The World of Warcraft Community Council is currently discussing the status quo of WoW: Burning Crusade Classic server populations with Blizzard developers. The reason: There are almost only dead or very full realms with performance problems.

If we look at the server populations of WoW: Burning Crusade Classic every month ( here are the numbers from December 2021 ), then of course we focus primarily on the German realms. However, if we expand our view to the other regions, then it is noticeable: In the last few months, some very full “lighthouse” servers have formed, while at the same time other realms have died out completely.

The Council puts its finger in the wound

Blizzard’s World of Warcraft Player Council last year wanted to discuss this issue with the developers a month ago. In two detailed forum posts , Sixxfury and Basîl go into the reasons for this crude population balance:

As soon as guilds get the feeling that more and more players are leaving their server, which has been populated for a long time, and that hardly any are coming, a transfer movement sets in, which causes more and more communities to look for a fuller server, until finally hardly any or none large guild no longer exists.
Members of these guilds then usually only have a few options: invest the money for the transfer (whereby several characters usually have to be transferred), remain on the medium-term dead server or stop with TBC Classic.
Of course, as a target you look for servers that will most certainly have a strong population in the long term. As a result, these become more and more full, which in turn has a negative effect on the performance on the servers, because too many characters are divided into too few layers.
This problem is spreading more and more: On more and more servers, a population flight is taking place, while on other realms there are 15,000 or even 20,000 characters cavorting.

The Council’s proposed solutions:

There must be restrictions on paid server transfers once realms reach a certain size or when faction balance is out of whack.
There must be free transfer options from servers that are too full to realms with a low population (again with restrictions to ensure faction balance).
Small servers should be merged into one server in a way that ensures faction balance.
On very busy servers, there must be additional layers when needed.
There must be no new servers.

How does Blizzard assess the situation?

A few hours ago, Game Producer Aggend finally addressed the issue in a lengthy post . Here are the most important findings:

The developer admits that the issue of “player distribution across all servers” is one of the most complex that the WoW Classic team has to deal with. Although the topic is constantly being discussed internally, nobody has been able to offer the perfect solution so far. This is mainly due to the fact that the wishes of the players are very different and, at first glance, logical solutions have consequences that are not quite so obvious.
In November, the developers decided to offer free character transfers across different realms without restrictions. The priority here was to meet the desire of many players to be able to switch to realms with a larger population. The developers have consciously accepted that this results in dead and very full servers.
Aggend now believes they should have taken this step much earlier. When it comes to making adjustments to a server population, or making a change that could potentially negatively impact the gaming experience of a group of players, developers are always very cautious.
As an example, Aggend cites a realm with a population of 60 percent Horde and 40 percent Alliance. If half of the alliance players are unhappy about their status quo as a minority faction, then that sounds like a lot at first. But these dissatisfied people “only” make up 20 percent of the total population. If Blizzard gave them the option to flee with free transfers, they’d be happy, but the new, much larger imbalance could have a very negative impact on the game experience of the remaining players. An actually well-intentioned action would ultimately lead to many more unhappy players. A dilemma for which there is no easy solution.
Can’t you just connect servers together?

In the further course of the post, Aggend deals with the question of whether servers with a one-sided faction ratio can’t simply be merged in such a way that an optimal balance is created in the end.

Blizzard has always been reluctant to merge servers. This would completely lose the realm identity.
With a view to TBC Classic, even server connections like in Retail-WoW could go too far. After all, the server identity or server community is even more important here.
In addition, the developers have gained the impression over the years that many players do not want to play on a well-balanced realm. There is more than enough data to show that many players specifically choose servers as transfer targets on which they then belong to a clear majority faction.
In addition, one would like to prevent such a merger from suddenly requiring layers on realms that have been doing without layers for months. These layers should only be used when there is no other way, because they are also heavily criticized.
Server populations are constantly changing. Once linked servers would eventually need to be linked back to other realms. A constant cycle of new measures that would continue to dilute communities and server identities.

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade

Burning Crusade has the maximum level in WoW at 70 and brings 2 new playable races (Draenei& Blood Elves). In addition, there is a new continent: The Sheol

The Burning Crusade is the first expansion for the successful MMORPG World of Warcraft (WoW) from the developer studio Blizzard. The add-on introduces a new continent called Outland. There are also new races. The Blood Elves for the Horde and the Draenei for the Alliance. The classes Paladin and Shaman are now also playable for both factions. Furthermore, the expansion brings an increase in the level limit from 60 to 70 as well as flying mounts.

World of Warcraft (WoW)

The online role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW) was released in Europe in 2005 and is an MMO with a subscription payment model. In WoW, players can complete tasks with their characters to improve their hero and meet like-minded players. There are thirteen different races to choose from when selecting a character – six of which belong to only one faction each – as well as eleven classes. In World of Warcraft, players have the opportunity to join the Horde or the Alliance, complete missions and quests with their character in the rich world, and adventure with other heroes in instanced areas for five, ten, and even 25 players. In addition, characters can take up professions, collect pets and mounts, compete against opposing players in battlegrounds and arenas, or simply unwind in the main cities and chat with their guildmates. Guides, news, videos, screenshots, reports and more about World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade are collected on our topic pages.

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