Auchindoun Really is a Graveyard Now
Since I am quickly approaching the end of all story content on the druid, I had a notion to try leveling some of my other characters. Specifically, one of the dozen or so I have been playing for the past 6+ years on Auchindoun-US. After about two hours, I have come to one, sobering conclusion: Auchindoun may as well be a graveyard for all my original characters.
You see, I didn’t quite realize how well I had it on Sargeras-US, Alliance-side. As far as I know, it is the most lopsided Alliance-favored PvP server in WoW. I just sort of took it for granted that I was only ever ganked twice (both times at the end of far-flung Flight Paths), and that there were always a dozen or so Alliance members attacking a WQ mob at any given moment. Even if there were rogues skulking about, I quest in Bear form, so… good luck, buddy.
Back on Auchindoun, the situation is much more grim. According to this site, it’s 77.2% Horde.
Sargeras is… oh, 92.9% Alliance. Wow. Goddamn.
Anyway, the bottom line is that the very minute that my level 99 rogue step foot in Azsuna the other day, I was one-shot by a hunter, presumably out of principle. What followed after was a harrowing two hours of questing, where I was constantly stealthing after every mob kill, and had to be ready to Cloak of Shadows/Vanish the moment anyone else showed up.
Worse was the simple fact that even if the Horde were content to leave me alone, I could never actually contribute meaningfully to any kills. The vast majority of every class and spec cleaves by default, which means I either spam Pistol Shot from 20 yards out or simply die to collateral damage.
All of this nonsense and anxiety was occurring on my rogue. I can’t even begin to imagine how many combined hours of time spent in spirit form I’d need for my mage or warlock. And, remember, Blizzard severely nerfed the experience one gets from dungeon queuing, because of course they did. What are my options? Battlegrounds? $25 server transfers? Straight-up rerolling? Even if I did manage to get to 110 in spite of everything… hey, I’m still fucked with WQs and world bosses.
“PvP on a PvP server,” amirite? Well… technically, yes.
But for one thing, Auchindoun wasn’t this imbalanced faction-wise for the first six years I called it home. It was a barren wasteland, for sure, but the current situation is inarguably worse for me. Indeed, had the server been this way all along – filled to the brim with hostile Horde – I would never had gotten as far as I did on it. This is all entirely Blizzard’s arbitrary doing, without ever offering an escape mechanism from a server that has declined in playability to effectively zero.
The feeling I had at the end of the night was the same I experienced in Wrath, when my account was hacked. These characters are effectively gone. RIP in pieces.
Posted on October 6, 2016, in WoW and tagged Auchindoun, Faction Imbalance, Population, PvP, Sargeras, WoW. Bookmark the permalink. 8 Comments.
In An Age 
Maybe it’s me, but I cannot even begin to imagine why someone would want to roll on a PvP server.
In progression-based games, PvP rarely exists, it’s more often than not simple ganking, i.e. something which is completely uninteresting both for the victim and for the perpetrator. WoW with its exponential power increases only makes things worse, but in my experience in all “open world” PvP games the PvP experience was always complete garbage.
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I remember that back in the day, I heard about WoW PvP servers in the sense that they added an element of danger and mystery and cooperation, etc. To my virgin MMO ears, that sounded cool. And since I blindly joined a no-pop “recommended” server, that was actually the case for many years. I had an add-on called Kill on Sight and let me save Horde names and automatically flag them with a Skull or some other notification that they had ganked me in the past. Encounters with the opposite faction were rare enough to be meaningful, you know?
These days ganking is an instant, impersonal affair. “If it’s red, it’s dead.” It’s all a net negative, IMO.
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The one game that might have a solve for this does not have pvp servers. GW2 has a solid pvp system that would be fun as hell to have as open world (at least as an option for alts). WoW now has level scaling tech which would alleviate a lot of the pain but they probably won’t implement it because players will cry foul that they “earned” the right to trivialize all previous content and it makes them not feel powerful.
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The Horde is a greater existential threat than the Burning Legion, to the Alliance.
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To hear you, one would think that getting your characters off Auchindon would require getting the UN to revise existing conventions and treaties on the rights of migrants and refugees to accomodate them, followed by obtaining the blessing of all the world’s religious leaders for the project, and finally, the construction of a functional Stargate.
Just transfer them already. I know that you love to optimize the fun out of everything, and that you’d rather download an extra 50GB over a week to save a couple of dollars over Steam price, but the fee is not *that* backbreaking. Surely being able to play your beloved characters without fear would bring you more value per dollar than whatever you got from the Hex kickstarter?
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It costs $25… per character. There is zero way to justify that price in any capacity. The Hex disaster is a fair point, but even that $85 loss would cover only three toons. I have a 100 rogue, 101 paladin, 100 death knight, 100 priest, 96 warrior, 91 hunter, 87 mage, 87 warlock, and a 85 shaman off the top of my head.
Am I going to spend time with all those characters in Legion? Probably not. But I’m not about to make a $25 decision on a whim. Or at all, really, for a game that already does not have a continuing price tag for me (e.g. I still have 6+ months of Wow Tokens).
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There is something a bit extortionist about the pricing if you remember that FFXIV (possibly WoW’s most direct competitor?) offers World Transfers for $20 that move over your entire character roster.
Granted, there is a restriction of 8 characters per server in the first place, and FFXIV has its own oddities (like a small subscription surcharge for what amounts to bank space+AH slots) but it is not like you’re being unreasonable about something that’s ‘industry standard’.
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Don’t forget CRZ is a factor. It’s not that your dead server has a faction imbalance as much as there is a guarantee someone from another server will be there to keep the zones feeling more “active”.
I can’t believe they nerfed dungeon XP. I’m really trying to figure out if they could screw up the leveling experience any more than they have. You gain so much xp you can’t complete a zone quest line, open world mobs fall over like paper and pvp is gank fest. Instead of turning on level scaling they nerf one of the more painless ways of getting through those levels.
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