https://www.forbes.com/sites/hnewman/2019/08/26/warcraft-classic-layering-and-realm-queues-ion-hazzikostas-explains-why-youre-waiting-to-log-in/#76287ede7e45
We are trying to manage long term healthy populations on these servers around a unique sort of game launch. There’s no box that you have to buy on a shelf in a retail store for an outlay of dollars. We are opening this world up to millions of people, many of whom are just going to want to check it out as a matter of curiosity.
There are others who’ve been waiting for this clearly for years and they are in, as in as can be, but they’re all going to be there contending for the same server space on day one.
We are fairly sure — we can’t know for sure without being fortune tellers, but most of them align — there will be a fairly steep drop off compared to that day one interest, and we want to make sure because of how important community is in Classic in particular, that we have healthy server populations.
That’s why we’re not jumping to, hey, let’s just open up dozens and dozens of servers. We have the ability to do that. This isn’t about limiting costs or available hardware or anything like that. We could do that easily if we wanted to, actually much more easily than having complicated tech like layering.
But where we would that leave us down the line is with underpopulated servers that we have to start looking at merging or offering transfers from them to other servers to get back down in population. That’s tremendously disruptive to communities and something we really, really, really want to avoid.
Vanilla maximum pop is accepted to be around 3500. Let’s suppose Blizzard is willing to raise that to 5000 today. It would be maybe too many already, but it is just a supposition.
You have 15000 players in a realm today, because those 15000 can share 3 or more layers.
You remove layering, suddenly you have 15000 that can join a 5000 max realm: 10000 go to the queue.
I think we’re finally getting to a common ground here. If blizzard were to reduce the allowable population of an entire realm AS they reduced layers, it certainly would increase queues. All I was trying to say is that layers are not what affect queues, realm pops are.
and thats what they are going to do. do you really think its healthy for servers to have 10k people online at once? heck no. its not designed for that many people.
come phase 2, the people on high/full pop servers are in for a rude awakening.
No. Go back and re-read what I’ve written. Read the article that someone else linked from forbes. That’s not the case. if there’s a 15000 population realm on three layers and all three layers were condensed into 1, you would have a realm with 15000 people and it would be massively overcrowded, but it would still allow 15000 people in game at one time. If you want to only allow 5000 people on a single layer realm, you have to set the maximum realm population to 5000. As it stands, strictly removing a layer does not lower the max realm population.
I said if they remove layers, we’ll get skyrocketed Q’s. That’s true. I never said that layers as a technological product created scaling server caps and thereby directly effected Q’s. i’ve been digging for the post but can’t find it. It was said that the caps were artificially inflated and compensated for with layers for launch so they could shrink down to a normal, healthy population as the natural decline occurred.
You people are arguing over a technicality. The fact is, layers leave, Q’s will go up on servers that are overpopulated.
This isn’t the worst idea. I feel like incentives may be dangerous, depending on how they impact game play. I’m sure a few creative minds could come up with creative incentives though. Like cut next months subscription fee in half for those transferring or something.
Strictly removing layers does jack to the queue. As others have stated, and I’ve agreed with, maximum allowable realm population would have to be decreased. Simply removing layers doesn’t do this.
While we are able to fit several times more players on a single realm in 2019 than was the case in 2006, we are not going to raise that cap any further, even though we have the technical capacity to do so. Raising realm caps would simply forestall the problem, letting more players in at launch but creating an unsustainable situation down the line, with severe queues when we turn off layering permanently before Phase 2 of our content unlock plan.
Here. Are you guys finally convinced? There are people reading every bit of news since the announcement.
they literally talk about the realm having a similar capacity to what it did back in vanilla.
they talk about using layering because of the hordes of tourists.
they talk about collapsing and removing layers.
and
dangit nobody beat me to the punch. the part i want to point out is where he saids letting more people play at launch, but they project severe queues when they turn off layering.
Saying that removing layers doesn’t change the Q in the same paragraph as saying that maximum allowable realm population would have to be decreased… yeah, like I said. You guys are arguing a technicality. The point, as I stated, still stands and is still true and you’ve agreed with it. Everything else is arguing over an unimportant step along the way.
It’s like saying “My wife is pregnant, we’re gonna have a baby!” and you guys spend the next half hour arguing about the fact that I’m not going to have a baby unless the embryo fully develops into a viable human and the birth itself goes well.
