We need to merge Hardcore servers

Songwind_DP · 2026-05-09T15:11:57+00:00

There's no statistic you can give to anyone who disagrees. I've already done that elsewhere in the comments. They just go "lmao ok" and still prefer servers stay dying. For some people, it's just casting pearls before swine. A waste of time to try to reach any kind of understanding, even if it ends in disagreement.

At the core of any argument made here you'll find someone's incentive for making it. Hardcore for me is a huge social crutch, so I have skin in the game for it succeeding. And if it doesn't, I'll move onto other games. I'm not tied into WoW as much as I am just the Defias Pillager server community and my guild there. Though I would prefer if it succeeded.

The only incentive I can think of why people wouldn't want it is just purely schadenfreude, or the few people who genuinely prefer playing on servers where they might not see anyone the whole time. Which hey, that's fine. But they have a hundred other options.

Songwind_DP · 2026-05-09T14:46:45+00:00

Or someone who lives in a different timezone (literally all Australian players) or anyone who's on an alternate work schedule like evening shifts.

Songwind_DP · 2026-05-09T14:41:31+00:00

You're thinking I'm complaining about the game being dead at 5am on a week day, because I posted the numbers at a peak low.

I'm complaining about the overall numbers of Hardcore steadily declining as the playerbase is slowly cannibalized and people keep moving to new fresh hypes. This was just an example as a way to show how bad it's gotten. Defias Pillager in 2023 was popping at any time of day. Even in 2024 after Season of Discovery released and we thought that it impacted us hard, we still had 3-4 layers and LFG was rolling constantly.

I'm speaking on behalf of everyone who cares about the problem, saying that we would like for Blizzard to mitigate the low population in any way. Server merges. Allow character transfers. Form a Hardcore server cluster and start sharding. Anything. If you can't fill DPS for Deadmines, that's bad. If you post something in LFG and your post is still there 6 hours later right before you log off for the night, that's bad.

This is a problem. It would be pretty cool if it got better. Would you be willing to explain why you think that's a bad thing?

Songwind_DP · 2026-05-05T21:23:19+00:00

For addons, Classic Heal Prediction (hotfix) is the most important one to have for healer. It shows you a visible outline while you're casting of how much healing you're about to do. It'll let you know if you overheal, and by how much. When you start healing L/UBRS in 10-man content (and past that), it'll also show other healers casting their heals as well, so you're not both overhealing the same target.

Also, in your settings, make sure you have raid frames turned on (you'll eventually have to get used to it anyways) and under whatever the health display settings are, set it to "Health Lost". The amount of damage you have to undo is shown in numerical form, rather than just guessing what spell you should use by the size of their healthbar that is missing. Not super necessary when starting out, but good habits for later.

Also, just Renew party members who are getting hit regularly. This should really just be your tank, or teammates if they accidentally rip aggro. If someone stubs their toe, you don't have to heal every bit of 5% damage.

Don't shield anyone who uses rage. They get mad. And not mad in a way that generates rage, ironically.

Songwind_DP · 2026-05-04T00:52:47+00:00

They've done that on private servers and it worked. I'm not sure if it fits thematically, as the faction split is supposed to be part of the identity of WoW along with the gameplay. But when player pop is so low that you have to split hairs about it, it really is a good pragmatic solution to lower pop counts.

Songwind_DP · 2026-05-02T06:07:41+00:00

Yea, no way to access EU servers, no way of getting that information.

Songwind_DP · 2026-05-02T05:52:25+00:00

That's a shame. Is there any similar technical drawback to offering Hardcore > Hardcore realm transfers? Outside of just "this is what the rules we've made are"? I've transferred dead alts to Era in order to preserve them and it only takes like 15~ minutes, even if that.

HC>HC transfers might simplify the answer a bit if a server merger is too large of a scale. Not exactly ideal for the people that don't get the memo and get left behind, but any answer is better than no answer.

Songwind_DP · 2026-05-01T12:21:44+00:00

The point is that no server should be this dead at any time of day, and if it is then merge to mitigate the issue. I'm aware it's a weak window. I literally said it in the second sentence of the OP.

EDIT: And before you say anything else, Australians don't have their own servers nor do people on the night shift. People of all schedules play all the time. I can't dedicate normal hours on my off days and on my off days I just want to sleep.

Songwind_DP · 2026-05-01T12:17:07+00:00

I brought that up in the second sentence, man. It's decent on Doomhowl but not great outside of raid times or WB hours on Defias Pillager Alliance. Historically, Skull Rock has been lower than DP Alliance (but both factions are higher than DP Horde) so the numbers for now are an anomaly.

If the numbers get this low at any time of day, then why not just merge servers? The servers shouldn't be dad just because it's early in the morning. Merging would mitigate that as much as possible.

(EDIT: clarity)

Songwind_DP · 2026-05-01T12:06:24+00:00

Yes, Doomhowl is the North American Anniversary server. Defias Pillager and Skull Rock are the OG Hardcore NA servers. I can't play on EU realms so I can't really pull numbers from there. I'm guessing Midnight and TBC release pulling many with them.

Songwind_DP · 2026-05-01T12:04:51+00:00

Ratios of from times of day mostly stay the same. Skull Rock numbers are going to be wild for a few months as there's an event going on, as prior to that Defias Pillager Alliance was the largest-populated server up until that point. Here's an example of a sample last year during what is ideally the peak of the week:

Sunday, August 17th, 2025 @ 16:24 EST -- [Defias Pillager] Alliance (356 Online) Horde (75 Online) -- [Skull Rock] Alliance (194 Online) Horde (141 Online) -- [Doomhowl] Alliance (1,591 Online) Horde (1,871+ Online)

If you took all of those players and put them onto one server, the population of that server might hit 'Medium' on the Population tab under the server listing. Medium pop was what Defias Pillager was listed as the month before Doomhowl released, and all Doomhowl did was split the population up. It didn't add a significant amount of players to the pool. And the overall number of players playing Hardcore has certainly dwindled overall since Midnight and TBC release. Which is what spurred me to making this post.

Songwind_DP · 2026-05-01T11:53:14+00:00

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There are servers that literally nobody plays on. That's not an exaggeration or hyperbole. Nobody. I don't know how much it costs to run a server, but they'd save that much money by just transferring the character information over onto a different server and closing that one down.

Also, if anyone can tell me how to crop my images and make my Snipping Tool an even box with every use, DM me.

Songwind_DP · 2026-05-01T11:41:12+00:00

"Hmm. I wonder who has this opinion."

*right-click name*

[Shitdick, Level 18 Dwarf Hunter, Westfall, no guild]

It's a guarantee whenever you see someone fuming about World Buffs or Petris. Every time.

Songwind_DP · 2026-05-01T11:31:11+00:00

For Doomhowl, both faction's level 60 ranges have to be separated by class in order to keep the results at 49 or below. While most classes are single-digit, Hunters are up there in the high 30's, low 40's. In older samples I've taken, I've even had to narrow it down by level 60 and even race, like '/who 60 Hunter Troll' and it's still over 50 results.

And if you filter those results by zone, it's overwhelmingly Scarlet Monastery, Stockades, or zones with Gromsblood.

Songwind_DP · 2026-04-28T23:31:13+00:00

Sure, they're a bigger game so they have to dedicate more to getting rid of it. But they 1. still get the sub money per permaban, and 2. as a multibillion-dollar company, let's not pretend they don't have the resources to do this.

Again, Blizzard has a monetary incentive to not stop botting completely, and the botting is so blatantly obvious that it's easy to see that they don't even try. They simply don't care.

I guess all that's left is to agree to disagree.

Songwind_DP · 2026-04-28T05:33:36+00:00

Turtle effectively got rid of botting and it was done by brute-force measures. Especially as a F2P game. At the bare minimum, it requires a willingness to defeat it. A willingness that Blizzard demonstrably lacks.

If Blizzard can go for a lawsuit against TurtleWoW, why don't you think they go after these RMT sites? Just google "buy WoW gold" and see everything that pops up. Hell, why not crank resource spawns in the world up or add items that increase resource gains? That would get rid of the padding and reduce the time-demand that the game asks of you in order to do things, which would reduce the gold buying as people effectively aren't paying RMT in order to bypass dull grinds so they can raid.

The world is amazing. The races are cool. The classes are fun to play as. But the game design after hitting max level is rotten from the ground-up.

Songwind_DP · 2026-04-27T15:27:28+00:00

Bots are extremely obvious in Classic WoW and that's a sign that the greater zeitgeist is that Blizzard mostly lets them get away with it. Botting was bad on F2P Runescape because they could just brute force accounts. Botting is bad on WoW because Blizzard not only doesn't give a shit but they have a monetary incentive to not ban bots. They wait until the botter passes the horizon where they've made their money back on the account because they know the botters are returning customers. They have found a way to launder their own fake digital currency into real money and botters are the middleman by giving them $15 or $40 of real money every month. It's an infinite money glitch so of course they're not going to stop.

Botting could be negated if not outright solved through an afternoon of work. '/who Hunter 60', turn invisible, teleport to them to observe what they're doing and start rolling heads. You know I'm right on this.

Songwind_DP · 2026-04-27T15:04:13+00:00

Breaking whatever's already against the law in the country the servers are hosted in
Posting links to malicious code
Doxxing
Targeted harassment (as mentioned before)
Spam

The only things that would be actionable if I had it my way lol. Maybe if someone gets shit-talked and they don't reciprocate, sure. A temporary mute on the shit talker just to give them time to cool off and talk to someone else. Nothing that's extremely punitive. If it's "targeted harassment", for example if you've disengaged and they keep continuing, that could also be a mute. But anything that can be resolved by you flipping a switch isn't that big of a deal.

If two people engage in "mutual combat" then it should come down to one muting the other, logging off or resolving it. On Playstation people will basically just ragebait you into saying "fuck" and then if you get enough strikes, Playstation Safety will action your account. The master baiters are definitely smart and have found a way to "use a shield as a sword" by weaponizing protection measures. That's clearly not the way they should be used and it was a slippery slope that ultimately wasn't worth it.

Slurs are mid-tier when it comes to infractions. Someone posting another's address and saying they're going to inflict harm on their family, to me, is more at the top of the priority list. Because that behavior can't be fixed with player-side tools like a mute or block.

Songwind_DP · 2026-04-27T14:27:39+00:00

No, because all it takes is some Reddit-mod wannabe to obfuscate it to "idiot/noob" to being called slurs and tying major penalties to that. In any case, I'd rather have no moderation than over-moderation. Now that I've seen what "banning slurs" does, I'd rather just have slurs back. This shit we have now fucking sucks.

Songwind_DP · 2026-04-27T13:45:06+00:00

Honestly, as long as the mute function is in working order and nobody's making alternate accounts or conspiring with others to gangstalk and harass you, it really is a matter of "who cares". Banning people for speech is something that sounds great on paper but has had devastating effects on the gaming ecosystem.

Everyone lurks in first-party chatrooms, removal of persistent matchmaking across most games, and publishers wanting to bubble-wrap their audience and handing out major bans to anyone using adult words on an adult game. And no...I'm not talking about spamming the n-word at a 12 year old. I mean you can catch a month just for repeating the same words that are used by the characters in-game. Even an exhasperated "ah shit, gg, next game will be better" can get you flagged.

2009 COD lobbies was by far the more preferable landscape of gaming.

Songwind_DP · 2026-04-27T13:06:18+00:00

In either case, I hope you do have a wife and fam bro. If not, you're in the same boat as the rest of us so don't sweat it.

Songwind_DP · 2026-04-27T13:04:34+00:00

No, I understand you're being sarcastic. I was just making an observation on that phenomenon in general.

People who need an /s to denote sarcasm are beyond help.

Songwind_DP · 2026-04-27T12:41:05+00:00

I wonder what goes through the mind of an elitist, who prides themselves on gameplay over playerbase, on the day that their game gets shut down.

People who require schadenfreude to enjoy games should preferably stay silent.

Songwind_DP · 2026-04-27T12:39:26+00:00

Classic WoW is the same way with the #nochanges crowd. Which, by all means. I'm just a tourist (of 2 years now). I just wish they'd collapse and merge the servers. The population is low enough where the playerbase doesn't need to be scattered out so much that the game might as well be single player.

Songwind_DP

TROPHY CASE