WOW Realms

As many of you know, I am very new to this game, so it would help to understand more about the various realms that it offers. How do you enter them? Do you need to go from realm, to realm to raise a higher level of awareness as a WOW character? Do you meet other people, in these realms? What do the realms actually provide? What is a realms purpose? What do you personally think of the realms? Are these realms safe? Have you got any unnerving experiences to share, within these realms?

A realm is WoW's term for server. Because there are so many players (over 10mil subscribers) everyone can't play in the same server. There are a few different types of realms which I will describe.

A normal realm is also considered a PVE realm, player versus environment. In this type of realm, players can't be attacked by or attack other players unless they flag themselves for PVP. This is best for players who like to be able to quest without having to deal with annoyances from the opposing faction.

The opposite of a normal realm is a PVP realm. In these realms, players are free to attack other players of the opposing faction while in contested territories. It might be harder to quest here since you are never safe unless you are in a territory controlled by your faction, but it gives you the thrill of a more realistic environment and the opportunity to pwn some noobs.

Lastly there are RP realms which is roleplaying. They have both normal and PVP realms of this type. In RP servers you must stay in-character at all times, basically you're always roleplaying. This would appeal to players who want to actually be their character and interact with other characters instead of other people, I guess is the best way to put it.

Once you pick what type of realm you want to play on, each realm has a population level, low, medium, or high. I'd say medium is normally best because you don't want an underpopulated realm but sometimes in the high pop realms there are waiting queues to get in the game when they are filled to capacity.

I personally play on a PVP realm with medium population. There isn't much to picking a realm once you know these details besides which name sounds coolest. Other things to consider are the horde:alliance ratio, for example our server is at least 3:1 horde to alliance so we are vastly outnumbered which is a pain sometimes. Hope this gave you some insight into different kinds of realms.

I'm not really fond of the concept of realms, I really think the united states should be limited to like four realms. When i first heard of WOW I thought that it was all on one big server, but of coarse you can't do that because of lag issues. But I hate how everyone I know isn't on the same realm. Anyone else think WOW would have been better off having a few more universal servers?

I do wish that there were less realms. Whenever I discover someone I know plays WoW, they're never on the same server. Its cool that a bunch of us are on Demon Soul but theres so many more people that I know who I don't get to play with.

Out of curiosity I just tried to look up some info on Guild Wars population numbers since there is only one server. I found a gamespy page which said over 2mil copies have sold (including GW: Factions) but they haven't released numbers regarding active playerbase[1].

I can see not doing complete regional servers since there are ~ 5mil subscribers in Asia and most of them are probably gold farmers or power levelers. There are between 2 and 3 million subscribers in North America, so I can see not putting them all on one server but if there were like you suggested a low number of US realms I think that would be a lot better. To handle overpopulation they could use instanced areas more often. Anyways I don't know if any of this is plausible but I just wish all the people I knew played on the same server.

I'm a newbie as you know but just thought I'd mention that I selected a RP PVP realm called Emerald Dream. I have noticed though that even though everyone is supposed to be playing "in character" that many don't stay in character that much at all...

What do you think of the RP realm silk? I'm just curious as I have never played on one.

Well it's the only one I've been on so I have nothing to compare it to mind you but I like it. You do have some serious players that really try to stay in character and then others that are more sloppy about it. Most of us stay in character most of the time and restrict our off-character comments to whispers or microphone.

Sure are a lot of men interested in finding "in game wives" in this realm. Is that common in all of them???

silk

lol, I've heard some weird stories about that kind of stuff, but I don't know how common it is..

Well I've only been playing about 2 weeks and I've only been in this one realm but so far I've had 2 marriage proposals and another character that last night declared he's in love with mine (so I'm assuming it's heading there.) And I've seen at least 2 or 3 characters wandering through the shire calling out that they want an "ingame wife" so maybe it's only popular here. I've met some who are married and some of these guys are telling me as well they are trying to get their friends married but can't find a girl to agree.

How interesting! lol

I haven't consented to marry yet. I was considering one offer but then I decided the man had too much "queen time" (his character is a royal guard.) lol However, I can see there are some perks to having a partner. Last night not only did my companion for the evening give me 10 gold to buy outfits and tailoring supplies but then he also let me give him a fashion show back at the inn too. lolll

silk (Hisdesire)

P.S. He's also holding several of my items in his bags so that I have room to buy my outfits. lolllll

heh stuff like this makes me wonder how many guys are playing a female character