Background: I work in an organization that manages infrastructure in large data centers. I am a software engineer with 21 years of industry experience.
Assumptions: 1) Blizzard devs have stated in pre-launch interviews they have the capability and capacity to add enough layers to not require queueing but doing so limits their ability to reduce the layers to one before phase two. 2) Blizzard is assuming the population will drop off drastically in the coming months as the new shiney wears off so they are hesitant to add too many servers at once. 3) the vocal community would be ok with more potential layer hopping than not being able to play with their friends.
Possible solution (phased approach):
- drastically scale out layers on existing servers to eliminate or vastly reduce login queues.
- as realm populations stabilize over the coming weeks and months and true population (concurrent active user metrics) is known, create enough servers to meet this user limit (the limit for a server where all players can play without layering enabled and without significant queues).
- Offer free character transfers to the new realms with hard dates on when layers will be reduced (which will cause queues again if players don’t transfer). Blizzard could offer incentives to players and guilds to move, like temporary subscription discounts for those willing to move characters above a certain level (to avoid lowbie abuse).
- eventually reduce layering to ONE by phase 2 (or whatever phase, at least before AQ event)
Cons of this approach: server communities could fracture slightly. But I argue long term health and stability of the servers and player base outweighs this concern. Perhaps it took extreme queues for the player base to realize that short term community pain is preferable to not being able to play at all.
Thanks for your time. If you think this solution is dumb and don’t work for blizzard, that’s fine. Don’t throw stones and be positive. I’m just trying to offer alternatives beyond just “give us free xfers plz”. Thanks!
Update: Blizzard is seemingly following my suggestions above I posted on Aug28th. They increased layers, they added more servers (is it enough? I doubt it), now they are going to offer free transfers announced today.
I’m still going to take credit for this if they solve the problem even if Blizzard won’t acknowledge it. lol.