Yeah pretty much.
Would you rather have a rough start and queues to play when the game releases!?
Yes, actually. Rough starts are an accepted part of new mmo servers. Going out of your way to fix something by adding something else that is 1000 times worse is stupid. Did you know it is possible to “prove” in a lab that rat poison has anti carcinogenic properties? Amazing right? Unfortunately its poison so you shouldnt be gobbling it down like a deranged goblin unquestioningly in an effort to prevent cancer, who knew right?
Anyways, who is gonna be discouraged by the queues and rough start? the tourists. Why make drastic changes to appease tourists of the game who are not interested enough in playing it to put up with the rough start? If they are not interested in the game enough to put up with the rough start then they can just wait 1-2 days for the starting zones to die down then play it. Why do the people who are not interested in the game enough to put up server crashes on launch day or a 20-30 minute queue for the first few hours of the server being catered too? They are being catered to in a way that drastically impacts the game for the coming months for Everyone. They are making drastic changes that will last for weeks (months?) so a few… people… wont be inconvenienced in the first few days of release? The “rough start” argument is one of the most asinine arguments ever.
Would you rather play on a low pop server?
Yes actually, i have played on low pop servers before. The community is more involved and friendly and its less of a hassle to get things done out in the world. The people who want 10k players per server are the private server people who played with higher spawn rates. Blizzard doesnt want higher spawn rates, the community wants “no changes” and are terrified of dying in caves due to dynamic respawns, because that would ruin their life apparently, So we are getting 3-4 layers. Each “with the player population of of an individual server as they were back then” so 2.5k-3k people per layer. And blizzard is rolling the dice with each server hoping that a majority of the population is in fact just tourists who will drop the game by the first phase. What happens when on some servers they dont? you have 10k players all out in a game world designed for 3.5k players max. No dynamic respawns like private servers. That means you and 3-4 people of the same faction all are standing around waiting for the same group of 10 satires to start respawning so you can farm your felcloth. 4 people thats a little more than 2 kills for each player per respawn (assuming its distributed fairly) with respawns at 5-10 minites each, 5% chance per kill to get the item you want. 2 attempts per 5 minutes. Ah yes, that is the vanilla experience i look forward to most!
Also with 10k players on a server you may as well have cross server dungeon finder (which from a gameplay perspective is really the same thing as layering just with a different name if you think about it) because why should the tank or healer care if hes rude or ninja loots in the group if he has 9995 more players to choose from in future groups.
The layering and phaseing is one of the worst “technologies” to have ever been abused by mmo developers. They are antithetical to the mmo experience entirely and it blows me away that anyone with the audacity to claim to be interested in mmos would say they want them in their games. No you dont want them in your mmo games. You want to play a single player game with a related chat room open at the same time. Go do that and stop ruining mmos for the rest of us.
Would you rather have server merges?
Yes actually, there are literally 0 downsides to server merges from a players perspective besides the idea that you may have to change your name. That doesn’t affect me because i have some actual unique go to character names that are often not taken even on later term high pop servers. I couldn’t care any less for the people who think they are clever for naming their tauren warrior “milktank” and who think it would be the end of the world if they had to come up with something else because some other genius from another server already has the name and has higher priority.
damn i really wanted to enjoy playing this gnome mage but now i cant use the name “shortstuff”. I wish i was a night elf female hunter named “legolass” instead now.
How wishy washy can you be?
Thus ends my negative nelly rant. I will leave you all with this:
'https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=141&v=rrnw7XuGTJQ