Loss of AT's identity

Hey guys,

I recently decided to try out Arena-Tournament again, only to find out it had been merged with Molten. Seeing as the AT population had been on the decline for a while I thought it was a really good idea in terms of boosting the player base and whatnot, especially considering the large amount of players Molten used to have.

However, I was kind of disappointed to find out that the previous WotLK and Cataclysm realms Arena-Tournament used to host, now Blackrock and Warsong, are quite different from how they used to be. It was said that maintaining AT's identity was a priority but it doesn't really feel like playing AT anymore. Different NPCs now selling different things, no race/faction change through commands, no morph commands, no transmogrification NPC, different (and completely dead) duel zone, cooldowns not resetting from duels, etc, all these cool features, things and environments that were unique to the old AT. Things are seemingly more buggy now too (old player corpses scattered everywhere, random NPCs stuck in walls, etc). These are just things I thought of off the top of my head after having played for an hour or two.

Logging in to Blackrock/Warsong honestly doesn't feel anything like AT and instead of a merge between AT and Molten it feels more like Molten swallowed AT whole.

AT was a great server, really well made and maintained. The only thing it really lacked was players. The merge was a really good idea, but did the AT realms have to change so drastically? Practically everyone I talk to, including old friends from AT, keep telling me the server has gone to **** and it really isn't worth playing anymore. From the little I have played so far I have to say I'm not very tempted to return to the server, and I used to love Arena-Tournament.

So really, my question is, why were the AT realms changed so much? Purely technical issue? No workaround? And will the current staff work towards integrating the features that made AT the great server it was into the Blackrock and Warsong realms? Because currently, Blackrock/Warsong feels 100% like instant 80/85 Molten only realms, with a (very) few straggling AT players left to remind you that AT hasn't vanished completely. Apart from those selected few old friends, I see no resemblance to AT anymore, and while a merge generally results in a mixture between two things, it feels totally one-sided this time.

Apologies beforehand if these issues have been lengthily discussed before, I've just been too lazy to search for the threads. Thanks for your time.

honestly, I do not know why AT changed anything. The only thing they needed was more players, all these changes, were bad and not needed, there was nothing wrong with AT. I feel like molten didn't just want them leech players so they added some of their own features, which were never that great.

Yeah i agree, its pretty silly that all the merge solved was the population issue AT had. Its still the same, everyone queues 2s and hardly queues 3s. Maybe adding some rewards for 3v3 will provide incentive.