21 realms x 3000 players x 3 layers = 189,000 players expected in the US alone…
For a stress test, they arbitrarily constrict the numbers of realms to allow for the “stress” to be applied, since they don’t believe that there will be enough play-testers to perform a full live experience.
However, if they’re expecting more than 200,000 players for their stress test, and that has a reduced server count to constrict it and cause stress…
Does this mean all our expectations of total server counts are low? This is just for the US.
Has something been said in an official capacity about realm numbers? The only thing I’ve ever seen is the “rppvp is too niche, we won’t have that” that indicated pvp, pve, and rp realm types would exist. If I had to guess, I would say that even Blizzard has no idea how many realms there will be (that it is a subject of wild speculation in house) and that the number of realms will probably change between character creation opening (the name reserving) and when the game goes live.
I suspect this stress test is intended to put full pressure on layering. No idea how many realms they will bring up, but I bet there will be way more than 3 layers per. Not because they want to use that many when in production, but if layering works as planned, 3, 10 or 30 should also work.
If they wanted to have far higher layers, I’d have either expected far less servers, OR they’re expecting player numbers in the millions for the stress test.
I heard in the one of the developers talking about how they are only doing layering at the start and then tape it off as people stop playing. What if people don’t quit and endgame zones become as populated as the starting zones.
Im expecting 9, maybe 10 whole people. Possibly a visit from a ghoul looking for his legs so 10 and a half.
All seriousness it’s a real crap shoot because it could possibly be very high due to many people hyping it and a general lull in good games, but it could also be quite small given the possibility not as many people will be interested in actually playing it over watching. It could be that the numbers of people interested are closer to number of participants in watching content and participating on forums since its not really a new game release so to say.