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

[Enkki-eonar (Enkki)]

The simple answer to your question is that we were made of stronger stuff back then. We sucked it up and managed to muddle through it until the initial zones (Hellfire for TBC, both Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord for WotLK) started spewing folks out into the next zone (Zangarmarsh, Grizzly Hills, Dragonblight). We understood the concept that a quart jar could not hold two gallons.

And just to correct one thing: 11 million players DID NOT all log in at once. More like 6 or 7 million TRIED to log in at once, resulting in queue times that often ranged in hours. The realists among us didn’t even try to log in the first day, and some didn’t even try to log in until the 3rd or 4th day.

[Rotduhr-wyrmrest-accord]

I believe the game had around 5 or 6 million players when TBC launched, and around 11 million when Wotlk launched. Sharding and layering did not exist for the launch of either game.

To hear Blizzard talk now, layering is a neccesity. Yet somehow 11 million players all logged in at once and were able to play in Wotlk. I’m not saying it was a perfect experience, but people logged, dealt with some crowded zones for a little bit and then just played the game.

Is it overly simplistic to just ask for that again?

That’s a very simple answer; Blizzard was entirely different.

[Heidene-kelthuzad]

It is true, back then players, specifically MMORPG ones, were made of tougher stuff.
Put old tech from 2008 plus a couple million players together trying to log into an MMORPG at launch, and you’ll see quite the spectacle. Just as it’s happening, it’s also over very quickly. People signed up for this, and believe it or not, but many enjoyed this spectacle, me included.
After that initial queue and couple dc’s or so, everyone is well on their way in the game they now have full on access too past the obvious difficulties associated with such a big MMORPG launch. People made it through this time and time again, and regardless gave early WoW immense praise overall as they up until this day remain the most beloved versions of the game.

Nowadays, with much better tech that can handle things so much easier than back then, telling players they might face a queue at launch is literally causing a panic attack and it needs to be avoided at all cost. Wolves and Boars have to be exterminated ASAP, and Blizzard better make that happen or they face the wrath of several powerful emotions about this situation.

Let’s not even talk about having a miniscule amount of potentially low pop realms way down the line as it happened in the past, i don’t wanna be responsible for the pain just the thought of this could inflict on their psyche, leaving them traumatized about WoW’s horrible nature, being a player driven game. Some things should just stay in the past, and be left there.

Back then, we dealt with it, as we always have. Some people even liked to be on low pop realms. Some people didn’t and had to transfer off, tough luck. I was one of them, and had to do it for my whole guild. Ouch. Things were fine very quickly once that was done.

This time around, Blizzard will hold our hand so much, as they try to very temporarily create the illusion of “safety” for the first weeks or months.
And people buy it, too. Hope you got a Plan B for when they let go and leave you to the real game, and back to a layerless situation for the remaining 2 or so years, and you’re left with the playerbase mentality that got created out of, and supported a layered Classic WoW.

[Stabystabs-zuljin]

Tichondrius was a fing disaster for both BC and WotLK. I had nights I couldn’t even play because of the queues being so long.

[Stabystabs-zuljin]

K

Ten characters

[Fellína-thrall (Fellína)]

I believe the game had around 5 or 6 million players when TBC launched, and around 11 million when Wotlk launched. Sharding and layering did not exist for the launch of either game.

TBC
The game crashed and queues for hours at prime time. Hellfire was awful to level in.

Wrath
Blizzard learned and opened up more places to level and things got better.

Cata
They allowed players to chose the location of there starts based on a few zones but phasing was in full effect at this point.

[Kryptical-emerald-dream]

Yep. I remember launch day for TBC was absolute chaos. Constant DCs and lag. This is specifically why Blizzard added options for starting zones for each expansion from then on.

[Enkki-eonar (Enkki)]

Correct.

TBC = 1 starting zone (Hellfire Peninsula)

WotLK = 2 starting zones (Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord)

Cata = 2 starting zones (Mt Hyjal or Vashj’ir)

[Kallistus-malganis (Kallistus)]

They also went down a lot, and when you got in some quests had such long timers you basically couldn’t complete them

[Dirtytape-proudmoore (Dirtytape)]

I played horde on Kil’Jaeden during the TBC launch. That was a ridiculous mess. Queue times of 1000, constant server disconnects, lag, and server crashes for the first 4 or 5 days. It was pretty bad. Granted the KJ realm was a high pop realm. Everything seemed to calm down on the 2nd week.

Whoever says the TBC launch was smooth or not that bad wasn’t on a high pop server. The forums were flooded with people crying about it and demanding game time and blah blah. I expect the same thing will happen for Classic launch and I expect the forums to be flooded with numerous posts about it too.

[Shoopufqt-tichondrius (Shoopufqt)]

Multi-thousand person queues and constant server crashes. Raids were basically unplayable after 8:30 EST on Cho’gall for the first 7 months of Wrath. My queue for WotLK after I got back from GameStop was almost 9 hours.

[Ohshiftson-area-52]

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

A tweet I made in 2014 during the launch of WoD.

“I heard Tichondrius was somewhere in the 20k+ queue times, along with a few other really heavily populated servers. Ouch. =/”

Still better than sharding/layering.

[Zonkabonk-blackrock]

If/when they opt for such servers I imagine layering if it was used would be used in reduced capacity. Hype for classic is at all time high, it’ll still be high if they release BC but it won’t be the same. That would mostly draw from existing classic players so we won’t need massive servers with a ton of layers. More like 3-4 layers or something if even that much.

They don’t have to go crazy with the new servers in that case. We really need to see just how many people are playing classic after the game has been out for a while, that’ll tell us once and for all what should be done.

[Ziryus-doomhammer (Ziryus)]

They also went down a lot, and when you got in some quests had such long timers you basically couldn’t complete them

Wrath was pretty painful because there major progression quests tied to killing named mobs before shared tagging. You think that trying to kill wolves in the shire is bad, try killing a single mob with 100’s of people spamming for tags on it…

[Williams-akama (Williams)]

@Barkamus-elune

Is it overly simplistic to just ask for that again? The wide ranging, worldwide problems that layering is causing just does not seem worth the small benefit of less crowded starter zones for a day or two.

No it’s not overly simplistic.

I can maybe point out why they’re doing the layering thing with Classic in phase 1 only.

Simply because they’re having a problem gauging the number of actual servers needed.

Laying gives them the option to expand or reduce the number of servers with out impacting the community as much come phase 2.

How effective that can be is yet to be seen, but I discussed it further in the following post and simply copy / pasting that over here is redundant, so here is the link to that discussion.

Classic WoW points of concern

Part 3 Layering This is obviously another point of concern in the community and I fully understand the point behind Layering; it’s an elegant solution and 10X better than sharding so long as you can make it work. However consider a methodology that would improve the practical side of Layering for the unavoidable Phase 2. In phase 2 if the player base expands your back is against the wall; not in a bad way but just in a way that will make splitting servers up a lot more complex. How about yo…

[Galbalan-dalaran]

They handled it with servers having 5,000+ queues and hours-long wait times just to get into the game.

Nobody wants to sit in a queue for 2 hours just to play. That’s insane in 2019.

[Noobpedal-skywall]

Remember the WoD launch? It was terrible. It was so bad that Blizzard gave out free game time.

[Tug-uldaman (Tug)]

Someone did one with the Northrend dragon but I cannae find it.

[Ultionis-the-venture-co]

TBC launch and classic launch were horrible. Que times, lag, overpopulation. So many people quit because of all the launch problems. Game failed right out of the gate.

Oh wait, it actually grew in popularity despite the problems, because the gameplay made up for any drawbacks.

[Oshana-shattered-hand]

Direct answer. It didnt go over well. Huge hours long ques to get in. Lines in the thousands. Constant server crashes and horrendous lag spikes. Yes they added more servers but it only did so much till the servers couldnt handle it. It took time, waiting for others to level out of a zone and go elsewhere and make things easier on the servers.