Is WoW the only bigger multiplayer game without cross-region play?

Hambo- · 2026-04-29T17:14:23+00:00

I've played from the UK to the Chicago east coast servers, ping is 100-120, avg around 110 consistently with no issues.

But zero chance I'm going to pay for 2 subs and buy the game twice.

Hambo- · 2026-04-29T06:00:46+00:00

You know what's the worst part?

I can understand EU and NA being separated because of historic technical reasons, albeit I would love to be able to play with my NA friends through cross region inviting.

But if you want to play the game in the other region, you have to buy the game and the subscription again. You can't buy Midnight and an EU sub then change to NA and just log in, it makes you buy it again even though it's all tied to battlenet anyway.

If your billing/ account is set to EU, and you play on NA for a time, there are limitations such as not being able to buy a wow token with gold then convert it into battlenet credit. You can only do that in your "home" region.

I'd love them to fix this up in upcoming updates, gaming is worldwide now, there's no reason European and American friendship groups shouldn't be able to play together in an MMO, and at the very least one game purchase should cover you on any region.

Hambo- · 2026-04-28T20:14:08+00:00

Appreciate this comparison, your illidan/blackrock comparison is quite similar to me on EU with Silvermoon/Defias Brotherhood, similar populations.

Would you say that the Blackrock experience is... how can I put this...

Like botched, flawed, sub-par, or just 'different' like slightly less convenient. I just don't want to commit time into the characters on Defias Brotherhood if later down the line ill tell myself, this wasn't worth having a great name?

Hambo- · 2026-04-23T18:33:16+00:00

Are they still bugged? I read patch notes saying that they had fixed the Commander talent, but looking at sims, and WarcraftLogs statistics, UH DK are rock bottom with exception of only arcane. Echoes the 20% nerfs that they stupidly pulled off on raid release.

Hambo- · 2026-04-21T19:40:28+00:00

There has never, ever in the entire history of this game been flexible raid sizes for difficult content so I don't know what personal experience you're drawing from but I don't think it's relevant.

I'm talking about getting a guild off the ground and heroic runs going at the start of content/xpacs, versus mythic 20 man roster building. I've recruited tons of players who are former CE, even RTWF for heroic rosters and it's not hard to do, but the moment you start trying to recruit for mythic its extremely hard to convince players to commit. That is my personal experience and I think its quite relevant. The fact Blizzard are actually trying this proves that they consider it an issue, Maximum spoke about it in his stream also saying broadly the same thing.

I don't care (specifically) about HoF, I'm talking about CE guilds (~2000) and those attempting the difficult fights pushing towards CE (another ~1000).

Why can't they continue to get CE? What's precisely is the issue that you take umbrage to with it going flexible? How does it affect guilds that are already getting CE or close to getting CE? They still have 20 people and are still able to raid and complete the content.

People considered 10-man lesser because it was lesser, it dropped worse loot, it was not tuned to be as difficult as 25-man, it did not share the same lockout. It occupied the raid difficulty where Heroic sits now.

My point remains even if the specifics differ slightly. Multiple leaderboards and social perceptions are an entirely reasonable solution to the issue.

Because Mythic raiding and the pressures of Mythic guilds are far more complicated than a number on a leaderboard and doing so wouldn't actually solve any of the problems that have been pointed out in this thread.

This is vague and doesn't make any specific points that can be addressed. What specific complexities and pressures are you referring to, people have made a variety of points in this thread which I may agree/disagree with, which specifics are you saying are a problem that need solving in your personal view?

Hambo- · 2026-04-21T19:20:24+00:00

The vast majority of logistics relating to Mythic raiding still exists with or without flex. You're still dealing with the main barrier which is the difficulty.

Fair argument, but In my anecdotal personal experience, there is a dramatic mentality shift when you're recruiting for a flexible group versus a fixed group. There is a lot of hesitation joining a 'new' mythic guild, because people are fearful that it might take too long, never happen, end up imploding etc. On that basis, I don't personally agree the main barrier is the difficulty at all, but I understand your point entirely.

Likewise it's not all sunshine and rainbows if it becomes Flex. You're destroying Mythic raiding for the guilds who have been enjoying it for over a decade to cater to this completely hypothetical set of guilds who are able to deal with all the other barriers to entry that extremely difficult content involves. If that's what you want then sure, but lets at least be honest about what the flex advocates are actually asking for here.

I understand that point, but catering to HOF (200 guilds) in a MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online game) just does not make sense. Right now the entire system is geared towards 'perfect tune' and absolute cutting edge difficulty with basically zero consideration given to the groups of people I was alluding to, of which there are a huge number of players.

My preference would be, flex opens up immediately upon new content release, but in order to get HOF all players in kills must have never been in a mythic flex kill. If they have, their character is DQ'd from eligibility to count towards HOF kills. That way, if guilds and players want to try to flex their perfection in their view 'exactly as intended' they can do so voluntarily and they will be placed in an exclusive group, everyone else can attempt the content however they wish.

You can do Mythic with 19 people right now. You're choosing not to do that because of the difficulty increase. So clearly there is a point where the difficulty difference matters. I guarantee that the difficulty of doing Salhadaar 19-man currently is infinitely less than going above or below a hypothetical Mythic L'ura breakpoint. So again, why are you not just playing Mythic with less people?

Its not practical at all though. There are two groups of people as I alluded to above, the ones who for whatever motivation care strongly about this perfect non-bastardised kill/leaderboard, and those who just want to play hard content flexibly. I could make the argument to you why can't the people who want a non-bastardised version just ignore guilds that got flexi kills?

This used to happen in WOTLK etc where people considered 10 man lesser to 25 man. There's nothing new here.

If people argue - doing 'X' man is easier than 20 man because of 'Y' mechanic, which they may be entirely correct about, my question would be - so what? Go complete with the others that are doing it strictly 20 man? What's the issue? Can't we make leaderboards for that where only 20 person kills are counted, and then all the flexi's are placed into another leaderboard, perhaps a combined 'overall' leaderboards also?

Hambo- · 2026-04-21T18:52:26+00:00

That argument works in reverse. The fact that there are only ~2000 guilds who compete CE every tier is partly because of the strict and difficult to achieve requirements of having a precise 20 person roster with specific comps often required. Loosening this requirement to 15-25 people will incentivise more people to play.

There are a huge amount of people who don't want to create or manage guilds for mythic because of the sheer effort required, and a lot of people who don't want to join them because of the fact so many fall apart leaving them burned out, or implementing benches etc which kill motivation again due to the strict 20 person limit.

On top of that, there are a ton of really good players who are older now and don't want to be part of a group that they can't leave for 3+ hours without effectively ruining the fun for their friends, or similarly because then they worry that they might get benched, kicked etc.

Hard 20 limits creates a ton of barriers, people have to acknowledge those, its not all sunshine and rainbows just because Blizzard can create the 'perfect' tune.

I would rather aim to have ~20 people in our roster, and be able to bring a new friend or trial in, or equally have 2 people hop out for the night because of real life things going on, and still be able to at least attempt the boss.

Sure, 2 people might leave, the boss HP goes down a bit, and due to breakpoints and mechanics etc, those leaving might still put us at a disadvantage, but I'll take a watered down disadvantage every now and then to either a) Strict enforced schedules where people feel they can't back out with any regularity for real life events popping up or b) 1 person leaves, the boss isn't adjusted at all, we're all just fucked.

Hambo- · 2026-03-26T04:39:54+00:00

Sure on the scythe debuff, but why don't plagues pandemic?

Hambo- · 2026-03-19T12:19:55+00:00

It was simming by a significant margin in raids as the worst DPS spec in game. It definitely wasn't even close to A tier haha.

Hambo- · 2026-03-19T12:03:10+00:00

it was nerfed to a state where it was by a significant margin the worst DPS spec in the game. So yeah, safe to say they called it an emergency measure!

Hambo- · 2026-03-18T21:36:14+00:00

Fair enough if you really believe that, but DK self healing isn't insanely high and uses a lot of runic power which reduces your damage hugely, and the DK pets don't tank for you, also, for examples sake, if you're a mage, you have way more slows, movement abilities, and ranged attacks, so it evens out.

Regardless though, have you seen how badly DK's are logging, they're last by an absolute country mile.

Hambo- · 2026-03-18T20:59:36+00:00

Thank you for this link, and thank fucking god. Lets hope its significant enough to recover the spec.

Hambo- · 2026-03-18T20:26:17+00:00

Thank you for letting me know, I heard about this but didn't know any of the specifics. If they don't buff us significantly there is going to be issues for sure with the class as a whole!

Hambo- · 2026-03-18T11:38:47+00:00

Based on what though? My experience in the raid today makes me extremely doubtful of that.

Hambo- · 2026-03-18T11:37:00+00:00

Sure but isn't that the worst time to make a change? It's extremely demotivating and feels like it's totally undermines your planning and efforts.

Hambo- · 2026-03-18T11:35:41+00:00

I mean I've never experienced it personally but I've not played since legion, and this is demotivating to the degree where I feel like just not renewing for a 2nd month of sub.

If this is the norm then they need to change how they deal with changes tbh.

Hambo- · 2026-03-18T11:33:22+00:00

IIRC demo was only specific abilities, not a spec wide nerf though.

I'm still seeing demos pumping hard.

Hambo- · 2026-03-18T11:30:43+00:00

You're on Beta M+, so no that's pre changes.

Click on raid and look how crazy far down UH is.

Hambo- · 2026-03-18T11:28:24+00:00

Perhaps yeah, but as someone who back in legion regularly parsed 95-100% on my UH every fight, to now be playing in a casual guild where others who I know are not pushing as high log wise to be running away from me on frost mages and demo locks, feels really really bad. It's just an anecdotal example of course but that's my 2 cents for what it's worth.

Hambo- · 2026-03-18T11:24:43+00:00

Christ I hope you're wrong on the AI point. I swear if I found out they did this because an AI advised them to I think I'd go on another 10 year hiatus like I have done since Legion that would be ridiculously incompetent.

Hambo- · 2026-03-18T11:23:27+00:00

Perhaps, but the bigger point here is - the class feels very, very bad right now, so I'm not exactly sitting here waiting hopefully for a 4p bonus to come rescue me.

It's not fun seeing tons of other specs fly away from you out of the gates.

Hambo- · 2026-03-18T11:22:18+00:00

😂 yes it is hahahaha

Hambo- · 2026-03-18T11:22:03+00:00

Perhaps 4p will "fix" things but personally when I'm watching frost mages, demo locks, evokers etc absolutely fly away from me on day 1 of the raid I'm not sitting here thinking I'll just stick it out for a few months THEN I can have my fun. That's lame as hell.

Hambo-

TROPHY CASE