23/10 Queues, new realms and migration

Greetings!

We wanted to give you a quick update on the measures we’re taking to address the queues currently experienced on the English realms. We have two ways of addressing these; migration and new realms, depending on other factors.

For PvP realms the main additional factor is the difference between population on high and low populated realms, thus we plan to address the queues by offering Free Character Migration from the highest populated realms to the lowest populated ones. This will address the population concerns on both the source and target realms. We’d like to assure those concerned with moving to a realm with lower population that we have every intention of using the migration to make sure these have a healthy population over time.

However, due to current concerns with realm performance we wish to wait at least until after the upcoming weekend to start any free migrations, making sure the extra load on the realms from the migration doesn’t impact the game performance.

For PvE realms the situation is different; the population is very evenly spread out, and thus migration is not an option. We plan to open new PvE realms to address the current realm queues. These will be fresh realms, allowing no migration to them at first. We will have more about this tomorrow, Friday, but wanted to at least give you a heads up about it today.

We’ll keep you updated on our plans and considerations moving forward. If you have any questions, feel free to post them in this thread. More details will follow as soon as we have them ready.

Q u o t e:
will there be new realms with WOTLK release?

If needed, based on population numbers, yes.

Q u o t e:
i feel the same concern here, what can we expect for GB?

As said in the first post, the initial measure for highly populated PvP realms will be free migration.

Q u o t e:
Just 1 question, will AQ gates be open or closed on these new PVE servers?

Closed.

Q u o t e:
Are new servers really the answer when lot's of realms don't have many players?

All PvE realms are filled up. We won't hold back opening a PvE realm because there are PvP realms that are not full.

Q u o t e:
What about the battlegroup with just 5 realms? Is that still pretty deserted?

Both new realms are in Ruin. Plus, we plan to combine Battlegroups of different languages in the future.

Q u o t e:
You have not specifically mentioned the faction imbalance on some realms, specifically one of the worse realms in the world is EU Silvermoon which over recent months has hit a faction ratio of 54:1.

I think you would agree this is a shocking ratio, but I have not seen any posts addressing this. Would you be able to offer a solution, or input specifically on how you can address faction imbalance?

It would have been a more shocking ratio if it was a factual one.

Faction imbalance on realms is something we're keeping an eye on, but have no word on at the moment. All numbers we see posted are highly exaggerated though. ;-)

Q u o t e:
Doesn't it feel rather pointless to ask people to ask questions and then don't be around to awnser them?

Yes, which is why we're around to answer them.