WAHH SHARDING, your say, your way, go

[Eloraell-moon-guard]

I find it so odd that this is considered a problem that has to be solved by external means.

Blizzard said it was. They know it will be a problem for their smooth launch day goal.

There are three starting areas

Actually there’s 6. The Realm cap is not factional.

What do you really think Day 1 of vanilla WOW was like, the moment they made the servers accessible?

89 servers across 350,000 players is going to be NOTHING like 2-3 million over 30 servers. I was there on Vanilla launch. It was sedate compared to TBC or Wrath launch. We had more issues with looting than mob availability. The only mob I remember queuing for was Benedict.

Personally, I’d let players deal with it in player ways.

Players can’t deal with the queues. That’s the whole issue here. People getting stuck in multi-day queues is going to be considered a failure for Blizzard, and will get them panned in the media as such and on the forums.

I’m concerned that certain individuals who see it as the best available option for certain scenarios won’t hold to that, and Blizzard will keep using it at other points in the game. My worries have to do with city raids, massive-scale wPvP, Silithus for the AQ event - and thus my solutions, or desire for other ones, are not about a bunch of people who want to no-life day 1.

Yet another “No sharding because Blizzard might lie” argument then. If you’re fine with 1-10, lead with that and you don’t have to write a wall of text.

[Twiinkedd-moon-guard]

#nosharding

Everyone can wait in line to kill the boar.

[Shimy-khadgar]

Though I applaud your spirit and I fully support that ideology… we both know that wont fly in blizzards game… there will be competition for mobs… but healthy competition. At no point in my time playing wow over 15 years have I ever dealt with the player density in retail that is seen on private servers.

[anon83669306]

Blizzard said it was. They know it will be a problem for their smooth launch day goal.

That doesn’t make it any less odd. It makes it the same mentality they’ve used to explain away many changes - because their goals aren’t always aligned with players.

Actually there’s 6. The Realm cap is not factional.

I said three because the 2500 cap was, to my recollection, factional. Thus the 2500 is divided to three zones and the other 2500 is divided to the other three zones.

is going to be NOTHING like 2-3 million over 30 servers

Both numbers there are completely speculative. (Remember that the hundreds of thousands playing private servers is an international number. The millions of subs reported years ago is an international number.)

We do know they’ve said they want to keep the number of servers lean, which is basically them creating the real bottleneck, in order to not have populations shrink too much.

We can also speculate that Blizzard will pull the ultimate in stupid and try to use the WOW Classic launch to shore up player numbers during a Retail content drought … which is another choice that would be them creating the bottleneck. (Release WOW Classic about a week before a new raid opens, and the population is more likely to focus on those who prioritize WOW Classic.)

Which brings up the point that Blizzard made a choice that WOW Classic will be on the same game time as Retail, when separating it completely would have given them better numbers, better evidence of direct interest, more committed initial players.

– Yes, this is coming down to my opinion being that Blizzard is creating the problem in a variety of ways, and instead of considering other ways, the “best option” is sharding.

Players can’t deal with the queues. That’s the whole issue here. People getting stuck in multi-day queues is going to be considered a failure for Blizzard, and will get them panned in the media as such and on the forums.

Where are all these players who can’t deal with queues? Are you talking about the same whiny babies who, a decade on, still throw tantrums when Tuesday maintenance happens? Or are you talking about the players who experienced vanilla, and dealt with queues because vanilla was a game that worth waiting for?

Multi-day queues versus sharding implies insane population levels being used, which is just creating a massive headache for a later day because there won’t be some exact point when a bunch of tourists quit and the population on every realm settles to a perfect balance point.

Yet another “No sharding because Blizzard might lie” argument then. If you’re fine with 1-10, lead with that and you don’t have to write a wall of text.

Get used to it - I almost always write walls of text, and if you want to sit there and try to nitpick MY OPINION because you disagree, that’s all on you.

[Michaell-lightninghoof]

My solution would be to integrate something like you see in SpatialOS, a world that seamlessly scales with player demand- to millions- without phasing. The architecture is different in that multiple servers support different game components as opposed to the traditional way which limits you by the capacity of a single game server.

It’s 2019. There are options on the table, and sharding is far from the only one.

[Muzein-stormreaver]

Where are all these players who can’t deal with queues? Are you talking about the same whiny babies who, a decade on, still throw tantrums when Tuesday maintenance happens? Or are you talking about the players who experienced vanilla, and dealt with queues because vanilla was a game that worth waiting for?

It’s still a service Blizzard is being paid to provide. People come home from work and have a few hours to play before having to go to bed. It would unreasonable for Blizzard to tell these people “too bad”.

That’s the real issue here. Blizzard is the company who has to provide the game and service to all paying customers. The issue of the topic is “If not sharding, then how does Blizzard achieve this?”

Not many solutions to that question in here…

[Nawak-andorhal (Nawak)]

Mass congestion on launch day is fine. It’s a pretty unique experience. I have fond memories of the swarm of level 1 undead hopping around Deathknell when the game first came out.

Personally I would just leave the game as is and let the congestion sort itself out. But if they want to introduce sharding to combat launch day congestion I think that’s fine so long as it’s just for a couple weeks, just for the start zones, and it’s not too aggressive (still a fair number of people per shard).

[Shimy-khadgar]

No…thats not the kind of congestion we are talking about… that is a healthy experience and one that you will likely see plenty of times throughout your playtime… what we are talking about is literally spending 20 minutes FIGHTING for a Kobold tag so you can MAYBE get 1x Gold dust… that is not fun… not fun at all.

C A N C E R

[Nawak-andorhal (Nawak)]

It doesn’t happen every day though; it’s a one-time event in the server’s history. Definitely a memorable “I was there” kind of experience. I would rather they leave the players to sort it out themselves but very limited sharding is an acceptable alternative.

[Shimy-khadgar]

it will be limited… blizzard knows they will shoot their legs off by introducing world wide sharding.

[Eloraell-moon-guard]

to my recollection, factional.

It was not. The realm cap was 2k (according to Mark Kern) with a flexibility for heavy moments. And it was a “realm” cap, not a Faction cap.

We do know they’ve said they want to keep the number of servers lean, which is basically them creating the real bottleneck, in order to not have populations shrink too much.

They’ve also said they’ll expand as needed. See my posts above for systematic methods of determining when to bring servers online.

Which brings up the point that Blizzard made a choice that WOW Classic will be on the same game time as Retail, when separating it completely would have given them better numbers, better evidence of direct interest, more committed initial players.

This is all cynicism. Blizzard knows exactly how many people log onto which servers and for how long. They don’t need a separate sub because they have you know… data sources.

Where are all these players who can’t deal with queues? Are you talking about the same whiny babies who, a decade on, still throw tantrums when Tuesday maintenance happens? Or are you talking about the players who experienced vanilla, and dealt with queues because vanilla was a game that worth waiting for?

When people see 11 day queues because someone on the forums whined enough to make them not use Sharding, there’s going to be far more complaints both on and off Blizzard sites than the amount of complaints a small group of uber purists who care more about their personal idea of Vanilla than long term stability of the platform.

Also, you just confirmed that Blizzard doesn’t need to pander to your complaints because:

vanilla was a game that worth waiting for

[anon83669306]

When people see 11 day queues

When people exaggerate to absurd points trying to make a point, it makes them hard to take seriously.

---

Ultimately, you expending so much effort to pick apart my opinions proves nothing, doesn’t change my plans, and doesn’t make Blizzard any less likely to be lying (keep using sharding).

[Sabetha-turalyon (Sabetha)]

When people see 11 day queues

Did Blizzard hire the guy who coded the original Windows time estimator?

[Desodeleter-medivh (Desodeleter)]

I can’t agree enough with this line of thinking. If the starting zones are packed, imagine how many people you will get to meet and interact with right from the get-go.

Basically, it’d be the ‘Classic WoW is here’ block party!

So as the world server crashes endlessly and people “lag-out” and desparately flee starting areas the asnwer will be you meet none of them. People sure are romanticisng how it will really play out when hundred of players load into starting areas at launch.

It will be more like the apocalyse. Where fellow players are the enemy. Run from them as if they have the plaque and you must find whatever corner of prosperity you can. Once you manage to kill stuff a few levels higher than you then it’s smoother sailing.

Macro /yell STAY AWAY FROM ME! THIS IS MY AREA.

Then for good measure hiss at them. On RP servers do we all just become golem from lord of the rings? Will be some interesting back stories there. So much for ‘block party’

[Eloraell-moon-guard]

11 days would be 5 people logging off every minute with 85,000 people in queue, on one server.

(Numbers on one of the many sharding threads, starting to lose track)

[Anadann-icecrown]

85,000 people in queue

Wrath felt like that on launch day.

[anon83669306]

@Eloraell-moon-guard

The realm cap was 2k (according to Mark Kern) with a flexibility for heavy moments. And it was a “realm” cap, not a Faction cap.

By the by, could you provide a source for that? Or any official source that actually gives explicit details about the realm cap, population cap? Seriously, I’ve gone looking in the past, I’ve asked various people who make claims, and the last time someone gave an answer they felt was certain, it was the opposite of what you’re claiming.

LOL, this is what I find trying to get a source:
https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/8uya2c/a_different_take_on_vanilla_wow_server_population/

[Sabetha-turalyon (Sabetha)]

Were those numbers written by the Windows time estimator guy?

The thing that I’m getting at here is that without any real data from Blizzard, any numbers about queues is really just guessing.

We can’t say with any level of certainty that there will be queues of 85000 people or that it will be 5 people logging off per minute.

[Kaìm-tichondrius]

It’s still a service Blizzard is being paid to provide. People come home from work and have a few hours to play before having to go to bed. It would unreasonable for Blizzard to tell these people “too bad”.

That’s the real issue here. Blizzard is the company who has to provide the game and service to all paying customers. The issue of the topic is “If not sharding, then how does Blizzard achieve this?”

Not many solutions to that question in here…

100% this. If you disagree with sharding the starting zones, provide an alternate solution. 2-3+ hour queues and crashing because it’s “what happened” is not a solution.

[Eloraell-moon-guard]

Couple of sources
https://imgur.com/2GmbPpp

Timestamp: 39:30

(still trying to find the exact 2k one)