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Do we need a cross-realm Auction House?
I live on a dying server. It's not quite dead, but it's slowly withering away. I'm not sure what happened, exactly, but I have an idea of when -- at the beginning of Wrath of the Lich King, Dalaran was packed. By the end of the expansion, there were far fewer people running around. Orgrimmar in Cataclysm was a quiet place to be, and in Mists, the Horde shrine is populated by a few handful of players. As I said, I don't know what happened, but for some reason the masses that were on my server when I rolled there in Burning Crusade have all but evaporated. On the one hand, it makes Pandaria a pretty quiet, idyllic place to be. There's hardly any competition for rare spawns, and you don't really have to compete with anyone for quest mobs or ore nodes or herbs, either. There's hardly any drama on the server, by and large because there really aren't enough people around to generate it. Sure, there are a few jerks, but it seems like everyone on the realm is generally relaxed and well-behaved -- as long as you stay out of Trade Chat. On the other hand, it makes trying to buy or sell anything on the auction house an absolute nightmare.
Blizzard offering some free realm transfers in the US
If you are on a server with a long queue, you may be able to transfer to another server for free. Blizzard has announced that characters on eight high population servers can migrate at this time. Each transfer is to a specific realm (or two) similar to the original -- you cannot choose the realm. Guilds can transfer over together if the GM purchases a Guild Master Realm Transfer to the destination server first. All of the remaining migrations will be free. Note: Once the destination servers fill up, the free transfers will end for that server. The full post from Bashiok with complete details is after the break.
How to make gold when your competition is camping the AH
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! Making gold with heavy competition is hard. I get comments on my articles all the time about how my ideas don't work on some high-population, high-competition realm. There's an implicit (and sometimes outright stated) disclaimer that any advice you'll find here is general and may not apply to your realm. It's time to talk about what to do when you're always being redirected back to these weasel words. If your server really is so competitive that you can't make any normal strategies work, what can you do?
Stephen Reid addresses SWTOR server load issues
Star Wars: The Old Republic continues to prove itself overwhelmingly popular as the official launch day progresses. Perhaps a little too popular, in fact. Stephen Reid stopped by the official forums today to post a short warning on high-population servers. Many players are experiencing extended queues to log in to their servers, but Reid focuses on a few "consistently high-population servers... [which] are closing in on their absolute population cap." These servers have reached or nearly reached the maximum amount of players the server can handle and "will likely have a queue to enter even at off-peak playtimes." The servers in question, organized by region, are The Harbinger, The Swiftsure, and The Fatman for North America, and Bloodworthy, Frostclaw, Legions of Lettow, The Red Eclipse, Tomb of Freedon Nadd, Darth Revan's Mask, Darth Traya, Jar'Kai Sword, and Hrakert Rift for Europe. Reid adds that server transfers are a common request, but even though the ability to transfer servers is being worked on, "there is no ETA on when it will be available." Also of note is the announcement that SWTOR will be launching in Australia and New Zealand in the spring of 2012. Reid states that right now the team is aiming for March 1st, though that may change. And if you've already imported the game, don't worry. Reid says that "[BioWare] will be investigating solutions to allow you to continue to play on a local server once they come online in March." For the full details, click on over to the SWTOR official forums.
Final Fantasy XI devs threaten players with forced server moves
Server populations in massively multiplayer online games can be a delicate balancing act. Popular servers are very much the hubs of these games, where players can easily forge bonds with one another in a lively social environment. But log into a desolate server and you'll wonder what the point of playing an MMO is when there's no one else around. Many developers try to balance server populations by offering free server transfers, and sometimes bonuses of one type or another as a reward for making the jump. This has been an issue for developer Square Enix with Final Fantasy XI and the overcrowded Odin server. However, their efforts to disperse the crowds have been unsuccessful, leading them to take a more drastic measure: forced emigration. FFXI-centric website Petfoodalpha suggests that Square Enix's deportation solution (or alternately, world splitting) creates more problems than it solves. Fusionx writes, "Surely there has to be a better way to deal with this than randomly distributing people from the server to others. Friendships would be broken, linkshells would be destroyed. More importantly though for Square Enix: They would lose subscribers." When a developer identifies a high server population as being a problem, and when players don't take advantage of free server transfers or other incentives, do the devs really have any other choice but to take away choice?
Free character transfers announced for Warhammer Online
Free character transfers were just announced for Warhammer Online, for characters on low population servers who'd like to move to high population servers. The service will be put into place in the coming days. The character transfers will be done in the Mythic Account Center, which will have a Character Transfer button, just below "Activate a Key" and "Validate your Email Address." In addition to Free Character Transfers, Mythic also announced Guild Transfers. This comes with its own set of caveats as the transfer cannot be reversed, with details to be listed on the Character Transfer page.There's an added bonus for characters moved to higher pop servers -- a Realm Population Bonus of 20% experience and renown. The Warhammer Online Herald will update the playerbase once the Free Character Transfer service goes into effect. Until then, see the WAR Herald announcement, which lists further details on the transfers and lists the source and destination servers eligible for Character Transfers for North American and Oceanic regions. Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out our Warhammer guides: Massively's Character Creation Guide and our WoW Player's Guide to Warhammer. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!
Ever-enlarging WoW realms spell continued success
In a forum post about the ultimate downfall of WoW, Drysc pops in to explain that WoW still has a long lifespan ahead of it. People who say that the lack of new servers proves there are fewer and fewer new players in the game are missing the big picture. Back before The Burning Crusade was launched, Blizzard did a series of server upgrades that left each realm down for a few days. At the time, they said this was to make things ready for the expansion, but little did we know it would be to such an extent. Apparently these upgrades allowed Blizzard to keep pushing the maximum realm population up all this time, as more and more players joined the game. There are some relatively "low" population realms, of course, but only in comparison to the new much-increased maximum limit. As Drysc says, "aside from literally a handful of realms (I could count them on one hand), every other realm has a population that would have been considered high to overpopulated before the launch of Burning Crusade." Only recently have certain realms become truly crowded enough to merit free transfers to other realms.People always like to talk about the eventual downfall of the strongest player in any arena, but the steady growth Drysc is talking about continues, it looks like WoW will be the biggest 800-pound gorilla in the MMO jungle for a good long time to come.
