An issue with alternative solutions that could be implemented by a developer that has managed population on servers abysmally.
What we are encountering now is a byproduct of how servers have been handled throughout the lifespan of the game cataylsted by an unexpected event.
So here’s the thing even had blizzard managed servers perfectly and we had the exact right number of servers to support full realms with even factions the current crisis would still have caused issues with queues.
This op has already stated there’s more than enough room to support the pop without bad queues, just like many servers never saw queues currently before layers. People just want to bandwagon on mega servers with no repercussions.
Yes because there are too many servers, some being low pop. And that would require people to transfer a solution that was tried and it failed.
So it’s not like blizzard just went right to layering.
And also if they had managed servers properly from the start as you’re claiming they should have that free space wouldn’t exist at all.
If transfering is non effective, why isn’t Incend layered?
Restrictions on transfers and character creation, coupled with free transfers were given barely any time to take effect compared to the first wave when it was introduced.
They gave it a few days on some servers, Bene never even getting free transfers, then said whelp let’s layer.
If they managed it appropriately, servers would be vanilla pop capped and new ones could be opened as needed. They didn’t in this case because they already had done so
Opening new servers is a non solution though, as you already said there’s plenty of free space as there’s already too many servers.
And another issue with transfers is that’s an over tie solution not an immediate fix. It’s not really a situation where you can wait for something to work.
Right?
Another week to see the effect of implementing their other solutions very well could have yielded more data on the optimal move.
As Blizzard has throughout Classic, they are acting reactively.
I’m not sure that is a fair characterization. While I do agree with you that many of the problems are a result a game players not Blizzard.
However, in the case of Earthfury, the server had reached a point where there was not only a healthy population but a balanced population. They didn’t recognize this or didn’t pay attention to it. Hence, they never shutdown free xfers to the realm. In addition, no effort has been made to address the huge faction imbalances on East Coast several realms.
Both sides have dirt on their hands.
Or they looked at how many people were taking the free transfers vs how much more the problem was increasing and saw that it wouldn’t fix itself in another week or two.
If it is non effective, how did it work for Incend?
Vanilla does not have sharding, or per zone instancing.
The lines are too grayed/blurred
To have it work right would require a lot of work, and careful world changes and a lot of stuff that does not exist in the vanilla world.
Layering works, out of the box, because it simply runs a cloned game world as a complete separate entity.
You don’t have to go and carefully redesign an unknown amount of aspects of the game world to support it and then spend weeks testing and debugging it.
I really do not care what Ion had to say about layering, while obviously not being a vanilla thing, you can not cause me harm with it.
You ran Naxx twice in a week, and i didnt run it at all?
Ok and ?
I didn’t run it at all, so i was obviously not getting there anyway.
Your running it twice has cause me no harm unless i am some immature twit suffering from a bad case of entitlement.
You killed 8 dragons today, i killed 1
So?
You obviously had more time, or were better at killing them than i was.
I was not getting past 1 to begin with, so how many you killed is a non issue.
A bunch of extra resources become available to sell?
Um ok?
Usually that drops the prices, buyers can buy more, sellers make it up on quantity.
Personally that affects me about 0, because we usually use stuff internally within the guild and make our own things and only sell stuff we don’t need or want.
Probably, but that is one of those things where if blizzard puts their finger in it, their hand gets chopped off, and if they dont, it’s still their fault.
You can not win.
Because see, the perfect system is i babysit the entire thing.
And i dictate to you what realm and faction you can go creating toons for.
And it is perfect, right up until the 1st human being comes along, and then there is a lynching party in my honor.
People do not want to be told what to do, even when they should be, even when it is much to their advantage.
Why didn’t it work on some of the other servers?
Given time and restricted character creation, it had the same likelihood of being effective.
As evidenced by how effective it was for Incend.
Or maybe incendius was an exception and blizzard saw that in the data.
Many of the servers had less than 2/3 days worth of data, some of the currently layered servers never had transfers opened and still do not to this day.
They had server access KPIs flagging red, AEs indicating they need a solution, and the dev team said we’ve got this tool we used before to turn it green.
There was no critical analysis that occurred for some servers currently layered, as they had an insignificant amount of time, in some cases none at all, to aggregate data for it.
In general, people want to be on the mega realm.
They just want the other guy to leave.
They point at the transfer options and say DEAD REALM, NO!
Meanwhile the people on the so called dead realm are looking at each other saying Dead? we aren’t dead, we have a higher than vanilla pop here.
What do you mean they didn’t have time? Blizzard keeps logs of everything that’s happening, they don’t need to start aggregating the data is already there.
Yes, I am going to stop you right there and point out (quite smugly) that neither was layering. If they are truly going to play the #wasnotvanilla card, they better think long and hard about layering.
No it was not, but in terms of impact layering is much less noticeable than sharding would be and is in retail.
I agree with your first portion for the most part.
Part of faithful recreation should be servers are the same pop as they were designed for, queues should be there if people bandwagon as it was in vanilla, and transfers should be available if you want to get out of it.
Layers facilitate mega servers, which will always cause issues with a game that was never designed for them.