We knew this would happen. It seems Herod has become the “def-facto” PVP server. It was the first to become “full” on name-reservation, with some people reporting an 11k queue for name-reservation alone. With Brazillians / Streamers claiming the other 2 East Coast PVP servers, it seems everyone else and their mother has flocked to Herod. This problem will just get worse on release day: people will see realms that are “full”, and will feel obligated to roll characters there so they can “play with everyone else”, and also to be assured that their realm will have a long-term healthy population. If they see a “low” population server, they will avoid it like the plague because they don’t want to end up on a server that will be dead come phase 6 so raiding Naxx will be impossible.
This problem seems to be self-reinforcing. As more people sign up low population servers will remain low and full servers will just accrue more players. After layering is ended in phase 2, Herod might end up with a constant population in the tens of thousands making for untenable queue times. Low populated servers like my realm of choice (Grobbulus-RPPVP) might need little to no layering and might not have a strong enough long term population for raiding guilds to survive past phase 6.
Seeing threads like “Herod: The Premier WoW Classic Realm” definitely doesn’t help this. The low pop will stay low pop and the high pop will gain ever more population, sort of like modern day wealth inequality. Even during day 1 of name reservation I had to second guess my decision and delete one of my alts to try to reserve my main’s name on Herod so I could have the option to switch over depending on how things play out. I would definitely endure extremely large queues if it means my realm is guaranteed to have a healthy long-term population. Are my fears overblown? Should I be worried that half the realms are full while half the realms are still “low population” (including my realm of choice)?
A little clarification on Blizzard’s part might help, especially because of layering. What does low pop even mean? Does that mean a server that will still require extensive layering and it’s just “low pop” relative to the others, or does it mean a server that won’t even qualify for layers at all? Again I hope my fears are overblown seeing as how this is only day 2 of name reservation, but it looks like we might have a situation where some realms will have tens of thousands even after laying ends, while some realms might not have a healthy long-term population at all, all because of the herd mentality of wanting to play on “the” server.
4 Likes
Also supposed low population server Myzrael had a que over 7000 yesterday
ehhh population will pop the F**** off, name reservations arent the greatest thing to go off of since a lot of people just see names as a name lol, granted a lot of people may not like vanillas monotonous simplicity or extended grind compared to the amount of shiny mechanics and toys in modern wow but i mean it definitely wont be detrimental
Just lock herod. People can’t roll on it so they go somewhere else.
Rolling on ‘New’ or ‘Low’ servers was always my personal preference. Not everyone is hardcore about endgame, some of us want to take our time and just ya know…play a game.
6 Likes
Bunch of other servers are showing ‘Full’ now as well. It’ll fill up. The first day population is not representative of launch because a lot of people are either waiting to reserve, haven’t been able to reserve yet, or they won’t re-sub until Classic launch… Everyone freaking out about server population are worrying for nothing.
You also can’t forget how many people will be swapping servers in these 2 weeks and after launch. Guilds die, people change their minds, etc.
I don’t think people will keep making characters on Herod when it takes them 2 hours to log in every night. I also don’t think people will avoid low pop servers at launch.
I could see your argument maybe 2 or 3 months in. But why would you not want to roll on a server that isn’t full? You realize that Herod is not even a Classic server anymore? It has so many people you will have so many layers that its pretty much current BFA.
To me low population, which who knows what low is. Is better off. Remember Classic is about community and knowing your realm. Rather have 10k on a server and know my server then 40k and not see 90% of the server for Phase 1
4 Likes
The problem with this is realm time and type are more important so that really limits your options with only 13 servers total to choose from.
That, and every server is going to be layered by initial necessity, they’re all going to be ‘full’ - 13 wouldn’t be enough to hold the classic WoW subreddit nevermind everyone else.
Makes me wonder when Fairbanks will fill up. Lowest pop PVP realm so far and I was wanting to roll alliance there , even though it’s faction balance is looking rather mediocre atm for it. Maybe once Whitemane and Herod have too long of a queue.
I don’t think there will be que’s the first week. I think they are going to have bottomless servers and they will integrate que’s 2-3 weeks in after you got your toon leveled and your commited. Then the 2-4 hour que’s will start up and then they will…
Option 1: offer transfer to low pop.
Option 2: they open new server and offer several realms a transfer off.
Option 3: no que’s and keep layering forever
I just want to play on a server without streamers or a heavy spanish community.
4 Likes
Where are you seeing Fairbanks faction balance? I am on the Fairbanks discord and its looking pretty good to me. Certainly more horde favored, but its not like there arent any Alliance.
The reddit poll and discord is the only places I can see for. It seemed a bit less balanced than a lot of the other servers but still not completely dead like alliance Mankirk / horde pagle.
Long queues to login are the most effective means of encouraging new players who haven’t committed time to their characters to re-roll on a different server.
1 Like
herod is to 2019 as archimonde was to 2004
whatevs, we will just go thalnos if long queues. or hell even fairbanks (coolest name imo) since people are saying the east coast servers may not exactly be located exactly in the east anyway. ping times and queue times will work things out, no worries.
Playing Fairbanks here, as an east coaster. Tried the test server. Pinged 40ms on EST server (Chicago based). PST servers pinged 90ms. (LA Based), Didnt notice a difference during the whole stress test.
If that help ease your concerns if you swap to a PST server
Which brings up an interesting point… since none of us can actually get INTO the game right now why on earth would the servers be listed as Full right now (as in right now, 24+ hours after the initial name claim rush)? Are the server pops they’re listing just purely off of number of names created on each server?
Yes, it seems that the PvP community has created this problem themselves. They’ll either have to fix it themselves or tolerate the cluster they’ve created.
From the way I understand it, a new layer is only created once the cap has been reached. So in theory, if a low pop stays below the cap there may never be a layer on it, I would assume.