Less than a week ago, I told players to expect more Warhammer servers to be merged and shut down this year, and although I was right on the mark, I honestly expected Mythic to spend more time “discussing” what to do about the server population issue than this. In the latest Herald news article, Mythic’s own James Nichols announced that next week will begin the free transfer off of select servers.
On the North American side, Iron Rock and Volkmar will allow players to transfer to Gorfang for free. On the European side, players on Carroburg will have the opportunity to transfer to Drakenwald. These transfers will begin on the 9th, when the affected servers (Iron Rock, Volkmar, and Drakenwald) will become “legacy” servers, disabling new characters from being created on them. After a period of three weeks, the servers will be retired, forcing characters to transfer to the chosen destination server for free, or to a server of their choice for a fee.
Each server will feature a multi-realm ability, meaning players will be able to have both factions on one server. This will leave Warhammer with two North American servers (Gorfang and Badlands) and three European servers.
Warhammer Online is a game that thrives on PvP, and therefore requires decent server population in order to keep those that are in the game, still with the game. There has been numerous signs of impending server mergers in the past, with player testimony to MMO Fallout such as Xianthe who posted on last year’s article about the Auction House:
To put it frankly, WAR’s AH is so unused at this point having too many features actually hinders use and makes selling things a pain. I know it seems unintuitive to take away features, but let’s face it — WAR is trucking along but with an unhealthy population in many respects. Making search work well, and a simple buy sell feature is really all that is needed here.
Anyone up for a rousing game of Hellgate: London?
MMO Fallout 