Connected Realms (Updated 20/12)

Updated 20/12

Hey all, the following realm connections went ahead as planned last night:

English Realms

• (PvP) Aggra and Grim Batol
• (PvP) Lightning’s Blade and Karazhan

French Realms

• (PvP) Arathi and Naxxramas/Temple Noir
• (PvP) Ner’zhul and Garona

Spanish Realms

• (PvE) Minahonda and Exodar

German Realms

• (RP PvP) Das Syndikat and Die Arguswacht

To see a list of all realms connected so far, see our other forum post.

We’ll provide updates on the next batch of realm connections as they're available. For more information on Connected Realms, please read the preview blog post here.

Thank you Takralus!

I will watch this space :)

Grats to the first 8 listed I do hope it goes smoothly for you whenever it happens!

Yay! We're really excited about it too! :-)

I've updated the original post with new info for y'all :)

*hugs Takralus*

Thank you for the quick update! Very good news and I am also very happy to notice that several people (myself included) already got some their wishes granted!

3 loud cheers! *does a happy troll dance*

24/10/2013 13:02Posted by Lswindrunner

I've updated the original post with new info for y'all :)

I have to take my bow off to you, and apologise a little, you are going about this the correct way.

All of the realms you have listed so far are the lowest popped realms in the EU.

The new numbers won't be fantastic by any stretch of the imagination, but at least by slowly merging these low pops together they get less and less and will obviously be connected again once they are stable.

/salute

<3

I was wondering why are all the realms getting merged PvP ones, both in US and here, without any PvE ones getting merges?

Any particular reason for this?

No special reason other than we have to start somewhere. Not to worry though, low pop PvE realms will get some love too soon enough :-)

Why are low pop realms connected with other low pop realms? it should be a high pop realm with a low pop realm.

We have just begun connecting realms, and many more connections are planned still. Once we are done with the entire process, the population on all connected realms should be quite healthy :-)

Any plans on connecting full servers with dead ones and moving people over. Or just splitting the server in two, but keeping them connected?

Here in Draenor its a mad house. 1000+ queue lines some times, was made to wait for an hour and a half once.

The current high population realms that have queues will remain as they are today, however we are monitoring the situation on those realms.

In case you are interested, I recently made a post in another thread explaining why we aren't currently planning to connect the high population realms with other realms.

25/10/2013 07:42Posted by Anza

they dont connect realms to fix faction imbalance

"In the end, we’re considering a number of factors, including Battlegroup, population, and faction balance."

Faction balance is definitely being considered, but it is a tricky factor though, because generally the factions are not balanced within the same realm types.

If we were connecting PvE realms with PvP realms, then faction balance would be much less of an issue since our PvP realms are typically Horde heavy, and our PvE realms are typically Alliance heavy. But since we have to connect realms within the same realm types, the population will be increased on the connected realms but we cannot fully balance the factions on all of those realms.

That being said, the overall population situation on those realms should feel vastly improved overall once we are done with the whole process, so although the outnumbered factions in some cases will remain outnumbered, they should still see a nice boost to their numbers.

25/10/2013 08:51Posted by Droliaz

Will you keep adding more realms if connected realms are still too low?

Sure. As an example; Emeriss and Hakkar have been connected now, and Crushridge will be connected with those two realms next, and more realms will be connected to those three in the future.

Remember, what you are seeing now is just the beginning. Plenty more connections will be made, which means that it is way to soon to proclaim doom and gloom on the few connections that have been made so far ;-)

I'm sorry, once more, but You are connecting 2 COMPLETELY empty servers to emeriss. why would you connect 3 realms together while 1 has an "ok" amount of 90's, emeriss in this case, and 2 thats made of thin air? isn't it better to connect hakkar with emeriss and crushridge with another realm like emeriss? I don't see it fullfilling the purpose of populating the realms further, nor help the technical issues by mixing in massive amounts of realms without it changing anything.

hakkar and crushridge basically contributes nothing to emeriss, but ofc, the other way around, emeriss contributes to them, But why would you attach 2 empty realms to the same one? wouldn't it be serving a much better purpose connecting those nothingness realms to one other realm?

Edited spelling mistakes

Because those three realms will be connected, the population will effectively be larger on all the three realms. Right now it might not feel like much of a population boost for the players on Emeriss, but it will already feel like a significant population boost for the players on Crushridge and Hakkar. We have just begun the realm connection process though, and more realms(yet to be announced) will be connected to Hakkar, Crushridge, and Emeriss.

In short, once the entire realm connection process is complete for Emeriss and all the realms(some that are still to be announced) that Emeriss will be connected to, players on all of those realms will feel like they are playing on one single well populated realm.

As I mentioned before, this is only just the beginning of the realm connection process, so it is a little too soon to declare doom and gloom ;-)

after seeing that Scarshield Legions and Spooregar will be merged,
arent it better to just merge the RPPVP servers with each other?

The plan is that Scarshield Legion and Sporeggar will be connected with more realms in the future, but we cannot connect all realms in one go. We have to do it in a staggered manner to make sure that realms will be connected 100% correctly without any complications.

One of the reasons why we are not announcing all the planned realm connections right away is because we want to be careful with raising false expectations in case something does not go according to the plan. If we announce specific realm connections in advance, then we will naturally raise a lot of hope and expectations for the players on those realms scheduled to be connected, but if some unforeseen complications would then arise that would result in us not being able to connect some realms as planned, then we will have a lot of upset and disappointed people.

All the following connections are now live:

• Hakkar and Emeriss
• Taerar and Echsenkessel
• Theradras and Dethecus

Additional time is going to be required to complete the connection below:

• Burning Steppes and Kor’gall

We don’t have a specific date yet on when this connection will occur, but we’ll provide another update once we do.

Hey Vaneras i´m curious to know whats th target population for each final group of connected realms. Something like a high populated server? or Medium?

Thanks a lot.

I can't give you any specific numbers,

But the target is high population realms with some additional capacity for new players and/or migrating players. We basically want a healthy population for the connected realms, but not so high that there will be queues from the get go.

25/10/2013 14:10Posted by Karlotte

Also, do custom chat channels work "crossrealm"?

Yep!

Regarding Connected Realms, the only noticeable difference you should expect to see is the realm-name being attached to the nickname of anyone who doesn’t belong to your own realm. The whole experience should feel seamless.
Not being connected to any other realm should not affect you in any negative way, on the contrary, we expect everything to simply be… better.

Update 05/11 – 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.

Next Realm Connections:

• Burning Steppes and Kor’gall
• Mug’thol and Dethecus/Theradras
• Temple Noir and Naxxramas
• Crushridge and Emeriss/Hakkar
• Sporeggar and Scarshield Legion
• Vek’Lor and Arthas
• Shen’dralar and Zul’jin
• Haomarush and Dragonmaw
• Chromaggus and Shattered Halls
• Shattrath and Garrosh
• Dalvengyr and Nazjatar
• Bladefist and Zenedar
• Runetotem and Killrogg

We’ll provide updates on the next batch of realm connections as they're available. For more information on Connected Realms, please read the preview blog post here.

The information in the original post has been updated.

Thanks for your patience as we carefully roll this out guys. I know some of you on low population realms are really keen to see your realm connected; we will get to you, don't worry :)

I see there is now a currently linked realms sticky: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/8715582685

Just a suggestion to you blues. It might be as the list gets longer to split the list by locale.. At the moment the length is manageable. But soon it might be hard to find your realm.

Just a thought.

So perhaps:

Below you will find the list of the realms which have been connected so far. More will be added as we proceed.

English Realms
Chromaggus and Shattered Halls
Runetotem and Killrogg
Burning Steppes and Kor’gall
Crushridge and Emeriss/Hakkar
Sporeggar and Scarshield Legion

French Realms
Temple Noir and Naxxramas

German Realms
Vek’lor and Arthas
Mug’thol and Dethecus/Theradras
Taerar and Echsenkessel

Spanish Realms
Shen’dralar and Zul’jin

Thanks Andraii (and Dottie and everyone else who made suggestions), yeah we definitely want to keep it nice and clear as the list inevitably expands. I'll get to work on that right now /salute!

20/11/2013 10:41Posted by Andraii

Garrosh and Shattrath completely vanished from the list, awesome.

Confirmed (for whatever my confirmation is worth). I have them on my list marked as delayed. So they were scheduled and there was a problem.

Now they're in neither the connected, or to be connected list.

Yup we took stock of the current connections and tweaked the order a little. Stay tuned for further news on those :)

20/11/2013 10:44Posted by Xayo

Once everything is connected, will such clusters have their own names? I'm guessing it would be quite usefull and realm forums should be connected like that too.

It's not something we're currently planning.

Hey Takralus,
i think there's little error.

French realm Naxxramas is already connected to Temple Noir.

So the next connection is Arathi ans Naxxramas/Temple Noir.

Thanks

Thanks Knup! I've updated the post to show all existing connections.

20/11/2013 12:43Posted by Nerraw

Did the Haomarush/Dragonmaw connection get scrapped? I don't see it in the top post anymore, despite being listed in the Nov 5th update.

Some realms that were mentioned before have been re-scheduled. We're constantly re-assessing the progress and adjusting if necessary.

20/11/2013 12:48Posted by Шокохрюшка

What about Russian realms? There's even no thread about Connected realms on Russian forums...

They're coming! Same as the Portuguese realm :)

@Takralus: One minor edit, if you don't mind. *chuckle*

Current lists have both:

Boulderfist and Chromaggus/Shattered Halls (shortly)

and

Daggerspine and Chromaggus/Shattered Halls (more info later)

Maybe edit the latter to:

Daggerspine and Chromaggus/Shattered Halls/Boulderfist?

Done! Thanks again :D

And the fancy list of Connected Realms sorted by language (thanks Andraii!) is up \o/

21/11/2013 07:10Posted by Kolanji

Erhm, just a few days ago it said that Bladefist and Zenedar was going to connect, but not anymore? Why?

We changed up the order a little based on the current connections. It's an ongoing process, sorry for the confusion! Keep an eye out for further news on those realms :)

The Breaking News say:
Agamaggan, Emeriss, Hakkar and Theradras.
Lets hope this is a visual mistake and you wanted to say Crushridge instead of Theradras.
If not, you may encounter problems with the language being Theradras german and the other 3 servers are english.

Lets hope its only a mistake and you wanted to say Crushridge! =)

Well-spotted! Thanks for the heads up, fixed! :)

21/11/2013 08:56Posted by Himmelfesk

Hi, was just wondering if you have any kind of timeframe on the project as a whole? I'm very eager to ask about my own realm, but I know you probably don't know spesifics yourselves even :)

That's right, things change even at short notice, so giving any kind of indication beyond what we share already would be a little reckless ;)

21/11/2013 09:02Posted by Thirn

I just wish realm forums were merged too, it is going to be impossible to use when your realm has 4 different forums.

If you're looking to recruit for raiding, there's a forum for that here: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/874708/

Looking for PvP players is here: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/4087193/

Going forward, we'll see what works best and try to adapt :)

21/11/2013 09:46Posted by Jakfu

Not a single alliance raiding guild on the Agamaggan/Emeriss/Hakkar/Crushridge connection. -.-

Feel free to start one ^^

Can we fix turalyon horde before WoD please?
Kinda hard to recruit for mythic on a dead server side.

Realm Connections will improve the size of the player pool you can recruit from, so the situation should improve for players in a minority faction once their realm has been connected. When possible, we've tried to help even out the factions when choosing which realms to connect, but there are heaps of other factors to consider. Plus, on EU PvE realms Alliance outnumber the Horde in general, so achieving perfect balance is not possible.

So, will all servers, except the already high populated ones, be merged at some point?

Because if not, the servers that don't get merged will be left out and slowly die off. I find that a little unfair.

The aim is for all realms to have a healthy population when we're done, we don't intend to leave any low population realms out in the cold ;)

Original post updated, all scheduled connections went ahead: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/8427764143?page=1#1

22/11/2013 09:42Posted by Andraii

Techies love bunnies. They'll do as they're told! :P

Everyone loves bunnies *_*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSFB2ytWJLQ

22/11/2013 20:54Posted by Trelw

@Allianceduck: I have to point out that is already weekend and rather late, too. Most blues are probably catching (hopefully a good night's) sleep. Anachronos is not on the lists yet, but the same applies to many other small realms, too. Blues can not give definitive answers to questions to which they do not (yet) have one. I am not a blue, but I can say this much. I think Anachronos will get connected, but as to when and with which realm(s) remains to be seen later. If you read back on the thread, you will notice that some answers are very short and not everyone gets a personal reply. Even so, things can and do happen.

Allianceduck, as Trelw explained above, if your realm has a low population it will be connected with another realm. As I've said before, no low population realms are being left out of this. Please be patient, we're getting there ^^

22/11/2013 21:46Posted by Kevaver

Takralus how do you define a low population, Hellscream is listed as a mid popped realm, but so was it durning vanilla, tbc, wotlk, while back then we had a lot more active players then we do know.

Yes, 'medium' does cover a lot of ground. Obviously some medium population realms lean more towards 'low' whereas others are just under the 'high' threshold. It's all assessed when we're looking into the possibility of connecting them :)

Hey all, I just updated the info in the first post. Sorry for the delay!

A couple of things changed: Arathi and Temple Noir/Naxxramas have been re-scheduled, and so was Thunderhorn and Wildhammer. As you can see, Thunderhorn and Wildhammer should be happening soon, we'll keep you posted on the next batch as soon as we know :)

Hi guys, I've updated the list to reflect the latest connections. All planned ones went ahead without any issues. Awaiting the next list, I'll let you know as soon as I do :)

Good morning, the original post has been updated, thanks for your patience :)

Hi all, I've updated the original post. All connections went ahead as planned.