Are Classic servers really bigger than vanilla servers?

Ion said in an interview with Forbes that each layer was roughly the size of a 2005 server which would lead me to assume that now that we’re down to a single layer the realm capacity would be authentic to what it was back then.

However I see a lot of people saying that the servers are much much bigger than they used to be and there is some evidence to support that so I’m wondering which it is and if they indeed changed a fundamental design decision like realm sizes why did they when they tried to keep the rest of the design decisions as #nochanges as possible?

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they are massively bigger. vanilla servers were 3k maybe 4k i cant remember exactly and classic servers are 10k+ ive read.

honsetly i think this is a huge problem that is contributing to the overall issues everyone seems to have because the servers are 3-4 times bigger and the problems are 3-4 tiems as bad too

at least this is what i have read. i dont recall back in vanilla having servers this packed

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^^^^^^^^^^

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i hate that the server capacity is increased so much.

i get that they were gauging interest in classic and what not but increasing the server population as they did will be the ultimate downfall i feel like. more servers with a much lower population would smooth things out so much and allow for some real faction balancing to take place.

but were also so far into wow as a whole… we all know pvp is favored to horde and i think that also contributes, even if only slightly, to faction imbalance. more so than it did 2004-2006

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it was a crap decision period. even before the honor system was added. every quest i did while leveling up was no longer a challenge, just a fight against other players all camping mob spawns cause there were way too many people, even with layering. now that layering is removed and honor system is here, its turned out to be an even more obviously crap decision.

would rather have had servers with classic populations and then mergers for the lowest pop realms 6/12 months in.

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The convenience of being able to fill dungeon runs in minutes has been terrific, but it’s also made the situation on PVP servers much more difficult.

I don’t recall ever seeing hundreds engaging in world pvping at Kargath in vanilla lol, but that seems to be what is happening now.

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The increased realm caps are fantastic. Loving it on Pagle. Can run a dungeon on an alt, or get a group for an elite quest any time of the day. No matter when you get off of work, there’s a thriving realm questing and raiding and whatnot.

Its fantastic.

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If each layer is the size of a 2005 server, then collapsing those layers would essentially mean all those mini servers were dumped into one. So a server that started out with 5 layers would have 5X the population of a Vanilla server.

Blizzard said they would remove layering before phase 2 and warned people to consider transferring off overcrowded servers.

Belongs in retail.

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It was going to be a catch 22 either way.

Bigger (and thus fewer) servers - exaggerated issues on PvP servers

Smaller (and thus more) servers - dead servers

Either way, people would have been complaining and demanding Blizzard fix something.

:cactus:

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Mergers aren’t the terrible ordeal people make them out to be. I think everyone who yelled NO MERGERS should be compelled to play the underdog faction on a PvP server. F those guys.

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While many realms are super busy, the expectation is that players will eventually drop off over time. So, it’s nice to think these realms will still have viable long-term populations.

I’m pretty sure this has been said through statistics somewhere. Probably one of WoW’s largest population explosions in a while. How many are on retail now anyway like a total of 100 people on the LFR queue?
There was a big population drop off though.

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They are the same size now that layering is gone, and by same size I mean the max logged in capacity is roughly the same.

However in classic the majority of the servers are what would have been high/full pop servers in vanilla. In vanilla there were a lot more medium/low pop servers so many people likely never exeperienced a real high pop server until now.

Connected realms would be more desireable than an actual merge. But you know, thats a retail tech and the word retail triggers people.

Also, retail.

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I don’t see anything wrong with having more people then before. Heck, in an MMO, the more is the better really. And since WoW is my Favorite MMO (regardless of what version), it does make me all the more happy to see that more people are enjoying it.

That was factoring in layers.

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My eyes tell me that is not true. There were over 500 players in Orgrimmar on Mankrik the other night.

How do I know? I started counting the people just afk at the flight master and there over 40 just sitting there. That was nothing compared to all of the people milling around.

There’s no way a server with 3K players has 500 people in Org

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They didnt want to open more servers at launch, so now almost all of the servers have massive pops that vanilla servers could not handle.

Blizz just mishandling classic in normal blizzlike fashion.

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I’d say even putting aside all the pvp issues the raw resource gathering is a huge PITA right now with the increased population for endgame.

The game world mobs and resource spawns were not designed for this large of a player base.

I dare you to try and farm Felcloth for just personal use in a reasonable amount of time.

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