Come on now, if You follow the discussion about server population issues You should know, that Blizzard was extremally hesitant to take any drastic measures (like locking servers) especially because they didn’t want to limit player’s freedom to play with their friends. Recent actions are a result of situation getting so dramatic, that They felt forced to act, even though they knew that meant sacrificing one of their other priorities.
I don’t know what You mean by reducing the potential, but ruining the game experience of players who play and pay consistently for the sake of convenience of people who left the game/didn’t play until now seems bad for business.
I also believe that more players would be harmed by this decision (literally thousands of players currently on Golemagg) than made happy. This is sacrificing the good of many, for the good of a few.
Also, new players arriving to the server plagued by queues and lag wouldn’t be happy in the long run.
I will, but You should also keep in mind that the only entity that knows the real extent of server traffic is Blizzard. None of the players has accurate data on server population. We simply don’t know how different the situation is for each server, so there’s no use in using other servers as example.
As for Your guild, I’m sorry to hear that You have trouble playing with friends, but if You look back at this very forum You’ll find, that playing on the server with queues causes even more problems, as people ARE on the same server, yet they are still unable to play with friends (or play at all) due to queues.
Venoxis is not locked, I created a character there one minute ago with no character previously there.
I know about Mograine, but as I said: the problem is the risk of moving. Morgraine was proclaimed both dead and overpopulated within 24 hours, you are yourself implying the randomness of this situation. Solving both seperation of friends and queues has one simple solution (free re-transfers). Please read this response for empirical data from a community council member that has surveyed guild leaders on the mega realms.
I don’t think constantly being unfavorable towards returning or new players is “good business”, but that is besides the point.
I am suggesting a solution (free retransfers), yet no one addresses this. It’s a really sound solution and the only party being harmed by it, is blizzards wallet - since players will not be forced to pay their way back to their original realms after being stranded on dead realms. Why argue about details when we can suggest a solution to both our problems.
I don’t think it’s that simple. Just think about such scenario: 1k players from Golemagg move to Hydraxian Waterlords. Blizzard unlocks Golemagg, which attracts 1k new/returning players. HW turns out to be not so great, so people who moved there take the free retransfer to Golemagg. Now we have 1K more people than we had initially, and with it - queues.
This is of course very simplified, but shows one of the possible dangers of such “solution”. Not to mention exploits, like transferring to dead servers to gather mats and retransferring to sell, transferring for realm first titles and so on.
I’m not saying some form of free/discounted retransfer is a bad idea entirely - just that it’s not that simple, and may need some refinement/restrictions.
Anyway, regarding the main topic: unless Golemagg’s population significantly drops (and I rather see it increasing* with the launch approaching), the server should remain locked.
*Edit for clarification - people returning to their characters, creating alts, or generally playing more than usual. You can see it in the number of layers inreasing.
I imagine part of it is to avoid ghennas players being able to paid transfer to golemagg to avoid the issue just moving over.
Those who can pay but want to have a decent server pop with decent AH would have likely moved to golemagg if they didnt trust the free option would work out before seeing what happens.
I can see golemagg being opened not too long after launch when more players from ghennas will likely have opted to move to mograine (alleviating ghennas further for remaining players).
I agree, I’m not necessarily advocating for opening up Golemagg by the standards we have today if such a system was in place. We definitely need restrictions for which items & how much gold you may move across, etc, etc.
As a compromise, I really wish starting & boosting new characters were allowed, like on the other fully populated servers. I’d be shocked if this created unpleasant queues for more than what is already being anticipated.
And if nothing else, I hope Blizzard keeps to their word and immediately removes the restrictions as the queues die down. In this case, we might salvage some raidmembers mid-p1.
You may start there from 1 but for Transfers it is locked. So if you have already 60-70s on Morgrain, Patchwork or Transcendence you can either leave them behind or stay where you are with them.
Firemaw also has literally 0 queues during prime hours ( firday/saturday evening) please blizzard a lot of people are unable to join their friends and play the game
Allow players free re-transfer and you won’t even have queue when Wrath starts Keeping more than 8 English speaking realms full throughout the expansion is never going to happen, so letting people play on low-pop realms with their friends, with the option of moving back once the realm is dead off the hype of wrath, is a viable option to make everyone happy. As previously discussed.
No queue huh, say hello to the 4 hour queue today!! Big ups Blizzard, best developer at rehashing old content, giving awful customer service and not even letting us play the game WE PAY TO PLAY. Joke of a company you now are.
Keeping more than 8 English speaking realms full throughout the expansion is never going to happen, so letting people play on low-pop realms with their friends, with the option of moving back once the realm is dead off the hype of wrath, is a viable option to make everyone happy. As previously discussed.