We all know the current situation with PVP servers being monofactional in Cataclysm. While it’s fine for a PVE server, for PVP server it basically disables a big aspect of the game.
I’m not talking only of simple ganking, but of guild wars, fights for world bosses, city raids, etc.
There is an example of how Blizzard managed to handle this problem right on the Anniversary realms by making Gigaservers and forcing faction balance to be close to 50/50.
I believe that similar thing can be done for Cata servers just before MoP launch. Just merge Firemaw and Gehennas (maybe some more servers too), and after things settle down enable the balancer. I’m not sure if the balancer rules must be as strict as for Anniversary, because these realms are not new, but it should be one of the topics to discuss.
Agreed, with SoD basically dying few of my guildies are considering MoP but faction dominated servers are our biggest issue, we need a pvp server merge or fresh servers with faction balance enforced like in sod/anniversary realms.
They did not announce any mergers with the prepatch and mop release date announcement so I do not expect them to do anything about this issue.
I fully support this post. Server balance is worse than ever, and nothing’s being done to fix it. It feels like Blizzard has forgotten the issue entirely.
This seems to be a Cata (soon MoP) problem—SOD and Anniversary servers prove it can be done right.
Please like or comment to raise awareness. Let’s bring back the other faction and make the world fun again!
I asked them in a support ticket, and they answered that devs are closely monitoring feedback on forums and via ingame ‘give feedback’ option, so I should make a post about ‘Gigaserver’ here.
IMO if the merge can be done, this is the only good time for it. We must try to push this message here.
I’m 100% with you on this. Ever since Classic 2019/20, this issue has affected many servers — including the German ones like Venoxis and Lucifron. Venoxis, for example, is 99.99% Horde, and in the open world you rarely see anyone from the other faction. It basically feels like a PvE server now, which completely defeats the purpose of a PvP server.
I really wish Blizzard would take action and merge servers in a way that brings back faction balance. And if that means forced merges, then so be it. Honestly, I’d even say that players who chose to play on a PvP server that now functions as a PvE server should be expected to pay for a transfer. After all, they made that choice.
But realistically, I don’t think Blizzard will do anything about it — they haven’t since 2019/20.
agreed! WoW used to feel like a whole world, but now even on the most active realms it feels a bit dead. a gigaserver would bring this vibe back! active cities, active duelzones… guild wars, wpvp…
The amount of people following this forum and engaging is very low, so don’t expect such change based on the beta forum alone.
Faction balance have been an issue for a long time, and Blizzard have talked about various ways to fix it many times.
The biggest issue is, that even PvP players do not like PvP when they’re loosing.
The problem with forced faction balancing on existing and well established realms like Firemaw and Gehennas is the players and what they’ve gotten used to.
I’ve enjoyed PvP’ing through Classic and BC. I started on Razorgore and left when all alliance flooded to Firemaw. Why did alliance leave? They left due to imbalance. Imbalance is not just player count, it is also skill and race/class strength.
For a good while Firemaw was a somewhat balanced megaserver, lots of open world PvP fun, but! If you’re not on the winning team, you’re apparently not having any fun, and suddenly horde were gone.
The fact that we - gamers - require Blizzard to “keep” the factions balanced shows how broken open world PvP is.
Merging servers may fix the balance issue, but at what cost? You have to factor in the cost, and I doubt those crying for a merger realise what this cost might be.
I wouldn’t mind PvP’ing again, but even back in BC, it was rare to see actual PvP’ing outside actual PvP zones, besides ganking of low levels.
They should convert the current mega realms to PvE realms and give players a free transfer to a new faction balanced PvP realm, the fact that Firemaw and Gehennas are PvP realms today doesn’t matter at all considering the state they’re in.
Biggest issue with Cataclysm is the fact that we aren’t locked from creating characters of the opposite faction. I have both alliance and horde characters.
I would love some real open world PvP again, Isle of Quel’Danas was amazing, I do however feel like flying have ruined PvP and I seriously doubt Blizzard could manage the current realms in a balanced way, considering the current players and the behavior shown form both sides. There’s a reason for why we have these monofaction servers. If players actually cared, we could’ve balanced the realms ourselves, but you don’t want to play on the loosing faction, do you?
How many new players do we expect that doesn’t already have characters on Firemaw and/or Gehennas?
Merge them and we simply just force the weak/PvE’ers out, how does that ensure balance? It still requires players be willing to join the loosing faction, and if we already have characters on the realms in question, you can’t really force people, unless they’re new. Is limiting new players really the answer?
I still see a new PvP realm with free transfer from all other realms as the only solution.
Firemaw and Gehennas are PvE realms today, they’re simply mislabeled, forcing PvP would be a brave choice from Blizzard, but who knows, maybe they can do it without causing trouble.
The best thing in ‘forced balance’ is that players cannot join the ‘winning’ side until the balance is restored. They lock the faction for new players.
Also I believe that back in the time most of the players just picked the server where their faction got more players than on their current server. Many players in your faction mean you can find the raids easier. The good side of gigaserver here is that both factions got plenty of players.
So balance is forced and no reason to leave.
What is even the point of the EU PvP servers?
It must be so dull with everyone on a single faction.
Merging will solve little , its a player base issue and not a blizzard issue , players flock to play 1 sided servers regardless of pvp/pve since it leviates the open world ganking(pvp) and makes Pve achivements like killing other faction leaders quite trivial on 1 faction servers , ONLY way to prevent ppl havinga choice is to make 1 server but ppl will quit very fast since no one from other servers wishes to have anything to do with Gehennas that houses the most obnoxius and rude people to date (fact not biased, ask anyone… from other servers) people levae RDF´s when they see players from gehennas