The state of Golemagg alliance, server health and server transfers

WoW Classic Mists of Pandaria Classic Discussion
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While I’m probably beating a dead horse here, I feel like it’s important to keep bringing up the issues regarding faction balance and server health. Most of the content will be in context of my server (Golemagg, alliance), but I’m sure it applies to a lot of other servers as well.

The server is in a dire state, despit Blizzard opening free transfers to the server several weeks ago. The alliance population is mediocre, we are still severely outnumbered compared to the horde playerbase and a significant portion of the alliance playerbase speaks little to no English, despite rolling on (or transferring to) an English realm.

It is honestly baffling that Blizzard allows almost unrestricted transfers for anyone who is willing to pay, regardless of faction balance or server health. Servers like Gehennas and Earthshaker are pretty much 99% one faction, and several servers are literally completely dead. Golemagg is not at this state yet, but if horde guilds continue to transfer here, it will drive alliance even further off to other servers or cause them to unsubscribe completely.
A healthy faction balance is crucial for the enjoyment of the game, specifically on PvP servers. Being able to contest for resources, PvP objectives, meeting stones, and so forth.

Additionally, while there is no objective take on what constitutes a ‘healthy’ population, having one server with 50k+ accounts and several others with less than 1k is not healthy. In my opinion, a server is healthy when there is high activity regarding dungeon groups, raids, guild recruitment, PvP, etc on both factions, especially during peak hours. If you’re looking for a daily heroic for several hours at prime time, your server is probably not well off (atleast on your faction).

I highly recommend Blizzard to step in and do atleast a few of the following things:

  • Restrict transfers based on faction, don’t allow one faction to dominate the other one in terms of numbers;
  • Merge very low population servers together;
  • Incentivize people to transfer from mega servers to medium sized servers by giving them perks such as bonus play time, a temporary reputation or xp boost for alts, etc.
  • Actively monitor server health and faction balance and keep adjusting as much as possible
  • Inform players on server and faction balance. Players will always choose based on self-interest (playing with guilds, friends, or playing on the big servers). They dont know or dont care about server balance and it’s therefor illogical to blame the players about the state of affairs.

I hope Blizzard can consider some of these options and take the issues seriously, and I’m for sure not the only player with these concerns.

11 Likes
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They are not gonna do any of that and everyone knows it.
They let Firemaw become what it is now, killing whats left of a dozen+ servers. The free transfers they did recently had negative impact in some servers (including Golemagg) cause they put 0 effort in addressing the issue since the beginning of classic. And when they try do do something the f it up, like when Golemagg was locked for 4 5 months essentially putting the server in the trajectory it is now.
People pay lots of money to transfer and thats enough for them.

They might do something for Wotlk but i wouldn’t bet my money on it.

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You don’t seem to understand that a vast majority of players would rather be on a monofaction realm than on an underdog faction. It’s a lesser of two evils. Wow never had balanced servers, not in a long run. Every PvP server skews toward one faction and Blizzard never did and never will do anything about it.

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Well, I don’t see Horde stopping transfers to Golemagg anytime soon. Golemagg and Mograine are the only real options to use free transfers on, but honestly most people realized that Golemagg has higher chance of survival than Mograine.

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Those players be sissies!
I prefer bein’ da underdog (Dreadnaught Horde, hello!). Means dat I can shrink da heads of more noobs out in da wild.

If ya don’t like da PvP, ya roll on a safe space server aka PvE aka Pansies versus Environment, ahahah!

Also, stay away from da voodoo…

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Man, I would be severely disappointed if wanting to play on a balanced, close to 50/50 server made me a minority.

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Retail developers in Blizzard ignored same problems with Gehennas, Morgraine, Shazzrah, Noggerfogger and many more.
They without any action allowed those once really big servers to die.
Will they do the same with Golemag, server with 7800 active chars and AH ratio 30:70 ??

They can merge Golemag with some server with most Ally population like Ashbringer, Earthshaker and in that case Golemag would be one of best balanced server with ~15.000 active players (still half of Firemaw) with 1-2 layers max.

Will they do that?
Obviously NOT, they want us to PAY transfer from middle/dying servers to somewhere, extra money is great thing for Activi-Blizzard :slight_smile:

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To keep server most possible balanced is Blizzard job… but… but money, huge money of desperate players who pay transfers prevailed…

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Players voted with their wallets and paid for transfer Sept-Nov NOT to play on balanced servers. Any merge would end the same - players dont want it.

Yes, really strange behaviour from profit-oriented stock market company. /s

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As much as i would love to see all the changes coming you mentioned, i fear that it will never happen. The amount of money they earn with paid transfers is just way too much to care about server health and population.
It was a long time ago when blizzard actually cared about their game and their customers.

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Golemagg was already in the faction deathspiral since AQ. Start of TBC defered it a bit but this process only goes one way.
Also you can add that the top guild transferred off to Firemaw followed by 3 more and lot od people caring about their gaming experience.
Golemagg aliance is just waiting to die.

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Free migration from Ashbringer alliance to Golemagg alliance would give a more balanced state to the server but as usual blizz won’t do anything hoping that alliance players pay to move. Eventually 1 side faction servers tend to die (with exception of Gehennas) … oh boy i recall Shazzrah having around 4700 pop (horde) on Ironforge 1 week before phase 2 and 3 months later we were barely 2k and now it’s botland.

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Problem is that people rarely transfer to a underdog faction, or one that already is small or dying.
There’s a couple of mono servers out there that should be merged into a almost 50/50 server, but I dont see Blizzard doing that.

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The real bewildering question is why do we not simply have more PVE servers because the majority of players roll on a PVP server while they actually want to play on a PVE server based on these trends. Razergore and Gehennas are perfect examples, in TBC those servers became PVE servers for the Horde.

People flock to these one faction servers and we have very few balanced, Firemaw has always been pretty close to balanced tho, more alliance skewed but still a massive Horde population.

1 Like
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Mono Faction PvP servers may as well be PvE, and are for all intents and purposes.

Probably get more World PvP on our PvE realm than the mono faction PvP realms.

The sad thing is history is repeating itself and Blizzard have let it. Outland, Ravencrest, Stormscale etc should have been a lesson from the first time round and not allowed to repeat.

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The problem continues to grow as more and more alliance guilds transfer or quit completely. I strongly urge Blizzard to take some form of intervention - sooner rather than later, before Golemagg becomes Gehennas 2.0. If the server cannot be saved for alliance, atleast allow free transfers FROM Golemagg to other realms.

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Merge NA and EU

Game is too dead at night and too much downtime

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More like Mograine 2.0. Lost about 2-3% Alliance from reset to reset since October. Alliance guilds had threads begging for transfers away from Mograine and Blizzard did nothing.

4000 Allliance used to raid there - now its a ghost town.

Waiting to be the last 100 there isnt recommended if you want to have some sort of love left for the game, take action in your own hands. Costly as it is …

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its not costly to play on a good realm

but its costly to pay blizz to scam us and not reccommended cause then it will never stop

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And you know what funny about this? This was predicted before the free transfers were opened, but the zug brains had zug brains and cant predict anything