Free Character Transfers Available from Firemaw

WoW Classic Cataclysm Classic Discussion
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Over the last few weeks, we’ve observed an unprecedented event in World of Warcraft: an unserviceable number of Burning Crusade Classic players have continuously attempted to play on a single realm.

This has always been possible, of course. At any time over the last 17 years, players in a region could have collectively decided to create characters on a single realm and then all attempted to play on that realm. All realms have a cap on concurrent players (this is configured to be the same number on all realms), and if that many players are in-game on the realm, additional players who come along are placed into a queue. The queue itself also has a cap, and if even more players than that attempt to log into the realm, they are denied access entirely.

By the measurement of its daily total number of players logged-in, Firemaw is the largest realm in the world. To give that some context, the 24th largest realm in the world (Benediction-US) has about 67% as many daily players as Firemaw does.

The reason we’ve never seen such a large population on a realm for more than a few days is something we call “queue pressure”. The game is much more fun if you’re actually playing it, even on a smaller realm, so in the past, players have always eventually chosen to move to other realms. For quite some time, free character transfers have been available from the Firemaw realm. Any player with characters on Firemaw can move to the following realms for free:

  • Amnennar
  • Ashbringer
  • Auberdine
  • Chromie
  • Earthshaker
  • Everlook
  • Golemagg
  • Lakeshire
  • Mandokir
  • Mirage Raceway
  • Mograine
  • Nethergarde Keep
  • Patchwerk
  • Pyrewood Village
  • Razorfen
  • Razorgore
  • Sulfuron
  • Transcendence
  • Venoxis

As always, we encourage players on Firemaw to alleviate the population issue by transferring to one of those realms.

It’s worth mentioning that the subject of layering is not related to this issue. Layers are automatically created or collapsed based on the number of players who are outside of instanced content, and the layering configuration is exactly the same on all WoW Classic realms. Lately, Firemaw has consistently needed 4 layers to accommodate all players who are not in instanced content. Smaller realms have fewer layers, but this is related to the number of players congregating outside instances, not the total number of concurrent players the realm can serve. Adding more layers would not increase the total number of players allowed on a realm at the same time. That maximum is bounded by the limitations of hardware.

We’re currently evaluating all realms’ populations and the necessity for more or different free character transfers. We’ll let you know as soon as we determine whether we need to take additional steps there.

Thank you!

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BS response to a situation created by Blizzard.

Dead server = pay to transfer to the only viable server Firemaw
Full server with unbearable queues = free transfer to a potentially dead server

There are absolutely no guarantees from Blizzard that the above cycle doesn’t repeat itself

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ES is really nice for alliance - no hordes though.
Currently medium, but feels like High status, because no horde.

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The reason we’ve never seen such a large population on a realm for more than a few days is something we call “queue pressure”.

No, the reason is your Paid Character Transfer which ruined all the other servers. Your current “queue pressure” is the consequence.

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Joke of a response but what do we expect from the guy who was silent as realms crumbled and communities perished

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Dying realms are in dire need for FCTs and it’s been like half a year. Wasn’t this enough time for “evaluating”?

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I mean seriously, you have free transfers to Earthshaker which is the third largest single faction on a pvp realm in europe and it’s very alive and popping. Having much more fun on it compared to my horde character on Gehennas. It’s not potentially dead in any sense of the word and will not be dead throughout WotLK either.

It’s pretty clear to me at least that this old version of the game clearly is not intended for such a large population on a single server. The AH and even your inventory lags to hell and back on the multi-layer servers. Feels really bad to play on IMO.

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How can you guarantee it won’t be dead in the near future?

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typical blizzard, this has been obvious for months with realms dying and firemaw being the only real option of where to go. they couldve fixed it back then by force merging some of the smaller servers together, but they wanted the money from people transfering.

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Free migration is not an option if you want to enjoy the game, when you are horde and only speak english:

Patchwerk, Transcendence, Amnennar, Venoxis and Sulfuron are German or French.
Golemag has 1/6 of Firemaws population.
Earthshaker has 1/6 of Firemaws population and is 99,7% Alliance.
Mograine has 1/10 of Firemaws population.
Mandokir has 1/15 of Firemaws population.
Ashbringer has 1/25 of Firemaws population and is 97,2% Alliance.
Earthshaker has 1/6 of Firemaws population and is 99,7% Alliance.

ironforge.pro/population/tbc/?locale=EU&realm=PvP

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Thanks for trying to fix the situation!

When you consider giving free transfers away from completely dead servers aswell, please review the player population faction-wise. FCT for pops that make the game close to unplayable are a must in my opinion for obvious ethical reasons.

Another thought I wanna share is that alot of the players pressuring the queue could probably be Bots seeing the amount of “illegal” Gold Selling that’s being done on this realm aswell.

One solution I could see are server connections/merges to create alternative Realms that aren’t either completely dead or completely full on one faction.

I also think it’d help too, if most things were cross-realm and phased like in shadowlands with a working group finder tool for pvp and pve, so people aren’t pressured to go on a big server to find people to play with fast.

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What a joke

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To be fair they haven’t tried to fix anything the past 4 months, and this post is basically saying they will continue ignoring any issues hoping it will resolve by itself.

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Dear Blizzard,

You created this issue by making a system that incentivises playing on larger realms. If I want to find a guild of like-minded individuals, the most logical step is to look on the largest realm. I started playing classic with the same mindset you are presenting here: “Just play on a small server, you will have no queues”.

The problem was, my server (Flamelash) died off before I even got to 60. I seldom met another alliance player and doing any quests was basically impossible as I was ganked every time. And that was before P2 of classic released, I can’t imagine what it would be like then.

In TBC i started playing on Gehennas but unfortunately my character from classic was still stuck in Blizzard prison on a dead server. I had to PAY to transfer him from a realm which had ZERO activity for over a year because of your greed. But I did pay.

Now you probably already know where this is going. I had to pay again, this time on two characters, to transfer from Gehennas because it, likewise, died on Alliance side.

Blizzard, in its wisdom, could have offered free transfers for alliance players to SOME chosen realms, say Earthshaker, which were not dead and this would most likely would’ve fixed the problem before it began. But no, they didn’t and since all alliance players had to pay, they decided to go to a realm thats not likely to die again. And best bet for that was Firemaw, which got a huge influx of players around BT release.

In other words: You created this issue by not allowing free transfer to specific realms. You created this issue by creating a system that incentivises playing on mega servers to find groups easier. You created this system by making people pay multiple times to transfer from servers on which they could no longer play the game.

Now it’s up to you to fix this problem, not the playerbase, so please think of some solution or Wrath will be a constant 6h queue experience for a HUGE portion of your EU playerbase.

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How does that work if you want PVP on a PVP (English EU) realm?? Need a decent balance which none of them have!

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I play on it. There’s a sense of community, it’s super active and there’s also nowhere else to go since firemaw is unplayable. Unless Blizzard decides to put everyone on the same server and just roll with it by opening free transfers to Firemaw I can’t see it dying.

What a load of bull, surely you don’t actually believe this yourself? Like come on, this is silly.

Golemagg is very alive. Yes, it has a much smaller population, but, like… maybe you shouldn’t be expecting the same population since the issue to begin with is Firemaw being extremely overpopulated and easily the largest server in the world.

The only reasonable arguments to adamantly stay on Firemaw is faction balance which is 100% a reason I can buy into. World pvp is fun and makes the world feel more alive and dangerous.
That, and having issues with convincing your friends to transfer off.

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So why Beneditction has 12 layers and we have only 4? 1 hour queue on our gigarealm firemaw with 12 layers would be completely OK and most people would accept that as a price for playing on big realm. Not this BS we have. I logged at 16:00 to go on raid at 19:30… and got disconnected when I had to go to WC for big business… So login again and boom 180minutes.

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I’m afraid that at this point, the only solution would be to give players some sort of “Firemaw-1” and “Firemaw-2” with exact clones of their characters, and let them login to either. Raiding guilds would just go to the queue-less one and free up a lot of space for people who are trying to PUG or doing whatever else.

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Such a sad response to a major problem that affects - as you are stating yourself - the biggest classic server in the world.

Not only is your response pure copy paste from earlier advice for people to use FCT, it even seems like you are smearing it in our face by highlighting the obvious facts of the problem.

The distance between your developers and the customers should be short, but are instead endless.

Instead of finding real solutions you artificially create a problem that can only be alleviated if the customers spend more of their hard earned money.

Greed has poisoned your soul.

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When you say playing on on small realm, you mean trying for 1 hour to form group for god damn Daily HC? Because this is my experience form your small realm…

Instead of this BS post, I would expect some statement that you are aware of issue and looking for ways how you can introduce cross-realm dungeons and raids, because this is the only way how I think you can solve this mess.

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