10 years old, and has nearly all achievements done. it would be a bit unfair to throw that in the bin :frowning:

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79

I agree, messing guilds would be unforgivable. Our guild is almost 14 years old now and i would be super mad if something would break it or mess with the name (just like with my characters names it is not special name but the age and history makes the name important to us).

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further to my last email to the community team, (as i thought it came across as too generic, or empty), i have had a 2nd reply from them:

Hi Vintoleth,

We absolutely understand your concerns, please don’t feel like we don’t. We understand that waiting for both communication and action to be taken can be frustrating when we’re talking about something that affects gameplay as much as this.

Connecting realms is something we take very seriously, and if we reach a point where we think it’s the best course of action to solve this problem and we have everything planned out, we will communicate about it, but not until then, because it’s as you said, as soon as we even mention the subject of future connections, people will hold us to it, it will create expectations that we’re not yet ready to commit to fulfilling.

Again, and I know it’s quite a lot to ask, but please trust us when we say that we’re following this subject very closely and take it extremely seriously, and we have been since the last time we’ve connected realms together.

im not sure what else i can do tbh. i dont want to pester the Community team, and if they are being genuine, (and i cant show they are not), then i understand where they are coming from to a fair point. i have tried talking to Taliesin from Taliesin & Evitel, but i guess he just doesn’t see me. i thought this would get more traction, as dead servers effect a lot of people (like, a lot), and where threads on high elves and removed portals got so much response, i thought this could too.

all i can ask is for people to try keep asking their friends, guildmates, or randomly in tradechat or general, to look at this thread and keep it going.

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