State of Retail Servers

Community General Discussion
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Figured I’d open a discussion here as I see it talked about a lot recently.

Currently Retail servers are in a somewhat state of disarray. Since nearly half the player base moved to Classic Vanilla or TBC, the population drop on Retail servers resembled the Anima draught at the launch of Shadowlands.

I know balancing servers has and always will be tricky, especially given that most issues are player-driven, but having 6 connected realms with a total population lower than New Player realms, should be a problem on everyones radar. ( Addressed by either allowing free bulk migration before shutting down the dead realms or by making another connection with a High population realm server from the same battle group )

The growing sentiment in this particular case is that Retail servers are being fully ignored as if the game is at its end and retail players are no longer relevant.

The multiple free migrations and attention Classic players have been getting for the last 2 years is a testament to this:
Classic ← plenty
The Burning Crusade ← plenty
Shadowlands ← Well… none

Just like on Classic, Retail servers are dying, difference being nothing is done about it.
The scenarios a lot of us find themselves in are:

  • Friend is leaving because of “a” reason, usually unable to do activities, or sell on AH
  • Your guild is leaving because of “x” reason, usually unable to find new recruits
  • You are forced to leave with them or play with a whole new group of people OR play with potentially no-one because 90% of the server is leaving.
  • Add the fact that some people are paying hundreds of $ just to move many characters

Maybe I’m wrong in this, or maybe I’m missing the point, but it certainly doesn’t feel like servers died off fast because I’ve been addressing this issue since BFA, it really feels like we’re full neglected after the classic / retail community split/shattering.

For the last year, I’ve tried starting a dialogue yet my voice has fallen on deaf ears.
Maybe this approach will reach the Game creators or the Developers or the Server admins.

So with that in mind - is there a way to move forward and make this better, or is this just how it’s going to be?

Don’t get me wrong I love seeing a big server because I know I can find people to play with, I know that I can find people to do trades, buy stuff, etc. and it’s a very thriving environment, but whether it’s the new norm or there’s some ideas being worked on, I believe it needs to be addressed so we, your lovable gamers know what the future brings.

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I rerolled on Draenor because I refuse to pay Blizzard for something THEY should fix and not let us pay our way out of it.

Getting bags was an issue, so I asked in General, some dude gave me 5k and I got started. I highly advise you to do the same.

Just abandon your realm and restart, Blizzard has no customer service, only ‘paid’ services.

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I’m a Guild leader, I do not leave people behind.

Just abandon your realm and restart, Blizzard has no customer service, only ‘paid’ services.

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Take them with you then.

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Cross faction play (and guilds) might help because then at least you’d be able to play with all of the people on your small realm, rather than just a percentage of them. Being the minority faction on a small realm double-sucks, but at least the AH is cross faction so we can fail to buy things from both factions due to lack of availability… :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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blizzard react to numbers and finances , i would suggest you take the guildies to a new game

i know its harsh and drastic but sometimes the money does not justify the service given

  • games ive tried in the past that lasted several months for something fresh and FREE to play like Gw2 ?
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One thing I loved the most playing Classic was that sense of community and just seeing
players everywhere. Helping each other out. All the zone channels being chatty and busy.

Just made the world feel alive , even gear trades or sales in the zones. That priest rezzing your corpse. Players buffing each others and they walked past. A friendly high lvl player coming to help with an elite quest when no one asked them to.

Guilds chatty both on discord and guild chat. Players making bags and wands for newbie casters. Guild crafters asking is anyone needed something.

That constant question anyone up for a bg ? Anyone up for a dungeon ?

All these things help cement friendships and relationship with other players.

I would love WoW to get some of that back ? But how when everyone prefers to dungeon queue. Elite quests you can just Queue up with randoms from other servers. Discord is the guild chat in modern wow .

The zones feel empty , even at end level. There’s no much to do except the multibox druid running around maldraxxus herbing.

Cities is just a place to dump stuff on the ah. The economy is all about gold hoarding to buy tokens and expensive legendary crafts.

You’ve all said it yourselves most of you wouldn’t even be playing this game if it weren’t for the token as you don’t feel the game is worth irl cash to you.

Retail is in a dire state , I don’t even think 9.2 will bring back the players in droves. Hopefully 10.0 can regress WoW back to some of it’s roots whilst keeping the QoL improvements we’ve had over the years.

Community is important as well as casual content. All we have left is the collectors and the min maxers and nothing in between.

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They need to move back to servers, maybe add layering but get rid of sharding.

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they get plenty of money from server and faction transfers.
ofc in the long run it’s a suicide strategy for the game, but who cares when you get a nice phat bonus ?

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i feel like the pressure on MMO’s is currently at an all time high with FPS games and BR games dominating the playerbase market

but there is several things Blizzard could do to revamp the mmo experience in WoW. i don’t believe or trust the current dev team to deliver that product

i will keep an eye open for when that day comes , but until then its easier to just play other games

im having tons of fun in Warzone with close friends, after all the only reason we play is to play together whether that is an MMO or a FPS/BR

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They should fix the dead server issue by merging low pops and medium pops into megaserver 1 , and high pops into megaserver 2 , removing realm locked mythic raiding forever and sharding less

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I want 10 and 20 mythic mode.

IT’s annoying that mythic is locked behind the high pop and full pop realms exclusively.

I think having a 10 man mode would increase interest in doing it. But they also need to remove all the crappy grinds to get there. It should be as easy as doing normal - heroic - mythic. Not a fat wedge of grind between heroic to get to mythic.

Also Mythic + is causing the downfall of raiding in general. Most people I know just rather do a m+ than spend 4 hours raiding.

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I’d rather Raid m+ gives me anxiety issues xD.

Cause it’s timed.

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Solution of this is badges with PvE vendor but oh well. Design team shares a single brain cell so rip

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I just don’t focus on the timer. people freak when the group gets 1 death and it’s like take a chill pill we are doing just fine.

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If you don’t focus on the timer how do you complete it?.

And on higher keys deaths can mean a failed run so you avoid those so I’m sorry to say your point there is invalid.

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They should scrap LFR and normal and do 2 diff max like it used to be normal/HC
we can call this HC/mythic
they should scrap sharding? and replace it with something else so people can have community on realm like it used to be
There is no Fun in game when i’m playing on drak’thul
but somehow i’m seeing all russian players around me
happend to me twice i think when i TP to oribos everyone around me was russian :smiley:
they need to re-introduce 10 man raiding cause let’s be real here m+ is dominating wow right now
it’s fast and good content
20 man raiding should die with the past.

Tuning is just excuse

1 Like
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Changing the little things in the game wont make a difference, when the game is restricting the access to the game and its content.

this is why other game types like FPS / BR are thriving its entry to the game is an open door

MMO’s require a treadmill and precursor to reach the “goodstuff” or endgame content

if you understand gaming in all genres , you can predict the problems MMO’s are currently facing,

  • all i can say to the current Devs and players alike is to keep an eye open on changes but be willing to try other games, Fun is subjective to the individual
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Too long didn’t read <3

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Let me see 425 accounts, 777 toons

  • 600k Gold per char transfer ( 2 tokens each )
  • 900k for the Guild. ( 3 tokens )

That will be a total of more than 467,100,000 Gold :star:/ 10,140 Euro

Should I begin a Kickstarer or Sell a kidney :joy: ?

5 Likes