Because they know they’re going to keep layering.
I did mention both of those things in my next post.
I mean, I wasn’t making a retail vs. classic argument, but technically retail does have a great deal more content than classic if that’s the comparison you want to make. Regardless of what you think of retail, classic WoW doesn’t have enough content to keep people interested for a long period of time outside of the people willing to repetitively do a very small amount of content for a long period of time.
I don’t know why you’d think Classic WoW has more content than retail, but it’s not even remotely close. It takes longer to level in Classic, but there’s still dramatically less content along the path to max level as well as less at max level in classic.
BfA isn’t fun because of class design and certain other things, but the actual total amount of content in the game is undeniably massive compared to classic.
The only long-term classic players will be the ones into raiding, which historically is always a minority of players and the people willing to put in enough time to grind to the higher PvP ranks. Repetitively leveling alts is also a thing that took up a lot of time for some of us in vanilla, but I’m not sure that will be as big of a thing in a game that no longer feels new and in a world with a lot more options than we had 15 years ago.
They said they will be keeping a close eye and are ready to spin up new servers if needed. This isn’t the final list.
They can add servers if and when it’s needed. They might indeed be underestimating the amount of players but then again that matches the original #no changes
Tell you what. If I find that I get clumped into a shard where I repeatedly come across the same players, and there’s anything like in Retail, where you’re in a party with someone, standing in the same spot geographically, but you can’t see each other because of PHASING—PHASING—PHASSSSSSINNNNNNNGG—THEN THAT’S IT! Sub will be gone forever.
Why so few? Because all of these guys were wrong:
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Better too few realms they can add to later than so many they have to reduce soon after release. Thats good for players and shareholders. Personally I am happy to queue for half an hour for a full realm and I dont care if they have a thousand realms or three, I can play only one at a time.
Could be, buuuut…
5 to 7 layers per server X 13 initial servers (by name only) = 65 to 91 “Vanilla” sized servers.
65 to 91 servers according to vanilla values is already ahead of the original “Vanilla” launch figures, and given that Classic WoW has zero paid advertisement campaign and will grow organically as it should; this is a decent place to start out life.
It’s very possible that Classic will need quite a few additional servers as demand for the game could be a lot higher than expected.
Most “players” do not get on to test realms, do not beta test and are simply not interested in stress testing.
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Quoting this one for when layering is removed and we’re still under 30 servers with a Vanilla sized population cap.
Phasing because of different quest progression isn’t as big of a thing in retail as it was in say WotLK or whenever it was that quest phasing was a big thing.
Unless you’re in a different mode (war mode on/off) than someone in retail, it will typically move everyone in a party into the same shard immediately if you’re in the same area.
Although in Classic beta it seemed like major cities may have still been in their own shards even though it was supposed to be the entire continent. You could tell because as you walked over the threshold into any major city next to other players, they’d briefly vanish and then re-appear inside the city. That may have been changed already though.
I mean, I’m totally cool with the low server start number because I believe they will make more if we overpopulate into huge queue times. If I’m wrong, whatever. I’ll admit that openly if I am.
BUT…This is the whole point. It wasn’t a small beta. It was a TINY beta. There were thousands of us wanting in who did not get in. I played Vanilla almost from the beginning and our guild cleared all endgame content except Naxx to the point of farm. I wanted to get in there and help search for bugs and missing textures and experience it with everyone. There were literally thousands like me.
But it was an extremely small beta, and very few people who wanted in got invites.
I don’t think it was exclusively streamers, but it was too small, imo. The first stress tests were too short and too limited. This one has been better. I’m still in it, btw.
Why do so many players take Blizzard’s side on the layering issue? It’s just like retail, they’d present a change, thousands would say NO, a few would just repeat Blizzards reason, then the game would just get worse and worse driving more and more players from it.
Layering stinks. It’s fine if Blizzard wants to do it. But how can anyone who wants to play the original game experience possibly accept it?
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Nostralius at it’s peak popularity would need 2 normal size Blizzard servers. 13 servers for NA may very well be the right number. Blizzard will obviously be watching behavior during the name reservation on Monday. If it becomes apparent that they have underestimated demand, they will add more.
Nobody has a better estimate of demand than Blizzard. That said, they might miss by a mile, but they have the ability to fix it.
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50% ppl wont play on ps they want real deal and now we have it.
Blizzard’s side? I think layering doesn’t go far enough personally.
You’re not going to get anything like the original game experience anyway given that we’re starting at 1.12 with content phases that don’t really re-create the original experience those of us who played from day 1 had. Also, you probably aren’t using a CRT monitor, you’re already familiar with the game and will never re-create the actual new-game feeling you had when you originally played, the addons and addon API are different than they were in vanilla etc.
Re-creating server-specific population problems from having too many servers that were then abandoned or having multi-hour login queues isn’t something you should want to re-create. It wasn’t an important aspect of the actual gameplay. It was an unfortunate limitation of the technology at that time and was an awful experience for many.
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Think of how off PVP rank grind will be.
They’ll be servers that just won’t be playable if they are not layered and letting 5K plus players in at once.
If there is layering, then you’ll have groups jumping layers to kill level 48+s. It’ll be just like that garbage on retail with realm hopping to wpvp.
And then, once some people do reach max rank, will they really feel like they’ve achieved max rank like people did in Vanilla? Or will it just feel like a cheap knockoff version of the experience just like pirate servers?
I’m not sure if it’ll effect raiding, of course, with guilds having larger population to draw on, they can just treat their members poorly for the first phase that is layered. After all who cares if they have to replace their key players with total strangers in crafted and dungeon gear.
Problem is layering will undoubtedly cause some of that population fall off… Especially from those who are want the close nit play with the same folks all the time feel .
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Wonder how many servers the retail players have?
Wonder how many of them are dead?
Thank God for sharding for all those dead servers are they would be wastelands.
Wonder how many active subs retail currently has?
Oh yeah Blizzard only posts numbers when they are good.
You may not like us, you may hate us people who prefer classic, but don’t for one second think Blizzard doesn’t need us to boost that record breaking low sub count.
Wonder if blizzard would of done this classic launch if retail subs were good??? Hmmm?
You are overestimating the classic community.
Also blizzard stated day 1 that they are going to be super lean on servers, and than will open up more if necessary.
They most likely have a bunch of servers on hold in case they need them.
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That is just ignorant.
Blizzard stated in an interview that they are going extremely light on servers at launch. Than will open up more servers if needed.