RIP Flamelash

[Diddums 4,346]

 Obviously none of you are noob enough to be up to speed on this story but it's currently taking place and as we were all on the forefront of the whole thing, it's close to home so is most certainly worth sharing. 

 

Basically Flamelash is a PVP server, the one we played on. @Middle Class Caveman, @Misneach_, @J&B, @GazzaGarratt, we were all on this. When we joined it was a 60/40 Horde server, with the Horde gaining more members over time, and the Alliance not so. 

 

Before I continue this story, let me touch on the PVP system in World of Warcraft. Killing enemy players awards Honorable Kills, which in turn reward Honor Points, and Rank points. Honor points are of course a currency, however the items that can be bought using this currency ranks in Tiers. You start at T1, and make oyur way to T14. It's a very complicated system however, so all I'll say is that you're competing against your own faction for whoever has the most kills, and only the top players are awarded the higher ranks. This is where the images of people with buckets of shit under their chairs come from, because it basically boils down to whoever has the most time, plain and simple. People take months off work for this shit, it's crazy.

 

Now, that said, none of this was implemented when we started playing. That means that whilst we could kill each other, there was zero gain from doing it. No honor, no ranks, no cash, no money, no fuck all. We were getting constantly killed by players 20+ levels higher than us, and generally in groups. It was fast becoming the most inhospitable server in the whole of WoW. 

 

Then Blizzard released what we call Phase 2, which is when the Honor system went live, and it basically became a complete and utter wankfest of a bloodbath. When I say it was impossible to play, you couldn't walk more than 100 yards without being killed and having the Horde corpse-camp you to the point that I had multiple characters all over the game world so when I was corpse camped I could log on to a different character to wait for the Horde to lose interested and move on. 

 

Blizzard eventually stepped in to try some damage control and eventually gave all Alliance players a free character migration to different servers. Pretty much the entire server upped and left, leaving the Horde with nobody to fight. The server, as it currently stands, is dead as a doornail. It's becoming a bit of a famous thing in the gaming world and people are fascinated by it. I just logged on now, and counted all the players on Alliance. You can search for players using various parameters, which you can see below:

 

Here we have the players from level 1 to level 39. I have discounted all the level 1 players as they're all tourists who have logged on to this server just to see it for themselves:

 

 

So 49 players, minus the 15  level 1s leaves 34 players. 

 

Next I did from 31-59:

 

 

So 34 players + 45 players = 79 so far. 

 

Then the max level of 60:

 

 

So 79 + 13 = 92 players.

 

That's 92 players on an entire Alliance side of what was one of the busiest WoW servers in the whole EU region.

 

For comparison, I took these screenshots a few minutes ago. This is between the bank and auction house in Ironforge, arguably the busiest hotspot on any Alliance server. This is our current server:

 

 

And this is Flamelash:

 

Keep in mind that there is only one player on this screenshot who isn't a level 1 tourist, the rest are all visiting to witness an event which we're all gonna be reading about in a few years' time. I suspect it'll be called the Flamelash Exodus.

 

Here's a screenshot of the WoW Flamelash forum:

 

 

 

If you search for Flamelash on Youtube, this is the result:

 

 

 

 

As you can see, these events are widely known all over the world at the moment. I'm personally glad we left ages ago, I couldn't even begin to imagine what a clusterfuck it must be right now to try find even a 5 man group. 

 

There's a whole element of the way ex-Flamelash players are being treated on their new servers too, so I'm sort of glad I transferred when I did so I avoided all that bollocks too.

 

Interesting times in the WoW universe, that's for sure. Let's see what Blizzard does to fix this!

[GazzaGarratt 11,049]

That was pretty eventful then! Lols for the fact they couldn't see that coming. Surely they should've but I do not see what rebalancing they could've done to make it better...other than going back to Phase 1 and forgetting the rank system.

 

I'm glad you get all of this stuff so good spot for sorting out a new server. We dont do all of this BS. 👍

[Middle Class Caveman 980]

Oh how I wish we had known about the migration!

[GazzaGarratt 11,049]

On 12/9/2019 at 9:48 PM, Middle Class Caveman said:

Oh how I wish we had known about the migration!

What would that have helped? Kept our levelling and character?

[Middle Class Caveman 980]

6 minutes ago, GazzaGarratt said:

What would that have helped? Kept our levelling and character?

 

Yup, I have level 47 Mage on Flamelash with a mount and loads of gold etc. Having to start over foe the third time (I rolled a warrior to 30 first and got corpse camped so I re-rolled a mage to have more survivability) has been fucking painful!

 

[GazzaGarratt 11,049]

Hang on, when did they stop offering migrations? Surely they must still be active as technically it's unfair that you have that character tona certain level. You tried to ask Blizzard @Middle Class Caveman ?

[Middle Class Caveman 980]

1 minute ago, GazzaGarratt said:

Hang on, when did they stop offering migrations? Surely they must still be active as technically it's unfair that you have that character tona certain level. You tried to ask Blizzard @Middle Class Caveman ?

 

I've looked everywhere for the information about it but can't find a fucking thing! I even CHECKED to see if Character Migration was available when we decided to move servers and couldn't find anything. It's not the end of the world but I am desperate to be doing the end game stuff because it's so much more rewarding than the 1-60 grind. 

[GazzaGarratt 11,049]

1 minute ago, Middle Class Caveman said:

 

I've looked everywhere for the information about it but can't find a fucking thing! I even CHECKED to see if Character Migration was available when we decided to move servers and couldn't find anything. It's not the end of the world but I am desperate to be doing the end game stuff because it's so much more rewarding than the 1-60 grind. 

I'd still give it a bash by directly emailing the support team and advising them you're a longstanding player that has numerous playthroughs. I bet that move you over. Same for @Diddums @J&B  and @Misneach_

 

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

[Middle Class Caveman 980]

24 minutes ago, GazzaGarratt said:

I'd still give it a bash by directly emailing the support team and advising them you're a longstanding player that has numerous playthroughs. I bet that move you over. Same for @Diddums @J&B  and @Misneach_

 

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

 

That's a hard no.

 

 

[Middle Class Caveman 980]

OUCH.

[GazzaGarratt 11,049]

It was worth a go Elliott.

 

Abit double standards though to say migration was available (for an unknown period) and may be available again at some point (for an unknown period).

 

For a company as big them they should be clear with dates and availability personally. I mean you do pay a subscription for this service every month so I'd expect their support to go abit further than that conversation.

[Middle Class Caveman 980]

1 minute ago, GazzaGarratt said:

It was worth a go Elliott.

 

Abit double standards though to say migration was available (for an unknown period) and may be available again at some point (for an unknown period).

 

For a company as big them they should be clear with dates and availability personally. I mean you do pay a subscription for this service every month so I'd expect their support to go abit further than that conversation.

That was just a bot though, wasn't it?

 

He said it was on the loading screens but that's bullshit because none of us saw it! The first I heard about it was on youtube AFTER it had closed.

 

Absolute bullshit.

[Middle Class Caveman 980]

Folks if anyone is at home, log on to WOW and give these steps a go:

 

Character Migration

[Diddums 4,346]

Shop option isn't even there.

 

 

This is textbook Blizzard tbh. They won't open another one for Alliance, I'll be very surprised to see one, and even then it'll be to transfer Horde off the server, or Alliance on to the server, to try and balance the mess they made. 

[Diddums 4,346]

So I've actually been quite interested in this whole saga, so I wanted to keep an eye on it, and also add some context for those who don't understand the numbers. So I went on to Flamelash and did my /who commands, and these are the results:

 

 

 

 

 

This, for reference, is at 8pm this (Wednesday) evening. Total players: 75.

 

 

Now the context part. The server we moved to, Nethergarde Keep, is bustling. How bustling? Well, I /who'd every level and added them up: 1998 players. 

 

 

For those of you who are stupid like me and needed a calculator, let me save you the hassle. Flamelash is 3.75% the population of Nethergarde Keep. On a Wednesday evening.

 

That should drive home the point of how dead that server is. It's awful. 

[Diddums 4,346]

Here's my count .txt.

 

Keep in mind that the counter only goes to 50, hence the need to break it down as much as possible. The count for level 60s had to be broken down in to classes, and even then every single class still maxed out the counter at 50, so it's anyone's guess how many 60s are actually online. The total count, bare minimum, is 1998. I'd say it's easily close to double that. 

 

 

 

Utgarde Alliance count 830pm 18.12.2019.txt

[Middle Class Caveman 980]

Unbelievable!

[Diddums 4,346]

logged on to Flamelash for a bit tonight with the sole intention of farming some elemental fires to bring over to Nethergarde Keep when I transfer. These are rather valuable but very heavily farmed items so there's always fierce competition at the zone where the mobs spawn which drop them. Within minutes there were a few Hordies around me, one of which killed me once but when I made it clear that I was just there for farming, he left me to it. Three other hordies were completely the opposite, dancing with me, helping me kill mobs, etc. 

 

Then a mage turned up and made it his priority to highlight why the server is dead and just kept killing me over and over. He was level 60, I was level 36. He gained absolutely nothing from killing me, not a single honor point, not a single rep, not even a single copper. I was a completely honorless target yet he still kept killing me. The others were telling him to stop and one of them even figured out a way to cross the game's language barrier and kept saying "no go no go no go". 

 

Obviously these guys know what's up and are trying to look after the few Allies they have left, perhaps in the hope that the Alliance will grow back again, but the mage was having none of it. 

 

Well, to those who helped, I salute you, but please send my thanks to the mage for highlighting why that server is dead in the first place and wish him all the best on his empty PVE server. 

 

I'll transfer tomorrow.