I see so many people upset about the paid character boost, fresh servers, bots, etc. Why are we not making a big deal about the lack of support for the game and the server population caps being so high?
We know Acti-Blizzard downsized it's support staff and that's what led to the current bot issues. How are a handful of people split between multiple servers with 5k-10k players on them expected to handle that kind of work load? I'm pretty sure the automated system doesn't have the final say on banning an account, which it shouldn't. Why are we not asking Blizzard to hire more people in this department?
And why are the server populations so high? Just because we have the technology? On Mankrik, we're constantly getting transfers and the competition for resources is ridiculous. And we don't compare to servers like Faerlina. I understand several thousand people want to play with Asmongold, Esfand, etc. And I know all the streamers want to play together to feed off each other's popularity and fan bases. That doesn't mean their servers should be the standard. There was never 10k people in Outlands originally. The servers at the time couldn't handle it and it worked out. It made for a more even distribution of players. Yes, there were still low population and popular servers, but nothing like we're seeing now. Almost everyone I play with has no intention of even trying to quest after Classic TBC launch. They all plan on dungeon leveling and it's not because they're min/max'ers trying to be efficient. It's because they don't want to compete with 10k other people for quest objectives. So, why is this not a larger concern?
Clearly, the Classic community needs some perspective. We're all going to focus on things like boosts and fresh servers and let much more important issues that we've all been complaining about for the last couple of years slip right into Classic TBC. Personally, I prefer not fighting 5k people for a gathering node for the next two years. Be them other players or bots.
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You do know that there are smaller servers out there and you have a choice where you play? My server has been medium/low pop for all of classic and it’s been nice.
That would be something I would consider, if I could convince an entire guild of friends to do the same. My server wasn’t this populated at launch. It took time and people miserable on their own servers to get to this point. The problem slowly got worse, so when I decided to play on Mankrik at launch how was I supposed to know it would end up this overpopulated?
Blizzard has indicated that it’s likely to offer free transfers to lower pop servers if there are queues at TBC launch, but you’ll probably have to wait until TBC launch for the free ones.
That’s a nice option to offer, but it’s just a band-aid. It won’t stop even those servers from growing exponentially over time. The zones were never designed to house this many active players and the decision on how much resources should be made available wasn’t made with this many people in mind. There’s no getting around that. Of course they can always increase the resources, but that too is just a band-aid and doesn’t address the broader issue, that when BC was released, the new content was only expected to entertain maybe 2k-3k players per server.
100% false. Blizzard has it’s own support team and they haven’t made CS cuts since 2012. The February 2019 layoffs that many people falsely believe were CS cuts, actually cut zero CS employees.
They’re not. Most servers are not overpopulated compared to Vanilla servers.
They won’t have to because of layers.
The concurrent player caps on Classic servers are about 5,000 players per layer, opposed to Vanilla’s end cycle caps of about 3,000 players. However, the number of players that are active on a server isn’t much different, if at all.
There were 7.5 million subscribers worldwide at the end of Vanilla. This was before WoW became extremely popular in China. NA had 143 servers, while I believe EU had slightly fewer servers. If we estimate that EU and NA had 2 million subscribers each at that time, that would mean on average, each server supported 14,000 players (not concurrently.)
My apologies, I confused the layoffs with the 100 members of the support staff that were paid to leave their jobs. Also, I didn’t play in Vanilla so I can’t speak to it’s population issue. I can however share my experience in Classic WoW and my concern for the future sustained health of Classic TBC servers.
You failed to address the lack of support, only focusing on my mistake. I’m going to assume you would like to see more and not dwell on the subject. As far as layering, is this going to be a long term solution to overpopulation or simply a tool they use to relieve the stress at launch? I have heard nothing about sustained layering throughout Classic TBC so far. If they decide to implement it in the short term, then the problem still remains. “Not concurrently” isn’t the issue. It’s how many actively logged players are on at any given time. I stand by my statement that Outland was never intend to be populated by over 2k-3k players at a time. So, even with a 5k layer, the problem still persists, although to a lesser degree. They designed the content around the technological limits of the time.
Smaller server = less players to group with. Let’s not forget where that led… Cross-realm, sharding, etc.
Too many servers and not enough players led to Cross-realm. Sharding was introduced after they over condensed them. Also, the bigger issue making it hard to get groups in Classic is boosting services and Classic content’s inability to retain players.
None of which were in NA and were likely replaced very quickly.
Well, there is a hacks team that is a separate entity from GM staff. I personally don’t care how many GMs they employ because I haven’t had a single issue that required one in Classic. They could hire more people to deal with bots, but I haven’t run into an issue with that on my Medium population server either.
Yeah, that’s true. Maybe they’ll lower the cap of each layer going into TBC. Blizzard is awful at communication, so I don’t know if we’ll see any indication if they do go with lower caps per layer.
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Lower layer caps in Outlands is an acceptable solution for me. My post was really just to bring more attention to the issue that I’ve heard people complaining about for the last two years and I’ve experienced myself. As far as the staffing issue, I concede that it most likely had no effect on the NA customer base. I still feel that they are understaffed to deal with bots and exploitation. Admittedly, I have no access to that information and I made assumptions based on my own perception of the problem. I’m glad this is remaining constructive though. Thanks for your imput. 
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The number of servers existed due to hardware limitations years ago. Folks eventually got bored and quit. That lead to the dead servers.
Starting off without larger populations, as they did for Classic, will help preserve an active playerbase.
I suppose you have a point, the only concern I have is that there is a balance between the two. And just cramming as many people as they can fit into Outlands would be a bad decision on Blizzard’s part. Hopefully, the layering that Delimicus was referring to will be a permanent solution and not just implemented at launch.
I disagree. They’ve been quite forthcoming and forthright about what they do and why they do it.
Patch notes and hotfixes are detailed, and usually with an explanation. Once they have something they plan to move forward with, they make their announcements.
There are bug fixes that were reported for months on end that Blizzard ended up fixing or addressing as quirks from Vanilla after a year. No acknowledgement of them looking into those bugs. No indication that those bugs were in a queue to be fixed. Nothing.
They kept players in the dark on many things with not even a simple “we’re looking into it” for over a year. Blizzard is awful at communication.
This is a YOU problem and not a THEM problem.
Why does everyone still expect Blizzard to fix the fact that the player base are the ones who all rushed to be on one server and posted over and over how great it was going to be. . until it wasn’t?
Do the responsible thing and roll somewhere with a smaller population.
There’s a Blue Post big fix thread here on the forums… It’s pretty lengthy.
We didn’t all rush to overpopulated servers. I’ve been on Mankrik since launch, along with 100s of other players that I have met along the way. Our server wasn’t packed at first. It slowly grew and then we had a massive influx of players from a server with a horrible A/H ratio. Do you seriously expect all of us to just reroll on another server after all the time we’ve spent together and the reputations we’ve developed within our communities? That’s an unreasonable request.
If you spent any amount of time on the classic forums or reddit, then you knew that Mankrik (meme server) was going to be populated. Claiming otherwise and coming here now asking for blizzard to “FIX” what the players did? It just does not make sense my brother.
Any effort you are expecting Blizzard to do would do this very thing. I don’t see how you can’t see that.
I am seriously perplexed.
What is it you think or want them to do?
2k-3k permanent layers in Outlands for high population servers is all I’m asking.
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