Free high pop to low pop server transfers incoming
by Mike Schramm 
Oct 21st 2008 at 1:00PM
Thundgot over on the EU forums says there's a pretty drastic solution incoming to the busy servers incoming: Blizzard is going to offer free server transfers from high pop servers to low pop, so if you've really been driven nuts by all the queues and lag lately, this might be just what you need. On the other hand, don't jump into anything too quickly -- traffic problems are pretty common, especially when big patches (and, you know, expansions) come down, and odds are that once the expansion actually releases, things will die back down after a little while.Of course, if you just don't want to wait, and don't have any particular ties to the server you happen to be on, then by all means, keep an eye out for the transfers. We're not quite sure which servers will be affected yet, but We Hate PUGs saw Quel'thelas on the list already along with a long list of high pop realms, so while we'll probably see more servers added to the low pop side, the high pop side there now is probably a fairly good indicator of the realms Blizzard sees as trouble. If you're on one of those realms and ready to transfer, sit tight and wait for the announcement today, help is on the way.
Filed under: Realm News, Analysis / Opinion, Bugs, Realm Status, Blizzard, Instances, Expansions, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Hardware
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
gaan Oct 21st 2008 1:23PM
low populated = not a lot people = harder to find a group for a instance/heroic
Moe Oct 21st 2008 1:26PM
High pop = lots of bad players = easier to find a group for instance/heroic, but you wipe a lot.
Ok that's mostly a joke, but true to a certain degree.
gudi Oct 21st 2008 1:20PM
I play on a low pop realm and I'm experiencing the same issues everybody else does. I don't believe it's a population problem.
Izakhar Oct 21st 2008 1:26PM
If you read the complete post at WeHatePugs you should be aware that the realm destination is a Latinamerican server, just a FYI.
Caustik Oct 21st 2008 1:30PM
The problem with those free transferts, is the fact they don't take into consideration population in each faction.
Meaning a server with a high ally pop/low horde pop might end with not a lot of horde left.
They should analyse faction population and create faction only transfert, their server wide transfert is killing some servers nowadays.
spacehyena Oct 21st 2008 1:34PM
Moon Guard queues are at what seems like an all-time high.
I hope some folks take this opportunity to GIT OFF MAH LAWN.
Omnishinzui Oct 21st 2008 1:37PM
I see two of my servers, Arathor and Turalyon, on the list. Since the new server is in Latin America, its suggested that the list linked above is US servers right? Or am I mistaken?
zappo Oct 21st 2008 1:53PM
Yeah, these are transfers to latin servers (been up for a while). This doesn't seem to have much to do with population - at least 3 of those servers I am familiar with and are anything BUT high population.
I'm guessing this is just an offer for people who speak Spanish/Portuguese to move to a server more in-line with their language.
stevens.ce Oct 21st 2008 1:57PM
This is correct - Quel'thalas has been a destination for free transfers for months now to encourage Latin American players who rolled on old realms before the Latin Realms were established. While there are english-speaking players on those servers, most of the trade chat and the like is in Spanish, so it's not much of an option for english speakers, unless you find one of the limited number of english-speaking guilds.
Omnishinzui Oct 21st 2008 2:08PM
I see, makes sense in my opinion. Im very active on Turalyon, and ever since the patch we have hit map-wide lag/dc (ie BC map crashing, or Eastern Kingdoms) and for the last two days "Instance Server failing". Example: two nights ago my raid group couldnt get into ZA cause Instance server wasnt found. Same thing happened last night for SSC. Waiting a half hour, we got into both however since the patch things like this have become a bother. Hoepfully since its 11am now, they have tried to fix things....
peagle Oct 21st 2008 1:45PM
"pretty drastic solution"
Seems like a fairly common solution, which has been employed before, and is fairly expected, no?
Rhys Oct 21st 2008 1:47PM
This isn't drastic, or new. Before Paid Character Transfers, there were fairly regular transfers between high pop and low pop realms.
Sarem Oct 21st 2008 1:49PM
Yea, I wish blizzard would set parameters, Like, If u want to roll here, u have to roll an alli and we show x y z are the rarest classes.
that would have remedied this issue a long time ago and shouldn't be so hard??
stevens.ce Oct 21st 2008 2:03PM
I think this would be an excellent way to solve the problem.
Superstone Oct 21st 2008 3:18PM
I don't think that is a good idea. People feel hemmed in by their guilds by being forced to roll a certain class, but they do it because they want to play with their friends/guild and the good outweighs the bad. Imagine that you're paying a company to play in their world (which we do) but now you don't even have the options that the game provides by pigeonholing you before you even hit create character. That's not gonna fill the empty spots in your roster. It's just going to annoy your potential playerbase.
Besides, even if someone did follow that rule and only rolled what the server demanded, what about alts? Do you need special permission? Would you actually pay to put up with that shit? Bad idea.
Zali Oct 21st 2008 3:40PM
Superstone,
I don't think it would go down like that. By making server makeup more accessable it would give you a better idea of what you are getting into. Server X has Alliance to Horde ratio of 1:1.8. Mage = 15%, Warriors = 21%, Druids = 9%, etc... That doesn't stick anyone in a particular class or faction. Just gives you an idea of what is in store. I, for one, would like to have known that the Horde outnumber Alliance almost 3 to 1 on my server before I made my first toon. I expect the Horde have a much different gaming experience than Alliance.
stevens.ce Oct 21st 2008 7:22PM
Yea, I think this would server less as a shutout mechanism, Superstone, than a filter - the Quel'Thalas server that most of these transfers are automatically going to right now has something like a 2.5 to 1 Alliance to Horde ratio. What would it hurt to tell someone that if they want to roll a new toon there, it has to be Horde? Or on a server with few healer classes, that one of the healing classes needs to be rolled? It's not like people don't have 25-30 low to medium population server locations right now - I'm only talking about higher population servers or servers with big balance issues.
stevens.ce Oct 21st 2008 2:02PM
It seems to me all of this issue with the rise and fall of realms could be avoided by a little more new player rolling on Blizzard's part. I play primarily on Aggramar, and I find being on a high-pop realm helpful in some areas (finding groups/finding crafted recipes) and absolutely crappy in others (ridiculous market spikes in some areas, lots of underpricing/farming, long wait times), but every holiday, every major patch, every time there is an influx or return of players, we go from rather smooth operations to 400 to 600 player queues. They've closed our realm now, but it's a little late for that. How about more proactive limits on server populations - there are all these low-population servers, and it seems counter-intuitive that Blizzard would continue to push people (or just let people) continue to go to realms where the servers are already strained when they could shut the new entrants earlier and push them other realms. I can stand server outages, lag, and the like - those are growing pains associated with new content that are annoying, but understandable, but I see no earthly reason for wait queues to play a game I pay to play - that is, in my mind, absolutely inexcusable and smacks of poor management.
Saladen Oct 21st 2008 2:24PM
Might this be why I cannot log on today?
Keeps trying to send me to another realm and Ive been on Muroden since I started.
tarheelblue24 Oct 21st 2008 2:26PM
What about the people that want to play on a low pop server. I transferred from a low pop server to another low pop server, because I want to be on a low pop server. My realm isn't up for this and if they are doing it because of the latin american pop then that is fine, but if they are doing it just to get people off the server then that sucks. If you want off the server pay your money and transfer just like everyone else has to do. If you want to give free transfers put restrictions on it like what faction you will play or race etc. So that the people who actually like to play on low pop realms are not overly affected by this and your not ripping off the people who actually pay to move.