Just two months before the release of the long-awaited Wrath of the Lich King Classic expansion for World of Warcraft, the widespread hype from Blizzard Entertainment continues to plague the servers. The true heart of the so-called “original” WoW experience, basically one of them, these virtual worlds, is indeed at the center of a growing debate… and it’s time to talk about it.
Happiness is mostly about your server
If many players have forgotten it over time (and especially with the advent of generalized communication in the modern version of the game), World of Warcraft servers have been the source of relationships between players, and therefore of the hit. Game (in addition to other elements, of course). In the beginning, it was all about trading with players sharing your daily life in your virtual kingdom, and if you played regularly enough, you would often find the same players fooling the whole server by selling items at exorbitant prices. while doing crazy PvP. Stormwind, even PvE, it’s the same players who train to “receive” intensely!
So if you were looking to improve in the game, it was very important to work on your “e-reputation” so to speak. The slightest conflict can quickly send you to the blacklist of the best guilds on the server and voila. for you. So it was quite interesting to keep checking!
With the return of WoW Classic in 2019, this way of approaching and playing the world of World of Warcraft has resurfaced. Less of course, relations between players have improved for 18 years, but the base remains. And while we’re mainly concerned with the aggressive sharding integration, this mechanic introduced by Mists of Pandaria is to divide each realm into micro-realms, to avoid lag and other issues from having too many players in one location. . Location. The “classic experience” is still relatively acceptable as is, though not entirely faithful to the era.
And finally, for regular French-speaking players…
The Fireflies Scandal
In a version of the game that included a massive over-representation of one faction on a particular realm, a (French-speaking) PvP realm where all the European nations intersect, Firemaw was a real alien that delighted the great war buffs. open the world
Firemaw was an art and a way to become the most populated server in the world with an almost perfectly balanced population: 51% of playersAlliance for 49% herd. Wherever you went, you were sure to meet someone from the opposing party at some point; And while we often greet politely while leveling up without slowing down others’ progress, sometimes things quickly escalate into a big battle involving lots of players!
However, with the release of Tier 5: Sunwell’s Rage, the crowds on this atypical server were so great that the queues quickly spoiled the fun for many players. We’re talking over 10,000 players in mid-May just for major content updates!
Inevitably, Blizzard had to step in and quickly find a solution to limit the breakout until a long-term fix was found. And the idea found was one of the most radical: from May 24, 2022, Firemaw has been completely closed and isolated from the other realms. It is impossible to create new characters there if they are not already there, and it is impossible to move them there. On the other hand, free migrations to relieve the population of this kingdom have opened the door! And that’s where it all went wrong.
Blizzard and silence: too much time
After weeks of waiting and isolation, and even as the queues ended two weeks into Phase 5, many Firemaw players gave up on hearing about Blizzard. Absolute radio silence, we saw the server emptying of the population day after day, that’s still how it was called until recently.
And guess what happens if you lock yourself in a realm for two months without communicating? Players run away to play with their friends. To make matters worse, Blizzard staged the largest outing of Horde players to dedicated Horde mega-European servers in WoW Classic history, allowing some already densely populated servers to be hosted via a free migration. . Thus, at the beginning of July 2022, 93.2% of Firemaw was populated by players.AllianceOnly 6.8% on the side herd.
To note: The actual server population is unknown, only players have “logged in” to WarcraftLogs. However, the observation on the ground is more or less the same, which gives an idea to players who are not on Firemaw.
If the problem isn’t clear yet, here it is: many players have chosen to play Firemaw because of its near-perfect balance that allows for lively and exciting outdoor PvP. Nearly 94% of players weren’t interested in a Blizzard-led group in the game, and many are hoping for an unforgettable Lich King Wrath experience. The classic suffers from destructive choices. Bliza… general indifference. There has never been a solution stated by the publisher to overcome this problem and now we find ourselves with a semi-locked server on Antipodes a few weeks ago.
Thousands of players are currently unaware and bitterly regret switching to Firemaw or creating a character here to have a great experience in WotLK Classic. What are we going to tell them today? That they are wrong and that “PvP” next to realm names in the list of available servers will never be useless on a server with a large single faction presence.
This situation could have been avoided with a minimum of communication and expectations from the publisher. It had to be him. And if you’ve been bitching a lot lately about Blizzard’s lack of communication, it’s probably too late. No justification, no explanation, no transparency. nothing.
Just a few days before they hit us in the face,”the server is still active” on a wire It is rarely seen on the Battle.net forums. We suffered for two months. We are waiting for a simple press release that will ease our fears a bit and give us some hope after this Blizzard disaster, a press release that will probably never arrive given the server’s blocked state. Horde players are gone, Firemaw is dead, it’s too late no matter what.
On the eve of the release of the most anticipated classic expansion for gamers, thousands of players are already certain of one thing: their Wrath of the Lich King Classic experience will be mediocre at best, and Blizzard will have a hard time keeping them up. create. Swallow the pill with a few fake tricks that might be in place to hide the bullshit that these single-faction servers represent.
It’s invisible to anyone saying even more than we imagined about certain things like the state of the realms dedicated to the classic version of the game. Without a doubt, it’s a situation that will be clouded by the happiness of many players. Created by the (re)discovery of Northrend on single faction servers.
Source : Millenium
