Imbalanced "dead" realms! What to do?

#0 - Sept. 29, 2010, 3:01 a.m.

Lets start of giving an example of my own server..
There are currently playing about 97% horde and 3% alliance on Al'akir. Thats about a 33 to 1 ratio.

Simply put, the alliance can't function on Al'akir.
-There are barely any auctions on the auction house.
-There are virtually no raids.
-Leveling a toon is nearly impossible. (group quests/ world pvp)
-Wintergrasp is an absolute joke. (both horde and alliance)

There are countless of other servers that have the exact same problem. Either way, the horde or the alliance is just crippled.

What has Blizzard done to try and resolve this issue? Free character transfers for everyone!
But lets be serious, who would ever want to transfer to a realm where you can't play properly...? In fact, there has been a dozen of free transfers to Al'akir (alliance only) and yet the issue hasn't been resolved. Big surprise there!

So are you (Blizzard) going to try and do something about these horrible server imbalances?

Heres an advice and its probably a last resort; merge servers together!

Al'akir has a 97% horde player base,
Realm x has a 90%+ Alliance player base.

Merge the realms together, and it is yet again enjoyable for everyone!

[ Edit ]

I'll keep a list of realms with serious imbalance issues. (Please post if your realm has severe population issues)

Below is a list of realms with population issues

-- I stopped editing the list. Blizzard obviously has alot more data then we do. The reason i made the list was to show people alot of realms have problems. So, continue writing about problematic realms. Hopefully Blizzard will listen to us and give a decent response.

[Horde]
Nagrand - Horde

[Alliance]
Bloodfeather - Alliance
Stormscale - Alliance
Al'Akir - Alliance
Dentarg - Alliance
Burning Steppes - Alliance
Spinebreaker - Alliance
Deathwing - Alliance
Silvermoon - Alliance

(Last thread got locked because i asked for a blue, well i wont know. I Kindly hope for a response on their side though.)

Thanks for a blue response. I really hope something will be done to all realms affected before the release of Cataclysm. Blizzard can polish up the game as much as they want, but without a healthy server its just not as enjoyable as it could've been.

#29 - Sept. 29, 2010, 10:22 a.m.

Q u o t e:
Nothing will be done about it, and that is an almost 100% certainty.

Why? Activision would much rather you transferred away from problem realms in order for them to earn extra money.

That's not at all true.

Before Summer hit we had many Free Character Moves available to help address realms with faction imbalance and it is quite likely we will revisit FCMs again. Not always, but sometimes these can be very effective with addressing faction imbalance. But FCMs are only the most effective when players choose to use them and do so en masse, with many other players. This doesn't always happen, though; FCMs aren't always the best solution in some cases.

However FCMs are only one tool that we have in our toolkit now; we can also do similar things to what we did with two realms, Vek'nilash and Mazrigos. Both realms were faction imbalanced PvP realms until we converted them to PvE. Those two realms are now very well balanced faction-wise and it is quite possible that we may consider further realm conversions in the future.

Anyhow, we are watching the realm faction balance and we are listening to your feedback. The idea that nothing will be done about it has not been the case previously nor should it be so in the future.