Breakfast Topic: How do you find a new realm to call home?
by Dion Cooper 
Nov 26th 2010 at 8:00AM
Home. It's where the heart is. It's where you can relax and be yourself. Sometimes, it is where you have been all your life. Other times, you have to move around several times to find the best place for you. The feeling of home in World of Warcraft is no different.
Because of a lack of guild activity, I've thought about moving my main to a new realm for several weeks now, but I have been hesitant to just do it. Part of it is the anxiety that comes with going to an unfamiliar realm. I've done research on several different realms and even rolled low-level characters on them to see what the environment is like, but the one thing I've learned is that you can't get a sense of what the raiding scene is like unless you are in it. The other part of my anxiety is getting to know everyone all over again. Sometimes, the hardest part of moving to a new town is introducing yourself to the neighbors. I thought about rerolling but have too much invested in my main to retire him.
So, fellow citizens of Azeroth, how did you find your WoW home? Is it the first realm you rolled on? Did you transfer somewhere else or reroll altogether?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
uncaringbear Nov 26th 2010 8:07AM
I recently rolled on a new realm based on the fact that I came across a lot of nice people from that realm when I ran random dungeons. It also turned out to be an Oceanic realm, which was handy, because I was looking to try one, being an Aussie and having played on US realms for over 5 years now.
My baby druid that I rolled on Caelestrasz is now almost 80, and my instincts about nice people on that realm hasn't been shattered yet, so it's looking good so far.
raylogo Dec 1st 2010 10:59AM
hey, theres a new social network for wow players, called www.wowmeetingstone.com this site has a lot of cool features like audio/video chat in your chatbox, play games with friends in chatbox, an share files here too. theres a groups page that lets you create your own group or find yours search for player in search box by nickname or search your realm in the advanced search box. lots more too like a games page , chatrooms with more games on profile page at bottom left. their is an info site as well, www.wow-nooobs.com to help lost or confused players. check them out an enjoy!
Pat Nov 26th 2010 8:10AM
I'm still on the first realm I ever rolled on.
I've never considered moving, Maybe some day when things get stale I'll go elsewhere.
eMaRDi Nov 26th 2010 8:16AM
I never really considered to move to another realm. Why? World is small and you'll always bump in old friends (or less than friends).
My sister told me that her realms is heavily fluctuating concerning horde/alliance ratio. However, most things tend to fix up themselves.
If you really have half the server population on your ignore list it might make sense to change - or if you decide that PvE server is less exiting than getting crushed everywhere.
Apart from that, I don't think server changes make much sense or things much better.
monkeyhouse Nov 26th 2010 8:26AM
i just want to move to have all Alliance on one server and all Horde on another - i have an alt problem lol.
Horde on my main server are hugely outnumbered so battlegrounds and the horde economy suck. plus after playing alliance (mostly) for years i (and some friends) want to try and get some horde characters leveled.
Necromann Nov 26th 2010 9:31AM
@Monkey, I also have a horde realm and a Allie realm. Although, I have 3 lvl 80 hordies and my highest 2 Allie are a 72 dk and a 26 Druid.
JohnnytheFuture Nov 26th 2010 8:19AM
Funny, as I was just looking into this myself.
Outside of getting a feel for the denizens of your new realm, picking a data-center nearest your physical location should help narrow things down (for example, if you live on the West Coast choose a realm from the Los Angeles data center):
http://www.wowpedia.org/US_realm_list_by_datacenter
Also, you could try picking your realm based on its creation date. I can't confirm or deny it, but I'd probably choose a realm that's been around longer; that way you know that at least a handful of the people there know what's up. Of course older realm does not always equal more mature players. Just a thought.
http://www.wowpedia.org/US_Realms_Timeline
Rainkeltoia Nov 26th 2010 9:11AM
I started on an original release server (moved to a different original release server) and they are night and day. Bloodhoof, my original server, definitely lacks on the maturity factor!
fluxboy Nov 26th 2010 11:34AM
About the servers, I live in LA, but my ISP's main hub is in Phoenix... so I was actually getting better latency times out of Blizz's servers in AZ.
Anye Nov 26th 2010 1:31PM
Picking a nearby battlegroup/datacenter is a good point, but another thing to consider is realm time.
When my wife and I first rolled toons, it recommended Drenden for us--a server in a battlegroup that was relatively nearby, but an east-coast timezone server.
We're in AZ and don't use DST, so we fluctuate between Pacific and Mountain times. Eastern is no good for us, but we didn't realize that it'd be an issue until we were already level 70 and trying to start raiding. We still stuck it out for nearly two years, but between time issues and server progression we were just unable to find a group that we could call home, and unable to recruit for our own guild at the times we needed to raid.
Being the complete and utter nerd that I am, I made a spreadsheet. We listed all of the Pacific PvE servers, recorded each realm's progression (I think from wowprogress.com, could be wrong) and checked the realm list at 6pm & 9pm to see how full the servers were. This gave us short list of about 5 well-progressed, medium-to-high population servers. Of those five, we looked a bit deeper--Alliance-to-Horde ratio, battlegroup location, the attitude on the realm forums, wowwiki article, etc. We also looked at name availability, but ultimately made a decision despite the necessity of a name change.
One server really stood out for us, so we rolled new toons and tried to get a feel for the place. Loved it, and eventually moved or rerolled all of our other toons to this server.
It was a fairly scientific way of choosing a new server, and probably sounds a bit lame, but when you're talking $25 a pop ($50 for a couple) to transfer to a new server, you wanna make sure you're making the right decision!
Narshe Nov 26th 2010 5:24PM
@Anye Could you please list the 5 realms you narrowed down? Ive done the same type of research for Arizona based servers so wouldnt mind seeing what you may have chosen too, you might have come up some better results than me :)
monkeyhouse Nov 26th 2010 8:20AM
very logically, i started with http://www.wowrealmstatus.net/factions.php?t=1 to view realm loads (horde centric, alliance centric of even split for batlegrounds) then by type (PvE) then had a look at the realm forum pages.
but the best thing was to roll an alt, get to the main city and check out the chat and AH prices/availability. that way you can tell how things are looking.
there are other sites that give you information on guild progression for servers like http://www.wowprogress.com/ which can also help.
Fujiwara Nov 26th 2010 8:59AM
I knew my server(Thaurissan) was really high on horde but I didn't know it was the highest :O
Pyromelter Nov 26th 2010 11:39AM
Up rated for wow progress. I really think that is the best measure of how good raiding is on a server, although I do believe the pug communities on each can vary. I'm told on top servers, there are pugs that end up doing full hardmode clears of current content; however I also know that these "pugs" oftentimes are made up of people from the top 2-3 guilds, and they might bring in a healer or someone else they know from other means.
Wow progress is the best place to start, however. From there, you can check out the realm forums, roll a low-level alt, ask around. In wrath, GDKP's were a great way to get your feet wet in end-game raiding, although it remains to be seen with the new raid lockouts how that will go.
But yes, start with www.wowprogress.com if your main concern is raiding.
rich Nov 26th 2010 5:01PM
this is what I did. then rolled a couple DK's and got out of the starting zone. I don't get enough time to raid and I'm definitely a loner, but a lot of progression on a server is good for BoEs, the economy and crafted gear.
Ice Nov 26th 2010 8:22AM
My friend said to roll on some server.
When I used trial and tried to make char to said realm it was full and back then (I recall) you couldnt just log in to server at all with trial or it had some huge queue..or couldnt make toon.
Well I then made some "when its not full" toon to realm thats name/meaning I really liked on lore.
So there it went. I never made proper toon to my friends realm because back then I was thinking that "woah im lvl 15 awesome stuff I cant start again it would take another 2 weeks and I have such good stuff on this".
Now I'm in really fun guild that has killed heroic LK that I was part in, my friend quit back in end of BC and never came back (we are school friends so its not like he quit cos I didnt play on same realm).
So I dont really regret the choice, I've met some nice people here. And some..well.
neogramps Nov 26th 2010 8:26AM
I started playing with a group of friends who were all giving wow a go with one former player - they all quit 6 months later, but I've been at it for almost 2 years now; at level 10 on my first character I got recruited into a small guild which I stuck with for a year and a half - the guild dissolved, but I'm good friends with the other officers, and most old members have moved to the same larger guild I'm in now.
I can't imagine uprooting and moving to another realm, even though mine is low pop and imbalanced towards horde. I wouldn't just miss the good people either, I'd miss our trolls, my blacklist (gank revenge targets) and everything else that makes it home.
Kz Nov 26th 2010 8:32AM
I have started a new character on Proudmoore with the intention of finding out what it is like to be in a very large guild like Taint. Although Taint is way over Blizzard's size limit, Taint has started sister guilds and linking them together via some kind of global chat addon.
I have not yet appled to Taint as I only have a level 3 character on Proudmoore. I don't want to move one of my mains to Proudmoore until I join and find out a little bit more about Taint. So I guess you could say I am looking for a new guild experience that does not exist on my server.
Lloren Nov 26th 2010 8:48AM
I did the same thing. I come from a background of small and close-knit guilds, so the atmosphere of Taint has been quite a shell-shock. I can tell you based on my experience so far that Proudmoore and Taint in particular is very accepting of everyone. However, gchat can get downright raunchy about 90% of the time and I frequently have to check to make sure I'm still playing WoW and not hanging out in a gay porn chat room. So, I would recommend giving it a shot, but it's not for everyone... And my mains are staying right where they are in their small, close-knit raiding guild.
aerinbear Nov 26th 2010 3:30PM
I moved to Proudmoore because of Taint. I've ended up really liking the realm - if you're in the LGBT camp, you really should try Proudmoore. It's just a relief after several other realms. Turns out that Taint doesn't work for me, but I'm hoping I can find a smaller, more female-friendly place on Proudmoore. A RL friend wants to reroll on a server together, but after being on a LGBT majority realm, I'm reluctant to be elsewhere.