During the last 24 hours, Blizzard shut down Character Creation and Character Migration from and on the realm EU-Firemaw.
according to the post made by Blizzard, the following reason is stated.
- Too many active players on a single realm creates an extremely long queue.
- A single realm can only handle an X amount of players.
- Too many active players on a single realm creates lag. (Not stated)
Blizzard allows the following solutions to the problem.
*Migrate your character for free to another low pop server without a queue.
*Wait in the extremely long queue.
*Quit Playing (Always an option).
The Burning Crusade expansion to World of Warcraft was first released in January 2007 (15+ Years ago) and we can imagine that the core is not built to be able to handle more players on a single realm then X)
However, with the new technology and tools that we have access to today 15 years later, i believe itâs possible to make these changes happen if Blizzard put in a dedicated and talented engineering team to work on it. This would of course come at a high cost and with the coming release of Wrath of the Lich King in 2022 we can expect the majority of players will migrate into the wotlk classic experience relieving the pressure from TBC Classic Realms and making them yet again more stable.
But, as this problem also existed in World of Warcraft Classic and moved into World of Warcraft Burning Crusade, we can imagine that this issue will follow into the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King Classic as well.
I believe that Blizzard will lose a lot of players due to the high ques and the reason for this is that today, not only is the average World of Warcraft player getting older in terms of age, meaning that a lot of players will today have more responsibility like average work, children, houses, etc. to take care of rather than just going to school and logging back into World of Warcraft. with the time today more overall more limited, most people will not be able to sit in a 3-4 hours que and will eventually they will for that stop playing the game.
So, why dont players migrate their character to a low pop realm?
I would argue that there is in fact are plenty of reasons, as a few examples.
-
To Play with Friends.
Players want to be able to play (Join Guilds, Play Raids, Battleground, Arena, Dungeons) together with their friends, and since full access cross-realm does not exist, and you donât play on the same realm as your friend/friendâs you will not be able to do this. And its pretty obvious as we like to share our world of warcraft experiences together with other people. -
To Avoid Being On Dead Realms.
If a player makes the decision to move his/her character to a lower pop server they will indeed avoid the queue issue and can play the game like itâs supposed to.
However, after a certain amount of time, the player population on that server will start to decay and the server will most likely become a dead server, meaning you will no longer be able to experience raids, battlegrounds, arenas, dungeons, and even complete challenging quests. We have seen this happen a number of occasions on a serve number of realms.
And even with the paid service of a âCharacter Transferâ you will still not be able to move your character into a high population server, so in most cases people abandon their characters and start to play on a higher population server or in worst cases they decide to quit their world of warcraft subscription. -
Populated server is just more fun.
Regardless if you intend to play World of Warcraft on a PVE, PVP, or RP realm you will have a lot easier finding groups to complete quests with and forming groups for dungeons and raids.
If you decide to play on a lower populated server it can be quite challenging to find players to assist you with a certain quest, even though the higher populated servers uses âLayersâ they share the same communication/chat through, for example, the 1. General and the 2. Trade Chat. making it far easier to find members when forming for example raids.
Different solutions:
-
Make a FREE subscription on accounts playing in low populated realm.
As the players will not reccive the same experience and advantage playing on a low populated realm. Then perhaps the players could be able to play without a subscription cost on these servers as it would dramatically increase the server population on these realms to make it more enjoyable for everyone playing on that realm. -
Even though the World of Warcraft realms currently does not support more than X players today we have access to tools that did not exist back in 2007 making it possible to either update the core or implement new mechanics like for example the âLayerâ system to make more players able to enjoy the game at the same time.
This would indeed cost a lot of money, but to save subscribers and get more overall players into World of Warcraft it could potentially be a win situation.
Making fewer realms in total but yet bigger individual realms. -
Adding more layers on already high/full populated realms.
If supported Blizzard could extend the number of players/characters on each realm by potentially adding more layers to the existing 4 layers.
Players would then still be able to invite their friends over to their own layers.
This could only be done if the layers in these cases would be its own âserverâ and communicate to a mother server. -
Put a Set Realm limit all realms
Though its not the best of the options putting a set limit on on realms could be an option to keep the population the same on all the realms deviding the players accordingly.
Firemaw (5000) â Locked
Golemag (5000) â Locked
Shazzrah (4900) â 100 new players may join only these server
In this case Firemaw and Golemag would be locked for new character creations until the realm of Shazzrah has reached a certain number of active players.
This system would keep a high and average number in all the realms, however, this would still mean you would not be able to play with your friends and family member.
Conclusion
As of now, players are locked out from playing with their friends forcing them to less populated realms making the World of Warcraft experience que faster for everyone but less engaging for the players that take the transfer.
Since World of Warcraft was first released back in 2004 the average player both in number but also in age has changed. The Internet is far more accessible and there are a higher number of active players/gamers in total around the globe.
We have discovered new technology and tools to make almost everything possible,
Activision Blizzard is today one of the few enormous companies in the lead of the game industry, with a most likely purchase from Microsoft interaction we as players expect them to take the lead and find solutions necessary to make the game more enjoyable for everyone both in performance but also with que times.
I hope that Blizzard would consider discussing and fix this issue in Wotlk coming out this year (2022) only time can tell.
Thanks for reading,
Do you have any feedback or perhaps better solutions to these issues?
Please write and discuss it.
if you get what i mean