Dambusters, you gotta let me know, should I stay or should I go?
I am sure by now most Dambusters are now aware of my current conundrum of whether to transfer the guild to another server or to leave it in our beloved Xavius. If you were not aware then you are now lol. A decision on the guild’s future placement will be made on the 26th of July on the Dambusters 3rd Birthday. That is 2 weeks from now and I will use that time to continue my operations on other servers to scout the best potential home for the guild IF we do decide to move. I have already spent the last 2 weeks scouting high population servers as potential homes. I would like all guild members to provide feedback with honest opinions about whether we should move or stay, but before you put too much thought into that, let me provide a few points for and against the move.
- Xavius has a total server population of 8400 characters, meaning around 14% of all characters are members of the Dambusters! That is a striking statistic!
- The servers I have considered moving to have populations in the 25000-45000 range, clearly dwarfing Xavius’ meagre activity levels.
- Xavius is fairly evenly balanced but slightly favouring the horde side. The server has always been heavily horde dominant but during this last patch period the ratio has become more balanced than ever.
- Xavius is 220th in the WoW Progress EU list based upon characters and guilds who have killed a teir 13 boss at some stage or other. This means the activity here is very low in comparison with most servers.
- Server balance is pivotal in my consideration of potential new home servers because we need to be able to see opposing faction players around the world, we need to kill and be killed out in the vast reaches of Azeroth. Some people don’t like world PvP but I personally love it, and remember that this guild should be active with people who will come to your aid if you are being corpse-camped. Mists of Pandaria will be rife with world PvP and I would like this guild to see the best of it!
- Xavius will boom when the new expansion arrives as it always has, and so will the other servers. This will be madness and there will be people everywhere in the new continent, fighting all over the place and getting killed by hordes etc. What I am interested in, is the trend that as expansions have rolled out over the years, people have stayed committed to the game for less and less time. The current ‘lull’ in server activity will happen sooner in Mists Of Pandaria and I need to ensure this guild makes the decision to stay or go only once. This is not a choice we want to be considering in a year or 18 months from now because we did not make the right decision at this time.
- Social levellers (or anyone else for that mater) who like to spend time out around Azeroth and see other players would actually feel like they play an MMO and not a single player game, if we were on a higher population server. Xavius is a ghost town in Stormwind at the moment and the low level zones are completely devoid of all activity.
- Raiders will have more opportunity to raid in a higher population server because finding other players who need a team will be easier. If you are not in a team then pugging is much easier also since trade chat is constantly filled with people searching for Dragon Soul pug players and other raid events for transmog etc.
- PvP on Xavius is badly stifled due to lack of activity providing very limited diversity of friends/server community to actually practice duels against. The server’s battle group ‘Emberstorm/Glutsturm’ is heavily one-sided in favour of German and French horde PvP teams who constantly farm random battlegrounds and cause no end of frustration for random BG lovers from our server. The frequency of meeting other German teams in arena matches can also become frustrating. I’ve won my fair share of encounters v German PvP maniacs and even a few battlegrounds but I am sure the statistics will prove the fact we face these 24/7 PvPers has been making it tough for us to get ratings in arena. A move to a battle group which is not German PvP people dominant might help the PvPers in the guild attain a better rating.
So, considering some of these points, and there plenty more good and bad points, what IF we decide to move? Where to? Well I’ve already been doing a lot of homework…..
The servers I have personally scouted so far, have been Ravencrest, Kazzak, Outland, Twisting Nether, Burning Legion, Frostmane and Ragnaros. I have characters on all those servers for both factions. I have joined guilds and spoken to people in trade, in guilds and made a few friends along the way.
Ravencrest is simply too full and too one-sided in bias favour of Alliance, dominance in that environment is fine for raiders but if you like world PvP then it is not a challenge. Kazzak is the same but in favour of horde. Both these servers suffer terrible server lockout problems on busy expansion release days and new patch days, I think I would hate paying for game subscription to find I am locked out due to high demand and I would suspect I’m not alone in that mindset. This issue has led me to search slightly lower but still high pop servers.
Burning Legion is very horde/alliance balanced and the population there is 30000, fully 15000 less than Ravencrest at the moment. The trouble with Burning Legion is that it’s full of Polish people who don’t speak English, resulting in a half English, half Polish trade channel and a lot of guilds there who demand only Polish people. I was also made aware that a lot of rude people exist there and tbh that does not surprise me. That situation is found both on alliance and horde sides of Burning Legion, and YES I have considered a faction change if it is really needed. Happily tho, it looks like that won’t be necessary and I would assume if it got so difficult to find the perfect server unless we changed to horde, then we’d best remain at Xavius instead.
I have moved my lvl 85 Holy Paladin to Frostmane and then to Ragnaros having singled those 2 servers out from the initial list. I have spent around a week on each thus far, joining PvP activities like killing Garrosh and completely owning Orgrimmar on Frostmane with a big social/levelling/PvP guild, then getting my Destroyer’s End title for killing Madness of Deathwing after a full clear in 1 night with a pug team.
I found Frostmane to be an excellent community but after trying and failing to enter Tol Barad on 4 separate occasions, I began to realise that faction balance was a big issue for me, that was the point I decided that a 33/100 horde/alliance balance was not really acceptable, I tried to make it work but the imbalance stifles certain aspects of the server to the degree that I feel the server must be ruled out.
On to Ragnaros. I am currently on Ragnaros and enjoying the community there, I have spoken to people on both sides of the faction divide and everyone I have spoken to has only one opinion on the balance matter “This place is evenly balanced” Officially it’s 85/100 horde/alliance but it’s clear that horde do not feel inferior there, AND I got into an epic Tol Barad which we managed to defend at the last moment. This only furthered my confidence of faction balance on that server. Ragnaros has 25000 population, almost exactly 3x Xavius but almost half that of Ravencrest and Kazzak. I have verified that number by logging into both factions on Ragnaros and both factions on Xavius at early morning. I found around 10 in Stormwind on Xavius on early Wednesday morning (just before the server shut-down) and little over 10 lower level players out in the world questing at that time. On Ragnaros, at the same time, there were 38 in Stormwind and the limit of 49+ lower level char
s outside Stormwind showed on my
who list which indicates the EU server populations list is actually felt consistently inside the realms. This cannot be checked during busier times like evenings etc due to the who list only allowing up to 49 characters shown, so early morning provides a good indicator. I will continue to work hard on providing a suitable home for the guild IF we decide it’s for the best, if/when that decision is made, I want to already know where we are headed. At this moment, it’s Ragnaros but I’m still working!
And if we stay……….
Xavius is where our friends are, our guild has a certain reputation here, most like us but some dislike us. Most respect us as people, some don’t respect us, mainly due to the fact we are not a raiding guild, some due to the fact they don’t like Bigticket lol. I’ve made lots of friends over the years in Xavius but also a few enemies, it’s time I learned to avoid drama better 🙁
Short term, Xavius might drive us all mad, the guild has begun to stagnate due to so many inactive people. We have fewer funny characters logging on, same as all other guilds on the server. Because we have lower activity than before(still high activity in comparison with the other big guilds on this little server) it’s not as much fun for people to join and the stagnation continues. I want to try to break that trend by allowing all guild members the ability to invite new members again, and I really hope our Big Birthday Bash is a stunning success that will really stimulate the guild again! If the event has a low turn out then it will almost certainly spell the end for Dambusters @ Xavius and we will likely swiftly move after that. During the Thursday event, I will canvas opinion on the potential of a transfer and see what you active people want, having read this post and had time to consider what i’ve been saying recently. That day, the final decision will be made, either way, STAY or GO!
Take care Dambusters, your community is in hard-working hands!
/SALUTE
