Yes, thats the one Im refering to.
Yes, they need to be of the same type.
Im not sure about realmpools. Havent heard that term in years. I thought it went away with CRZ.
Yes, if the small realm had only those available to merge, I would CONSIDER it.
No, I wouldnt connect one of the biggest realms among the first connections. I would connect some of the nearly 30 low pop realms first before I do anything with one of the biggest realm of the entire zone.
@Zasz: The reason pretty much has to be similar than the old grounds were for the Dentarg - Tarren Mill connection in the distant past. Dentarg was tiny, Tarren Mill was big, but not quite as massive as Draenor or Silvermoon.
In other words, Blizzard is at least trying to aim for larger populations. Small + big is âquickerâ than small + small + more smallsâŠ
EDIT: Also, the smaller partner is already a 3-way (Echsenkessel / Taerar / MalâGanis).
battlegroups arenât a thing but EU/US servers are still hosted in about 3 different locations, and they arenât going to connect servers that are hosted in different locations.
you can test it out yourself make a toon on backhand now and one on Echsenkessel and chances are you will get the same ping, try the same with a toon on Blackrock (just using that as an example) and you will probably see a difference in your latency depending on where your located, its probably not more than 10-20 ms difference but its the different between a server being hosted in Paris or Amsterdam (not sure but the IP address from that group as far as I can tell traces back to the Netherlands anyway)
Damn it, that is insane news!
Unfortunately I got very unlucky with these connections, so far every single realm connected I play on was also connected to another I play on, that doesnât help my goal of being on every realmâŠ
But also the size of blackhand makes this really unexpected, at this point pretty much every realm risks a connection, example they could connect alâakir to draenor potentially, hordes are happy and goodbye to the alliance on alâakir, Iâm not saying theyâre gonna do that or thatâs a good idea, but potentially, size-wise, this wouldnât cause queues, cause alâakir is so small in comparison to draenor.
Ahaha, this is getting hilarious at this point!
These are the american forums:
âDue to unforseen technical issues, we have to reschedule todayâs connections. We will do that as soon as possible.â
Unforeseen? So far the success rate has been 16,6% per attempt!
@Esploratore: Tragicomic springs to mind. I saw that. 
Also, I have unconfimed rumors that the Blackhand + 3-way connection might also have failed. I actually posted on that on German forums just a few moments ago. Do you happen to know, if the Blackhand + 3-way were actually offline this morning as well in addition to yesterday?
Agree about tragicomic!
And nah, sorry, blizzard didnât give a precise time-table, so I didnât check tonight cause it couldâve happened, and could still happen, all the way to the next reset, so I wouldnât say it failed yet, weâll just have to see if anything happens by the end of the lockout.
I donât get it how were they able to connect servers 7 years ago but not now? Did they fire all the good people or somthing?
Yes, I think this is part of the problem, they fired a lot of people and some of them had the knowledge for the connections.
They managed a realm connection this time around btw, amanâthul-anubâarak, but with problems related to mail and guilds, which I have no idea if theyâve been fixed, as Iâm not a serious player on those realms, as a casual who isnât selling stuff in AH or raiding it doesnât affect you.
So they have succeded in connecting amanâthul-anubâarak?
Yes, like I said thereâs been problems with guilds disappearing, items disappearing or duplicating from mailbox, and as a non-raider or AH player there I have no idea if they solved those, BUT the connection is done, if you log amanâthul you will find people from anubâarak on who, in AH as sellers, in trade and so on, and viceversa.
Itâs now marked as high pop at all times, before connection was low for amanâthul and medium anubâarak.
Ah, btw, they just announced theyâd try more connections on american realms, it looks like 4 connections, 2 new ones and the 2 they failed before.
There was no info on whether they solved the problems they had, if so would be quite fast, but the connections should happen at US reset, as in tuesday.
Hopefully they will add Lightbringer to the mix. Ah completely deadâŠnot been able to sell anything for 2 weeks
Hereâs hoping they pull it off without problems this time! I am concerned that if they donât manage to overcome their issues soon, theyâll get demotivated on doing all the connections they planned. 
@Anroka: While assuming things can be âdangerousâ, one would think that the fact that they are attempting four different sets on US on the fourth seems to indicate that they at least think they have solved whatever problems plagued the earlier attempts.
Indeed, while I donât hide my trust in blizzard is 0 atm, I have to say I see the fact they are trying a 2nd time to connect hellfire + kilrogg and 2 of those sets of american realms as a positive, as in before they mightâve said: these ones didnât work, letâs try some different ones, if they try again realms they failed before one would assume theyâre on top of the problems.
@Trelw Hadnât noticed that one yet! Just the EU ones. Well, that may mean good things indeed. Hereâs hoping!
Well, I had said about american realms even before your post:
Ah, btw, they just announced theyâd try more connections on american realms, it looks like 4 connections, 2 new ones and the 2 they failed before.
There was no info on whether they solved the problems they had, if so would be quite fast, but the connections should happen at US reset, as in tuesday.
Also they announced this afternoon theyâre gonna try and catch up on some of the failed german and russian connections: nefarian-gilneas, malâganis-blackhand (still no info on natchwache-todeswache) and galakrond-deepholm for russians (still no info on borean tundra-black scar).
Great. Sort of like how you added russians to EU battlegroups without asking the playerbase what they thought about it.
Go Blizzard!