How did Blizzard handle the TBC and Wotlk launches without layering?

[Espure-proudmoore (Espure)]

I don’t remember any notable queues in TBC. I do remember how amazing the actual Dark Portal opening event was though, the crowds is what made it so fun.

There weren’t horrendous queues depending on server, but a lot of them had high queues. Also I can’t wait for the gates opening.

[Aryxymaraki-earthen-ring (Aryxymaraki)]

My server was basically offline for the first 12 hours of TBC, and had a multiple-hour queue for the next few days.

Wrath went better, but there was still an enormous queue.

And my server was never particularly high population. This was a mid-range server, and it basically did not function at the first two expansion releases.

There simply aren’t any good solutions. No matter what solution is chosen, the first day is going to be pretty terrible, and the first week is going to be pretty rough.

[Eloraell-moon-guard]

It would introduce a whole new set of problems if it was at login not character creation though.

[Mogar-stormrage (Mogar)]

There were far more servers, and we had queues longer than the online population of the server.

At the worst, my queue was 5000+ with an ETA of 4 hours.

I would have been happy to accept layering for the first week or two of TBC just to get onto the server.

Yikes, I don’t know what server you were playing on. The only queue I ever had was when I was on a Guest Pass account because paying customers got priority over them.

[Aelithdra-blackrock]

It’s up to you what you prefer, but up to Blizzard what they prefer.

I think they prefer not to do dynamic respawns because, pservers did it first.
Pure speculation here. But no big company wants to copy cat small guys. Doesn’t look good to some. So they gotta come up with something elaborate to try to out do the little guys.

Reminds me of apple and the jail breakers. People jailbroke to get features, that weren’t on iOS. Eventually, apple caved and started to slowly remake the UI. All of the ideas like swiping up on the bottom of the screen to press a flashlight button were on jailbroke devices years before apple made them.

Jail breakers showed apple and people what their product was able to do, easily and conveniently.

I believe Blizz can take the same lesson from pservers.

No to splitting the community. No to phasing. Let’s stick with the proven method of dynamic respawns and higher initial population cap.

[Eloraell-moon-guard]

Why would this matter?

Login and select layer 1. Nope rare not up. Log out. Log in and select layer 2. Nope rare not up. Log out. Log in and select layer 3. Nope rare not up.

Giving people the option to select a layer at log in literally enables them to hop at will. It’s enabling the exploitation.

[Evanson-emerald-dream]

We simply didn’t complain about it we dealt with it and put up with it like a man. Unlike snowflakes of today are.

While I agree most people today are to soft.
I don’t want to have to use teamviewer to attempt to log in remotely from work 4 hours before I get home.
If it happens to fail or an error occurs with teamviewer I would be S.O.L playing that night because I wouldn’t have time.
I will deal with layering if I can avoid that.

[Aelithdra-blackrock]

Mark Kern said on his stream that they had dynamic respawns at Vanilla launch.

No changes. Dynamic respawns.

[Kerg-scarlet-crusade]

The problem is twofold. High burst population, low residual population.

I’m not so sure this is going to be the case anymore. Sure, there will be a lot of tourists from BFA that won’t like it. But I think many others will realize how great of a game it is and get hooked. And then it could spread by word of mouth and more people will try it.

We really don’t know what’s going to happen with the 14-25 year olds. It’s a huge gaming population and an untapped market for vanilla WoW, and many have probably never played a game this addictive. I think many will get hooked.

[Eloraell-moon-guard]

I think you misunderstood me. I said you select a layer when you create you character and you are locked to that layer. If you want to switch layers you would have to create a new character on a new layer.

It would introduce a whole new set of problems if it was at login not character creation though.

I think you misunderstood my response.

[Edz-barthilas (Edz)]

I’ve seen it hit up to around 10k on Oceanic servers and take about 4 hours during a couple of expansions. It lasted a couple of weeks too.
I’ll take layering over that.

[Kelzog-area-52]

More servers:players, 2k+ queues. The number of servers is the limiting factor now. I assume the people at Blizzard are creating a low number of servers relative to the number of players in the first week or so, expecting the number to settle somewhere comfortable for the number of servers they intend to start with.

[Alexès-moon-guard]

I think you misunderstood me. I said you select a layer when you create you character and you are locked to that layer. If you want to switch layers you would have to create a new character on a new layer.

I will straight-up admit I’m ignorant on layering as a whole, not going to lie. Has this been confirmed? That your character is locked to their layer no matter what? … Because if that’s the case I withdraw my reservations towards layering in the beginning. All I care about is that people are not able to exploit. While the community harm is real, that’s tolerable. Exploiting is not.

[Espure-proudmoore (Espure)]

I think they prefer not to do dynamic respawns because, pservers did it first.
Pure speculation here. But no big company wants to copy cat small guys. Doesn’t look good to some. So they gotta come up with something elaborate to try to out do the little guys.

Reminds me of apple and the jail breakers. People jailbroke to get features, that weren’t on iOS. Eventually, apple caved and started to slowly remake the UI. All of the ideas like swiping up on the bottom of the screen to press a flashlight button were on jailbroke devices years before apple made them.

Jail breakers showed apple and people what their product was able to do, easily and conveniently.

I believe Blizz can take the same lesson from pservers.

No to splitting the community. No to phasing. Let’s stick with the proven method of dynamic respawns and higher initial population cap.

They’re also worried about specific bottle necks and the fact we had hundreds of people in Elwynn Forest for example. There is such a thing as too many people. Private servers had problems with the rat pack and the general crowd, it was super high competition virtually the whole way. That wasn’t a natural vanilla experience and Blizzard doesn’t want that.

I’m fine with both dynamic respawns and layering in the short term, and Blizzard has stuck with this.

[Mogar-stormrage (Mogar)]

Why would this matter?

Login and select layer 1. Nope rare not up. Log out. Log in and select layer 2. Nope rare not up. Log out. Log in and select layer 3. Nope rare not up.

Giving people the option to select a layer at log in literally enables them to hop at will. It’s enabling the exploitation.

Why would you continually let them choose every time they login? You choose once and then that’s your layer. Obviously the problem with that is…how often are layers added and subtracted? How dynamic is it? What causes a new layer to form, etc? But if Blizz has a number in mind and there’s going to consistently be that number, there’s really no reason not to just have a one time option to choose your layer, and then no layer hopping. It would act just like joining a server. Except eventually all these layers will be merged.

[Eloraell-moon-guard]

If were talking about selecting a layer once at character creation, why worry about what would happen if you could select your layer at login? That is not the point being discussed.

Because right now, layering selects a new layer every time you log in.

[Felrung-garona]

When Blizzard developed Wrath they purposely created two starting zones and multiple leveling paths to limit stress on servers. Even then queues upwards of five thousand people formed on more popular servers. These queues existed for days and in some cases weeks before they subsided.

At one point i attempted to log in at 7:30am before going to school and got a queue of 7000 people. When i came home from school at 2:30pm i was number three hundred in line.

If laying means i get to play on launch day then I’ll deal with it, plain and simple. The alternative is potentially waiting days and losing huge advantages to people whose full time job is playing video games.

[Hypêrspace-dalaran (Hypêrspace)]

when wod launched it was a week before i could get a queue that didnt reset after counting down from several thousand

[Alexès-moon-guard]

No thats my idea to fix layering. Elo is trying to tell me why its a terrible idea but shes not getting through my thick skull.

Ah. Well, I like that notion or a variant of it. There are ways to prevent exploiting layers. If Blizzard is going to hinder the community aspect of everyone being together, then they need to at the very least put forth preventive measures to avoid exploits. I swear, when the game launches, I am going to be on a abuser spree. As I’m leveling, I will make sure anyone spotted abusing the layers receives numerous reports and is banned for it. If one person is mysteriously illogically quickly high in a profession or dominating a particular market on the AH in an obscene manner… Reported. I will crusade this, dang it.

[Eloraell-moon-guard]

If laying means i get to play on launch day then I’ll deal with it, plain and simple. The alternative is potentially waiting days and losing huge advantages to people whose full time job is playing video games.

Or worse, the initial playerbase being all people who won’t be there 3 weeks later.