I recently transfered from Earthshaker EU as free migration was offered due to Earthshaker becoming very low pop.
I transfered to Gehennas as I saw it was high pop and thought I might stand a chance of getting into a raiding guild.
Little did I know, Gehennas is hugely horde favored and as of the past few days at peak times I have seen no more than 35 level 80’s online on Alliance side.
Why is there no warning or inside source set by Blizzard to share population splits on servers? I’ve had to use an outside source to find out that Gehennas is a 99.5% horde population (I am Alliance). No warning by Blizzard at all to state that it would be near impossible to play the game once ive transfered to the realm.
I opened up a ticket and got this response from a GM "Thank you for taking the time to reach out to Blizzard Entertainment. Game Master “Shisescelo” here, but you can call me “Celo”. I’ll be the one helping you today with your request.
As a valued player in Blizzard’s universe, thanks for being so patient with us! Your time and patience are highly appreciated. Let me assure you that, as part of the Blizzard family, I will be handling your case with the utmost care and will be doing my best to assist you with your request and provide assistance as soon as possible.
I would also like to express my adoration and respect for your loyalty. Being a legendary Blizzard hero for almost 20 years, that’s just impressive!"
They expressed “adoration” for my loyalty but then pointed me in the direction of a paid character transfer to get my characters out of a situation partly caused by blizzard. They then closed my ticket when I asked them to just transfer me to a realm that is actually playable.
I am all for owning up to my own mistakes and maybe I should have checked outside sources before transfering but there is no way that Blizzard isn’t mostly liable for this mistake. The should atleast transfer my characters to a playable realm.
Really is beggers belief, especially after “20 years” of “loyalty”
You made a mistake which is unfortunate. These things happen. I can understand they don’t want to allow people to reverse server moves under FCM or people would be flooding the ticketing system with requests.
I tend to use this site to get a rough idea of realm populations and faction balance
If you have played for 20 years you should know how it works though. This is a rookie mistake. Blizzard have never divulged player data concerning populations or faction divide. I do think it would be nice info to see on the realm selection screen though. Rough population and faction divide.
I am on Gehennas and rerolled there despite hating PvP, but there are no populated PvE realms for Horde, they are all Alliance.
You server transferred and chose the wrong server despite there being plenty of resources to check this and now blame blizzard because you screwed up? Thats on you dude. If you refuse to ise the resources because theyre fan made theres not much blizzard can do
I assume you are talking about classic. This is not really an issue on retail.
As others have said, the onus is on you for not checking, it is a player created problem that the servers are imbalanced, not a blizzard one.
They even made forced balanced servers for SoD and people want to move off them.
I’ll say that I have always found these somewhat kitschy template responses from CS a little triggering, especially when the bulk of flowery language is followed up by a line or two saying they can’t help. It’s a bit like a cop fining you, brightly smiling at you and saying “have a good day!”.
But I also feel that your situation is the result of you not doing proper research before spending money. Most, if not all, realms are heavily faction-imbalanced. It is the first thing to look into, especially when you transfer characters for the purpose of finding a raiding guild. Presumably you wanted to transfer because your server’s faction balance didn’t work well for you. Why wouldn’t you investigate the new server properly before dropping money?
I disagree with anyone who says the OP is at fault for not checking an external third party website. What is wrong with you, seriously? You just allow Blizzard to troll you and you even defend it.
The OP is right, players shouldn’t have to rely on an external third party source for this information. And what if it is a brand new player? They have literally no idea what they are getting themselves in to when creating their first character. Is that their fault too? Should they have researched the game for hours beforehand? Who is going to want to do that?
This is the MO for Blizzard though. The amount of times I have to leave the game to check on how a quest should be done because it lacks details, or where a NPC is located because there are zero clues or what an item with barely any description on can be used for is just beyond a joke. You all know, you all do the same.
For a player who has been playing for 20yrs straight to be treated like this shows that nobody has a chance with Blizzard at this moment in time. TWW can’t come soon enough as then at least people can recruit to guilds across servers. Until then, its just pain.
That is a different subject, though. OP was looking for a new server because they couldn’t find a raiding guild on their current server, presumably because of faction imbalance. Why would they not check out the new server before transferring characters to that server? You can do that by using third party sites, by asking around here, or simply by making a character on that server and looking around.
Do I think that Blizzard should accommodate a long-time customer by reverting the transfer and refunding the money? Yes, absolutely, because OP will spend the money on WoW again anyway and they’ll be really happy with Blizzard for helping them and tell others about how great the company is. It’s an easy win.
But that doesn’t change that OP should have researched the new realm before paying for character transfers (or anything else).
It is good that you see the fault with Blizzard but my question is why should people have to research? Would you and I research beforehand? I’d say 100% we would. But when the main theme of a thread like this is that it is the OPs fault, it is giving off the wrong message. That is my issue. We all make mistakes, do we like it when people then point at us and tell us how stupid we are for making the mistake?
As I mentioned, when TWW comes out, the server you are on will matter slightly less, so that is some way to correct it but it is Blizzard who creates issues like these and Blizzard who should fix it.