Frostmane is being merged with Aggra, which is a Portuguese server twice our own size.
No offence to Portuguese people whatsoever - I’m sure you’re just as wonderful as every other nation on this continent of ours - but I like to be able to understand the players on my server.
It’s one thing when you’ve got small pockets of a particular nationality roaming about your server - but it’s another entirely when your medium size realm gets merged into a much larger realm speaking a different language. This is kind of like merging Nozdormu into Gordunni or something like that.
Also, you’re doing it during our raid time, but that’s quite far down my list of concerns here.
Why? I realise Frostmane isn’t in a good state right now, but that’s entirely because it’s famously alliance dominated and the alliance is dying. Merging us with a Portuguese server won’t fix that. Especially not since Aggra-Grim Batol is actually balanced. Why not merge us with a Horde dominated realm?!
You’re aware Europe is made up of many countries with many different languages right?
There is no “UK” server for English only people. You probably play with many Portuguese people every week and just don’t realize it. My “English” realm has a lot of Swedish and Turkish people on it, and I communicate with randoms just fine.
A large amount of Portuguese people can speak English, I’d argue that figure grows even more towards the younger generations, such as the main audience of WoW.
Portugal is an easy place to go to as an English only speaker.
@Ishayoe: I checked the very limited public info and came to the the conclusion that the created 3-way is extremely likely to get connected again at a slightly later date… Depending on Blizzard plans, possibly even twice. In other words, it is extremely unlikely that it would remain a mere 3-way and therefore the “language ratio” will likely change again soon(ish).
No, duh. I completely forgot I speak Danish. Silly me.
Excuse the snark, but I realise that an English server is for people who speak English, and not for the UK. However, when playing on an English server, people will generally speak English, regardless of their country of origin, because English speaking people is what the realm is for.
The same applies to Portuguese servers, but with Portuguese, which is why having a Portuguese community in an English server is very different from being merged with a Portuguese server.
It’s not that they can’t speak English, is that they’ll want to speak Portuguese - obviously, it’s a Portuguese server - and we can’t understand them when they do.
EDIT:
Ok, don’t care. Just don’t do it at all. It hurts us as much as it hurts them - they’re losing their Portuguese language community. In fact, since it’s their only one, I’d argue it hurts them more than it hurts us! Doesn’t make me care any less, though. This is really bad.
I realise now that it was already done to Grim Batol. I didn’t know this, so I didn’t say anything, but if I had known I would’ve posted this a while ago.
@Ishayoe: Depending on what you mean exactly… There is a distinct possibility you are about six YEARS too late… and on additional note, if my WoW history recollection check succeeded, Aggras’s population originally moved out FROM Grim Batol… so at that far past time, connecting Aggra to Grim Batol was likely the best available option. I understand that you are not happy, but based on the available data, Aggra / Grim Batol MUST be connected to something… The situation is suboptimal for the Portuguese players as my prediction is that they will soon be in the minority. In short, Frostmane is far too small to sufficiently reinforce the 2-way by itself.
@Ishayoe: Connections have always been executed in phases… and as I noted, my prediction is that the resulting 3-way will get reconnected to something else, possibly even twice as it is still way too small to be viable long term.
How does you checking the very limited public info bring you to the conclusion that it is “extremely likely” to get connected again later?
What exactly ticked you off? How did you come to said conclusion?
I feel like these statements are rather fishy, don’t get me wrong here, not saying you’re lying, but the way you’re phrasing these things reminds me of politicians. “Oh my information suggests that it’s extremely likely that these things will happen as I predict them. And if they don’t, I can always fall back on faulty information and the “extremely likely” not being 100%.”
I’d like to know where your statements are coming from.
Conversely you also get a lot of clusters of communities that exclusively communicate in Portuguese and don’t speak a lick of English.
Also, being able to communicate with a minimum level of proficiency is not equivalent to being eligible for merging with those who speak it fluently.
But I think you already know all of this kind of stuff…
Is it contrarian Tuesday?
I used to play on Defias Brotherhood EU and those servers (DB and it’s merged RPPvP realms) had a good amount of Polish people setting their eyes on the realm, which promptly resulted in Trade chat being full of all Polish communication and a bottleneck effect of newcomers.
He is right to be concerned with this merge. It’s nonsensical and only works on paper, not in an actual final scenario.
@Kyrel: Couple of minor corrections to the overall… Aggra / Grim Batol combined, currently, compared to the current situation, which WILL change as other connections are executed and Grim Batol is not marked as Portuguese. It most likely has a few, too, but to my knowledge that 2-way has had two official support languages for over six years.
@Korok: I will attempt to address this in my reply to Grobluk directly below in a response as to why I do not believe this is “an actual final scenario”…
@Grobluk: I am more than happy to try expand on my previous posts… According to the very limited data (mostly supplied by Wowrealmpopulation and supplemented by other info from Warcraftrealms, my old notes and screenshots and so on) Aggra / Grim Batol currently has around 10 000 active characters of level 10+, Frostmane less than 3 000 in the past 14 days. Blackmoore, which is also on the to be connected list by itself has over 33 000… In other words, the limited data suggests that Aggra / Grim Batol / Frostmane 3-way is still sufficiently small in terms of actual actives to be reconnected, possibly more than once as some of the prospective candidates are barely bigger than Frostmane… very deep sigh
Fair enough, if their goal is to create high population only servers, your expectations may be met.
I find it unlikely that they’ll merge servers several times over, given the fact how much they’re already struggling with properly merging those servers.
I also don’t necessarly subscribe to the belief that the ultimate goal for these merges is to only have realmpools the size of Blackmoore. I’d personally love it, because it’d mean my home realm Onyxia / Dethecus / Mug’thol / Terrordar / Therardras with below 5k active players would get merged with other realms, which I’d celebrate.
But hey, only time will tell.
I now understand where you’re coming from and see why it would make sense given the belief that these current merges are only the penultimate goal.
That’s a little different, although I certainly appreciate what you’re saying.
In your case you’re one dealing with 2 realms out of ~100.
In our case we’re going to be dealing with 2 realms out of 3.
Basically, we’ll experience 35 times more Portuguese people than you do using the LFG tool.
Obviously this only applies to our cities, our auction houses, our chat channels, our guilds and stuff like that. Not to the LFG tool. The LFG tool stays as is.
As for CRZ, this just happens to be a pet peeve of mine, but CRZ actually hits way harder when you use Warmode than it does when you don’t. If you don’t use Warmode, you’ll generally find people from your own server and, when I do, I’ll find Portuguese people most of the time.
If Blizzard ever decides to fix the open world social interactions in this game, which they say they want to do but haven’t figured out how yet, then this could become a very big issue for me.
Why are they merging High pop servers anyway? And what gives you the impression they won’t be done after merging a Medium and High Pop realm? Surely that should be a healthy population right then and there, no?
EDIT: Ok, so judging by your numbers, medium pop + high pop = … low pop? Basically?
Look - it doesn’t actually matter as far as I’m concerned anyway. There are dozens of low pop servers I’d love for our realms to sweep up that are using English as their language, so why on Gods green Earth should we merge with the Portuguese ones?
By the way, 10,000 players is a health size. I don’t know why they’re even allowing 80k servers, but 10k is twice the size of a vanilla realm. It’s absolutely fine.
This is the important bit. It’s not just a community, unlike this one:
Our situation is way worse. We’re being merged with an officially Portuguese realm.
And @Trelw: And it’s no good telling me that it’s already a Portuguese/English server. It isn’t. It’s the old Portuguese-community-on-English-server merged with an actual Portuguese server. The vast, vast majority of people on these servers are going to be Portuguese.
I agree that your situation is a lot more severe. My example was through the initiative of a polish communities, not Blizz. This is a massive handover.
All i can offer is to go there and see how trade and general works from what i recall its mainly english.
When you go to pick realms its under the english tab and has been for 6 years .
I know you are worried and rightly so but take a look see how you feel and if bad gather support from friends and guildies but players from Portugal have a good standard of english .
I wish you well .
@Grobluk: More in terms of sufficient activity ones… Even a massive population may very inactive… See for example current situation of Outland or a few other realms.
I do not, as the original program 1 already produced a TEN-way connection.
Based on what I can see, you will get connected, possibly even more than once. Naturally, not being a Blizzard employee, this is not a fact, just my honest opinion on your realm status.
You are quite welcome. bows
@Ishayoe: 10 000 characters, not players. Aggra / Grim Batol has an estimated 2 800 to 3 100 players, Frostmane about 825 to 950. For comparison, Draenor has over 84 000 active characters (and as far as I recall a passive population in excess of 600 000) and therefore likely around 24 000+ players (not all at the same time, but within two weeks).
Actually, no, a connection of smallish and tiny activity. Passive population, as I noted above, is to a degree irrelevant in the short term.
As I said, in my view Aggra / Grim Batol is no longer viable by itself, Frostmane even less so. This purely my view, but in my opinion, a viable realm has at least 8 000 active players over a period of two weeks and divided so that the smaller faction can achieve at least 800 actives at prime time peak. Data (without running a census scan) on Frostmane horde suggests they can field about SIXTY (60).
I will repeat myself, both Aggra / Grim Batol and Frostmane have to get connected to something… and very, very likely more than once. You may disagree with the specific union, but there is only a limited number of options even though there are others. As to why Blizzard selected that specific grouping first, I do not know.
@Ishayoe: No hurry, enjoy your D&D session with your friends.
As for the numbers, it is my estimate for a two week period based on the limited available data. If you have CensusPlus scan results or something else useful in estimating numbers, I will happily look at them. However, extrapolating from WRP data suggest a max of about 50 to 70 horde and 765 to 790 alliance for prime time peak, much less during quiet times…
bows