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Updates on US Connected Realms
By now, several US realms have been successfully connected with Blizzard's new Connected Realms feature. In case you've been out of the loop, Blizzard released an update in regards to the new feature, which seamlessly connects two realms so that they'll behave as one. That means players on realms that are connected can join the same guilds, use one Auction House, and run raids and dungeons with each other -- a pretty big bonus for realms that have been suffering from lower populations. The list of successfully connected realms is as follows: Auchindoun and Laughing Skull Black Dragonflight and Skullcrusher Aegwynn and Gurubashi Balnazzar and Warsong Burning Blade and Onyxia Chromaggus and Garithos Dalvengyr and Dark Iron Dethecus and Detheroc Dunemaul, Maiev, Boulderfist and Bloodscalp Hakkar and Aegwynn Rivendare and Firetree It's a sizeable list -- but if your realm wasn't on the list, not to worry. Blizzard is revving up for more realm connections, and soon. Two new batches of realm connections are on the way, and the first batch of connections will be taking place on Monday, October 28.
Next wave of Connected Realms announced
Following Monday's successful connections, the next wave of realms to be added to the Connected Realms feature have just been announced. While Community Manager Nethaera had the names of the realms available for players, as of yet there still isn't a fixed date for the realm connections to take place. However, given the faster turnaround that we've been experiencing, players may see these connections happen sooner than one would think. Nethaera As a part of our ongoing Connected Realms implementation, we will be connecting additional realms as listed below. We don't have a specific date yet on when these connections will occur, but we'll provide another update once we do. Please be aware that as a part of the connection process realm times may change to match each other. Next Realm Connections: Dethecus and Detheroc Auchindoun and Laughing Skull Hakkar and Aegwynn Rivendare and Firetree Dunemaul and Bloodscalp/ Maiev/Boulderfist We're currently evaluating further realm connections and will provide updates as they're available. For more information on Connected Realms, please read the preview blog post here. source It looks like the Maiev/Bloodscalp/Boulderfist triad can expect another addition to their happy little family with Dunemaul. In addition, Hakkar will join Aegwynn, which was connected to Gurubashi last week. If you're a player on one of the realms slated for connection, you might want to keep an eye on the official thread for future updates.
Latest round of Connected Realms coming Monday
The latest sizable batch of realms slated for the Connected Realms feature will be going under maintenance on Monday, October 21 from 5:00 a.m. PDT until approximately 11:00 a.m. PDT, according to the official thread on the feature. Community Manager Bashiok also added that once these realms return from maintenance, the realm connections should be complete. The realms scheduled for this round of connection are as follows. Balnazzar and Warsong Gurubashi and Aegwynn Dalvengyr and Dark Iron Garithos and Chromaggus Onyxia and Burning Blade Maiev and Bloodscalp/Boulderfist If you happen to be calling any of these realms home, be prepared for a brief bout of maintenance come Monday. However, Tuesday's regular maintenance should simply be a set of rolling restarts for everyone, so realms that are in the process of being connected should be hit with double downtime. This seems to be a pretty quick turnaround -- will we be seeing more realm connection announcements next week? For more information and updates on the process, keep an eye on the official forum thread.
New wave of Connected Realms announced
After the connection of the Skullcrusher and Black Dragonflight realms earlier this week, Blizzard has announced the next set of realms to be connected -- and this time, there's quite a list of them. Twelve realms total are slated to be connected, although a specific date for the connection has yet to be announced. However, Community Manager Bashiok provided the full list, noting that these are all US realms -- no EU realms have been slated for connection at this time. Bashiok As a part of our ongoing Connected Realms implementation, we will be connecting additional pairs of realms as listed below. We don't have a specific date yet on when these connections will occur, but we'll provide another update once we do. Please be aware that as a part of the connection process realm times may change to match each other. Next Realm Connection Pairs: Balnazzar and Warsong Gurubashi and Aegwynn Dalvengyr and Dark Iron Garithos and Chromaggus Onyxia and Burning Blade Maiev and Bloodscalp/Boulderfist We're currently evaluating further realm connections and will provide updates as they're available. For more information on Connected Realms, please read the preview blog post here. source Note that the Maiev realm will be connected with the Bloodscalp/Boulderfist connection that was the first to be made in this process. Although an exact date for the connection has not been set, given the connection that took place during this week's maintenance, we can hope that these connections will also take place during regularly scheduled downtime. Players on these realms should continue to check back with the official thread on the forums for more updates as they become available.
Black Dragonflight, Skullcrusher realms to be connected tomorrow
Black Dragonflight and Skullcrusher, the two latest realms to be announced as slated for the Connected Realms feature will be connected tomorrow, October 15, during standard maintenance. The two realms were next in line after the success of the Bloodscalp and Boulderfist realm connection. Given that the realm connection will take place during regular server maintenance, one would hope that this means that the wrinkles have been ironed out of implementation -- but just in case, Blizzard will be providing updates on any potential delays. The rollout for Connected Realms has been considerably slower than most players were expecting. However, it's nice to see that Blizzard is taking its time with this one, making sure that everything is functioning correctly and all potential issues have been addressed. Of course the question on everyone's minds now is which realms will be slated for connection next, and when will it occur? Are you hoping for the connected realm feature on your server?
Black Dragonflight, Skullcrusher realms to be connected
After the successful integration of the Bloodscalp and Boulderfist realms, Blizzard is continuing with the slow rollout of connected realms. Although no date has been finalized, CM Nethaera has announced that Black Dragonflight and Skullcrusher will be the next two realms to be connected. Nethaera As a part of our ongoing Connected Realms implementation, we will be working toward connecting our next pair of realms, Black Dragonflight and Skullcrusher – we'll provide another update once we've finalized the date. We will also update this thread with any additional information that becomes available. Please be aware that as a part of the process, realm times may change to align better with each other. We are currently evaluating additional realm connections and plan to provide a more complete schedule at a future point in time. For more information on Connected Realms, please read the preview blog post here. source CM Bashiok stepped in later in the thread to clarify some details on the connected realms process. While many are eager to see this new feature give a boost to realms with lower than optimal populations, the process is far more complicated than you'd think. Blizzard is taking its time with each connection in order to evaluate possible issues with the process -- and the choice of realms was specifically to help identify potential issues. In other words, at this point in the process it's not so much a matter of how much a realm would benefit from a connection, as it is how much that connection will help clarify any potential issues with the process itself. Check out the full forum thread for more information and updates on the process as it continues.
Nethaera fills in the blanks on Connected Realms
With patch 5.4 up and running, many players have been wondering about the status of the new Connected Realms feature. Questions have run the gamut from wanting to know the exact criteria of putting two realms together, to wanting a list of the realms that are scheduled to be connected. Most importantly, players have been wondering if the Connected Realms feature has actually been enabled, or if we have yet to see if the process has taken place. Community Manager Nethaera filled in some of those blanks in a series of updates posted on the official forums. The first two realms that have been scheduled for connection are Boulderfist and Bloodscalp. The system will be rolled out over time, much like what we saw with the Cross-Realm Zones feature -- players won't suddenly see all realms introduced to the Connected Realms feature all at once. Blizzard intends to keep realm types together as much as it possibly can -- for those on RP realms, this means if your realm is connected to another, it will likely be another RP realm. Nethaera went on to note that faction balance, something that has caused many players to struggle on incredibly lopsided realms, may not be the ultimate reason for a connection. But perhaps most importantly -- as of Friday, no realms have been connected. Any server restarts or messages about Connected Realm restarts in game are absolutely not an indicator that your realm has been connected to another -- it's simply some of the work that needs to be done in order to enable the connecting process, should it need to be utilized. For now, it seems that players are still isolated on their own realms -- but there should be further updates to the thread if that changes. For more information on the implementation of this new feature, check out the thread on the official forums.
Breakfast Topic: Do you play WoW in a different world region from where you live?
You can take a portal to another world within Azeroth, but it's not so simple in the real world to play the game with someone from another continent. World of Warcraft is designed to be played on servers geographically located nearest to where you live and play. You can play WoW in the United States, Canada, Europe, Russia, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Brazil, as well as South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and mainland China -- but you can't mix freely with players on servers in other areas. Making the hop to another region means buying a copy of the game localized for that region, then starting a new account and new characters there. Despite the hassles and rotten latencies, people play across regional server separations for all sorts of reasons. Moving is an obvious nudge to make the change. You'll often hear players wishing they could make the change for a chance to practice another language. More practically, many players use time zone differences to line up a nontraditional schedule with raiding opportunities and bustling server times. Although I haven't chosen to make the jump to an EU realm, the prospect is something I usually mull over once or twice a year. I miss friends there I used to game with; Facebook just can't hold a candle to adventuring together. Even the game world seems bigger somehow when the player community itself is more diverse. Regional segregation is one aspect of World of Warcraft that I've never quite adjusted to, even after all these years. If you play WoW in a different world region from where you live, what's taken you across the divide? Have high latencies or other technical difficulties turned out to be a wet blanket on your play? Did changing regions end up meeting your needs?
Reflections on moving from a PvP to a PvE realm
Truthfully, I had no business ever rolling on a PvP server. I only went there because some friends went there, and I stayed there out of habit. For years, I moved in the shadows, keeping one eye warily over my shoulder, with all buffs active at all times and the button for my flying mount at the ready. When I left cities, it was only to touch ground for the briefest of moments -- grab the herb, pick the ore, kill the mob, and get the hell out. Indeed, there's a certain pride in surviving on a PvP server, like a rabbit reveling in its luck of returning to the burrow at the end of a long, perilous day. I've been through multiple expansion launches and patch events and been ganked at exotic locales from Hellfire Peninsula to Quel'danas to the Molten Front to Mount Hyjal. Over time, you learn to subsist from that extra adrenaline. Even if you loathe world PvP, your body feeds off of it. The heightened sense of perception becomes exhilarating. That first terrifying moment when you realize you are under attack and fight or flight instincts kick in -- there's something in that emotional response that resonates with our most primal underpinnings. And yet, a month ago, I gave it all up. I transferred from a PvP realm to a PvE one -- and immediately, it felt like an alien landscape.
A leveling server, just for leveling
Reader Tiago sent us an interesting idea I thought was worth sharing. He suggests that Blizzard create a "leveling server" -- a server that would be marked as specifically for new characters, so when you rolled a new toon on there, you'd be surrounded by a bunch of other people pre-80. And the key here would be that when you hit 80 on this server, then you would get a free server transfer off. In other words, Blizzard would have one server (completely optional, of course) designed for people to level on, with a realm full of people playing in the old world and leveling through the old quests.Sounds good, right? Like most of our ideas, Blizzard probably won't go for it -- they've already knocked down the idea of vanilla realms, and while this isn't the same thing (you'd be able to level to 80, the idea is just that you'd leave the server when you got there), it does mean creating a different ruleset for a brand new type of server. Plus, to a much lesser extent, it could create an even more lonely existence on the normal servers. Not to mention that Blizzard has been focusing on speeding past the low levels, not emphasizing them.But I like the idea anyway -- it doesn't seem too tough to do (mark one realm recommended, and provide free server transfers off of it), and it seems like an excellent way to get people who enjoy leveling up all together in the same place. And that's really what MMOs like this are all about, right?
Breakfast Topic: Realm type
Before we even go into this... yes -- I am a carebear. I play almost exclusively on PvE servers. I just, personally, have never been that excited by the full-out PvP experience, and the amount of PvP I can find on a PvE server has always suited me perfectly well. However, when first logging on, there are several options of realm type -- so today's question is what's your favorite? PvE, PvP, RP, or RP-PvP?
