Worlds of Warcraft collide: Blizzard plans huge merger of WoW servers

Blizzard is preparing to launch a wide-scale global merger of some of its World of Warcraft servers to ensure a healthy and active playerbase.

Blizzard wants all of its WoW servers to be as populated as possible because, quite simply, an active server leads to better engagement (and monetization). The devs want to even out any discrepancies between realms by combining low-populated and high-populated servers together.

This isn't the first time Blizzard has done something like this. Realms have been joined several times in the past for this very reason, and the move could be prompted by lower-than-expected subscriber counts, players, or overall monetization. The migrations have often been successful and had a dramatically positive effect on overall play, from question to raids and everything in between.

"We've now completed a comprehensive study of realm populations for every realm in the world. Over the next 2-3 months, we're going to connect the low-population realms to other existing realms. This process will take place during scheduled maintenance, connecting a few realms each week, until we've connected every low-population realm in every region to a substantially larger population of players," Blizzard wrote in an update post.

The mergers also help pave the way for the new WoW Shadowlands expansion launch in 2020.

The crossovers are expected to start in a few months' time and Blizzard promises it'll be an automated process.

Check below for more about Shadowlands:

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