New Realm Connections are Underway

Community General Discussion
61

I do think that they shouldn’t merge Horde dominated realms with their Alliance counterpart. The reason is simple : If we want a global balanced population, then we need those Alliance strong realms, as a place for die hard Alliance players.

If blizzard merges Draenor with Ravencrest (For example), then all alliance raiding guilds would get an incentive to move Horde, because it halven the price of doing so. It’s from 55€ (Realm + faction transfer) vs 25€ (Only faction transer).

It’s sad that we need imbalanced realms for a global balance.

62

well isnt that the truth

63

I don’t expect that any low pop realms are going to be merged with big realms (although who knows? We have no details so far), but I get your point. If it’s “easier” to play as one faction on a realm, then many will. And for balance, we need it so that it’s not always the case that is “easier” to be horde or alliance. In that case, it would be very useful if realms are marked to indicate if they are horde-dominated, Alliance-dominated or more balanced so that new players have some kind of idea on what they’re choosing.

64

I guess ones that says “low” on the realm list, the problem is so many are on the border between Low and Medium. Like my old realm.

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65

That’s what I believe as well. And there I see an issue lying.

I’d say, when looking at active guilds, most medium servers are a lot closer to being low than they’re being high. And servers being on low medium is an issue just as well as servers being on low.

I’d like to know if these servers are also being merged with other realms, because to be honest, there’s 71 medium / low / new players servers on EU English. 54 of those are medium. The majority of them being considered dead. Helping out 17 out of these 71 doesn’t seem like the fix necessary. It feels like a bandaid on a gushing wound.

66

2 of the realms I used to play on are already connected and still have a low population or on the borderline.

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67

@All: A “multitarget” post incoming… :smiley: chuckles

@Kaivax / any other blue: Is any information available on whether we will only see changes on a short notice or are you going to publish the general outlines early on for the whole plan as well? Your wording seems to indicate short notice only? Also, as far as EU region specifically is concerned, please consider working on more than one language concurrently. In other words, for week X pick an English connection, a German connection and an Italian connection, for week X+1 English, French and Spanish, and so on. Additionally, having taken a look at the current listings, I literally pray that the “Low”-indicator is NOT the literal definition of low activity realm as currently it would exclude several realms that literally MUST get connected.

@Shihiroki: Draenor, Silvermoon and certain other realms are so large that they are 99,99% guaranteed not to get connected to anything at this point.

@Gráinne: Unfortunately real life interfered and I never finished that outline of mine. I should probably try to dig it out as I seem to recall saving it somewhere… :smiley:

@Anroka, Strorm and others on RP realms: While the post does not expressedly say so, I do believe that Blizzard will still honor the like for like principle and RP realms will only get connected to other RP realms. Alternatively (and in my opinion very unlikely) they might opt to change some RP realms to normal realms and offer RPers chances to transfer to remaining RP realms. At this stage, I believe Argent Dawn will remain unconnected due to its’ size. As for the remaining 10 realms, Blizzard basically has two options, either two 5-ways (only one connection is executed) or a 10-way is formed (two connections are executed). I have not yet had time to estimate whether the latter is viable, it actually might be.

@Dottie: Considering US and EU regions do not directly depend on each other, my current assumption is that both regions will have work done on them on concurrent weeks. I have not yet had sufficient time to estimate, which region will “finish” faster. Also, having taken certain lessons from the previous program, I am going to note that there could be technical setbacks. We all have to hope those stay to the minimum, but if they do occur, timetables not only can, but in worst cases will, break.

@All again: On the topic of population balance… For certain groupings it will not be possible to reinforce balance as the number of possible options is too small. This is particularly true for RP realms of all languages. I am fairly sure I will have more to say on this topic, but I will end this particular post here. :smiley:

EDIT: Added a critical missing word… :smiley: EDIT 2: There was another word missing… :frowning:

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68

I hope this time around, you realize some realms have these disgusting ‘I only speak my native language’-communities. Don’t merge those realms - don’t make it the problem of those who did bother learning more languages than the one they grew up with. Thanks.

69

Damn. Now I’m worried.

Like, on my realm (Moonglade/The Sha’tar/SteamwheedleCartel cluster) the RP community could definitely use some reinforcing, but at the same time we’re listed as “medium” realms because the numbers are inflated by the OOCers. If Blizzard looks at us and decides that we are not in need of any merges because of RP-irrelevant guilds and players, I will not be amused…

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70

I used those names for the sake of an example of why merging a Horde heavy realm like Draenor with a heavy Alliance realm like Silvermoon is actually a bad thing, because it would incentivize more Alliance guilds to defect to Horde side.

Obvisouly, it’s unlikely Silvermoon or Draenor are being merged.

71

I can only hope they’ll merge low population realms with medium population ones that are also struggling so maybe the result would end up decent.

Also for those wondering, the realms that appear low right now are:

  • Al’Akir / Skullcrusher / Xavius
  • Auchindoun / Dunemaul / Jaedenar
  • Bloodfeather / Burning Steppes / Executus / Kor’gall / Shattered Hand
  • Darksorrow / Genjuros / Neptulon
  • Frostmane

Those are the 5 mergers that are considered low (technically Frostmane isn’t merged with anything yet)

Also I have alts on Bronze Dragonflight so I can testify the Bronze Dragonflight / Nordrassil merger was sometimes dipping into low lately. Other medium realms might also dip into low at times.

72

Can you connect Emerald Dream-Terenas with Chamber of Aspects please? :slight_smile:

Would bring us to a healthy 7k active raiders split almost even on Alliance and Horde side - while still being about half the size of Stormscale, which is considered “high” and not “full” :slight_smile:

Both realms have a handful of mythic raiding guilds each, with recruitment issues.

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73

@Deathmaster: Would you care to elaborate as I am only aware of one specific connection being a major headache? It was sufficiently bad back then that some major offenders were banned due to various major breaches of (forum) rules. :frowning:

@Shihiroki: Ahhh, ok. I think Blizzard’s primary aim will be a population that achieves sufficient activity on which ever faction is less active in that speficic combination. And if I recall my old posts from distant past correctly that figure is probably somewhere around 800 concurrent actives at prime time peak or more, but in a manner that will not cause queues. So extremely biased groupings should be avoided, but limited imbalance is not a major problem, especially since we no longer have PvP realms on the retail side.

@Linaria: I am fairly sure that Blizzard has taken a close look at things and especially over a much longer time period, considering they took this long to get this far in the overall process. In addition Chronormi’s note about size fluctuations is correct… and even further, the relative sizes will start to change as soon as even a single connection is executed. The overall process is… complicated, to say the least. :smiley:

@Chronormi: Actually, considering the fact that 8-ways, 9-ways, 10-ways, etc, are rather unwieldy, Blizzard might elect to connect really small groups to lower end “High” realms, because that would actually reduce the overall number of connections needed. Just smashing “Low” + “Low” + “Low”, etc appear to be counterproductive in several ways. Lower end “High” will suffer no ill effects from a small addition while the “Low” part will see significant benefits. :slight_smile: I am sure you noted that the opening post quite specifically says: “until we’ve connected every low-population realm in every region to a substantially larger population of players”? :slight_smile:

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74

Doesn’t matter if you merge 2 realms with 1 guild raiding nyalotha heroic each. It’s still dead.

What you should be doing is Banning character creation in full realms, and realm transfers there.

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@Retributor: See my reply to Chronormi directly above.

76

Great. Can you also place limits on a realm getting faction heavy, no more than a 55-45 split in terms of active characters at max level.

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It is actually better for a realm to be biased towards one faction. You get a better recruitment pool and choice of guilds that way. WM on and off aren’t reliant on your realm. You are placed into shards with players from all sorts of realms who have chosen the same mode.

Only RP realms are realm/connected realms based but people can be invited onto them with CRZ.

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78

You reckon that includes Classic realms?

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79

Yeah, I am in agreement with what you have posted. The 5-ways merger would be a popular one. But I would not be against a 10-way merger either with the former PvP-RP realms involved as well. It could possibly be the best path towards creating a viable counterpart to the giant that is Argent Dawn, in the long run.

As long as we get any sort of connection for the small RP realms though, I’ll be immensely happy.

80

Just purge the low pop realm and give People free xfers.
Resort to having larger true realms.

IMHO

1 Like