Let me ask you, how long have you been playing WoW? How aware are you of how lower-pop servers fare when player counts lull in between content releases? How aware are you of Blizzard’s abysmal track record of mismanaging server populations?
Arugal was the only OCE PVP server available until shortly after Classic launched. DOZENS of guilds pre-formed months before Classic launched and all reserved their names on the only server we had open to us. “Blizzard immediately spun up new OCE PVP servers after launch when demand was too high” is not a valid response to this - everyone that’s played this game for a number of years knows the plight of low-pop servers, and how Blizzard will refuse to act on fixing them for YEARS.
I’ve spoken to countless people from other guilds on my server about this exact topic and the response from all was the same - they couldn’t convince more than two thirds of the guild to move to the newly spun up servers because nobody wanted to inevitably end up on a dead server. Many guilds on Arugal are a Classic re-creation of retail guilds, or were at the very least founded by groups of friends who have played retail together for many, many years and leaving that behind is simply not an option for most. Saying this is the result of player behaviour is just wrong - Blizzard created this problem of community perception nearly a decade ago when servers started to die off in droves during the mistake that was Cataclysm - and then did nothing substantive about it for nearly FOUR YEARS. The prevailing community sentiment is that if you want to experience the game to the fullest, you need to be on a high pop server.
Obviously the Arugal launch debacle is now only a piece of the larger puzzle that is “what to do about mega servers”. Botting is out of control - I can’t leave a faction hub without seeing swarms of bots. Blizzard took far FAR too long to lock transfers/character creation and the active server population ballooned out of control. Free transfers off a direly overpopulated server are not being offered (why?) - granted free transfers have been offered in the past but please refer to my above point about dead servers.
The Classic team has fifteen years of retail server (mis)management to look to for a detailed example of how not to manage server populations - unfortunately it seems like they’re following the handbook word for word. There are several solutions that would alleviate the problem gradually over time - but none offer the immediate queue relief Arugal desperately needs so much as layers do.
So please, #LayerArugal
Sincerely, a Fat Nerd who just wants to raid with all his pals.
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The private servers were managed better. Its beyond pathetic that a multi billion dollar company with thousands of employees and over 15 years of experience to draw from can’t manage their servers better then a bunch of untrained old nerds wanting to relive their youth.
magaservers should have never happened. So so sooo many problems have come about because they refused make enough servers at the start and lock them at the old population caps. from the relentless exploits possible through layering to the unmitigated disaster that was phase 2. We warned them! We knew this would happen! They ignored us and now look were we are! #NOCHANGES
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I have to say I personally love all of the alliance bots. They’re exceptionally easy to farm shards from for my summoning warlocks.
As far as I know, Blizzard has NEVER “managed server populations” in 16 years. Not once have I seen any forced transfers of players. I only saw servers that were “transfer locked” for 3 months during the covid-19 pandemic. Never before. And that was only in Classic – not in retail.
How can you say that Blizzard has an abysmal track record of poor management of something they don’t manage? You can’t. Your accusation is pure BS. It is pure made-up nonsense.
Does any other MMO “manage server populations” better than Blizzard? If so, which MMO?
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It’s almost like a system based purely on profit and increasing value for shareholders doesn’t directly correlate to quality. Weird!
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What to do about mega servers? Nothing. Leave layering turned off and the probably will eventually fix itself. Players will get fed up with the queues and transfer or quit. Blizzard tried the carrot, now it’s time for the stick.
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Excellent marketing and money making strategy. Annoy the consumer so they just leave and take their money with them.
The customer is not always right. Besides, Blizzard already made their money from Classic.
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Fairly certain they’d like to continue the gravy train. Agree the customer isn’t always right, but he customer right now is fairly unhappy. That should be of concern.
Now that layering is turned off, Blizzard should offer free transfers off all full servers. It’s really all they can do at this point. Many will stubbornly refuse to leave, but that will then be on the players and not Blizzard.
Yes, I know there weren’t enough servers at launch. Yes, I know many more people are playing then would otherwise be due to COVID. Yes, I know people don’t want to leave. That doesn’t change the fact that a full server is a full server.
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So they allow transfers into a full server to force out half the servers population?
That is a mistake. You should not be able to transfer to a full server.
That’s what blizzard did at the same time as remove layering
I know, and I disagree with that. Blizzard has certainly made mistakes. That being said, players still need to take personal responsibility for their situation, regardless of who’s fault it is.
Thanks for proving my point I guess? Not managing server populations is the same as mismanaging them. Blizzard’s lack of intervention in preventing/mitigating problematic community trends created this problem years ago in retail and they’re doing precisely nothing substantive once again in Classic.
As for which other games actually intervene in server population management, you only need to look as far as WoW’s biggest competitor - FFXIV. They have a system that dynamically locks character creation on servers whenever login queues go above a certain threshold (and the threshold isn’t high), and then automatically unlocks them again when the demand is lower. In addition to that they offer incentives for new players to create characters on the “lower” population realms.
They’ve been doing it so well and for so long that every realm in every FFXIV data center (server cluster) has a population within +/- 20% of the median for that data center. No dead servers and no clusterf**k mega servers. There are options for how to do it better - Blizzard just wont.
I don’t disagree per se, not what I want, but what we’ll get hopefully. But we don’t even have that right now. We have transfers in still!
Please tell me where the responsibility falls on the Arugal player for this situation.
Asking the player base to fix something they did not cause at the same time while blizzard makes it worse by the initial debacle But the audacity to allow transfers onto the server All while demanding it after AQ gates have just been open on the only OCE server 5/6 phases in with no communication
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Yeah, I wish Blizzard would do this, especially regarding faction balance on servers. The majority of servers shouldn’t have such a lop sided faction split. Grobb used to be 50/50, and it was awesome. Then a bunch of Alliance guilds transfered over and now it’s around 60/40. Only Horde should be allowed to transfer here now in order to restore balance.
Your server is full. Sorry. By choosing to stay when there are three other servers with no queues you could transfer to, that’s on you. If that’s your choice, so be it. Just don’t complain about the consequences of said choice.
Explain where my choice currently is?