Free Character Moves Now Available For Oceanic Realms - Season of Discovery

Posted 2024/09/19 at 5:26 PM by PopularTopular

Hey there,

We have poured through all the feedback on this topic and settled on a direction forward for the Oceanic realms in Season of Discovery.

As of now, transfers are available from -

Penance (AU) —> Wild Growth
Shadowstrike (AU) —> Crusader Strike

Wild Growth —> Penance (AU)
Crusader Strike —> Shadowstrike (AU

We’re leaving this both direction Free Character Move open to allow players to move a character, see how things feel and decide if they wish to commit and discuss things within their communities on next steps. The path back to the Oceanic realms is currently planned to remain open for the next two weeks, but we will evaluate extending that date if needed. It will not remain open indefinitely to avoid creating faction imbalance back-doors and farming shenanigans.

It is our belief that your best experiences within Season of Discovery lie on the larger realms and the effect of increased ping times is far less impactful than many players think. Classic World of Warcraft was designed for a world where dial-up was the norm and still performs well in surprisingly high latency. But, we also understand this is going to be very subjective to everyone.

We thank you for your patience while we mulled over the options here and hope this solution gives as much flexibility as possible for Oceanic players to try things out.

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Comments

Comment by TheInnsanity

woohoo, late night dungeon groups

I mean uh, yay, better experiences for Aus players >_>

Comment by Telloret

I am happy there trying to support OCE players. It's definitely better than doing nothing and looking forward to the continue support for them.

Comment by Dottbot

incoming lagfest for everyone *-*

Comment by dabba

No one cares, unlock transfers from PvP to PvE.

Comment by SinR

Nice, now instead of complaining about being on a dead server they'll complain about Pings and/or Raid Times!

Comment by Furos88

As an OCE player since the opening of the AQ gates back in 2006, here are my thoughts about playing on OCE realms opposed to US realms.

It is not just direct ping. Sure, a consistent ~180 ping sounds reasonable, but this is not the case. There are often severe spikes (even on a quality connection in an optimal environment) which result in 8-10 seconds of loss and disconnect. This was quite evident with the OCE Hardcore community, which was essentially dead from the onset due to far too many lag-impacted deaths relative to the US players.

How wow is structured now, the loot lag is far more notable than the combat lag, sometimes it take take 8-10 seconds to auto loot an item from a corpse, and mass buying/selling to a vendor makes a 20second process 4-5 minutes.

Using retail as an example (and why OCE players cannot play retail on US realms), there is too much of a delay where some interactions must be instant. Lets take current fire mage, and hot streak. Often, the server does not recognise your fire blast cast (that moves heating up into hot streak) until after you have started spamming your pyroblast button. In an OCE environment, the pyro goes off instantly. When connecting to US realms, the pyroblast starts its cast timer (because the server hasnt returned confirmation of hot streak), resulting in having to cancel your pyro cast and recasting. This essentially makes the spec (among others) unplayable, even in an optimal ~180 ping situation.

You must also double the ping. That ~180 MS is how long it takes to connect to the server, and is not a round trip. You are looking at on average, a half second of delay between actions. This makes a class with a lower GCD like monk far more difficult to play, as by the time a proc signal has been sent back from the server to the client, you have already pressed another button. Games like final fantasy 14 are far less affected, I believe they essentially have a 2.5 second GCD? They also have thriving OCE realms now.

Now, this has little bearing on Classic PVE, but is becoming more relevant in SOD, with ever increasing fight mechanics and new added abilities. Classic PVP is of great concern, you just cannot play the game at 100. Another example: you cannot sap a mounted target running past, as by the time your client has recognised they are in range, they have already left your range server side).

Potential recommendations:

Force OCE players to remain on OCE realms for the duration of SOD. Make OCE players pass a ping test prior to being able to character create on a given realm. This forces OCE players into the same realms and keeps a healthy population, albeit at the loss of choice for the player. The ability to transfer is what makes OCE realms die in the first place. Likely the least popular opinion, but it would eventuate in a more stable OCE pop.
Remove mechanics that depend on higher ping. OG Classic does not have anything in a PVE context that requires a sub 100 ping, but SOD does.
Incentive OCE players to remain on OCE realms. XP boosts, additional sub (e.g. get 10% more time), free token, pet/mount etc.

SOD OCE does not have a sustainable population if you give players the option to leave (and they will leave for bigger servers). I played daily on Shadowstrike in P1, often with login queues for the first week, and then returning to P2 and P3 it was a ghost town.

For future OCE servers, a singular PVE server, no PVP server. Limit choice, as mentioned, there is barely a sustainable community as is, made even worse by dividing it into different realms. SOM was a prime example, the PVE realm was quite literally dead in the first week, and Swamp of Sorrows died about 6 weeks in, with most players having migrated to US realms. A very small subset of OCE players actively engage in classic PVP as more than a novelty (AV weapon grind comes to mind), as even queuing in premade BG's with a full roster of OCE players does not result in a OCE game, where you may join to the opponents US realm, resulting in a poor quality game for both parties.

Comment by xactfoxy

lol get rekt elron

Comment by Abacus88

Not sure what makes me happier – finally transferring my characters to a server with an active player base, or imagining Elron's reaction when he wakes up to the news.

Comment by Hardstylehunter8

my favorite quote from blizzard is " effect of increased ping times is far less impactful than many players think. Classic World of Warcraft was designed for a world where dial-up was the norm and still performs well in surprisingly high latency."

Well everyone you better hide your pets!

Comment by phazonix

Freedom for OCE.

The majority finally had their say and they now they the freedom to choose how they want to play!

Thank you blizzard.

Comment by LookingForSilver

Im an Latin American player and i think this is for the best, i play whit 180 MS everyday and sure theres some stuff i cant do so precisely but most of the time its not a problem, specially since i have people to play whit, and yeah sure if theres a lag spike it usually affects me more than other people but really 180ms is not that much, but maybe im just used to it at this point since theres no LATIN AMERICAN SERVER nor has there been one.

Comment by Kashra

As an OCE player since the opening of the AQ gates back in 2006, here are my thoughts about playing on OCE realms opposed to US realms.
Games like final fantasy 14 are far less affected, I believe they essentially have a 2.5 second GCD? They also have thriving OCE realms now.

Ha ha you are funny. The OCE realms in FF14 are not thriving they are dead. It is true that FF14 has a 2.5 GCD but you have so many off globals that need to be weaved that it matters just as much as wow. Plus FF14 fights are a dance where being one second too late to move out of an ability can one shot you. The last boss in the current raid with her gun is a perfect example of this.

Comment by z0lid

@Furos88 yeah no!
You are cherry picking unlikely things with anecdotes.
Blizzard/OTK put up a full tournament on HC, where more than 50% of the players had 150-200ping. And that was in a mak'gora pvp tournament, where latency really matters, and there where no real issues at all.
You are dooming!

Comment by Ahsokatano

What happened to the megaserver?

Comment by DarkLinkUmbreon

Have fun with the queue guys! Eu is 1-3 hours now. Good luck!