The rhythm of player numbers is the same in most #MMORPGs and has been evident in WoW for more than a decade. At the beginning of a new expansion, millions of players stream out of their holes and the servers are largely well-filled. As the expansion progresses, more and more players drop out for a variety of reasons. This loss of players continues, except for a small upward trend at the final content patch, until the next expansion starts at some point.
The final content patch of WoW Shadowlands has been out for a while now and we are in the final phase of the expansion, even if it will take a while until Dragonflight. Barring a major miracle, player numbers will now continue to drop steadily until the Dragonflight hype kicks in later. This is nothing new so far and actually not a problem – for a large part of the players. However, there are a number of servers that were already at the lower limit of player numbers during the heyday of Shadowlands. The search for permanent players could soon become tight here. Server mergers could help, though.
Nothing new in the West… er, Shadowlands
In the past, developers have countered declining player numbers more or less well by merging various servers. Whole armies of empty servers were packed into a so-called server link. In theory, they are still separate servers, but in practice it’s like playing on the same server – without any restrictions.
However, the last of these links were quite a while ago and took place before the launch of Shadowlands. And even then, the developers were still careful and completely ignored some servers (alliances) that almost resembled ghost towns. As a player of Ysera/Malorne, I know what I’m talking about here.
At the time, it was still possible to argue that the player numbers were just about sufficient. In the meantime, however, such an argument becomes difficult. Especially given the fact that there are some servers that are/were much larger and still got connected. Okay, some of these connections would not be made today, because it goes back to the structure of PvP and PvE servers at that time – but the point remains the same.
If you look (very roughly) at the population of German-speaking servers, you can see an incredible imbalance. According to wowprogress, the German servers fluctuate between 15,000 and 1,200 players. Sure, these numbers are not accurate, but they show a very clear direction.
More players at the push of a button?
It’s always better to have more choice in teammates – whether you realize it or not. Anyone who has tried to keep a dying raid going or supply the guild with new blood in the past will agree with this. So the real question is why Blizzard isn’t intervening here.
The technology is there, as shown by the many mergers in the past, which went largely without a hitch. So you would think that Blizzard could create full server alliances at the push of a button. Especially now, that would be handy. Meanwhile, Horde and Alliance can play together, which could be picked up by merging classic Horde servers with mostly Alliance-populated servers. What is Blizzard waiting for?
Waiting for Dragonflight?
If one does not become active slowly now, it can mean three things in our eyes.
- Blizzard doesn’t care about empty servers. But we can’t imagine that, because otherwise they would have ignored these problems in the past as well.
- Blizzard is waiting for Dragonflight and the pre-orderers. Shortly before the launch of the next expansion, Blizzard should have a relatively good picture of how many players are returning and which server mergers are really necessary then. That would make at least half sense, because it would prevent possible queues, due to too aggressive mergers.
- Blizzard is preparing something completely different. This could be a complete revision of the server structure, which will make mergers obsolete. Whether it’s a mega-server or Blizzard simply eliminates all restrictions between servers, it doesn’t really matter in practice. In both cases, the amount of players on a particular server would no longer be relevant – except perhaps for potential queues.
Whatever reasons would cause Blizzard to continue with more server mergers until just before WoW. (buy now ) Dragonflight to wait, the players of the already quite empty servers should hardly be happy. Because until then, the player numbers will certainly not increase, but continue to drop significantly. Already now, only a handful of guilds are active on many of the empty servers – and it is unlikely that there will be more for the time being.
Do you also think that it’s time for Blizzard to think about more server links or do you not care about this topic – because you play on a full server or are hardly active outside of your own guild anyway? Which way should Blizzard go in your eyes? So other than bringing such a good expansion with Dragonflight that the servers completely fill up again all by themselves?
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