Without this realm, Europe has zero RP options left. I understand the server is very small, but it has its place as the only RP server left, and it does still have RPers on it. Bloodsail has been kept on NA, why can’t EU have its RP realm?
The server was going to be closed a few years back when the WotLK server consolidation took place, but was then eventually kept as Blizzard mentioned not wanting to have zero RP options in Europe. It’s unfortunate this viewpoint seems to have changed?
I figured I’d make a thread, so any Hydraxian players can post here and give their views, so we can maybe salvage the realm a second time.
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Thisssss! please blizzard. its my only joy i have left in wow at the moment.
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Agreed!! I don’t know what the issue is with letting us have ONE server for RP, but certainly more people will join us once cata hits. I’m pretty sure none of us would say no to having more people to share our fun with!
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Maybe offer people a free transfer to Hydraxian Waterlords
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FCM were there, didn´t work.
They should just leave us alone. it´s not that difficult. if the realm has a “RP” Tag, just ignore it.
one of the most simplest tasks ever. 
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I sincerely hope that HWL stays and RPers have a small cozy corner in which to enjoy solitude.
But if it were to remain, solitude is what you would expect.
Sadly, HWL was crippled by blizzard in 2021 with free transfers off the realm, a very well populated realm with over 1000 logging players regularly. It was killed overnight.
Please see this graph for information.
ironforge.pro/population/classic/HydraxianWaterlords/
So, solitude, that is what you will expect, as just with wrath, where 200 players was the peak, and was not maintained. In the eyes of most, this isn’t enough to sustain gameplay.
After a couple of months of asking, we received FCT TO HWL from all realms, but it had almost no effect on the survival of the realm.
Then, without warning, FCT to HWL were removed and were replaced with FCT to other, low population PvE realms.
The US realm has been well populated since release, and as such has no need to be closed.
I made quite the effort to save this realm last year, but in the end, made little difference.
Good luck.
A final thought, I really do think RPers are deserving of an apology for the murder in 2021.
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Please do. Although it might be a rather empty home, it is the home of those who chose to stay. Who didn’t want to stay took the FCT off ages ago anyway. It’s not that hard to just leave us alone 
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This is definitely the most frustrating part, the server has such dire population issues due to Blizzards weird and ultimately poor decisions regarding the realm. I still do not understand why they opened free transfers away in 2021, that caused so much damage to the realm.
The server has had countless flip-flops between FCMs to the server, and then away. It’s just been a total mess on Blizzard’s end and shows to me, a lack of care for the realm, especially compared to the NA RP server.
Another thing to note is that with Blizzard shutting healthy realms like Mograine and Nethergarde Keep for some reason, keeping Hydraxian could potentially push the realm back up a bit as a legitimate option for people that want a smaller realm. People were on servers like Mograine and Nethergarde Keep because they didn’t want to be on megarealms. I’m unsure why Blizzard has internally done a total mindset 180 on this and now wants to force people onto mega realms. Not everyone wants to be on one, and a few years ago they were pushing for people to join these smaller realms and that they were healthy. The whole situation is weird to me and very disappointing.
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This place is my home ever since I started playing Classic and has grown to me as I have never met a more kinder and welcome community anywhere. We may be small but we find entertainment another way rather than the majority. We don’t want to pump up big numbers and just keep repeating the same thing over and over again like a robot. We need this realm to keep on going with our stories that sometimes I believe were better written than what Blizz gave us, which also includes characters.
I refuse to part from it, even if I play less than before, I still get online and offer activity for my friends here whom refuse to move to another server let alone on retail. This is our home. And I will fight tooth and nail to keep it. If they take it from us, they smash our little, peaceful community causing a diaspora. A fate I wish to avoid, I have already many friends and roleplaying partners due to their screw up with the free transfers.
I once did the mistake of transfering from the server to one believed to have an active RP community. I got laughed out for looking and left people to wander are there any roleplayers at all. Needless to say, it left a bitter taste in my mouth and I moved back to HWL. I promised to myself never to leave it again, keeping up on my hope and enduring the silence until I find individuals burning for enticing stories and character interaction and as Wotlk came, my prayers have been answered. Since then I offered players whatever social activity I could, forming a friendly bond between ourselves and our characters, something I cannot tell about the average WoW player. I hold this realm, its people and our tales dearest to me and I have a lot more to give to them.
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Please could you not kill our server (again)?
From a narrow point of view, this realm may look dead by the numbers, but it is very much alive and currently progressing as a community; a community that would’ve no doubt grown had we been given the chance to progress to Cataclysm as we are.
Why must we be the only server to have the Sword of Damocles hanging over us? Why is it that you feel it’s ok to provide us with the false hope that our realm is safe by having it be the destination point for smaller realms you’ve already shut down? Those who were forced here from Celebras towards the start of Wrath have worked so hard to keep their community together and have successfully managed to find a home on Hydraxian Waterlords, and now you are to pull the rug from under them again? It’s a very real possibility that the extended community made up of a number of interconnected, symbiotic guilds will not survive the shutting down of Hydraxian Waterlords.
On a more personal level and as echoed in this thread, this realm is nothing short of a home for many of us playing here, myself included. This realm and the people on it serve as the place I come to for company and to escape the real world. I, like many as we speak, are now being forced to go on with the sinking feeling that this place will not be here for much longer.
At this rate, I struggle to understand why a RP realm for Classic was ever bothered with considering you’ve done nothing to preserve it and have instead threatened its existence time and time again. Please just leave us in peace to enjoy the game we’ve created for ourselves in the wake of the destruction you’ve repeatedly sewn. Surely you must have anticipated that a RP realm would adopt a slower pace of gameplay on a smaller scale, so why are you forever taking action against such an obvious outcome? You gave us the choice to be here on a realm that accommodates our preferred way of playing, and now you punish us for making the most of it.
It’s sad, frustrating and by now extremely tiring knowing that we’re essentially trying to reason with a brick wall. I will say only that, for once, you should consider taking a closer look at what you’re doing so that you can have a real understanding of what you’re about to ruin forever.
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Hydraxian Waterlords is my home. I started on it when Classic launched, watched their ups and downs and now still leveling there in nice and serene atmosphere.
The last time Blizzard tried to lock us down, they didn’t because it was the only one RP PVE server. Why change of mind now?
It has small but bright and active community that we won’t meet on any of PVE servers. Just let us live in peace on HW.
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Greetings,
As french player I had no choice but this server to find a RP realm. Even if I’m not fluent in english, i’ve met many friends and this realm became my new home.
Please try to consider that we, RP players, wish to go on in a RP realm.
Try to conside as well to open free transfers towards Hydrawian Waterlords to keep this server alive, rather then killing it by doing the reverse.
Regards
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Adding my voice towards the plea of keeping Hydraxian Waterlords alive. And seconding the suggestion to open Free Transers from other smaller realms to Hydrax for all the people who enjoy playing on small, cozy, non crowded, non spammy (gdkp and otherwise) realms.
Some of us choose deliberately to play on smaller servers, for a multitude of reasons. We are there BY CHOICE, still, despite the free transfers being available since months. Because we love the community, the stronger immersion into the game, the silence.
Please keep our server alive, it costs you nothing.
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Hello my dear friends,
I’m here to brandish my sword to face the danger involved : the disappearance of Hydraxian Waterlords… Like many of us, this server is my new home.
A home, where i met a lot of people with the same vision of the game. I don’t think to be able to find the same thing in others servers because i’m french and this RP realm is unique!
Even if this is a peaceful server, we built a strong community. A community which is just waiting to grow if we let it the necessary time.
Please, keep this server alive, you’ll not regret it.
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Dungeon finder is cross realm and I never joined an RP server with the intention or expectation to raid anyways so the very low pop was never an issue for me, rather i kind of enjoy the life of a lone adventurer and then meeting someone in a blue moon and do some RP interactions.
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I fully support this thread.
Also, keep Giantstalker alive. Not everyone wants to play on a PvE mega server, so a very low pop PvE server would make for a nice - and unique! - alternative.
And if keeping Giantstalker alive isn’t an option, then open transfers from GS to Hydraxian!
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I’m originally from Zandalari Tribe, the shut down European RP-pvp server. Currently on Hydraxian Waterlords.
… and honestly, I’m getting rather tired of it all. We’ve had an entire expansion with what I consider to be broken servers. Something that was integral to the old school classic experience was server communities, and the mega-servers we have today feel more like retail.
At this point I have to wonder what the point even is. Why not use server clusters and cross-server sharding like retail instead, as that pretty much offers the exact same experience. Want to be on the same shard as someone? Enjoy hopping between layers via group invites etc. I never liked this in Classic Vanilla during 2019, where there was a guy named Mahalo who hosted RP evenings in the Crossroads. You couldn’t just sporadically show up because chances are you were on a different layer. And I can imagine many people who were at the crossroads while he held his events missed it because of the layers.
In short: it doesn’t create a climate that facilitates community growth.
At this stage I would have preferred to have maybe one or two servers and then have a filter that will be applied to the logic of the layers. Want to play with similarly minded players? Adjust the filter and have some system in place that will put you on a layer where others who have similar settings in their filters. World pvp could be opt-in like in BFA.
Mweh.
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I’m not sure if this post will be useful or not, but here I am.
Servers are not physical machines, they are just labels. I don’t think there is much of an argument to close this, nor Giantstalker, just because they have smaller populations.
Frankly I dislike crowded servers, they don’t feel at all like worlds in which we adventure, more like a circus of people saying terrible things to each other to look cool and stealing nodes from under someone else’s nose.
The game has LFD and soon LFR, why would I even bother considering crowded realms.
Roleplaying is hard to find, if not impossible elsewhere, but the little bit I could enjoy was only on this server.
Please keep it open. Thank you.
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I have an inkling that the general outcry is being noticed. It is not yet time to let our hopes fall - I hope so, at least.
At this time, I can only ask all on HWL to not yet take the FCT off. Not yet.
If it comes to the worst, we should try over our discord to coordinate it, though, so the community won’t be split as badly…
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Speaking of, I’m not on the realm discord, could i have an invite?
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