You ever see that friends episode where Joey is writing a recommendation letter for Monica and Chandler, and Ross teaches him about the thesaurus, so he uses it on every word?
That’s what your posts are reminding me of lately.
1 Like
So to be clear, are you proposing that realm pops have nothing to do with queues? That one does not impact the other?
That’s not what his post was on about. It was about pops after they are dying.
I’ll point you to his proclamation of “dead plates”, to further elucidate the relevancy for you.
Not sure where this conversation actually is at this point. But here is the comparison that can be made. We will use a given of 16 variation of 3,000 population per variation. Total population is 48,000.
Layered: Assume only 4 servers which means 4 layers per server. 12,000 players stop playing weeks after the games launch leaving a player base of 36,000 over the 4 servers. The 16 layers likely reduces to 12 layers.
Non-Layered: The 16 variations will be defined as 16 servers. Apply the same math from layered calculations taking the 48,000 pop down to 36,000 pop.
In which of these examples will more likely result in dead servers with the given controlled variable?
The evidence points to the contrary.
I gave you a solid example. Do you have any response for it?
You did provide an example, however it isn’t in regards to server ques, and there are other options to eliminate dead servers that maintains the integrity of the game while providing a cohesive world to play in.
1 Like
In terms of server Queues, those will exist regardless. I have a feeling that Blizzard will have enough data (including the upcoming name secure) that they will be able to determine the amount of layered servers to have available at the start. Queues will likely not last longer than 5 mins out of a pure guess.
Ok, I think you might be missing the forest by focusing on the trees. All of these issues are related, launch pop, server caps, queues, layering, pop decline etc.
Blizzard remembers (as has a record of raw data, no doubt) how realm populations changed over the course of Vanilla, and the lifespan of WoW in general. If they launch Classic exactly as they did Vanilla, they have a pretty good idea of how it will go. Why? Because it is silly to think that doing things the same will have a different result.
Bliz knows that not everyone who logs in around launch time will stick around playing regularly. Some will try it out, decide it is not for them, or takes too much time and unsub. Some (especially those with current retail subs) may stick around but not play that much, maybe just when they are bored of BFA and want a change. Others will play Classic a lot.
But the point is that Blizzard is expecting a lot of people to check out the game around launch, creating huge demand that falls off in a few weeks as the “tourists” quit or decrease play time, leaving a somewhat stable population that will play Classic regularly. I’m not going to speculate what that percentage is, anything I say would be a straight guess.
If Blizzard handles Classic launch the same way as Vanilla, they will have tons of servers to handle all the demand around launch, maybe with minimal queues, and the launch will be a good experience. The concern is that a few weeks down the line, as the population decline happens, many of these servers that were full at launch begin to enter population death spirals. Instead of 2500-3000 players logged in concurrently, you may only have 1700. Not great, not terrible…yet.
New players avoid the lower pop realms and roll on healthier servers. People on the lower pop realms start transferring or re-rolling on higher pop realms. And at that point Bliz has to consider connected realms for the low pop servers. And right around the corner from that is CRZ. And this is a reasonable scenario because this was the course of events from Vanilla onward.
Now Blizzard knows the players hate connected realms, CRZ and dead realms with few people to play with, so they are trying to manage realm pops differently this time to avoid making the same mistakes again. Assuming for arguments sake that Blizzard is correct in expecting a population decline on many servers a few weeks after launch, here are the options I’m aware of.
-
Do it the same as Vanilla, creating enough realms at launch to handle the demand and let realms death spiral and either become ghost towns or connected realms in 4-6 months. This seems like a stupid thing to do to me, but maybe some people are ok with this.
-
Have fewer realms at launch, a number in line with what Blizzard expects the population to stablize to in a few weeks, keep Vanilla realm concurrency caps and just let tens of thousands of people sit in queue until the pop declines. People HATE long queues and this would likely CAUSE people to quit Classic, people who might’ve stuck around and played if they could, ya know, actually play the game. This is probably the worse of all options.
-
Have fewer realms at launch, in line with what Blizzard expects the population to stabilize to in a few weeks, but raise the realm concurrency to avoid long queues. This would create an inauthenic, almost unplayable experience as many more thousands of players are dumped into a game world that was not designed for having 10k people all playing in it concurrently. Launch would be awful to try to play in this scenario, and I know I’d probably have to just wait a few months or so before I’d be willing to play.
-
Have fewer realms at launch, more in line with what Blizzard expects the population to stabilize to after a few weeks, but create realm sized layers with Vanilla sized population concurrencies on those realms, so Bliz can handle the initial launch crowds with minimal queues, by cramming 12k people on one realm and spreading them out into those layers. This handles the initial launch without ridiculous queues, gives Vanilla-like concurrencies and avoids the realm death spirals by allowing Blizzard to collapse those layers into one, unlayered realm as the population declines. This option may cause you to occasionally see someone poof to a different layer for a few weeks, but it handles the initial launch crowds and prevents having dead realms 4-6 months into Classic.
For all the potential downsides of layering (which I acknowledge, but think won’t be anywhere near as bad as some posters fear), I think it is worth it to avoid long-term population issues that are inevitable if Classic is launched the way Vanilla was.
2 Likes
HAHAHA he reported my post… this guy…
Tldr layering helps reduce load being on one server and in turn helps reduce que times
You forgot the option to create more realms at launch, grouped together and ready to merge in the future to retain naming rights. I personally prefer any option that keeps the world whole over options that allow people to phase in and out of the game. A couple days, weeks, months, it doesn’t matter to me. A broken world isn’t at all Vanilla like.
The integrity of the game is far more important than a few peoples convenience, as far as the longevity of the game is concerned, imo.
2 Likes
vanilla only ever went up. sub spikes started happening after they ruined the game, people buy the new xpac to check if it’s fixed, it’s not and they leave again.
Maybe you should refrain from name calling.
There is also the option to limit account creations on realms to prevent ques ever, which would result in fewer ques than any other option will provide. IE; don’t put more people on a realm than it can handle. When you let 10k people join a 3.4k pop server, there are going to be ques at peak times, layering or not.
Vanilla started small (200k) and grew over the course of Vanilla and first 2 xpacs, yes. That does not mean they had a 100% retention rate. Even if only 1 out of every 3 new players stuck around to play long-term, if you keep getting new people trying the game out, your subs will rise. Classic will be a little different in that launch will be way bigger than Vanilla. Still doesn’t mean they will have 100% retention on the launch crowd.
Being clear real quick, I am not making fun of you. This is literally what went through my head.
“So yeah Blizz, this is my plan. We prevent queues by making it to where players can’t create characters on capped servers”
It would work fine if the server was big enough. If people get stale accounts they could open it up for new players to join, or merge them into their other realm grouped realms. There would never be a que and the world would be whole.
You forgot the option to create more realms at launch, grouped together and ready to merge in the future to retain naming rights.
The first quote is my option 1 from original post. The second quote is essentially a locked layer system where you simply can’t interact at all with the other layer until they are merged or connected. It is basically option 1 with name-sharing. Not the worst option imo, but still suffers from economic impacts and suddenly smashing two communities together that haven’t had contact before and might not be progressed to the same level. Not an option I like, but would still be better than 10 hour queues.
But then we are talking overpopulation of a server that leads to unplayable situations. Either you are keeping to the 3000 pop servers at launch and lead to dead realms thus forcing server merges in any capacity or you go with layered servers that forgoes any need to merge servers. I think there is one in those two that Blizzard prefers financially.