Convert unbalanced PvP servers to PvE

| Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Are any of you from Alliance side Cho'gall?  Well you're lying, because no one is (Warcraft Census estimates 1:19.7).  That's the problem: when a PvP server becomes seriously unbalanced, it becomes unihabitable for the lower side.  With attrition and transfers it only gets worse.

Thankfully, the PvE problems are reduced thanks to the variety of cross-realm options, though a server-based raiding guild would have problems.  On the other hand, that just makes it easier to get server firsts, so places like that should be attractive to raiding guilds that are competitive but not quite good enough.  However even in an era of dungeon teleports and portals to everywhere, people still need to leave the sanctuaries.  They need to farm materials (though I suppose a cross-realm auction house could do that, but they'd still need gold to buy with).  They'd need to do dailies, both for gold and for reputation.  With the loss of tabards players must do the dailies.

On a highly unbalanced PvP server, going outside is dangerous.  I started on a moderately unbalanced server, Magtheridon (1:3 or 2:3 iirc).  It wasn't so far off that Horde couldn't survive and it did wonders for the battleground queues (they were server-based back then).  Still, it was a problem at times, though I think it made me more aware of my surroundings, or paranoid.  On the other hand, Crimefighter is an asshole who seemingly did nothing but kill my warlock when I was trying to farm abyssals in Silithus.

Closing the server is not an option.  Blizzard won't allow the bad press, even if players would benefit from the merging of the many low population servers.

So why not fix the world problem?  Convert the server to PvE.  Give all Horde characters free transfers to any PvP server and free race changes to Alliance on Cho'gall.

Alliance could safely level up and play out in the world.  Horde could go to another server if they need the PvP so much, though they might miss the lack of balance.  I can't promise it would save the server, but it is a better option than leaving it to stagnate on one side.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

They've somewhat addressed this by introducing cross-realm zones. I've noticed that leveling on a pvp server has gotten a lot more ganky since they introduced CRZ and a lot of it is people from other servers picking fights with me. Blizz doesn't need to close a server if they can make it appear as if the world is still populated. If they can meter it so that, for example, off-server Alliance show up for Cho'gall players, they can theoretically balance the world pvp experience without actually balancing server populations.

I expect they're working on a limited cross-realm AH as well to make up for crashed economies.

Klepsacovic said...

I suppose at this point they might as well just go for the fully-integrated servers.

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