Key word there.
We have no idea how many people are going to be playing per region on launch day.
Possibly the biggest MMORPG launch in the last decade, possibly bigger then even wows original launch. All the gamers that have been craving a mmo to go to that isn’t retail wow, all the players that just want nostalgia, all the retail players that will be tourist, all the streamers promoting it even now, the private server players. It’s a given wow classic is going to be absolutely absurd at the start, it may die off quick. It will die off quicker if there’s 15k+ que times on every server.
Doesn’t it depend on their best estimate of how many people will play Classic?
Let’s say that is conservative, and the number is around 150,000 and the server cap can be 5,000 for tech reasons.
That is 30 servers, approximately. However is that everyone, or just NA?
Let’s pretend that is EU, NA and OCE combined.
So 10 servers for each region. Leave 1 RP-PVE and 1 RP-PVP per region, and 4 PVE, 4 PVP.
My main concern, which is not something I think they are aware of is the attraction of “FRESH” to a lot of people. If they launch a new batch of servers 6-12 months in, we’ll see servers die overnight.
If they need to add servers, that should probably happen in the first 1-3 months.
Did someone say FRESH? I just deleted all my characters, where are we going now?
Yeah definitely. Theoretically they could move to the cloud and still maintain that single server setup no problem. But the fact that they moved to a micro services architecture speaks volumes of how things are now set up.
I’m still expecting 50+ servers. But the total server count should be based on how many people they expect to be around after the hype dies down. The 3 and 6 month populations.
The limiting factor for realm cap is the play experience though. That’s why they had a 2.5k active user count, even though they could have had 4k users online back in Vanilla. It was a little flexible at peak times, but generally it was 2.5k so that the realm felt populated while not shoulder to shoulder.
At what point in time? Launch? 3 months in? 6 months in?
yeah I know where you’re coming from. When people say “server” they don’t really mean server. We just want it to feel the same regardless of whatever the eff they’re doing under the covers. We couldn’t care less.
That is why lean servers are a good idea to start. Beyond that, I don’t get paid to make those guesses.
My only real worry is that we have too few servers because they underestimate it, and they add extra servers too late in the process, trapping everyone on overpopulated servers with dead servers no-one wants to go to.
Hence why they’re thinking of using sharding.
Sharding solves the initial login rush by allowing the entire realm population to login simultaneously.
It does not solve overpopulation though unless you keep it on indefinitely and on all zones.
What they need to find a way to do is to have the realms settle down so they have a relatively stable peak time user count of around 3000.
If they have far less than that the realm is dead and if they have way more than that it’s going to be massive queues or constant sharding to allow everyone in.
None of those options is acceptable, in the scenario that 50% of the players are tourists that leave within the first week, overpopulating servers using sharding is an excellent solution, they just have to get that guess right about the amount of tourists and that is what worries me because it’s a hard one to make.
Stepping it down and being cognizant of the 10+ conversion rate and the 20+ conversion rate, and a willingness to add servers early when those numbers exceed expectations, will allow them to manage the bulge without overpopulating servers. The caps for past the starters should either step down to 2.5k rapidly or immediately.
But overpopulated realms are far easier to deal with than too many dead realms.
50% seems like a lowball number, unless you don’t think people are going to try it given the linked sub. I’m expecting we’ll have tourists in the millions with an 80% drop out by 10, 90% drop out by 20. That still leaves maybe 500,000 players actively engaged in Classic though.
4 PVP
1 PVE
No need 2 PVE
Except that roughly 50% of the playerbase prefers PVE servers, so you’ll have 4 dead realms and one super crowded one.
There will most certainly be a RP PVE server and a regular PVE, no question about that.
I don’t know any player who prefers PVE
Then you really need to step out of your echo chamber more.
That my point it’s hard to guess.
I am just hoping that I land on a healthy server and don’t accidentally pick one with a massive streamer on it.
Then again I don’t think that is much of a worry because I play on EU and as I have understood streamers are mostly rolling on PVE servers and I am going PVP.