Realm closures inc

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Balgair
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Realm closures inc

Post by Balgair »

Not yet, but with the next patch:
Following the very successful launch of the Russian localization, the vast majority of Russian-speaking players have migrated over to the new Russian-language realms. Four English-language PvP realms in particular were largely populated by Russian-speaking players, so these realms now have low remaining populations. As such, we've decided to offer free character migration off these realms to join larger English-language communities. Once the migrations are complete, these realms will be brought down and prepped for the Wrath of the Lich King launch.

Realms closing
The following four realms will be closed when the next patch is launched:
Molten Core
Shadowmoon
Stonemaul
Warsong

Free Character Migration
Free character migration will be active from the above realms to different destination realms. This migration will open next week and remain open for some time even after the realms have been closed.
The destination realms for each source realm will be given when the migration opens.

The exact time of closing these migrations will be decided at a later time. When the migration closes, remaining characters will be automatically transferred to the one of their two destination realm with the lowest population.
For information on how the free character migration works, please refer to the relevant FAQ: http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/faq/c ... rmove.html

Paid Character Transfers and other migration
Players wishing to use the Paid Character Transfer service to go to another realm than those above may of course do so. All the above realms also have migration available to Russian realms until that option closes on September 9th (as per our previous announcement).
Please note that paid character transfers have been closed to the four above realms.

If you have any questions concerning the closing of these realms, or the related migrations, please feel free to post them below and we'll do our very best to answer them. To make sure questions and answers are easier to find, any unrelated posts will be deleted from the thread.
First time I've heard of realms closing before, understandable though - Warsong is in my battlegroup and every time I met someone from there they were clearly Russian (bad english if they spoke it at all, usually they didn't) - since the Russian launch I've not noticed anyone from that server at all!

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Alanthus
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Post by Alanthus »

Warsong in particular had a large contingent of Russian players as well as a large number of Brazilian players, some of them spoke english just fine if they wanted to but they tended to behave rather exclusively and I found it wasn't uncommon when you did group with them that they didn't speak at all in group except for their own language. I have a lot of friends in Brazil so I do understand a little bit portuguese but the game is considerably more fun when you can communicate... Warsong has had a very large number of english speaking guilds and players migrate off it in the past, even if the population wasn't drastically low now allowing people to transfer to less shattered communities is likely to be a good thing. There is nothing stopping Blizzard from introducing more realms again should it be warranted.
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Hybuir
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Post by Hybuir »

I guess they want people to enjoy the content and having a higher population would give them a better pool of players to realize their potential. Good move by Blizz... wow that's the first time I've said that, and meant it.

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xpolockx
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Post by xpolockx »

Hybuir wrote:I guess they want people to enjoy the content and having a higher population would give them a better pool of players to realize their potential. Good move by Blizz... wow that's the first time I've said that, and meant it.
I guess this is EU realms?

This is definitely a good thing though... ghost town servers are definitely NOT fun to play on.
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Post by Balgair »

Yep it's on EU realms, apparently most the occupants of said realms are actually very unhappy about it, they want to keep their Russian community together on english servers, go figure :P

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DM.
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Post by DM. »

Understandable, and prob a good choice. So I guess Blizzard won't be releasing any new realms with this expansion.
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Post by Hybuir »

DM. wrote:So I guess Blizzard won't be releasing any new realms with this expansion.
Mal Ganis will be crushed to hear that :P

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xpolockx
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Post by xpolockx »

Hybuir wrote:
DM. wrote:So I guess Blizzard won't be releasing any new realms with this expansion.
Mal Ganis will be crushed to hear that :P
lol, they're offering another free xfer off Mal'Ganis starting tomorrow or such... but for every person that leaves, another transfers in so we pretty much stay stacked at all times :P
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Post by Jokester »

Looks like they've done a good job of clearing people off these realms. Just ran Census on Molten Core and it only found 5 players.
DM. wrote:So I guess Blizzard won't be releasing any new realms with this expansion.
From what Blizz have said these servers will likely get relaunced with WotLK as new realms. What happened was that all the Russian players congragated on these 4 realms. Indeed when Molten Core was released as a transfer realm it was 99% Russian:-

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Since Blizz released the Russian localisation a few weeks ago, they've offered free transfers to all those players to the new Russian realms leaving these realms completely empty.

I guess it'll be interesting to see if they keep the same names or give them new ones, though I can see them only releasing 1 PvE and 1 PvP realm.

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Post by Argg0 »

You really scared me with that... (I play on Warsong)

I searched all around and couldn't find anything about it and was gonna say it was BS.

Warsong being one of the most populated ones, was pretty strange...

But then I read more on the topic and noticed it was on EU...

Make it clear next time, ok?

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xpolockx
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Post by xpolockx »

Argg0 wrote:You really scared me with that... (I play on Warsong)

I searched all around and couldn't find anything about it and was gonna say it was BS.

Warsong being one of the most populated ones, was pretty strange...

But then I read more on the topic and noticed it was on EU...

Make it clear next time, ok?
Well, that's why I asked... you could have read the whole thread and saved yourself the trouble of freaking out ;)
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Post by Balgair »

Location: Scotland, and talking about Russian localisation - last I checked neither Scotland or Russia was in the USA, so it's pretty obvious :P

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Post by Argg0 »

xpolockx wrote:
Argg0 wrote:You really scared me with that... (I play on Warsong)

I searched all around and couldn't find anything about it and was gonna say it was BS.

Warsong being one of the most populated ones, was pretty strange...

But then I read more on the topic and noticed it was on EU...

Make it clear next time, ok?
Well, that's why I asked... you could have read the whole thread and saved yourself the trouble of freaking out ;)
I freaked out as I read... when I was done reading I was ok.

The second post made me almost sure by saying about the brazilians...

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Post by Balgair »

Following our previous announcements about free character migration from Molten Core, Shadowmoon, Stonemaul and Warsong we wish to advise that we will be closing these realms on Wednesday October 29. When these realms close, all characters will be unavailable in every way except for free character migration, which will be continuing on till Tuesday November 11.
So those realms are likely closing overnight now, dunno what your process will be for closing servers! :)

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Rollie
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Post by Rollie »

Well, really nothing in place. No reason to remove them that I can think of. The data will still be there, but the characters will fall out of the time window for updates and eventually it will just show up as a dead server.

Maybe I should mark it as such.
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Balgair
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Post by Balgair »

At least flag it so it can't appear on the most wanted list perhaps? Good to keep the data though, that's always useful for the historical side of things :)

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Rollie
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Post by Rollie »

Ah, good call on that part!
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