A low population server asks for some help
by David Nelson 
Sep 29th 2006 at 12:10AM
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In between the constant requests for new servers in the WoW.com forums, Stumble, a resident of the Altar of Storms realm, has a request. He'd like Blizzard to merge his server with another low population server, so he will have a wider base of people to play with. Unlike a lot of WoW.com forum posts, this one makes some great points, and manages to do so without hurling insults or making ludicrous demands.After reading his plea, I really appreciate where Stumble is coming from. Altar of Storms was once thriving, but for one reason or another, the population is dying. People are abandoning the server via transfers, and the appeal of rolling on a server already full of 60s is lacking for a lot of folks. Why reroll on AoS when they could reroll on a new server with a lot of people their own level? To his credit, instead of just complaining, Stumble offers his realm merging solution.
This seems like a pretty good idea to me. Granted, I have no idea how hard a merger would be on the hardware end, or how mad some people might get with a forced marriage with another realm, but I can see Stumble's point.
What do you guys think? How can Blizzard help realms like AoS? Is the answer as simple as stopping the release of new realms? Or is it deeper than that?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Sylythn Sep 29th 2006 3:23AM
Elune's been experiencing an interesting phenomenon lately. It's another one of those servers with a TON of lvl 60 because of its age. However, because it's been so badly balanced between Alliance/Horde (70/30 or worse) - what you'll notice is the huge Alliance guilds are starting to spin-off Horde versions of themselves. I'm in one, and I just heard of two other really large ones. It's not more players, but it's kind of a "new life" for the server.
Stockhausen Sep 29th 2006 3:40AM
Balnazzar seems to be having very similar problems to Altar of Storms. Two of the furthest progressed Alliance guild collapsed, which led to a mass exodus of people. There are benefits to having such a low pop server, namely the lack of queues and the overall stability of the server. Unfortunately the small player base makes PUGs very difficult, and it has destroyed the economy. It's also very difficult for young guilds to recruit because there are so few new players entering the realm.
Keegan Sep 29th 2006 7:04AM
This IS one of my hugest issues with WoW. Around the same time the Altar of Storms server was released, a friend and I rolled new charecters their, and were having fun dancing around azeroth and such. Eventually Server transfers were released, and we talked with a bunch of friends about jumping servers, which we did around level 40ish. The new server we jumped to was "dalvengyr" since we were mainly focusing on PvP, and the server had low queues at the time. Then came, cross realm battlegrounds which basically destroyed that servers population. I never made it to 60, and left my charecter to sit at 53 to this day. Grouping and questing is so terribly painful on that server, I just couldn't do it. :(
Twinklestar Sep 29th 2006 3:27PM
Hi Stumble grats on making wowinsider.