Virtual Realms: How the cool kids say “Server Merge”

You have to love the chain of events here.  Blizzard deeply discounted server transfers for a week.  The next week they announce a feature which makes server transfers largely unneccessary.   Win!!   Glad I didn’t transfer.  <Points and laughs at players who transferred last week>

Let’s take a look at Virtual Realms;

Virtual Realms are sets of realms that are fused together, and will behave exactly as if they were one cohesive realm. Players on the same Virtual Realm will be able to join guilds, access a single Auction House, join arena teams and raids, as well run dungeons or group up to complete quests.

The good

• Low and Medium pop realms will now have a much larger pool for recruitment for raids and PvP, as well as any group content
• This change will save countless raid teams from oblivion.  Reruitment has become horrendous as of late on my server, which isn’t even low pop.  I can only imagine what it’s like for a low pop server.  This will open up a world of possible recruits.  Can’t wait!!
• A much more active AH

The bad

• Nothing
• Some players will inevitably QQ about their beloved low pop realm becoming suddenly filled with other players.  My advice; this game is designed to have a large number of players.  If you do not like a large number of players, this probably is not the best game for you.
• Economy –  Some will become confused on the way supply and demand work.  They will expect that their low pop AH will soon see greatly increased prices.  Nope.  As supply increases, prices go down.  Low and Medium pop servers will almost definately see immediately lower prices on trade goods.  The downside, you’re ability to ‘Robber Baron’ it up <Twirls mustache> on the AH will be minimized.  Unless you are up for a new part time job of checking for undercuts, selling stuff will become much more challenging.

This change makes so much sense.  In fact, back when CRZ was first implemented it seemed clearly aimed at low pop realms, but didn’t fix any of these problems.   This is long overdue.  WoW does not work if your server is flawed in some way; not enough players for recruitment, crazy economy, etc.  With the playerbase looking as if it’s begun a permanent decline, as is expected by a game this old, it is vital that something is done now to preserve the community size neccessary for the game to work.

Do servers even matter anymore?

Nope. After this change, there really is not going to be a single server identity any more.   It basically makes all the servers included in the Virtual Server into one large server.  Hi, this is just a server merge without the bad press that comes with using the term server mergers.  That’s all.  In truth, I think they should just go the extra step and link all the North American servers into one Virtual Server, all the EU servers into one Virtual Server, and so on.   They could create different instances of zones to limit population in a given area.  This is common in many different games.  I mean, it’s 2013! (Where’s my flying car?)  Eve has had a single server for as long as WoW has existed.  Let’s do dis!!

The return of Community?

Many are heralding 5.4 as the return of community.  Between Flex raid and Virtual Realms; could be!  With virtual realms, you are going to see more people in SW/wherever horde will park in 5.4, than you have in some time.  We talked about Flex last week, but it is a fantastic step toward taking your friends into a raid without restriction.   I predict that LFR will become the last resort raid and Flex will become the casual raid.  Casual guilds will take whoever is online in and kill things rather than queuing with strangers in LFR.  This means, you will know the people you’re raiding with.  Not to say there won’t be pugs.  But to me, this looks like a a guild raid.

A side rant – I’ve heard players for years heralding the community feeling from Vanilla and how it is no longer part of the game.  This is usually pinned on LFD and LFR for making the game ‘World of Queucraft’.  I beg to differ though.  I played in Vanilla.  Sure, there were a few server rivalries that played out primarily on the realm forum.  But honestly, who did you interact with every day?  It was the same people you interact with every day now!  Those who share your guild tag.  This has not changed!  The guild rivalries from Vanilla only really mattered to the precious few who bothered to frequent the realm forums.  Occasionally it would bleed over into trade chat.  But that’s it!  That’s the long vaunted “Community” idealized by the rose-colored-glasses-wearing old-timer.  That plus the fact that you couldn’t sell enchants on the AH, so you had to spam in trade for an enchanter.  Truth be told, most people just went to a guildy like they do now!  But if community means getting rid of LFD, LFR, and enchanting scrolls, than you can keep it!!! No thanks!

>luvbacon<