Bruscha

Adding to this. I know Ascent has had several people from pvp servers who have gone through the interview and then backed out at the last minute because they didn't want to get trapped in the pve ruleset.

 

Phlis

God yes. Another aspect people may be ignoring: Raiding guilds on PvP servers who are tired of being on PvP servers, but were unwilling to transfer before because of the recruitment nightmare. I know of a few guilds, most of their members hate the PvP server experiance, but raiding happens on PvP servers because of the open recruitment pool. Now, just before the next big leveling push, we may have a chance of transfering to a PvE realm and still have the recruitment options. I really do love this change.

 

kysta

I think the true problem is so obvious that it boggles my mind why blizzard hasn't done something about it. Transfers are *not* a fix, just a poor way of treating the symptoms.

This is obviously just my opinion, but I think many people would agree with the following-

1) Players want to play on populated servers. Nobody wants to play on a ghost town server with barely enough people to support occasional 5 man groups.

2) Current blizzard server hardware doesn't support enough players. Look at Mal'Ganis. I love the population, it's awesome being able to find groups, but to be perfectly honest, it could be better. Even with the 80% horde skew in population, and even with being populated to max capacity the majority of the time, it's *still* hard to find groups if you are looking to do something that is slightly out of the mainstream dungeon farming runs. If a massively horde skewed server still can't support enough players in one faction, then what does that say about the servers that are closer to a 50/50 split?

3) WoW was released almost 4 years ago. Since then, computer hardware has kept on improving, average computer today is probably 8X as fast as what we had when WoW was initially released. Why don't we have servers with 8X capacity yet? I don't know what the WoW servers are based around exactly, but I would be very surprised if it wasn't possible to upgrade them to more current hardware and get a massive performance increase.


While again I must stress I don't know what configuration of hardware WoW servers use, it seems like it must be somewhat scalable with hardware upgrades. Further, couldn't instances be arbitrarily split among any number of servers?

I just feel like blizzard is going about things all wrong when they open up server after server, when the real fix would be to upgrade existing servers to support many more players.

 

Harne

Part of the reason for having a maximum capacity that is less than the hardware can theoretically handle is to keep zones from being overcrowded. Blizzard has commented in the past about trying to keep the population 'density' at a certain level so that you aren't always endlessly fighting over spawn points while farming/questing. This isn't as noticeable when everyone has been max level for a year and a half and mostly involved in instances, but is something they definitely need to consider when unleashing everyone on the new starting zones of Northrend. The server hardware has been upgraded a few times over the years, but the max player cap intentionally has not been increased by the same amount.

 

MatthewDB

If they ever open a free pvp to pve transfer I would be all over it. I'm tired of dealing with ganking while trying to do my dailies. It used to be fun and challenging, but now it feels tedious. I would pay for it, but 5 accounts and 15+ characters would be pretty spendy.

 

Gearman

Traffic increases exponentially as more players are in a given area. Each person you add to an area not only has to communicate with the server, but the server also has to communicate relevant data to the surrounding players about that new player as well. I'm sure that isn't the sole reason, but it's probably one of them.

 

• Sservis

It's only quadratic, superlinear yes, but not exponential. Each active object has to send a message to each other object in the vicinity when it does something if the other objects are going to be aware of the action. This means that at some level the load is related to the square of the player base.

Note: That assumes that the frequency distribution of player position in the game is consistent as the size of the player base increases. ie players don't clump more as there are more players nor do they spread out more, it's always 5% of the total in area X regardless of if that's 5% of 1200 or 5% of 3000.

 

kysta

That is true, but isn't that one of the things instancing is supposed to fix? Sure, nothing can be done about lag in Shattrath due to 500 players all being in the same place, but is it really a big deal to lag a little bit while you are repairing, buying reagents, and waiting for the BG queue to pop? For the most part, anything that matters is instanced. The few important things that occur which are not instanced, for example the AQ gate opening, lag is a given. Yet for some reason it seems like blizzard doesn't take full advantage of instancing. On an overpopulated server, the instances lag. I don't really see why, it seems to me they could just add an additional physical server and split up the instances further. Does anyone know why they don't do this?

Let the numbers speak for themselves. When players transfer in large quantities to a server that is already at capacity and lagged, doesn't that say something? To me it says the players don't care about suffering a little lag, they *want* a crowded server where groups are easy to find.

 

andastra

I don't think this will be an easy fix as they'll have to go against a very powerful economic incentive to do this. It's the same reason car dealers are right next to each other. If I'm transferring to a server, I want there to be plenty of backup guilds in case I get rejected, decided to be more hardcore/casual, have a change in my schedule, etc. That and after the midway point of every expansion, it gets harder for the T1 guilds to recruit unless there's T2 and T3 guilds to recruit from.

 

Kesh

This may end up being a problem, yes. There's going to be a ton of guilds who got together the numbers for 25-mans in BC *because it was the only way to see the content* and took in some people who really didn't 'fit' the guild. These guilds will pare themselves back down to their core people and stick to 10-man raids, because they can see the content that way. Why bother with 25-man numbers if it's not a good fit for you?

 

Melkortopia

Didn't they answer this?

Q: Why are you now allowing character transfers from PvE realms to PvP realms?

A: Because World of Warcraft has matured significantly since the inception of Paid Character Transfers, we don’t feel that PvE-to-PvP transfers will have the negative impact on the game that we initially wanted to avoid when we started the service in 2006. This change will provide more mobility and freedom for players to experience the game with friends or play in the type of environment they’re looking for.

World of Warcraft (English) Forums -> PvE-to-PvP Paid Character Transfers Now Open

Unless, of course you think there is a hidden ulterior motive. :O

 

buddhasevil

I am interested to see if any other guilds are experiencing what we are currently going through in my guild.

We are on a PvE server (Eldre Thalas, low pop) and our current progression is Kalecgos to 12/8, Illidan has been on farm for a few months. Are main issue has always been recruitment as we are a "late night" raiding guild that starts at midnight EST.

Briefly about our servers raid climate: We have one guild that is currently working on KJ, and us (Severance) now, all the other guilds in between have recently ceased to exist (3 or 4 guilds that were half way through SWP), and we are unable to pick up any of those players, due to our raid times. All of the other guilds on our server are just getting started in BT or less.

We have taken an internal poll of our guild population in regards to transferring to a PvP server, and the guild seems split right down the middle. All of our officers however feel that this is the best move for us, in order to get established and set ourselves up for WotLK.

I am a personally huge fan of PvP Servers (originally from Tichondrius), and I feel that the quality of players on PvP realms are generally better, as PvE server players seem to lack situational awareness to a large degree, effecting raid performance in a big way.

I am interested to hear from more veteran players and guilds, with experience in transferring guilds. This is in my opinion an interesting time for this to come up, as WotLK is nearing and we will be experiencing a gear reset soon, and will more than likely have to do some rebuilding regardless of moving or not.

I am just trying to do what’s right for my guild and would greatly appreciate some insight from more experienced players. Hopefully more than just our guild is going through this, and some of the replies may help them as well.

Why is everybody automatically given 300/300 skill common language? Chat channels prove, not everybody deserves it...

 

Uglesh

I don't think there might be an ulterior motive any more then a garbage man calling themselves a "sanitation engineer" at a bar when talking to women. Do you reasonably expect them to say "Well... actually since we are basically doing a reset in 2 months with the expansion we decided we would save you rerolling on another server by allowing you to pay us $15 bucks"?? Lets face it.... it doesn't effect anything at this point and it makes them money. It's a corporate no-brainer.

They are a money making company that wants to make MORE money.... and server transfers are a very nice easy way to earn revenue. Lets not forget that they are also facing a new competitor in the market and I highly doubt anyone can debate the "timely" nature of all their recent patches over the last few years.

 

Addled

Well, I hate to say "hidden ulterior motive" because it sounds so cliche and super-villain-ish, but yes.

Really for a couple of reasons:

1. If transfers weren't implemented, then you'd see a flood of PvE server people rerolling Death Knights on PvP servers upon WotLK launch. And while Blizzard might want people to play the DK, they probably don't want a large percentage of a server's population to consist of DKs.

2. More money. I shouldn't need to explain this.

3. Spoils the Warhammer release. Warhammer is slated to be released in a few days, correct? (I don't know, I haven't been keeping up with Warhammer news lately.) This helps spoil the release. And coincidentally (/sarcasm) enough, Blizzard is announcing a 3.0x patch right now, and downloading 800+ MB to our hard drives. Blizzard keeps telling us that we'll get our new talents and Inscription in this patch, but I don't buy it for a second. Inscription isn't done on beta, and the talents for most classes are horribly broken (in both the good and bad meanings).

In my opinion, Blizzard will delay the talent revamps until later on, and in the meantime, keep us entertained with the Brewfest event, and perhaps some WotLK introductory events. Perhaps we'll have a redo of the Naxx event where undead attacked all over Azeroth. Or maybe we'll see the marshaling of a giant undead force in the outskirts of Durotar.

 

dssurge

They actually accomplished this feat decently well pre-BC with the Green Dragons being nearly required content for guilds who wanted to get past Huhuran before the NR gear patch. If your guild was stuck behind some other guild that could field 25 people mid-day on Wednesdays, you were pretty much fucked. Combined with the fact there was never a really good reason to pass up on world spawns every week, good raid guilds tried to get on medium-high pop servers with little competition. There are exceptions to every rule, but that was the general mentality for re-roll guilds and major guild moves.

Now that world spawns are basically an afterthought and have really no significance, the core factors for running a stable raiding guild all revolve around consumables and alternate opportunity from what I can gather.

Without a mid-high population server, consumables go up drastically in price, are completely unavailable or force your raiders to have useless professions or farm alts. If you were in a Naxx guild pre-BC and didn't have a Herb alt camped at Scarlet Monestary you either never saw Loatheb or paid premium on the AH. Marks of the Illidari helped a lot with this issue, but fishing bots still help more than flasks that require people in your guild to do anything but raid. Alchemy masteries were another step in the lazy direction, although a nice one from the more expensive consumables.

Without other raid guilds on the server people who do transfer to your guild and it just doesn't work out feel stranded (PvE->PvP fixed major issues with this, but I don't agree with the change, they should simply remove the PvE ruleset and be done with it.) Blizzard has done multiple things to alleviate this issue already but the downside is all the bullshit musical-guild nonsense that goes on creating exceptionally high turnover rates. People don't really feel any kind of, dare I call it, server pride anymore. They play on server xyz because their guild happens to be there.

If Blizzard really wants to make people feel like they're carving out their own little corner of the World of Warcraft they need to make it possible to exist as a major raiding guild on little bullshit servers or just close those servers outright and re-distribute the population. Right now theres really no penalty aside from e-peen from being second place. The title achievements in Wrath might build up some of that competitive spirit, but it's really silly to think that people would leave their high pop well established servers just to get a stupid title over their head on some no-where server that everyone in the guild hates themselves every day for xfering to. The less attached people get from their server the less importance is placed upon server selection. Pre-BC people always seemed to make it work because re-rolling was a chore, now it's a 10 minute, $25 process.

All in all, PvE-to-PvP transfers don't fix anything. Population distribution is still a major issue. Blizzard did it for the money and to give people on PvE servers an incentive not to go play Warhammer.

 

Ja7us

I completely disagree. PvE>PvP transfers are the first step to fixing the population imbalances that they created in the first place, and the only real question is why it's taken them so long to do it.

Moreover: if you think "just eliminate the PvE ruleset altogether" is a reasonable suggestion, I honestly don't know what to say.

 

Currylaksa

The ulterior motive thing is really cheesy Yes, they are are a for-profit company. The way to make profit is to make sure you have a good MMORPG playing experience. Allowing PVE-PVP transfers lets you play with your friends or get off backwater realms, thus improving your play experience.

As for why they didn't do this earlier, IIRC they tried to implement it some years back but the public outcry from the community was so huge it forced them to delay until now.

 

Arvak-

All I can say about it is "too little too late." While it's good to know that all 6 of my toons aren't locked in PvE limbo, the innumerable damage to raiding guilds on many PvE realms is already done.

 

roquer

Just to give you an idea of how server populations have changed over time, This is from April 2005, and this is a current census. Max populations seem to have increased 50-100%. What I find interesting is the handful of servers that have existed since release, but have small (under 8000) populations. Most of these were twice as big 3 years ago. Maybe they never coalesced into a strong community like other servers have.

 

Uglesh

Now I'm not 100% sure on this, but I assume census stats are looking at the number of CHARACTERS and not necessarily the number of unique accounts. The sheer volume of Alts is likely a giant factor in the Max Population figures. Most people I know have 2-3 alts if not more!

 

Tanoh

Quite a bit offtopic, but I think Blizzard should allow cross server instances. Not just for battlegrounds. It would certainly help getting groups on odd hours. But maybe there's some technical limitations to it, or they just don't want to.

They should also improve the LFG tool by having a list of options that states your role "Healer", "DPS", "Tank" etc and let people search for this, either cross server or on this server only.

I love doing instances on all my chars, but lately it's became almost impossible. Never any tanks around, used to be that you could either get a tank or a healer, now you can never get the tank :> Having cross server instances wouldn't create more tanks, but it would be easier to find those that are out there.

 

Prinsesa

Tanoh, I believe the problem with that is it increases the propensity for ninja-looting. Granted, a blue drop from Shattered Halls isn't exactly something everyone might feel is worth blacklisting you over, but then it's still a form of griefing.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

◊ Cadfael

Also when cross server BGs came, although it did much to make games happen and more games being played, you did lose the "local server" familiarity. People where just... other classes. While before you started to knew exactly who was there. You just knew your kind of people and got to know "them".

Now granted there are realms that are so big you seldom cross each other when pugging but it still does happen and even I with my very bad name-memory do recognize meeting people again later. Not sure what would happen if there were cross server instances for PVE.

"Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through with the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet you act as if there were some sort of rightness in the universe by which it may be judged."

 

Tanoh

Well, I take "playing with unfamiliar people" over "not finding anyone to play with" any day of the week

But yes it does diminish the feel of the server you are on, but no one should be forced to play with other servers it should be an option for those that wants to.

Edit: As for ninjalooting, I don't know if this is much of a problem really. If you want to grief there are far more effective ways than hang around for an instance run and then hope something ninjable drops and hope you win the roll so you can take it.

 

Norfair

Also I'm not sure if it will solve anything. Assuming every realm has similar tank:dps ratios, it would still be very hard to find a tank as there are now more players that will "ninja" your tank. E.g. instead of 3 tanks available and 50 dps wanting to play, you now get 30 tanks available and 500 dps wanting to play. You could say the same holds true for BGs, but there are some significant differences.

In BGs games got created faster and people therefore become available faster as well, resulting in higher throughput leading to shorter queues. In heroics, this will probably not be the case because of the nature of how people play heroics. Heroics take a long time compared to BGs; if you want to PvP for an hour you do several games, but if you have 2 hours time you will just do 1, maybe 2 heroics. Even if you would do more heroics, chances are that the group will stay roughly the same and does not fall completely apart - something that does happen in BGs (save for premades).

Also, as you pointed out, technically it might be difficult to implement, as for example you can't go say "let's summon the mage at the meeting stone". The only option would be to make instances like BGs where you queue up and get randomly put into an instance group (the horror!) or create a group through the LFG tool. The latter would require each person to go to the instance on their own (not cool) or have the tool automatically zone you in. This is just one example, I'm sure there are many other problems (graveyards, instance IDs, and such come to mind) that would have to be overcome. I think it's not worth the effort, especially - as mentioned before - it would hardly improve anything.

[e] And of course it would be very uncool if each server would have the same daily heroic. ^^

Keep f**king that chicken.