World of Warcraft Memoirs: Part III - The Migration

In the year after Daggerspine disillusionment my playtime slowly started receding, I was even taking occasional breaks that lasted from a week up to a month or more. But what gave me new hope was that things in the game finally started moving in the right direction... or so it seemed.

Year 2006 was the year when Blizzard began rolling out new features to compensate for rising WoW population (which by now counts almost ten million people worldwide), among them so called migrations, which was basically offering a population of one or more servers a free chance to move (transfer their characters) to another (new or at least low-populated) uncrowded, lagless server - in theory unburdening the old server.

At that time migrations were a two-edged sword: crude, irreversible, very time-limited and a good showcase of how far Blizzard still was from providing satisfactory customer support. Migrations brought panic and chaos more often than relief, they had the power to shatter server communities and cause endless headaches over technical difficulties that sometimes occured during the transfer process. On the other hand, they offered an escape route for all those who could not stand long queues and lag any longer or who simply wanted to start anew.

The same inevitable thing happened with Daggerspine, our notorious laggy and overcrowded server. At first Blizzard made the most perfect plan imaginable: servers Daggerspine and Bladefist were offered a player migration to a new powerful server called Outland. There was much rejoicing when we learned of this news - and we indeed had plenty of reasons for celebration: both servers were reputable, with English-speaking population, vibrant communities and very successful guilds as far as game progress is concerned. In other words, merging the two would create the most powerful European server, a dream come true for many players, including myself. Quickly new friendships were made, guilds from both servers started making mutual plans, recruiting players from the other server and getting to know each other better in general. Bladefist players even made an Outland migration blog to track events related to the migration.

The only problem was that everyone wanted to migrate because of it, there obviously wasn't enough room for everyone on Outland... and so this common enthusiasm turned into migration's downfall. You see, Blizzard, who was closely paying attention to the events, just couldn't allow for such a migration to occur - particularly because they were responsible for the upciming train wreck. So what they did was a pretty dirty trick: on the night of supposed migration they disabled it, thus carelessly leaving players who tried to migrate the whole night without sleep, blamed the whole thing on technical difficulties, postponed migration until further notice and in a few days declared that only Bladefist players will be migrating to Outland and Daggerspine will be assigned its very own server called Kazzak.

The decision caused a massive uproar from both sides of the community - but eventually we all had to accept the fact that ajoined migration just wasn't going to happen, regardless of how low opinions we had of Blizzard's recent actions. We weren't going to give up without a fight though - well, at least I didn't.

This time my outbursts went far beyond those of almost a year ago... fed up with Blizzard's attitude and knowing that the migration has the potential to turn out to have a disastrous effect on Daggerspine comunity I started a new topic on the official forums and unleashed my rage-imbued thoughtful considerations about the migration that was offered to us, being as optimistic - I dare not say idealistic - as ever about people's response, for the very last time believing in something as elusive and slippery as the power of "community".

Posted: 26.4.2006, 10:32AM

[Read] What happens after Black Friday:

Disclaimer: This is not a drama post. And it's long just as the suffering of Daggerspine from all the perils, so please take time to read it. It is meant to encourage community actions after the Outland scandal is over and that server's door get shut in front of our noses, which will most likely happen.


INTRO

We all know that those sneaky Blizzard employees want to 'fix' their mistake of choosing Bladefist and Daggerspine to migrate together.
Their way of 'fixing' it is outrageous! Do not let Them outplay us all once more! Just think about this:

- You are paying a high monthly fee that gives you access to a fair, competent customer support!
- When the support fails at serving you, You still tolerate it because of the game itself and You believe things will get bettter.
- And what did You get in the end? More than a year of forgiving European Blizzard their mistakes: the lag, downtimes, restarts, malfunctions, false hope, ignorance - You got one final stab in the back!
- A backstab with a Dagger directly in the spine, ripping apart the the last thing that made all the players forgive Blizzard their mistakes - the community, foundation of all MMORPGs!
- So here we stand, on a hardware-outdated server. Tired, angry and humiliated for any number of reasons. And about to be tricked again.


THE REALITY

These are the reasonable facts:
Face it - Blizzard will never ever allow a Bladefist+Daggerspine crowded überserver because it would attract more and more new players and that is the opposite of what they're trying to do - disperse population!
Therefore Blizzard turned this 'two servers to one' deal into wildcard 'each mega-migration to its own server'. This is bad because:
A) Bladefist and Daggerspine have already planned their common future (remember how bonds were made, cross-server recruitment, the effort put in planning!)
B) Daggerspine itself will be split into at least two or even three parts. This will cause friendship breakups, partial guild deformations and would make both old and new server a pale shadow of old Daggerspine.
C) Daggerspine players can't preview who will they get as their new neighbor and decide if it suits them.
D) There is no way to tell who will join Daggerspine migraters on the new servers and in what A:H ratio will they come.
E) Also note that the later migrating players could be from a non-English speaking server. Daggerspiners have always been proud of being on an international server and using international language for communication.
F) And finally - the name 'Kazzak' itself is one of the worst name selections anyone could have made (my personal observation).

Now, let's clear our heads and think for a moment. Satisfaction with Blizzard services has reached yet another record low. You now either want to migrate as fast as possible to get over with the suffering Blizzard has caused or You are seriously considering to end your subscription because you won't take this mockery any longer.
But is the fast solution really what You and I want? No! All we ever wanted from the birth of Daggerspine was a top-performing server, hardware and community-wise. Now is our chance to get it!!


THE FUTURE - ONE BIG MOVE

As many wise heads here have already suggested, the best solution for Daggerspine is for everyone to migrate! Think of it as taking a boat from Azeroth to Kalimdor with all your characters at once.
But everyone migrating at once will not be an easy task and will require a lot of effort from us all. We need an advertising campaign, mobilizing everyone to spread the word and most of all - get certain guarantees from Thundgot and team. Make no mistake - even Thundgot himself acknowledged that this is no ordinary migration but something exceptional.
1. After almost two weeks of delays we deserve at least a minor compensation. This will be to open migration to the new server on Monday May 1st for Daggerspine only and leave it open for at least one week. If we fear that not everyone will be able to migrate in time then extend it to two weeks which means ending it in the middle May. Seems a fair deal.
2. Because a huge amount of players will migrate, Blizzard will most likely not open migration onto this server to any other existing server which means the following: we remain as we were, with a lot of new capacity to invite your friends from elsewhere! Sounds pretty good.
3. A good reason for them to let us do this is because almost empty Daggerspine will eventually fill to its optimal population, which is what Blizzard team probably dreams of. No performance problems means less work for them. Same goes for new realm which will eventually get a bit larger population but the new hardware will handle it easily.
4. Another step ahead would be to offer migration to Daggerspine's new realm to those from Bladefist who already made arrangements to join DS guilds. Also seems fair, doesn't it?
5. We can also request a different name of the new realm if the majority of players is bothered by it - even if this seems radical, I am certain it could be done. After all, they changed our migration's destination as well!


Summary:
So what are the good/bad sides of a total migration?
Good: Everyone can stay together!; a stronger, faster server situated in Germany; chance for your friends to join you here without causing a longer queue; A:H ratio stays the same, we all still communicate in English; Blizzard keeps many happy subscribers..
Bad: There are none!


BRAVE ONES, STEP AHEAD!

This is the last chance for everyone to do something for Daggerspine. I am unfortunately too busy with matters in real life right now to start this rolling, but it seems to me that at least some leaders of our most respected guilds could put their heads together and contact Thundgot to present whatever proposal you or the community may come up with. Just sharing thoughts will make the difference! If there's anything I can do to help, please let me know and I'll try. And for support from players - from what I've seen everyone so far are in favor of this massive server migration, the only thing left is to convince Blizzard to approve (and not prevent) it. Remember - together we're stronger!
If they decide to ignore us again, I'll simply cancel my subscription. I'm fed up with losing my nerves and paying good money for it. It's time for the customer to be right at least once!

The topic actually got some decent responses and people started taking actions, mostly independent of my own topic. What I did not understand at that point was that people generally don't even have the will (or precious game time) to read through my post, much less to actually give it some credit, especially because it was coming from an unknown, unguilded person. My words simply did not resonate.

But the situation was urgent and something had to be done... so I laid out a systematic survival plan for our server's community. There was no doubt in my mind that my analysis was correct and failing to take its recommendations into account would mean nothing short our own doom.

(A side note: Thundgot was Blizzard's community manager, responsible for well-being of players)

Posted: 29.04.2006, 12.00AM

The Black Friday is over with no surprises at all. It went exactly as predicted, Blizzard's tactics was simply too obvious not to get noticed. The only thing that remained was to think what to do next and start acting in that direction - and I'm extremely glad you did - especially Thunderhawke and his migration topics! However, I wasn't just idling around either - I was collecting information about migration plans from various community players themselves and came to some conclusions that could help make migration more successful.
If you're a woman/man of action, skip the first part of this post and start reading the Action segment.

THE THEORY

First important thing that I'd like to mention is how the community itself is made up:
We have raiding guilds with long-time players, who want to migrate due to unstable server. Then we have less progresssive (and younger) guilds who are hesitant to leave the server since the pluses and minuses are mostly equal to them. And finally, there are also quite some 'minor' guilds and players who are just starting the raiding, don't want to leave and think either that they will become more powerful server-wise (after big guilds leave) or that Daggerspine will by some miracle (and this is no joke) become lag-free.
These are just three general player types - and almost every single one of them has friends in other two groups. Now, to leave out either of the parts would do quite some damage to the lively community we intend to have on our new server.

Next important and I think obvious observation is that this forum is being viewed by mostly the first type of players - dedicated raiding guilds. This means that others, especially the pre-60 and non-raiding guilds don't know what we're talking about here! To solve this, a kind of an advertising campaign should be enforced at least on ingame City channels.
Another thing that worries me is the faith that players that want to stay have in performance capabilities of this server. It reminds me of the Neptulon migration time, when everyone thought we would get hardware upgrades or some other fix. Well, as we all know, it never happened and if you're reading blue posts who claim that 'there will be no server upgrades' you also know that they just won't happen in the future. But our newer community members, playing mostly in these newer 'we're not moving' guilds, don't know that because they weren't there. Also, they have probably never (or very rarely) experienced instance raiding lag.
This is where strong arguments for migration come in and help them realize that staying would be a mistake.

As last important thing I'd add that small portions of community want to get away from others, whether it's because they dont want to live in shadow of big guilds or because they like more empty space for themselves. This kind of players (guilds) wants to stay on Daggerspine and simply cannot be persuaded to join the migration. Losint time convincing them with arguments would be a waste of time - but, as always, a slim chance for them to join the big wave remains, it's just that the wave has to be really big.


3, 2, 1 ACTION!

3. How to advertise for migration?
Make a macro for general chat! Hit it once in a while in every zone you travel across!
Let the macro be reasonably short and clear! Make a reference to this realm forum (Thunderhawke's topic) or Kazzak blog!
Contact guild leaders of smaller guilds and tell them about new guild migration option! Tell them to visit this forum and join our effort!
Contact your friends whose guilds have not yet decided to migrate! Let them realize that they will only gain and not lose with migration!

2. How to explain the migration (illustrations)?
If talking to a Tolkien fan - We're like the Elves, leaving shores of Midgard for the western lands because there's no more room for us!
The server is an old man that is getting sicker with each additional luggage we put on him - even if he has very little luggage, he'll still be old and will have problems with health!
The spiritual persons: Daggerspine migration to the new server is nothing but the reincarnation of entire community in a higher being than the original!

1. What arguments to use for migration?
Performance:
In the past, Daggerspine was laggy and suffering even at times of medium population! It won't be any better now!
The new server's datacenter is NOT in France but (presumably) in Germany, which means no air condition and power supply failures!
Daggerspine WON'T get new hardware! Ever! Every blue post on that topic states that fact! The new server has this newer hardware!
Downtimes and resets will NOT go away after at least half or two thirds of the server migrates! Proof: Daggerspine has been having major problems even at times with no queue!
Daggerspine can only take low-medium population before things go bad! New server outperforms it big time!
It is inevitable that DS will get filled again - and that will mean exact same pains we're in right now!
Community:
Solid balanced communities like ours are very rare in WoW! Move with us and make shure it stays as good as it is!
If you care at all about other players of this server you should move with us! Staying won't make anyone happy!
Daggerspine has an equal Alliance:Horde ratio. By not going you're jeopardizing this balance and risking a very imbalanced server!
Both Horde and Alliance are moving together, and this joint effort shows the strength of our community!
There will be same people on the new server, only this time they won't be frustrated by the lag!



The migration will last for the entire week, so you will see me advertising with my macros all over Azeroth! I hope that players of both factions (Horde in particular!) will join it and that it will be accepted as a good thing. And to my fellow community dwellers, who are doing their best urging everyone to join the migration effort (sounds like the AQ War Effort, doesn't it) by opening new topics - it's not gonna work. If you've read the post above you know why :)

And the conclusion? Largely unsurprisingly, things did turn out just as I expected, though not as badly as I feared. The majority successfully migrated from Daggerspine to Kazzak, but there were also those who decided to stay, not knowing what was in store for them... it soon became evident that the once honorable Daggerspine became a desert, a barren waste with the number of players so scarce that playing itself became unbearable - except, of course, if you were a hermit. There were so few players to play with, so few enemies to fight against - and the situation didn't improve with time despite several migrations that Blizzard ironically directed towards it. Situation did not improve even when individual migrations became available - quite the opposite, players rather fled the empty server... in fact, the grim situation persists to this day and there is little indication of it getting better in the future, partially thanks to gaining the reputation of a dead server and in part thanks to keeping its Laggerspine reputation. You see, its technical problems never really went away.

Despite all those nuisances, the old migrants to Kazzak still talk of the days on Daggerspine with a nostalgic tone - after all the quits and influx of newcomers, anyone who played there is considered to be a veteran, a member of the old brigade. And for me personally, the migration first brought a greater attachment to the game that eventually reverted its course and turned into a detachment, causing me to start frequently questioning "what am I still doing in this game?"


**UPDATE** Ironically, Blizzard is now offering a free migration from Kazzak to Daggerspine... it's funny how things turn around.