The US get 43(!) realms connected this reset.
Thats massive and shows they are serious about connecting everything they can.
Neptulon ist part of the announced connection:
Faction balance. A thing a lot of people ask for all the time. This connection will be a significant help for the faction that ist not dominant. If the population after the connection ist not high enough there will be more connections 
Can we plz get this in EU too? My realm is sooo deadâŠ
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@Esploratore: Good evening! I assume this is âthe other threadâ you mentioned. 
Now, on to your question. âNew playersâ realms were in the past often those realms that had the lowest numbers of actives, but there were (as far as I have been correctly informed in the matter) a significant amount of complaints about this in multiple languages and the policy was apparently slightly altered to improve the new player experience. However, the tags are not changed very often and realms evolve (in various ways) significantly faster. Interactions with CRZs may also vary and the time of day one plays naturally also plays a factor.
Now, because I do no currently have characters on that specific realm, I prefer not to shove my foot in my mouth and will only make the following observation: The limited public data (strongly) suggests (and I must stress, suggests, not guarantees) that the realm in question should have somewhat higher activity values (on both sides) than certain others.
The most reliable method would be for multiple people to run census scans on both sides and post their results, including time of day and the length of the scan (as the manual operation makes CP usage slow and most people quickly get tired of constant clicking, if they are not actively playing).
@Zwappes, Oryczy: The limited available data suggests very strongly that the intended connection of those two low activity 3-ways will require additional connection(s) to reach viable activity levels (for both factions).
Evening, yes, this is the thread indeed!
I like how you always word what you say carefully, as in you seem to agree with me that turalyon is doing quite well but you donât want to generate arguments neither with one side nor the other, I really like that.
Indeed, tags last a very long time, probably years, Iâm pretty sure though that my realm, quelâthalas, has been marked as new players at some point, a year ago or 2, and it went from low pop to high pop during that period, you see now it has a healthy population and itâs a lot closer in the horde-ally balance, and from the feeling I got from my manual census checks on doomhammer, itâs supposed to be very similar to quelâthalas now, both in population and in balance, I strongly believe if they gave the new players tag to another english realm, doomhammer would be marked as high as it is.
It has around 30 guilds that have progress on mythic, so I donât know, maybe daestra has a different definition of low pop compared to me.
As it is Iâm estimating a peak of about 1.200 people on doomhammer, about 700 of which on alliance side, I can do a check if needed, I play on horde and have a slot for an ally, but really would be nice to know what numbers are expected by others to not call it a low pop, it certainly isnât draenor or silvermoon!
Iâm not sure I can get an answer from daestra about these expectations, but as for you (trelw), would you be ok with your realm if it had 500 horde and 700 ally at peak or would you want more? Or even significantly more?
@Esploratore: I am more prone to take stronger stances, when I have my own characters involved in some way in the situation. In this particular case, as I noted, I do not have access to characters of my own and the external data is limited. I COULD create alts on my secondary account, but I am not sure they are that badly needed.
Activity levels (without resorting to use of addons) are highly subjective matters and it is possible (, because of some realms (sidenote: RP)) for similar activity realms to have highly different level spread structures (this is more evident on Classic side).
This is not a set in stone rule, but in my long term view, the weaker side should be able to muster at least roughly 700 to 750 people at prime time peak. So a realm like your example would (in my opinion) absolutely need more horde and very preferably some alliance, too. At those values it would not yet be âdeadâ, but I would definitively classify it as âlowâ activity realm. I must stress that I am speaking of activity as there have been and are realms that have very significant numbers of existing characters, but have lost a lot of their activity. Outland alliance is one fairly well known example. The passive population is big, but the activity levels are far below the busy years of the (distant) past.
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I play on Alliance and been on that server for 14 years so please stop telling me and others that the server is fine it is far from it .
worldwide (minus china) there are 15 connections announced to my knowledge⊠7 in the US region, 6 in the EU region, 1 in Korea and 1 in Taiwan, so yes EU is getting its fair slice of the pieâŠ
Whats interesting is whatâs happening in Russia this week⊠as part of the first set of connections blizzard announced they would connect Borean Tundra to Blackscar. This was in early July and that connection failed with Blizzard issuing a forum post that they would try again at a later date. Today they announced a new connection in Russia this time its Grom/Thermaplugg connecting to Blackscar which makes me wonder if they forgot about the first connection, its weird that they havenât said anything about it since.
@Daestra, Esploratore: While the existing data is scarce, I ran some cross comparisons and calculations and ended up with this:
One of the really tiny realms I play on occasionally: Prime time peak about 110 to 135 horde (nonconfirmed note of 103 only), about 220 to 265 alliance (have a recent personal scan of 264).
Doomhammer / Turalyon: Prime time peak about 550 to 635 horde, about 780 to 1020 alliance.
End conclusion: Doomhammer / Turalyon is NOT fine, but it IS in better shape than some other realms.
@JĂ„nek: Thank you for the heads up, I will need to look at the other five (unless they are all Russian, which I do not follow).
1 English, 3 German (2 of which are RP mergers), 1 French, 1 Russian is my count for EU
So youâve made it clear youâre not satisfied of the population levels, but I donât understand, what are your expectations? Would you want it to be like silvermoon, does it just need to have an active trade chat?
I just donât have any idea what level of activity youâd like from your server.
Ohh, good job on running the scan, I wanted to do it too later this evening but looks like it wonât be needed.
The figures you got for doomhammer are slightly higher than I was expecting, and I have to admit your definition of healthy population is a bit higher than mine.
Which is the realm that gave a result of less than 400 overall out of curiosity? Must be one of the smallest!
Also, outland, that is a good example you made, itâs been declining so much! Only has 110 active guilds or so, itâs unrecognizable if youâve been around for several years, even in game indicator went down ofc.
Janek, interesting, these connections came later, I hadnât noticed them earlier.
@Esploratore: I need to clarify that the Doomhammer / Turalyon values were reverse-engineered, not actual scans as I do not, as I noted, have characters there (currently).
Darkmoon Faire / Earthen Ring has bled really dry⊠
As has been noted, the RP realms are desperately in need of connections, as also evidenced by the heavy German focus on them. Blizzard however played an interesting trick on me⊠I expected (as I think I posted a while back) them to create an 8-way and leave the 6-way alone, but instead they are making a 6-way and expanding the old 6-way to 8-way. 
@JĂ„nek: Would you mind posting what they are doing on French side? I have altered my notes for English and German already.
EDIT: Numerous minor typos⊠:(:(
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EldreâThalas cluster being connected to MarĂ©cage de Zangar
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Theyâre connecting the choâgall cluster to the dalaran cluster, so effectively itâll probably remain a high pop since dalaran is pretty big but not big enough to be marked as full.
Not sure if you heard what theyâre doing in russia already, but theyâre merging black scar, which they tried to link to borean but failed earlier, to grim-thermaplugg, so a medium with a low, itâs a low end, so will give a medium-high result.
Ohh, dmf, I am there too, now THATâs a small realm, seen very low numbers too on my checks.
the merger isnât that special a low pop connected to a medium pop server, itâs more that the last blizzard post on the subject they said they would try the borean tundra/Blackscar connection in the future again, now there pushing a different server on it without acknowledging whatâs going to happen with borean tundra,
German RP realms are weird because they are hosted in 2 different data centres, there isnât really many other options for them, unless they move DieAldor (as in physically move that server) they will be awkwardly separated ⊠all French/English RP servers are all hosted in the Paris server cluster.
True, itâs very weird theyâre changing their plans regarding black scar.
@Esploratore, JĂ„nek: Pure speculation on my part again, but maybe the activity ratios have changed so much that such a change is necessary (in Blizzardâs view)?
Nah, I think itâs probably related to the difficulties they had with black scar and borean tundra, those are both medium and the new one theyâre connecting it to was and is low, itâs not like it dipped recently.
@Esploratore: I meant to an extent that there are multiple changes, not just one or two.