WoW: Ever empty servers – time for new links?
The rhythm of the number of players is the same in most MMORPGs and has also been seen in WoW for more than a decade. At the beginning of a new expansion, millions of players pour out of their holes and the servers are mostly well filled. As the expansion progresses, more and more players drop out for a variety of reasons. This loss of players will continue, with the exception of a small upward trend towards the final content patch, until the next expansion starts at some point.
Of the final content patch of WoW Shadowlands has been out for a while now and while it will be a while before Dragonflight, we are in the final stages of the expansion. Unless a great miracle happens, player numbers will continue to fall steadily until the Dragonflight hype kicks in later. This is nothing new so far and actually not a problem – for the majority of players. However, there are a number of servers that were already at the lower limit of the number of players at the height of Shadowlands. Here it could soon be tight with the search for permanent teammates. Server mergers could help though.
Nothing new in the West…er, Shadowlands
In the past, the developers have more or less counteracted the declining number of players by merging different servers. Whole armies of empty servers were packed into a so-called server link. In theory they are still separate servers, but in practice it’s like playing on the same server – without any restrictions.
The last of these links are now quite some time ago and took place before the start of Shadowlands. And even then, the developers were still cautious and completely ignored some servers (groups), which almost resembled ghost towns. As a Ysera/Malorne player, I know what I’m talking about here.
Server with shockingly few players
Most servers are declared as “low”. A flowery paraphrase for almost empty.
Source: buffed
At that time one could still argue that the number of players was just about sufficient. However, such an argument is now becoming difficult. Especially given that there are some servers that are/were much larger and still got connected. Okay, some of those connections wouldn’t be made today as they hark back to the structure of PvP and PvE servers back then – but the point remains the same.
If you look (roughly) at the population of the German-speaking servers, you will see an incredible imbalance. Noisy wowprogress the German servers fluctuate between 15,000 and 1,200 players. Sure, these numbers aren’t accurate, but they do point in a very clear direction.
More players at the touch of a button?
It’s always better when you have a larger choice of players – regardless of whether you notice it or not. Anyone who has attempted to keep a dying raid going or to replenish the guild in the past will agree. So the real question is why Blizzard isn’t stepping in here.
After all – some of the German-speaking servers are still jam-packed.
Source: buffed
The technology is there, as has been shown by the many mergers in the past, which have largely gone smoothly. So you could assume that Blizzard could create full server networks at the push of a button. That would be especially useful now. Horde and Alliance can now play together, which could be taken up by merging classic Horde servers with servers populated mostly by the Alliance. What is Blizzard waiting for?
Waiting for Dragon Flight?
If you don’t take action now, we think it can mean three things.
- Blizzard doesn’t care about empty servers. But we can’t imagine that, otherwise they would have ignored these problems in the past as well.
- Blizzard is waiting for Dragonflight and the pre-orders. Shortly before the start of the next expansion, Blizzard should have a relatively good picture of how many players are returning and which server links are really necessary. That would at least make some sense, because it would prevent possible queues caused by too aggressive merging.
- Blizzard is preparing something completely different. This could be a complete overhaul of the server structure that makes mergers obsolete. In practice, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s a mega server or whether Blizzard simply switches off all restrictions between the servers. In either case, the amount of players on a given server would no longer be relevant – except perhaps for potential queues.
Whatever the reason Blizzard would do it, with further server mergers until shortly before WoW (buy now ) To wait for Dragonflight, the players of the already pretty empty servers shouldn’t be happy about that. Because until then, the number of players will certainly not increase, but will continue to decrease significantly. Already only a handful of guilds are active on many of the empty servers – there shouldn’t be more for the time being.
Do you also think that it’s about time to think about more server links from Blizzard or doesn’t the topic affect you – because you’re playing on a full server or are hardly active outside of your own guild anyway? Which way do you think Blizzard should go? So apart from bringing such a good extension with Dragonflight that the servers fill up completely by themselves?
Reference-www.buffed.de