...
Oh please, are you or anyone else going to die if they don't get onto a server for a few hours after launch? I don't think you will. Heaven forbid you compromise on something rather then throw a fit like an entitled child.
He's right though. Instead of splitting servers temporarily but allowing everyone to play at once - you are splitting the servers temporarily and not allowing everyone to play at once. Either way, you won't see all the players at launch and you'll just piss off those who don't get to play.
Sharding is just fine so long as it is temporary, and blizzard ACTUALLY removes it after the initial load. Whether or not they can be trusted to do that is the real debate.
People who really want classic will be willing to wait for a few extra hours if they have to, to play. I mean some people have been waiting for 12 years already, what's a few more hours?
And you bring up a good point. I don't trust Ion to remove sharding. I would almost be willing to bet money he'd expand it before he removed it.
...
He's right though. Instead of splitting servers temporarily but allowing everyone to play at once - you are splitting the servers temporarily and not allowing everyone to play at once. Either way, you won't see all the players at launch and you'll just piss off those who don't get to play.
Sharding is just fine so long as it is temporary, and blizzard ACTUALLY removes it after the initial load. Whether or not they can be trusted to do that is the real debate.
People who really want classic will be willing to wait for a few extra hours if they have to, to play. I mean some people have been waiting for 12 years already, what's a few more hours?
And you bring up a good point. I don't trust Ion to remove sharding. I would almost be willing to bet money he'd expand it before he removed it.
You keep responding and every time you do, I think you still don't understand the issue here. You are replicating the. exact. same. experience. as. sharding. Except you are locking players out of playing.
Do you understand this? Yes? No?
<span class="truncated">...</span>
He's right though. Instead of splitting servers temporarily but allowing everyone to play at once - you are splitting the servers temporarily and not allowing everyone to play at once. Either way, you won't see all the players at launch and you'll just piss off those who don't get to play.
Sharding is just fine so long as it is temporary, and blizzard ACTUALLY removes it after the initial load. Whether or not they can be trusted to do that is the real debate.
People who really want classic will be willing to wait for a few extra hours if they have to, to play. I mean some people have been waiting for 12 years already, what's a few more hours?
And you bring up a good point. I don't trust Ion to remove sharding. I would almost be willing to bet money he'd expand it before he removed it.
Blizz keeping it is certainly possible. So I'm sympathetic to the anti-sharding players such as yourself. But I do agree with the previous poster that your solution would create the same problem, and just create additional frustration.
It's quite possible your solution would even be more frustrating than blizz doing nothing. Because if blizz did nothing they would just have max pop realms and a very long que to get in. You are talking about forcing medium/high pop realms and slowly increasing it - therefore lowering the amount of people who can play beyond what blizz would do if they simply didn't use sharding.
...
People who really want classic will be willing to wait for a few extra hours if they have to, to play. I mean some people have been waiting for 12 years already, what's a few more hours?
And you bring up a good point. I don't trust Ion to remove sharding. I would almost be willing to bet money he'd expand it before he removed it.
You keep responding and every time you do, I think you still don't understand the issue here. You are replicating the. exact. same. experience. as. sharding. Except you are locking players out of playing.
Do you understand this? Yes? No?
Yes. Unless I didn't make that clear when I was talking about not being able to play with your friends.
But here is the thing, and please wrap your mind around this, so I don't have to repeat it 500 times.
1. There is a group that wants sharding, even if it's limited.
2. There is a group that wants no sharding period.
3. There is a group that wants a high realm population cap.
4. There is a group that wants a low realm population cap.
This gives all 4 of those groups basically exactly what they want, with the draw back of not everyone being able to play right away. It's not going to kill you or anyone else to wait, a few hours.
...
You keep responding and every time you do, I think you still don't understand the issue here. You are replicating the. exact. same. experience. as. sharding. Except you are locking players out of playing.
Do you understand this? Yes? No?
Yes. Unless I didn't make that clear when I was talking about not being able to play with your friends.
But here is the thing, and please wrap your mind around this, so I don't have to repeat it 500 times.
1. There is a group that wants sharding, even if it's limited.
2. There is a group that wants no sharding period.
3. There is a group that wants a high realm population cap.
4. There is a group that wants a low realm population cap.
This gives all 4 of those groups basically exactly what they want, with the draw back of not everyone being able to play right away. It's not going to kill you or anyone else to wait, a few hours.
Oh trust me, I wrap my head completely around what you are saying. I am just trying to wrap my head around how anyone could actually think this is a good idea. So instead of having a system that no one really wants, but allows them to play. You want a system that does the exact same thing as the system that noone really wants, except an added negative aspect to it that doesn't allow 95% of the people to play when they want.
This isn't just a bad idea, you should honestly be embarrassed for defending it.
This isn't just a bad idea, you should honestly be embarrassed for defending it.
That's too harsh mate. His idea is creative but not effective when you think about it further. At least he understands the need for a solution, and is trying to come up with ideas. That's more than 90% of the community is doing right now.
This isn't just a bad idea, you should honestly be embarrassed for defending it.
That's too harsh mate. His idea is creative but not effective when you think about it further. At least he understands the need for a solution, and is trying to come up with ideas. That's more than 90% of the community is doing right now.
I know it may be too harsh, but after seeing the BS that has happened over the last week with people freaking out the ignorance is just starting to be less and less tolerable. People hate the idea of sharding for the limited time SO much they are no longer thinking straight and are starting to sound like retailers who come here asking for retail changes. These changes that these people ask for do way more harm to the thought of vanilla than temporary sharding could ever do.
heres a much better solution
initially cap the population of every server at 5000 players
then, after the first week, lower the population caps by 500 players, then do it again at the start of every week thereafter until the population cap is lowered to 2500
The best non-sharding solution i've heard was from Preach on Youtube. He suggested having multiple servers of the same name (i.e. Draenor 1, Draenor 2, Draenor 3 etc..). People would get to choose the server they want to be on, and then once the load problem has dwindled, they get merged into a single server community (just "Draenor").
So to solve the issue with sharding, you want to split servers into, say, 5 shards, then merge them based on current population.
...you serious?
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The problem I've seen with every "solution" to sharding is that people seem to assume that population will only decrease over time. If it were monotonic like this, then Preach's idea would work. However, what happens when there's a holiday or AQ launch, and suddenly this "merged" Draenor server crashes/has long Q times?
If you argue that you should just let the servers crash/have Qs, then why not just do this in the first place during launch?
heres a much better solution
initially cap the population of every server at 5000 players
then, after the first week, lower the population caps by 500 players, then do it again at the start of every week thereafter until the population cap is lowered to 2500
This is their plan, basically. Except noone knows what numbers they are using. They implied they are increasing server caps which will require sharding at the start, and then presumably once the rush dies down/tourists leave they will set it at a normal cap.
11/08/2018 02:25 PMPosted by
Vaikuu The best non-sharding solution i've heard was from Preach on Youtube. He suggested having multiple servers of the same name (i.e. Draenor 1, Draenor 2, Draenor 3 etc..). People would get to choose the server they want to be on, and then once the load problem has dwindled, they get merged into a single server community (just "Draenor").
So to solve the issue with sharding, you want to split servers into, say, 5 shards, then merge them based on current population.
...you serious?
-----
The problem I've seen with every "solution" to sharding is that people seem to assume that population will only decrease over time. If it were monotonic like this, then Preach's idea would work. However, what happens when there's a holiday or AQ launch, and suddenly this "merged" Draenor server crashes/has long Q times?
If you argue that you should just let the servers crash/have Qs, then why not just do this in the first place during launch?
I actually approve of sharding so long as Blizzard actually removes it after the initial load. But there is valid reason to be skeptical if they will. The difference with Preach's solution is that you will never get phased out of anything in that process, so the actual gameplay does not really get affected much, and may actually incentivize blizzard to follow through with the merge.
The issue is blizzard likes sharding. They are proud of the tech and it's usefulness. There is likely to be "mission creep" on using it unless they are strict about honoring their word.
The best non-sharding solution i've heard was from Preach on Youtube. He suggested having multiple servers of the same name (i.e. Draenor 1, Draenor 2, Draenor 3 etc..). People would get to choose the server they want to be on, and then once the load problem has dwindled, they get merged into a single server community (just "Draenor").
So we don't like sharding because it splits up the player base and our "best" option is to split up the player base in what is sharding manifested into physical form? Our "best" option to not play with everyone is to not play with everyone?
Do you see what I'm trying to get at?
Every "solution" to sharding brought up, that isn't dynamic respawns or just leaving it, is essentially the same as sharding in concept.
11/08/2018 02:25 PMPosted by
Vaikuu ...
So to solve the issue with sharding, you want to split servers into, say, 5 shards, then merge them based on current population.
...you serious?
-----
The problem I've seen with every "solution" to sharding is that people seem to assume that population will only decrease over time. If it were monotonic like this, then Preach's idea would work. However, what happens when there's a holiday or AQ launch, and suddenly this "merged" Draenor server crashes/has long Q times?
If you argue that you should just let the servers crash/have Qs, then why not just do this in the first place during launch?
I actually approve of sharding so long as Blizzard actually removes it after the initial load. But there is valid reason to be skeptical if they will. The difference with Preach's solution is that you will never get phased out of anything in that process, so the actual gameplay does not really get affected much, and may actually incentivize blizzard to follow through with the merge.
The issue is blizzard likes sharding. They are proud of the tech and it's usefulness. There is likely to be "mission creep" on using it unless they are strict about honoring their word.
True, but unless you get invited by someone else in another shard, or if you log off, you more than likely will stay in the same shard from 1-10. 1-10 will be like an evenings time worth of leveling and then you never have to see it again, so I don't understand the outrage here. For the unlucky ones you will be phased once, maybe twice before 10 and then you go to the next zone and never think about it again.
[quote="207684207797"]
I actually approve of sharding so long as Blizzard actually removes it after the initial load. But there is valid reason to be skeptical if they will. The difference with Preach's solution is that you will never get phased out of anything in that process, so the actual gameplay does not really get affected much, and may actually incentivize blizzard to follow through with the merge.
The issue is blizzard likes sharding. They are proud of the tech and it's usefulness. There is likely to be "mission creep" on using it unless they are strict about honoring their word.
Let's say I'm trying to be the first to level 60 on my server, so I'm constantly /who'ing. The problem is that if I'm on Draenor 2, I won't be able to interact or /who people on Draenor 3. Maybe they do the server merge when I'm level 40, and then suddenly I find out there are 3 people on the newly merged server from Draenor 3 who are a higher level than me.
There are two aspects to sharding. One is to decrease population on overpopped realms. This leas to not being able to interact with players you could formerly interact with.
The other is to increase population on underpop realms. This leads to the problem that there are now players on your server who you've never seen before.
Preach's solution, like most others, only handles one of the scenarios.
11/08/2018 02:38 PMPosted by
Vaikuu Preach's solution, like most others, only handles one of the scenarios.
Aye. There really is no perfect solution here. We get to pick from the lesser of two evils. Preach's solution definitely still has some drawbacks, but it's the best non-sharding alternative I've seen so far.
11/08/2018 02:38 PMPosted by
Vaikuu Preach's solution, like most others, only handles one of the scenarios.
Aye. There really is no perfect solution here. We get to pick from the lesser of two evils. Preach's solution definitely still has some drawbacks, but it's the best non-sharding alternative I've seen so far.
What are you even saying? His idea is literally what sharding is.
A better solution IMHO:
Open beta for everyone, and a nominal paywall for classic access.
The former will give retail players a taste of classic PRIOR to having a negative effect on server populations. Gets the tourism out of the way prior to release. The latter reinforces a commitment to those rolling on classic servers when it goes live.
A third option is a separate group of servers that would have a one-time $5 access fee. Those servers would have the latter commitment from above, and could be set up with no sharding and a 5k cap.
11/08/2018 01:12 PMPosted by
Tuathaa Or they can release classic the sameday a major content patch drops for BfA
Classic is a big old honking content patch for BFA players as it is.
11/08/2018 01:19 PMPosted by
Tuathaa Or we can appeal to Blizzards coroporate overlords and suggest paid early access. There are a ton of people including myself who would gladly pay for 2 weeks early access
Amen to that. As much as I hate $15 for close-ended 14 year old content, having that 2 weeks would be a HUGE motivator to come back.
11/08/2018 01:19 PMPosted by
Tuathaa Or we can appeal to Blizzards coroporate overlords and suggest paid early access. There are a ton of people including myself who would gladly pay for 2 weeks early access
Honest to god, this is the best suggestion I have seen throughout this whole sharding thing. I was 100% ready to drop $60 for classic plus a sub. If they added some sort of "pay $30-$60 and get in a month before release", this would cut tourists down by A LOT and could actually make it so we wouldn't need sharding.
This is actually something that will work.
It would be THE best thing for server health as well.
Classic Tourism
Stopped there.
Put you on ignore, there.
11/08/2018 02:38 PMPosted by
Vaikuu Preach's solution, like most others, only handles one of the scenarios.
Aye. There really is no perfect solution here. We get to pick from the lesser of two evils. Preach's solution definitely still has some drawbacks, but it's the best non-sharding alternative I've seen so far.
This isn’t the lesser of two evils. This is sort of like ops suggestion where it’s exact same thing, except with more consequences. It is sharding + server merges. It is literally sharding except a more permenant sharding so once you hit level 10, it’s still sharded, once you hit 30 it’s still sharded. Then once the sharding phase is finally over, whenever it’s over, you get.... SERVER MERGES YAY!!! Guess what? That super common name you got right when you logged in and took it? That’s gone! Oh you thought you missed out or interactions with levels 1-10 with sharding? Guess what now you don’t know who 75% of the players you are playing with and you’re level 60!
You are so afraid of sharding because you think it will ruin the community, that you actually think that locking out 95% of the population for the first hour and only open it up for 5% more every hour, achieving an even worse scenario for community, is actually a solid solution.
So let me get this straight. Instead of sharding 1-10 for the first levels and have the ability for everyone to play and then all meet up at 10, you would rather have the EXACT same experience, except have it on a single shard and have this exact experience only available to the first 5% that logs in.
Think for a second what you are asking for here.
Yes, because it forces players to compete over limited resources rather then letting them shard off and not have to compete for those resources.
Even Blizzard admits, sharding is antithetical to the Classic experience.
You have no idea how sharding works.
You will be competing against tons of players on your shard.
Or, your server can crash without sharding and you won’t be competing against anyone except the login screen.