I remember a 2000 player queue back in the day in some cases took about 10 hours (particularly when new realms launched and people refused to log out).
So… about 50 hours?
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During name reservation 10k queues were taking around 5 or 6 minutes for people.
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ques may be likely but i dont expect like hours upon hours of wait time
But that is when people are spending a couple minutes logged-in reserving names. Not a few hours playing for the first time in 12 years.
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From how I comprehend layering, it won’t help a hugely overpopulated server with the issue of simply getting into the server; it will only help once you’re in.
I put in another thread I think it will be “log in before work and hope to be in after dinner when you get home”.
So many people are planning to marathon at the start that i expect they aren’t going to have people logging out.
Even those that didn’t have a plan to be on for a ‘while’ will take the opportunity to stay logged in and complete things because hey, they finally got in.
Of course, I may not understand layering correctly, but I really think it only effects those actually in the game in regards to making the game playable and not seeing 1k people in Goldshire, not those trying to get in the game.
When the game is live, a queue means one must leave the game for the next person in the queue to go in. 10,000 will take hours.
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This will be reality without layering.
With layering, Blizzard is gauging the player numbers the best way they can - using real data obtained from the first release phase.
To Elaborate - While we start with a massively overpopulated server on release, layering will pick up the load and selectively spread those initial spikes onto background hardware, ensuring everyone can login. After the Retail tourists all leave, the populations numbers will normalize somewhat.
Blizzard will then release more servers ( as they’ve already been doing in its current pre-release phase ), using those accurately gathered player numbers and offer free transfers to the overpopulated server, then removing layering ( because it will have served it’s purpose and will be redundant ).
If people refuse to transfer, then they are willing ( and going to have be ) accepting the high queue times.
The only other solution is to have an excess of servers from day 1, watch how some servers die in the first month or two, then force server mergers or have people bin their played time on their current toon to reroll a new one on a populated server. Server mergers also bring with them forced name changes and the severing of some social ties, which is some of the biggest whines also happening currently,
Another thing to consider is the population limits on servers themselves. I was reading a dev post this morning that stated the current realms have a far greater capacity that back in 2004 because of the technology advances in 15 years. The current servers “medium” rating is equal to the older servers “full” status.
Overall, people have to pick a solution rather than whining about layering and whining about queues and whining about populations and whining about dead servers.
I personally see layering as the best option from a bad lot, to fix a difficult problem that has plagued WoW since it’s inception.
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That metric is irrelevant, people like myself were logging in to make 3 characters then got off. The queue was very very quick because people were purposely in and out.
When the game launches everyone is going to log in to play and will probably play at least to level 10, and if you are hardcore at all probably 20+. Queues will be astronomical if it’s 10k per layer.
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At 10K, you’ll be waiting for people who are in queue to leave the line first.
Then you’ll wait for the people already logged in to leave. The people playing won’t leave for quite a while once they’re in.
So, either way, you’ll be waiting a LONG time to play.
This is now a big game of chicken to see how many players flinch first and go roll up on another server vs. the die hards who want to play on the over-populated server.
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To choose a name. Not actually play the damn game.
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The point I apparently failed to get across are things will be different now than they were when vanilla was live. At launch, with layering, I don’t see any way for there to be 50 hour queues. A recent blue post stated that today’s medium population servers are larger than full servers from vanilla.
They said there is a limit to the number of layers that will be generated per server. So yes you may have a very long queue if you are on Herod even with layering.
Not really. Layering is meant to create multiple instances of the continents, i.e. “layers.” Each layer still has the cap of a regular realm without layering, 3000.
Basically, Layering is supposed to let more people into the game at once, thus preventing queues, therefore (theoretically) negating the need to create more realms to deal with the population.
Thanks for the clarification!
So everything I said was under a bad assumption.
but still, that makes the waits on ‘naming night’ a bit more scary, doesn’t it?
I wonder how quickly they can make the layers appear, and if the authentication servers can handle the DDOS levels of traffic we’ll have on the 26th?
Indeed, especially once you consider that most people didn’t subscribe just to reserve their names.
The actual player count will be MUCH higher come launch day.
Expect queues in the 6 digits for the first time in WoW history.
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Wait. Isn’t that what layering is for? Theoretically, Blizzard sees an early mass of players who will taper off quickly. So for the first few weeks, they will increase the capacity of the server with layering. Therefore, there shouldn’t be terrible queues at launch. Or what’s the point of layering?
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Surprised Blizzard didn’t make more servers for classic launch when they can always fallback to connected realms. Or are the costs involved with connected realms too high? Blizzard hasn’t done CR for retail in recent years.
Hardware is not unlimited and blizz stated they have a layer cap, so I expect herod to have quite long queues
Connected realms don’t solve things, they need to merge and they won’t, better to have a rough launch and less overall servers
I don’t know. Do we know what a layering cap is? 50K or less? More than 50 K. I can imagine it being pretty large. The issue is will the server populations die down as Blizzard expects.