Hi, I’d like to give you a different way of thinking:
Hydraxian Waterlords died, because there were too many RP servers for a too small audience. The original amount of people interested in playing on a RP server in general was initially way higher than now. TBC as a game though is really hard/annoying to play, if you don’t have enough people, and it’s also hard to RP for alot of people, who RP casually, to find others to interact with. Stuff like this causes reaction chains, that kill servers. That’s why it’s better to only have Hydraxian Waterlords, and have the german RP community play parallel to them on the same realm. That’s long term a way healthier solution I’d think. Of course, celebras can’t be the only RP Realm in EU, because it’s german-speaking. Imagine a new RPer from England wanting to join a RP server: They’d never go on Celebras, but their german counterpart would probably join HW (Since alot of germans can speak ze english fluently).
I also wanna add, that the english RP community in EU is extremely forgiving, when it comes to grammatical mistakes.
Put the german speaking community on the Horde side and the english speaking community on the Alliance side and get 2 birds with 1 stone - less servers with more population and cultural divide that couldnt be implemented by RP even if we tried… ^^
On a serious note, I hope Blizzard thinks this through properly, RP is a big deal for some.
Or that the english people can only play humans/Orcs and the Germans everything else. This could bring the fact, that they do not talk in their Mothertongue perfect out.
Since other empty realms are being consolidated, they are doing it with RP realms as well.
Weren’t most of you complaining about empty RP realms last month?
I do not know about the guys on the EN Realm but even though we find the people on Celebras a bit few it whas enough for us. If we wanted to leave we had nearly a year to do so.
I don’t know, I wasn’t subscribed and checking the forums 
The problem is that we have 3 distinct realms: 1 English RP, 1 German RP and 1 RPPvP. German speakers who are not comfortable with English would rather move to a separate German realm without the RP tag, and ZT players would miss the forced PvP aspect of their server, making it likely that they will go to other PvP realms.
Either way, I don’t see the population of HW being significantly boosted with the consolidation. So it is likely that the problem will remain.
Don’t get me wrong though, I’m happy that we get to keep an RP realm!
The RP servers (and foremost HW) died from last-minute panic when Blizz opened free transfer off those servers for no obvious reason.
I left with my guild, but did not like life on a full server and paid for a transfer back there - my alts never left so I knew how it looked.
It’s empty now, also more empty than I would like, but choosing beween too empty and too full is easy for me, too empty wins hands down every time. And I was about to quit when all low-pop PvE servers were closed down (this means the RP servers just fyi).
Still Celebras is more populated and more RPing -as fas as I know - than HW and thus deserves to be the surviving server.
The language barriere is higher the other way around … for Gernans to go to an English server requires more courage than for English speakers to go to a gernan (or French, Spanish or Italian) server. This is because English is the Lingua Franca of WoW so everybody find it, if not fine, then at least acceptable to speak it everywhere.
Same, I moved a lot of my characters to MR with my guild. I don’t regret it, I like MR a lot, but HW will always have a special place in my heart. Which is why I left a lvl 52 (now 53) and to 30+ characters there, into which I had invested a decent amount of effort (at least for a casual scrub like me with very limited time )
You can hope for the free transfer back to HW in some days - hopefully.
I was considering it… But I’m afraid we’ll end up in a similar situation and the realm will be empty again! That been said, I’m fond enough of the characters I left behind (and the new Druid I’m leveling) to split my time between the two servers. Getting even less done, but I play for leveling and the open world anyway so that’s fine by me!
In what world is this true?
in the real world - of Warcraft!
and if you had not cut short my meaning, you would have understood why:
There was one “obvious” reason - for Blizzard…
If you read Aggrends comment in the wow council post regarding low pop realms, he wrote, that they offered free transfers away from realms if there were not enough players, and the same way they considered which realms would be consolidated:
As i wrote in my huge, long rant in the other thread (which was not intended to become so long and such a rant):
I think, the free char transfers away from our RP realms was the moment they passed the death sentence over our realms. 
And I know several people who are really resentful about that: That they did not communicate clearer what they thought about the state of the realms.
These players think, Blizzard did it out of bad will, and it is really difficult to convince them otherwise.
I tried a lot of times to convince them, that Blizzard just had the best intentions (and that they listened to us and at least leave Hydraxian Waterlords “intact” (the thought of Celebras not being “intact” somehow doesn´t sit well with me. It does feel so wrong… 
)
I think the main issue is really, that there is no communication and no “connection” left between Blizzard and the EU/German players.
And this is really sad.
Edit: If you continue to read Aggrends respond, it is clear that Blizzard has different players, and the different problems they face in mind - but the communication is just not there anymore and therefore the player feel left behind and ignored.
Aggrend is in two minds in those answers - even within the same text - partly he says that people want big realms, and partly he says that he knows that some people prefer the “village feel” of a small realm. I think the problem is that the people sitting in the US drawing the lines did not realize that by closing down ZT, Celebras and HW they not only closed down all the RP servers in EU, but also the only low pop PvE realms.
I agree with you on the communication issues. If it’s necessary to post n the US forum to be heard, something has gone totally wrong.
Aggrend says (my copy/paste, as you cannnot cite from this US forum):
Another factor that led to us not being super aggressive when it comes to consolidating all of the lower population realms has to do with the upcoming release of Wrath of the Lich King Classic. As was the case at the launch of Burning Crusade Classic, we expect a pretty significant increase in players joining or re-joining the game and we definitely want to make sure everyone who wants to play in Wrath Classic has a place to do so, preferably with multiple options in their chosen ruleset that aren’t experiencing heavy queues or are layered. While many players will choose to play on the busier servers, there are always actually a contingent of players who prefer smaller populations or are uncomfortable with layers and those individuals may not all want to be funneled to high, or even medium population realms. This certainly is not a majority of players (and I expect many people reading this to scoff at this notion :P) , but these players definitely exist and having a few, let’s say, “small town” options of realms to play on isn’t something we feel is a bad thing, especially going into an expansion launch where we expect to see a large spike of new and returning players of all stripes.
He clearly states:
… having a few, let’s say, “small town” options of realms to play on isn’t something we feel is a bad thing …
But they clearly did not look closely at the EU servers before choosing which realms to “consolidate”. For after the merge - with HW surviving - there will be exactly TWO PvE low pop servers left over: HW and Russian Хроми (Chromie). Not much choice …
LOL imagine keeping 3 servers for a “RP” community of 4 cats.
I think because they only listened to the english feedback, because the feedback from other language they simply do not understand and “everyone does speak english nowadays”.
I think they just forgot about the language problem 
To be fair:
We do not know, what he and his team had planned, and what they were allowed to do. Maybe they intended to offer more realms, and in the end were told they only get one, and had to choose.
We will never know 
US forum (thanks to you 
), EU forum (both), Twitter, Reddit, Feedback tool…
And we only did it, because we care about our small realms and our communities.
And at least I had the confidence that, if we reach someone, they would listen.
However, in the german board, we have had the bizarre situation, that Celebras RP player were asking Blizzard to remove Celebras from the list, and on the other hand some Patchwerk (PVP) player, who were upset that THEIr realm was NOT on the list
After some misunderstandings, we realized we have had the same problem- just inverted.
I have had a discussion with one of these players from Patchwerk. Our conversation was like (out of memory- but the overall sense is still there)
he: I do not think that blizzard does listen here (side note: I agree on that. The german forum is probably 100% ignored)
me: well… we can try, right?
him: no one does care
me: Blizzard did care - 2019, Celebras. I am sure, they do still care. what did you try already? You write here, did you use the feedback tool?
him: The feedback tool is useless (i got the impression, between the lines, that he didn´t think that this tool is actually working). No one will ever read this. I wrote a ticket
me: hmm… probably will be closed 
because the gm can´t do anything
him: I do not expect him to do anything. They don´t care. It´s more out of frustration, and i know at least, that anyone read it - even if they can´t and won´t do anything
me: but why should blizzard ignore that there a lot of player on Patchwerk are so unhappy?
him: they just don´t care that Alliance is dead there. They are greedy: they will wait until we are so desperate to transfer away from Patchwerk with paid transfers. And THEN when there is no money left to get THEN they will open free transfers.
The sad thing is:
Without 2019 i would be like him. I am playing since the first open EU/German demo version, with maybe only some weeks interruption.
The very first time that I got the impression that someone at Blizzard does care about what I, as a roleplayer need, and listened, was 2019 when the opened up Celebras.
After so many years…
I can understand him, but I really think nowadays Blizzard tries their best to make the player happy
But what does that tell you, as a company, if some player enter every available medium to make sure, they get heard - and the other are so frustrated like this Patchwerk player, who does more or less not even think that the feedback tool does work?
I really think this is sad, and the current devs do not deserve this mistrust.
But with the current form of communication, there is apparently just no connection anymore.
They are loosing their EU community… unfortunately. Not in numbern, but their trust
To elaborate a bit:
It’s one thing when someone speaks to me in English, and then I try to help. Then I just try to help with my bad English (except once, when a new colleague addressed me and I accidentally answered in German, because I was in a hurry and on my way home. I’ll never forget the confused look on his face 
, but it didn’t stop him from asking me things on a regular basis).
Another is, if I go somewhere - then I am responsible (in German I would say “bringschuld”, but my dictionary claims this is not translatable) that I can also communicate well and not be a burden to anyone- and that is not the case.
My English is terrible.
And that of many of my friends is even worse. A friend of mine, always asks me, when I forward english links to blizzard announcements, to summarize it for him in german - and he is 40.
My even older friends in the guild, are even worse in English…
I am here also only, with two, three others (so few of the Celebras players), because the others could communicate even less.
Normally I would not write here
As I said, there is a shift between generations - for my 25 year old buddy on Firemaw it would be a penalty, if he would have to play on a german realm. 
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