Don't merge realms of different languages!

Community General Discussion
655

The sheer confidence in their internal data and abilities, and the willingness to write off your own concerns as being based on incomplete information, is starting to boggle my mind a bit.

Ultimately, the purpose of a realm merge is to avoid dead realms and provide a better experience for players.

Have they achieved this in the case of my connection?
No. Absolutely not.

Will they achieve it? Not the way they’re going.

I’m not even sure I can sum up the amount of problems, both socially and technically, that I’ve been through these last few days, but I’ll give it my best shot to chronicle them all.

  1. The merge is announced a few days ahead sort-of quietly, forcing us to cancel a raid night. There is no in-game login message telling you that this realm is getting merged. Many guild members had missed it entirely and got a shock when we cancelled the Thursday raid and instead asking for the optional Wednesday raid to take its place to at least do something.
  2. I note my unhappiness at merging an officially Portuguese and officially English realm together. Although I dislike merging realms of different language communities, I can see why it must be done, and I understand it - but this, for me, took it a step too far.
  3. The merge happened anyway with no communication, updates, or anything else. Even when the server was shutting down, which it did during our raid time so we were all online because we just had to experience it, there was no in-game message informing us why the realm was being shut down.
  4. Immediately upon logging in the next day, Frostmane shows up as having no characters. Many guild members are so confused they call Blizzard customer support. Frostmane does have characters, and they show up when you log in to the realm itself.
  5. All the players are missing from the guild list, the in-game calendar, and many other places.
  6. Attempting to add these characters results in “-GrimBatol is already invited to this event”
  7. Attempting to tab-complete these players that have not yet logged in has them show up 3 times. For instance, Sattana took a little while to log in because he was busy for a few days, and for the longest time I could auto-complete Sattana, Sattana-Frostmane, Sattana-GrimBatol, and Sattana-Aggra(Português)
  8. Currently the guild information lists an incorrect number of members - I presume it’s doubled all the numbers by counting a GrimBatol shadow-copy
  9. The item sets for our character panel were not copied over correctly.
  10. For some players, items that were already used or items that were owned much previous showed up in inventories. For some players, seemingly random items have shown up - although in many cases somewhat relevant items. We presume there have been bags mixed around between characters of the same name or something along those lines, but we’re currently unsure.
  11. My dislike for a cross-language merger, when better options were available and the Portuguese server was well alive, gets misconstrued as my hating Portuguese people, and I got an extraordinary amount of hate upon logging in. However, saner heads have prevailed and things are mostly back to normal.
  12. One of the top guilds left. 2 more were considering it, and so were… are we.
  13. Trade chat is full of Portuguese and English people flaming one another, reporting each other for xenophobia, using the wrong language, being awful, etc.
  14. Our raid yesterday evening had to be cancelled, because internally Blizzard had apparently used character transfer, so we ran into the limitation that’s supposed to prevent people from selling raid lockouts across servers - we all had independent 0/12M lockouts.
  15. There doesn’t seem to be much mixing between the two populations so far, with the notable except of FOR THE INVICTA, which is huge either way.
  16. There have been no updates anywhere about how any of this took place, how it worked, what problems we might run into, etc. Even as we actively run into issues and report them, we receive no replies or updates despite the fact that there is a stickied thread dedicated to exactly that.
  17. Various fansites haven’t updated their API’s yet, causing sketchy errors. This isn’t strictly Blizzard’s fault though, although if they had an API that didn’t suck, it wouldn’t have been a problem.
  18. a character had to leave the guild, get deleted, get undeleted, then join the guild. Until that happened it couldn’t be found by Blizzard’s API’s, thus some of our spreadsheets weren’t working, and it wasn’t on the armoury.

I’ve probably forgotten a handful of things from that list. Maybe I’ll update it as I start to remember. Either way, the notion that this was done by competent people using solid data as their guide is completely and utterly absurd to me.

“It was a ****show, obviously.” -Taliesin

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656

@Ishayoe: Problems are without a doubt VERY annoying and you personally certainly have had far more than your fair share of them. :(:(:frowning:

Problems 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14 and 17 are sadly not unique and would unfortunately likely have struck even with a different “root” realm. :frowning:

Problems 1, 3 and 16 are more out of game issues. I did see “Breaking news” announcement beforehand, but I have heard conflicting reports about people receiving only information relevant for their client language, which, for some of us is a problem, too. :frowning: I was unfortunately not available to be present on Xavius before it was shut down. Did you receive ANY yellow system messages before shutdown or were you simply DCed without any warning at all?

Problems 11, 13 and 15 are “people problems” and will hopefully settle down. An announcement of further relevant connections would certainly help here.

Problem 12, as I noted should be put on hold unless you intend to head for Silvermoon (alliance) or Draenor (for possible horde alts).

As for problem 2, I have tried to explain the overall picture and it applies to several other possible future connections as well, because as you can see from the related Burning Legion discussion the “officiality” of something is not really a factor in the creation of problems 11, 13 and 15. :frowning:

I would also like to note that the people responsible for the connection picks are quite unlikely to have relevant knowledge in the mechanical execution of said connections. So there are at least four subsets of issues and they have very little in common, which does not make solving them any easier. :frowning:

With that said, I would like to think that the underlaying mathematics are sound and based on the far more comprehensive data Blizzard must possess. I think the main issue here is that the situation is not just mathematics. In fact, most of your list has no relation to any quantifiable number of “stuff type X”.

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657

To me your defence basically amounts to “The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, but they have very good data and are making informed decisions” - which is a line of reasoning I just can’t get behind, and I certainly can’t defend them based upon it.

There are 4 levels of failure and a failure of inter-communication all going on at the same.

  1. Community team isn’t doing it’s job figuring out what the communities are actually like.
  2. Forum team isn’t gathering and/or receiving feedback and/or it isn’t being acted upon.
  3. Server team hastechnical issues on their end
  4. Game engine team has technical issues on their end
  • None of them are coordinating.
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658

pretty bold statements when said what 3 days post merge ?

come back in 6 months and then we can see if it works or not

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659

… w0t?

So the realm merge works fine now contrary to evidence because it might work fine in 6 months?

I… uh… ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ???

Unicornduck.

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660

Seems better to me to start over on a different server now and have that max char for SL this week instead of waiting 6 months.

661

the process of merges just started.

it was obvious that it will be painfull .

but resoults will be seen 6-12 months after merges end.

just because some guilds decide to transfer to other servers doesnt mean that those servers wont be merged too in near future.

its situation similiar to people jumping servers in early days of classic and then whining that their server is unplayable too and that if they knew they wouldnt transfer off.

give it time - so far you are one out of what 5 people here on forums complaining ? such a problem indeed.

662

so start ? people have been rerolling servers for past 16 years.

i have rerolled this way from Saurfang to Draenor in early MoP - transfered 1 toon and releveled all other classes .

its not a big deal .

663

Exactly my point :+1: Get out of that crap situation. Don’t wait 6-12 months. That is 1 tier missed and maybe even 2. (while this was not about me, of course).

664

If you are in a stable guild before the connection I do not see why you are suddenly going to miss two tiers because of a connection. People are free to move of course but bear in mind connections have not finished happening yet.

I do understand and fully sympathise when things don’t go smoothly with connections and there seem to be a lot of hiccups.

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665

@Ishayoe: I am really sorry, if you got that impression from my reply. I tried very hard not to dismiss or belittle any of your concerns, because I happen to agree that many of those 17 issues are extremely serious and require fixing, quickly.

As to this list of four. I believe certain responsibilities are delegated entirely or in large part to US Blizzard staff. We do not get information on what gets passed on and how the information is perceived at the receiving end. It is also difficult (at least for me) to understand to which degree points 3 and 4 interact with eachother. In other words, do technical conditions somehow differ between different component realms, because some problems at least appear more widespread than others, even within the same connected realm. quite puzzled

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666

This is such absolute BS it boggles the mind. It’s like finishing the development of a game and then it comes out in a terrible state and then saying “Well, the game will show its true colours in 6-12 months” (I like how you just prolonged that, just in case)

The server merge just happened. This is the result. Will the community settle down? Sure it will, but the result of the merge is in.

Besides, what you’re referring to is the two communities merging together. I didn’t even get into that in that list! I was talking purely about technical problems and communication problems.

Wait, you actually think everybody who doesn’t like this is on the forums?

I repeat: Unicornduck.

I get that, but there’s an element of defence as well. On the one hand they require fixing, and they absolutely do, but on the other hand it feels like there’s this attempt to try to explain it to make it okay.

Obviously what’s done is done. I’d just like a message from them at this point. But I apologise in turn for misreading your intention.

Alright, let’s dig into it then.

The engine programming tasks and the tools are obviously in the hands of the US offices. The data engineers are more than likely in Europe, although that’s not quite clear either.

Anyway, it’s clear we’re dealing with a community team,a management team, a core engine team, a server and maintenance team, and a data management team.

The actual server merging itself - the deleting of a server essentially, went well. There’s no traces of the old Frostmane. So far, so good.

The data management guys were supposed to get the data over so it would operate correctly, and that definitely didn’t go as planned. These guys definitely bear the brunt of the responsibility.

However, there’s also some game engine bugs that are hopping in here and interacting with the broken data in quite remarkable ways, and these guys are likely also responsible for writing the character migration system, which caused several of our issues. However, one could argue that this feature actually works perfectly fine, but was misused by the data management team.

It doesn’t really seem like the data management guys were talking to the game engine guys. There was no public testing of this - that much we know. The last time Blizzard did large-scale merges, they were testing it out on the PTR. This time that didn’t happen.

The community team isn’t updating us. Whether that’s because of their own incompetence or because they aren’t getting the internal information needed is unclear, although I strongly suspect it’s the latter. It’s a mistake that’s easier to make in a large organisation, and I know the blues were reading this thread. I saw them edit posts.

Management should’ve stepped in here and gone “Hol’ up!” based on any number of these factors and they should have facilitated far more coordination and testing.

As it just so happens I work at a large software company myself, and we handle billions of rows of financial transactions data for our customers. If major or catastrophic errors with no recovery plans are done in some of these, like is the case here, things can go really, really badly wrong.

In Blizzard’s case, the game engine will likely fix the errors automatically over time and the disruption is the main negative event. In our case the historical data is of huge importance, so this would’ve been far worse.

God have mercy on our souls - Blizzard just makes games.

667

@Ishayoe: The current situation is NOT ok, but for the large part it is also way beyond my personal ability to fix. I just try to juggle (often very lacking) data and pass on my views and opinions with some background data (where available). As you know, greens are just regular players and I have no desire to turn into a glorified customer service agent (a job for which I am decidedly unsuited as I am actually rather shy offline, stutter, if I lose my temper (rare) or get embarrassed (common) and I also tend to be too thin-skinned to handle excessively negative critique). Also, I am a humanist, not a technician. When my studies hopefully successfully conclude in 2024 I will technically be a Master of philosophy (major: English).

I also agree more feedback would be extremely nice… but we no longer even have a dedicated community manager. :frowning: As far as I know, Aerythlea still works for Blizzard, but in other areas of responsibiliity and Takralus left EU region years ago. I still miss her, “working” with her on the original connected realms program was a genuine pleasure at best and she could at least soften some of the rather cruel blows of worst times… really deep sigh

Much of what you say rings true in certain ways, some details I am not qualified to assess (due to my own lack of knowledge).

All in all, I still believe the situation can be weathered. I am aware it might be painful (the original program had some moments I would rather erase from my memory, but can not), but I sincerely hope the end result will be better than just tolerable as the point of games is to have fun, not to get tortured / frustrated / angry / depressed.

EDIT: Minor typos.

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668

Its not a big deal on an individual level. When you start asking entire guilds to reroll and essentially restart their characters, it becomes less reasonable.

Let’s also factor in the reason for this. Most would probably accept it if some clear objective benefit came from it. At current there’s little evidence of this.

A high pop PT realm that didn’t need a merge got one. Benefits to them are small.

A smaller pop EU realm gets merged with them, but their ability to connect with the high number of guilds is impaired due to language.

“Well they just have to learn to speak PT/English” but which, given the realm had two officially designated languages? Who has to give space? Who had to give up their promised majority language?

Whilst this may not affect all established guilds it doesn’t really help overall growth significantly.

I just can’t get behind the mindset of “we’ll introduce this thing that IS a major inconvienience right now in the short term, had no clear benefits in the medium term because it may have benefits in the long term, but we don’t actually know that for sure and we won’t know until it does or fails” especially when there was an option to just not do it and think about a longer term solution over time.

It just seems like no careful thought was put into it and players are expected to make it work because blizzard just decided to shake the sandboxes, and if it does manage to work through player agency it will be part of “blizzards plan” they never even knew about much less could predict. Really wacky development ethos.

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669

I honestly would quit if my server got merged with another server where I can no longer understand a good portion of the people talking in public chats or trying to group with. It already feels bad to get grouped in dungeons/LFR with people that don’t know mechanics/and/or you cannot communicate with things you need to.

Not about to pay so much money for each character this far into the game to transfer, let alone whole guilds.

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670

I know from personal experience back in BoD raid we recruited someone who later on we find out he doesn’t speak or understand english at all.
I tried to help him as much as i could! Whenever he was giving a task in the raid i would just go and translate everything to him so people in our raid don’t get mad at all.

Well it was working ok-ish till we arrived to a boss where we need to communicate on discord to tell each other our colors. After that night he got benched and then he left the guild after 2 weeks cause he felt neglected.

Same thing will happen to us if any of this low pop realm get a chance to join a guild that doesn’t speak english. Simple as that.

1 Like
671

but thats the not case here.

we have very succesfull merge with more coming in future

just because few people complain it doesnt mean its not succesfull .

672

let me remind you that BL is not an official Polish server though

so no problem is visible on Blizzard side of things

just because people speak polish in trade there its not stopping others from using english .

673

Guess I Just made all those points I made earlier up, then.

But Aggra is officially Portuguese.

So there should be a visible problem on Blizzard’s side of things.

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674

Repeating it for the 100th time but we have no new guild recruitment options or new guilds to join, because theyre all polish.

Cant this thread just be a letter to blizzard. why do people from other realms have to derail it despite it not having any effect on them

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