FRESH Classic Server Launch with No Transfers! No Layering! and a Population Cap!

^ that! Haha

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On private servers Fresh servers ensured the death of pre-existing ones. We’re still months away from AQ, doing it now would be blasphemous. New servers aren’t a bad idea, but fresh ones are a different story.

It would be a good idea once content has been released/ we progress to TBC. However starting a fresh server anytime soon puts a huge fracture in the game unless put at the current patch.

At this point new servers wouldn’t be awful, but completely fresh ones could be disastrous.

The idea of layering in the first place was for a ‘smooth’ launch experience. (and I think that even with layering it was still an issue of dynamic respawn rates. I remember standing on a spawn point for the first 30 min just to get ANY kind of kill for exp.) It’s par for the course; but if there is a server cap, then when they remove layering, that still won’t be an issue. I do like the idea that we push server populations to the MAX they can hold for the sake of long lasting servers that dwindle over time for stability (and more justification for expending resources to keep a server up) but there should be a buffer included in this number with the expectation that friends of friends would want to join later.

Over all I think less servers is better but having options to go to a ‘big’ server vs ‘small town’ server is still very appealing to me

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The number of overall players of Classic seems to be orders of magnitude larger than private server populations.

A fresh server, or a handful of fresh servers with some experimentation around faction balance, or even other things might not make much of a difference to the current server populations.

But yeah, I don’t know. It might have massive effects… I suspect it could potentially add to the overall population of Classic as well, as some people who didn’t have the time to play when it launched and do now with the current situation, but feel they are too late, could start fresh as well. :slight_smile:

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In one of the pinned blizzard posts Kaivax has already stated that:

So just opening more servers at current phase is what they are doing already… and it’s screwing things up for those servers who had a ‘balanced’ PvP experience.

The reason that existing servers would not die is because they have LOADS of players who just got rank 14 and have invested over 120 days /played. they are too invested in their current trek to AQ and beyond. Fresh would only leach away disgruntled or behind the curve players FROM ALL OVER to have a second go at Classic.

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I noticed the wording there…

I suspect fresh servers would be pretty popular, though I don’t think the majority or anywhere near would jump at the chance to grind levels, mounts and gear from scratch :wink:

Right! and that’s my point, we wouldn’t need very many Fresh servers and I think it would go a long way to alleviate concerns of all the server mixing that is happening on all of these overpopulated realms.

Also people do not want to change. Most of the guilds that have worked hard to carve their name into the landscape of their server will not be hurt by a handful of Fresh Classic servers.

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I support a FRESH server!

Only two things I disagree with:

  1. The faction specific queue idea,
  2. release phases because I think they should stop

Faction specific que is ‘an’ idea of how to avoid 99% Horde PvP servers. What are your thoughts on what to do (if anything) to foster a healthy 50/50 faction balance specifically for PvP servers?

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That pop balance doesnt matter and that BGs suck? Call me old fashioned.

Seriously, I think pop balance is extremely overrated if the density stays low.

Very seriously: Classic BGs completely and absolutely suck and hardly anyone would play, except for the overhyped rep gear.

Edit: and Blizzard will never ever directly gate basic player choice, and if they intentionally gated access to an existing character, theyd face consequences both in the space, and perhaps breach their implied contract on commercial grounds.

O.o woah! That seems pretty harsh :laughing:

Well…yeah lol. Its not a threat from me, personally. Its the crap they have to think about from others, though, in offering subscription pricing, EULA be damned. Sorry that was my world for a long, time.

I think you make a great point pairing those two ideas together. On lower population servers the Horde/Alliance ratio of active players doesn’t matter nearly as much.

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FRESH servers are a private server meme.
Not a snowball’s chance in hell is Blizz going to attempt to run different batchs of servers running different patch’s at the same time.

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Snowballs have a pretty good chance in Hell right? :thinking:

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100% agree

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How is it going to require ‘more resources’ to sprinkle in a few pvp / pve servers in both USA and Euro etc? Why can’t they just use server space they already have to upload a few ‘New’ servers that players can enjoy Classic launch 2.0?

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Ah… you’re taking the statement a little out of context. I’m pointing out that if there are no changes made to patch levels, there wouldn’t be the same resource cost, with regards to development resources to design, specify, develop, test, and deploy feature work to facilitate a new patch release cycle (or a different one on some servers), as well as faction specific queue times, etc.

Ah ok, well yeah I don’t want to misconstrue what you were saying for sure. Absolutely though they are already expending resources to figure out overpopulation and making a real mess. I feel that Blizzard owes it to us to provide an actual solution to this mess. so Yes they do need to deploy ‘feature’ work or whatever to facilitate customizable servers. Slow phase release.

They already have a way to set server cap that begins ‘que times’
I’m not a fan of layering but even that if used at a new launch would not ‘cost’ them anything extra. I am not a computer programmer but I really don’t see what about my suggestions would be that costly or even time consuming.

as always Frosto I greatly appreciate your comments and insights in this thread.

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They seem to have decided to use Layering to resolve the queue times for a couple of reasons:

  • it was already developed, thus would not cost any additional development resources
  • the problem is temporary, and expected to go away when the quarantines end

So, I don’t think anyone is particularly actively working on a solution to this relatively solved, temporary problem.


The faction-specific queue or any sort of feature that leads to balance would require some work. Work to determine what precisely needs to be done, to design that, to specify it, then to have it developed in terms of adjusting any UI elements such as even a pop up that says, “Horde is in queue:” etc. and the coding that would support it. It would also require work to test.

Depending on what needs to be optimized for and how a feature should be implemented, there are potentially varying levels of additional resources required.

In any case, none of it is impossible. :slight_smile:


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