Just let people pay to transfer. Some realms will die, but can’t be deleted because some love dead servers. Everyone else will relocate to the most popular server.
I understand that Blizzard wants to have the “let me do it for you” power play, but honestly, that’s what created this mess to begin with.
LOL ok dude. Name some then. Some actual successful ones.
I would love Blizzard to say “We’re going to offer 350,000 invites to the original players, then wait a week and offer invites to the people who joined in January 2005, then a week layer Feb 2005, and so on”.
It would not only simulate an authentic track Vanilla, but would ensure that people don’t raise the servers in crazy ways. But alas, that’s not something that’s likely to happen.
So unless the most eager people are willing to wait for access, we need layering.
Not only that but a launch experience is something you can’t simulate, so they’ll be able to test it in a real environment before using it on what they see as the primary breadwinner.
FF14, Path of Exile, Runescape, WoW, even Aion held 2m+ subs for years in Asia - they all launched with server queues averaging about an hour
To be fair, if they won’t fix pets, I won’t play either. They work way better on pservers right now.
Blizzard is right. A lot of live players will try classic, realize they cant do this or that and quit. You would have to be in denial to not accept this. Its going to happen. Retail isn’t doing so well, those bored folks WILL fire up classic in the lulls, guaranteed.
If Classic had it’s own sub then Blizzard would better understand how many people would play Classic, but as it shared with retail WoW there really isn’t any way to tell if 5% of the retail crowd will pop into classic or 50%.
Hence to cater for a massive influx of “tourist” a temporary ‘holding space’ is required.
After the first month (or even after the first 2 weeks) a better indication on numbers should be visible and I’m sure if require Blizzard will create more realms - or collapse layers in existing realms.
No, you’ve simply gotten use to their games flopping. Besides, putting aside that most recent expansions have been terrible games compared to TBC/Vanilla - none of them, not even WoD, lost 80% of subscribers in 2 weeks. They lost a lot but not that many.
This model is also born out in every single “WoW Killer” and most major MMO’s since WoW’s launch. A big burst of players looking for something different, with an equally massive drop off, because modern players are super-fickle.
Not only is the playerbase different in size and reasons for playing, but its also 15 years of cultural difference in gaming.
“Blizzard says 80% will quit”…care to quote the developer who actually said this?
What’s your solution to having 2/3 of the Alliance or Horde players on a single server all starting in most popular starting zone for their faction? Why don’t you try giving actual data to support your issue with layering rather that saying “it’s a horrific blunder”?
I fell in love with Vanilla and I complained about the crowding. Did you try out the human starting area?
I don’t believe laying has anything to do with people leaving the game after trying it out. It’s impossible to say layering will be gone by any time or phase if that were the case. It would be a server by server basis. What if every player who joined the very first server didn’t leave? Assuming there are more players on each layer than the game could accommodate, which I don’t believe, the layers would have to stay.
bUt i wOrK 12 hOuRs a dAy. i dOn’T hAvE tHe TiMe tO SiT iN a qUeUe
The overcrowding was, and will be, a major part of the launch. Not at the levels of Server 15, but at a real and authentic level as if 3000 people were on the server together, not 4000 or 5000 or whatever those caps were. There were about 8000-10000 on each server, but 15 appears to have only had 2 layers. Server 3 appeared to have 9+ layers and felt deserted.
Layering is a fail safe not some omg they think it will fail type mentality. The hype for classic is real, the problem is there is no guarantee that hype will sustain. The one thing the classic community tends to not want to come to terms with is yes there are many that love the old way of mmos the way before ease and convivence but many more love the convenience of how things like BFA and even FF14 etc are today and time efficient. Vanilla wow was and is a time sink the hardest part is dedicating the time needed to excel in it.
Many will flock to classic as it got the roots and feel of old day mmos however eventually many will either move on or just play on the side for many reason and you will have a nice core of those dedicated to classic. I don’t see some omg soo many will outright quit more so I feel many will scale back playing. Layering is a fail safe so if and when those things happens the servers are still healthy so those faithful to classic still have a thriving full server and not a wasteland of dead air or only certain hours you can find people to play.
That’s just not true. Blizzard makes money on good experiences for the players and a new player might love the game, but they never got to enjoy it because the starting zone was a terrible experience. They might assume the rest of the game was standing around waiting for a mob to spawn so they could attempt to kill it so they could move on to the next quest which is more of the same.
I think it was what 8mil end of vanilla and so many guilds were struggling to keep a core or field a 40 man raid team, at 8 mil subs imagine how it will be if only at 1mil hell lets say even 3 mil over taking BFA and if those are spread thin across many servers.
People expect it to be popular, but some people, myself included will feel cheated if they took time off work to play and could only get through the first 5 quests the first night of playing because it was too crowded to get anything done or it was too crowded to enjoy it.
Source?