Server Squishes

The title image shows what I saw this morning on the AH on the Windseeker Classic server. That’s five bags of ALL kinds for sale. That’s it.

For the past few weeks I had noticed that Windseeker had become somewhat of a ghost town, ever since the pre-patch for Cata. I figured that it was temporary before the actual Cata Classic launch. But things just kept going downhill, even after the launch.

Being ignorant, I assumed it was a clear sign that the WoW community had a word for Cataclysm, and that word was NO. So I posted that screenie to Bluesky commenting how Cata killed Classic, and oh well I guess I was going to have to join my old guildies on Hardcore.

Shintar commented that maybe my realm was locked and that meant I should get off it? I was dubious, having never seen an announcement, but started searching around. She got there ahead of me and provided a great link that got me what I needed.

Yes, Windseeker was going to be closed. Yes, there were free transfers.

Eventually I figured out the process, despite Blizzard’s support services (huh). Just in case anyone else has the same problems navigating the process, I’ll summarize.

1. Make sure you’re eligible for a free transfer.
2. Log in to the game
3. At the character selection screen, select the Shop button.
4. If you are eligible, the “Free Realm Transfer” button will be the very first one in the list.
   • Select that.
   • Select your character from the drop-down.
   • Select the “Transfer” checkbox.
   • Select the realm you want to transfer to
   • Select the “Transfer” button to commit.

That should pretty much get your character into the pipeline. You’ll be returned to the shop screen. When you close that, a little icon will appear next to the transferring character that shows that the transfer is in progress.

Now, a few things that kept me from transferring.

• I was GM for my guild. I transferred ownership to the old GM, who had never logged in since TBC Classic, and, for good measure, I left the guild. (Turns out that guild server transfers are going the way of the dodo, though they hadn’t mentioned that quite yet.)
• I had auctions active on the AH. Cancelling them was the way to go, but there was lag.
• I had unread mail. Easy peasy.
• I had mail pending that was not yet in my inbox (in flight, needed to wait for it to show).

And a few things that surprised me

• Even though I had emptied my bank of the important stuff, it turns out I didn’t need to, as my bank travelled with me.
• Three of my four characters did not leave the guild, and when they arrived, they were still “in” the guild, though they could not do any of their usual guild activities, even though they were all officer rank. (in fact, when I tried to leave the guild on them after the transfer, the attempt bombed with an error of some sort. This appears to be a residual effect, and eventually “fixed itself” by removing that guild membership.

One odd thing

• Most of my toons rematerialized in the same place on the new server that they were on the old server. Not so, Grimmtooth. He left Windseeker standing in front of the bank in the Dwarven District. He Arrived on Pagle server in the tunnel to the Stormwind trolly station. Weird.

Two interesting things

• Floramel had to change her name because someone on Pagle already had that name. Which is somewhat amusing because she had that name because the name she wanted – Florimel – was taken on Windseeker (and also on Alleria, where Floramel Prime lives). Florimel is, for those not in the know, the name of a character in the Amber series by Roger Zelazney, and the toon was named after that character, same as Jasra is also named after a character in that series. So I was forced to name Flora back to Florimel on Pagle, which is ironic (paging Alanis). Does Flora have a secret fan on Pagle? It’s like a typosquatting incident – Floramel is not something that is real outside of my own weird circle, being a name generated by necessity.
• Grimm got his name back! “Grimmtooth” was taken on Windseeker when I rolled him up, so he became “Grimtuuth”. But I was able to claim my real name on Pagle, as nobody had claimed it there. Which probably means that either the “Grimmtooth” on Windseeker is abandoned, or, like me, that player was unaware of the pending realmpocolypse. Good luck, buddy.

So starting with a bit of a shitpost on Bluesky, I’ve now more or less arrived at a new realm. I’m sure that we’ll see more of these squishes as Blizz continues to ignore the wishes of the playerbase, but, that’s another show.

What I can report is that Pagle is extremely vibrant – perhaps excessivly so. I honestly think that Blizz jumped the gun with Windseeker. Before the merge, it was an extremely viable realm. Extremely busy.

Pagle is far more busy, excessivly so, and the auction houses are packed, to the point that making anything from selling your shit is kind of difficult due to the presence of dozens of Designated Goblins just clogging up both AHes in Stormwind.

My theory is that Blizz’ theory is that the pop on Pagle will decrease immensely over the next six months because, see above, nobody likes Cata. Is that cynical? Maybe. But the way they crammed three or four realms’ worth of inhabitants into one cramped space, given what they know historically, has me leaning a certain direction.

I am starting to gear myself up, mentally, to join my old guildies on Skull Rock, an HC server. While I think HC is just a gimmick, it’s a gimmick with my friends. That counts for something.