New Connected Realms - Population and Auction House Analysis

Since first hearing about "Connected Realms" many of us gold-makers have wondered if and when our realms would become connected and how that would effect our economies.

Tomorrow (October, 21 2013) some of the first realms will become "Connected Realms". This means that for all intents and purposes all essential game systems, including the auction house, will be shared between the Connected Realms.

We spoke with Blizzard Technical Director Marco Koegler about connected realms in The Power Word: Gold Podcast Episode #071. Back then Marco let us know it would be a manual selection process. Head past the jump for more data and analysis.

The Analysis

Today we wanted to do some population analysis on the populations on a couple of the realms before they are connected and see if we can get an idea how and why Blizzard is connecting these particular realms.

This will also help predict if your realm may become connected in the future.

The Realms

The following realms are planned to become connected realms on October 21, 2013. These are US realms.

Balnazzar and Warsong
Gurubashi and Aegwynn
Dalvengyr and Dark Iron
Garithos and Chromaggus
Onyxia and Burning Blade
Maiev and Bloodscalp/Bouderfist (previously connected)

Data Sources

All realm population data was gathered from Realmpop.com.

All realm auction house data was gathered from Wowuction.com's Realm Overview pages. (For more on using Wowuction see How Does Your Realm's Auction House Compare?)

The auction house data represents the last 14 days ending October 20, 2013.

Population

The realms we are going to be looking at today are Balnazzar and Warsong which are both PVP realms.

The first chart we are going to look at is the population of both servers and the combined population of the connected realms.

Balnazzar and Warsong - Population
Level 1-90
	Alliance	Horde	Total
Balnazzar	4,269	8,882	13,151
Warsong	5,692	15,759	21,451
Combined	9,961	24,641	34,602
Level 90
	Alliance	Horde	Total
Balnazzar	646	1,662	2,308
Warsong	249	849	1,098
Combined	895	2,511	3,406

It is hard to put population into perspective without a reference point.

In order to make more sense of the population numbers I'm going to compare them to my own medium population realm as well as the highest population realm in the US.

(Some of the numbers I'm comparing them to are from my previous post How Does Your Realm's Auction House Compare?.)

Balnazzar and Warsong - Population Comparison
Level 1-90
	Alliance	Horde	Total
Balnazzar	4,269	8,882	13,151
Warsong	5,692	15,759	21,451
Combined	9,961	24,641	34,602
Kilrogg	44,949	34,991	79,940
Tichondrius	101,043	139,133	240,176
Level 90
	Alliance	Horde	Total
Balnazzar	646	1,662	2,308
Warsong	249	849	1,098
Combined	895	2,511	3,406
Kilrogg	9,196	7,661	16,857
Tichondrius	19,026	41,356	60,382

As you can see from the chart above the level 90 population on the connected realms combined amount to about 1/3 of the population of my medium population realm and don't even come close to the highest population realm.

Auction House

So we know the populations are going to still be small but what about the auction houses of the servers that are getting connected?

Below is a chart showing some of the statistics about the Balnazzar and Warsong servers that are being combined.

Balnazzar and Warsong - Auction House
# of Items
	Alliance	Horde	Total
Balnazzar	1,525	1,679	3,204
Warsong	601	1,766	1,766
Combined	2,126	3,445	5,571
Auction House Value (in gold)
	Alliance	Horde	Total
Balnazzar	298,511	583,113	881,624
Warsong	106,336	812,888	919,224
Combined	404,847	1,396,001	1,800,848
Auction House Rank (out of 492)
	Alliance	Horde
Balnazzar	477	467
Warsong	491	450

Again we can see from some of these numbers (especially the Auction House Rank) that these two servers aren't winning any awards in the auction house department.

The players on these realms can expect roughly a doubling of the value of the auctions available on their auction house.

How do these servers compare to the same medium and high population servers we used for population comparison?

Balnazzar and Warsong - Auction House Comparison
# of Items
	Alliance	Horde	Total
Balnazzar	1,525	1,679	3,204
Warsong	601	1,766	1,766
Combined	2,126	3,445	5,571
Kilrogg	6,945	6,036	12,981
Tichondrius	9,771	11,538	21,309
Auction House Value (in gold)
	Alliance	Horde	Total
Balnazzar	298,511	583,113	881,624
Warsong	106,336	812,888	919,224
Combined	404,847	1,396,001	1,800,848
Kilrogg	6,504,655	4,680,091	11,184,746
Tichondrius	9,962,731	14,684,099	24,646,830
Auction House Rank (out of 492)
	Alliance	Horde
Balnazzar	477	467
Warsong	491	450
Kilrogg	41	119
Tichondrius	15	5

It is very evident by looking at the two realms to be connected that their economies are minuscule compared to not only a high but even a medium population server.

While the players on the new Connected Realm can expect a slightly more active economy it will still be small.

Conclusion

From the data we were able to analyze today it would seem that in many cases Connected Realms are not going to make as much of a difference as we would have thought given that the realms being connected are fairly low population.

We are working on further analysis of realm sizes and their relation to Connected Realms. Expect a future post with more analysis.

All that said from the data on the new connected realms there shouldn't be too much of a upset in any of the economies at least on a macro level.

On a micro level who knows what players venturing into a newly expanded auction house on these connected realms will experience.

If you play on any of the realms that are connected on October 21 we'd love to hear about your experience in the comments below.

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