Alb is the worse realm. I played Alb religiously most of my time with the game. Hib, has quite a few baddies. I think my best experience with people has been on Mid. Too many people on Alb, that think they are l337

 

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Hib is easily the worst.

They're not all bad. But the majority don't even care you exist, have pixels navigating the screen in the vicinity of them and are in the same realm, or sent them some sort of message.

 

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Hib is like that because it's the most gimp realm and most PUG's are doomed to fail. This makes people only want to accept the most skilled seeming players and classes to have a chance at success, or not even bother at all.

Also, there is a severe lack of players willing to lead in Hibernia. This is mostly because the people who try to start a group get tired of everybody QQ'ing and blaming the group leader when they get pwned by every other group they come across, and either stop grouping, or leave for a different realm. Hib groups have the ability to be very successful, but it requires more patience and more skill than your average casual player is willing to attain.

They should just forgo the realm selection screen for Easy, Moderate, and Hard buttons, and then send you to the corresponding realm. I am, at best, a mediocre player. Yet, I prefer Hibernia because it's a challenge. Sure I die a lot(and it really is a lot ), but being the underdog really makes those wins mean that much more. That is uncommon, though, since most prefer to play for the winning team.

As far as the "friendliest" realm, I believe they are all about the same. As Gardianangel said earlier, I believe it's really a population issue, % is the same, but larger population means more in that %. One other thing though is that I've noticed that more of the French, German, etc.. players seem to prefer Mid and Hib. Depending on what time you play, language can be a barrier to getting a group.

if it were 2005 I wouldn't complain, but it's pretty easy to get these days, that's why groups expect you to have it. Well you especially need it on a Warden. You could get away with no ML's on a caster if you were running in a caster group, but you can't be a warden and not BG.

 

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[colorurple]It's funny, because if I play in off times, when the people I normally group with aren't running, I find it much easier to get into a group with the Euro players on hib. I've been in a number of groups where the only English being spoken is "stick up" and "kill"[/color]

 

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You may as well ask which realm has the most dedicated zerg leaders. In alb, you can form a random region group and latch onto billings, rescu or one of the others, and you have safety in numbers, even if the group isn't that strong. Hib (US prime time) has no dedicated leaders, so groups get used to doing things on their own, and are less likely to invite random people from region.

 

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Albion has the most zerg friendly classes and plenty of Minstrels and Sorcerors. So it's easier to throw together a random PUG on Alb that hangs together. Hib classes aren't so zerg/PUG friendly and Bards are always in short supply, so Hib groups tend to be more picky about who they invite. Mid is somewhere between the two, there's always Skalds about and Healers whilst a bit hit and miss are usually available.

For me it all hangs on one class .... the Bard. Having Hibs speed AND primary crowd control in the same class causes problems. We all know how powerful a well played Bard can be, but it's a tough class to master and not so easy for an inexperienced player. There's far less Bards than Skalds or Minstrels. Which means that Hib PUGs either have to accept being gimped for speed AND crowd control or spend a lot of time waiting around to find a Bard. And even when Hib does get a balanced group together, everything hangs on the Bard - speed, crowd control, interupts, heals, endurance etc.

Alb and Mid don't suffer this problem, because CC and speed duties are split over two classes there's more resilience. There's a huge volume of Skalds and Minstrels, so Alb and Mid groups always have speed. And there's stacks of Sorcerors so Alb groups always have CC. Less Healers around, but still more than Bards.

I'd like to see the Bard class changed so that it only has one primary role out of speed and crowd control. For me it would make sense to remove primary CC from Bards and make them focus on speed, medium CC, heals and some melee. To compensate, add a charmable pet to Bard as Hib is short on pet classes. Then move Hib primary CC to the Mentalist, which would become similar to the Sorceror but without speed.

Hib boosting will never happend, no matter how gimped this realm is.
For past 10 years Hibs were always at the underdog on almost every server.

I still have /level 30 Hibs on almost every achived server.

So "friendly" thing is all about population.
I already said at another topic, no one wants to play a gimped realm.

So, you would nerf a class in order to make it more popular. Great idea! Bards don't have to focus on speed. They hit it once and its up; it's not taxing them during a fight. Thankfully, you are not in charge of balance decisions.

 

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Well it's like if you kill a bard enemy grp looses CC, Heals, Songs and Base buffs sometimes. So by moving some of abilities to other classes on bards death grp looses less things.
Just saying.