Has anyone else noticed this or wondered about it? Because it baffles me.
Take a look at the realm list in game and find all the “full” realms. One of them is Zangarmarsh. A while ago I decided to start playing on Zangarmarsh because it’s always been one of my all time favorite zones in the game. Then, when I went to a city, on both factions, it was a ghost town. Like 2 players hanging out. No chatter in Tradechat.
I have played on Sargeras for a long time because I started off as Alliance and several expansions back I wanted to transfer to the most populated Alliance realm. This morning, Sunday, I log on. Same thing. Ghost town. Nobody in tradechat. This is, or once was, the largest Alliance server- it should be busy at any time of day.
But I’m mostly talking about Zangarmarsh et al, because they’re just empty all the time. It’s not the only one. It’s weird. It’s weirdin’ me out man!
Full is a warning that on major patch or launch days you will likely have a queue to login or server instability. Its a measure of accounts with characters there, not how many players are logged in at that moment.
The game is quiet right now. People are waiting for prepatch or playing mop remix.
I have a feeling it’s a metric based on how many active accounts play on the server and not how many are currently logged on.
Companies guard their active playerbase numbers these days and don’t want people to know the exact amount of players are currently logged on.
The last time I saw an accurate number of players on a server was back in old EverQuest days where it actually had the active population on the server select screen.
Agree with this. It is definitely not based on how many people are logged on because it would change throughout the day and after server maintenance. For the most part, the 30-40 “full” realms have been consistent…but the number is definitely lower than it used to be.
Edit: Just went and counted again…there are exactly 30 “Full” retail realms. Definitely a decrease.
We’re at the end of the expansion, and it’s summertime, so a lot of people are taking breaks at this time, or they’re split between playing classic and Remix. There are still a ton of people playing, but if you’re looking for a more active realm, for the Alliance, it’s going to be Stormrage, and for the Horde, it’s going to be Area 52. These two realms have always been mega realms.
It is because of layering and sharding and phasing. All that should be removed. I want to feel like I am in a world again. This game is made by a bunch of people who spend all day in a 4 foot cubicle and never go outside so they don’t understand why the rest of us want to socialize when we play a game.
In my head they said something about it being based on characters actually logged in, but I can’t find anything to back that up so this may well be correct. Either that or it’s based on how many are logged in but doesn’t update in real time (say: taking an average of how many were logged in over the last 24 hours or something?), this would more or less bypass maintenance windows and such.
In Classic it definitely works that way (Real Time Characters Logged In, I mean). It’s basically indicating how close to having a queue the server is, with Full having a queue.
It seems really dumb for this to not work the same across all versions of the game. But it doesn’t feel like it’s global, for sure. Retail might be using the old version still (which AFAIK is something like comparing total number of characters against the most populated realm, which would explain why “full” realms basically never actually have queues).
When I mentioned Zangarmarsh in my OP, I forgot to say when it was that I made those characters (horde and alli) on the realm. It wasn’t recently. Like months and months ago – presumably during a more active time during the expansion, and not the lull we have now at the end. It still applies, it was a ghost town even then.
I have noticed that and wondered the same thing. I kind of miss the way the servers used to be. Running into people you knew from playing was fun. Now, unless we are on one another’s friend list, odds of seeing one another again are slim to none.
