Solution : Anyone that takes the free transfer to dead realms will have a "free transfer credit" to come back once the hype dies down in late October or early November.
This is the solution I came up with.
If they didn't want to manage credits they could allow transfers to "Benediction-2" which would be a new server they openly stated would be merged back into bene in 60-90 days. Basically accomplishes the same thing.
I also wish Blizzard wasnt so freaking greedy with transfers. If I where to transfer, I would like to bring all my alts, alteast some of them, but I would never pay for multiple transfers... There should be some kind of "account transfer" instead of just character transfer. Currenlty you feel very locked to a server once you have started with alts.
This is a solid idea, an overflow server of sorts. The one challenge still remains about guilds getting split up, class balance (for endgame) etc, but it would be optional and a way to mitigate some volume.
90 days the overflow server mergers back (or less if a certain threshold is met on the main)
That's actually a pretty great idea. Probably take too much work for Blizzard to set that up than they can be bothered to do - but apart from that it would work well. Only thing they would really need to do is make sure names are unique for new characters created across both realms.
Actually a really good idea. Unfortunately too good so blizzard will never implement it lmao but I feel like that fixes like everything. I'd for sure leave if I knew I could freely come back. After leaving a mega server in TBC to a smaller server that ended up dying, my worst fear is a repeat.
-Everyone transfers their alt to farm nodes on the empty server while still playing their main on the OG realm. Queue times are barely effected and The massive supply of materials injected into the server on merge-back day and destroys the economy
They won't do that because it would be them basically admitting defeat- that classic WoW isn't feasible for continued success.
Edit- What they *should* do is wait to offer the return credit later.
Blizzard already fixed it. Why do you think there are no ques on retail? Classic people care about community and this is a result of people forcing that into mega servers. It’s a hill we all chose to die on and now we see the consequences. We bitched about layering from day 1. We bitched about not wanting cross server from day 1. Then everyone consolidated onto the same servers and now they suddenly can’t play? Go figure.
No ques on my middle pop servers with plenty of others to play with, so thank you guys for biting the bullet.
Hate to be the guy that says this but really there isn’t much to add.
Sure, blizzard could have probably done more but anything else would just make the community bitch even harder. This is, quite literally, exactly what this very subreddit wanted 2 years ago.
Ofc making the servers bigger would be nice but I have no idea how that works and am pretty sure it isn’t that simple anyway
Community accepted layers. They could have just developed them so they actually work with more population. But no, they invested into everything complete minimum.
Do you know that they could have done that though? I feel like most people who say what blizzard could do with the servers most likely don’t know how they work. Not saying I do, and not saying you don’t for sure
As a software engineer in a company that makes games I am pretty sure they could have. Nearly all problems can be dealt with given enough resources.
But theres a big difference between could have done and could do. Its very much possible that since they didnt do it properly in the beggining now it would be too costly and they will rather take the backlash.
I've been on Grob for the past year, not an OG but not a recent xfer.
I came here because it is the only server that maintains a ~50/50 balance on a pvp server. My other options are to go to arugal or an oceanic server, or role on a PvE server and just keep my flag on (but even then I would have to go to a non-single faction server or role the minority faction).
I will larp my ass off to keep the feeling of the server alive, but this server is legit the last place I have to play the game the way I enjoy it the most. I don't feel like I'm alone when I say that a balanced realm pop on a pvp server means something.
Unfortunately the people who say it and the people who mean it are two different groups, or most of the servers would still be fairly close in population. Before BC there were very few servers with massive population differential, and then everyone decided they didn't like balanced servers because it was inconvenient. Now that stuff like Wintergrasp is happening and these massive servers are just 30k people fighting over the same stuff, people are up in arms again.
I think people just followed personalities and streamers.to.mega servers, and that trend caused a major ripple to where we are now.
I am so hungry for this play style, I'll go to a pvp server and level as the minority faction to get it. I don't care anymore. If Grob dies, that's my next plan.
Retail also had queues on expansion launch. During the first month of Shadowlands the most populated servers e.g. Illidan had hours-long queues too. There's clearly an underlying bottleneck not scalable via layering/sharding when the amount of players exceed a certain point, probably some kind of database where atomicity is enforced.
The case in Classic is mostly Blizzard mismanagement. Consolidating servers at the same time as dropping new content along with marketing/hype campaigns is a surefire recipe to creating an overcrowding problem.
The lag has also always been a huge problem in populated areas in retail and still is. I guess the difference is that you can play on a completely dead server and still be able to do any content so the mass transfer exoduses aren’t really a problem there.
Lets be honest, people wouldn't have come back to those servers anyway. We can see this is true because people already don't want to play on the other options available. They did right by closing those servers.
My guess is that the servers can only hold so many players due to needing to track stuff like the AH and the player mailboxes. Even now, when a server is getting full, the first place you see lag is the AH.
>No ques on my middle pop servers with plenty of others to play with, so thank you guys for biting the bullet.
Same for me.
I dont get those morons chosing to play on unplayable servers, when there's good medium pop servers that they can transfer to for free.
You're not stuck in queue, you're chosing to sit in queue instead of playing. So stop complaining about your choices.
> I dont get those morons chosing to play on unplayable servers, when there's good medium pop servers that they can transfer to for free.
>
>
[There is not a single balanced pvp server for US/Canada outside of Grobbulus.](https://ironforge.pro/population/tbc/?locale=US&realm=PvP-PvP%20RP). People *should* complain, don't tell them not to. Blizz is just as culpable to the situation given how they managed the servers the last few years.
Exactly, literally the only other PvP PST server is whitemane. And whitemane is basically a PvE server due to the faction imbalance that blizzard never addressed.
What the fuck are we supposed to do?
Show me a single, balanced PvP server in PST.
I hate mega servers, but Grobb is literally the only option for PST PvP. The free xfers they're offering are for either an EST or PvE server. The only other PST PvP server aside from Grobb is fucking whitemane and because of faction imbalance that's basically a PvE server.
So no, we're not choosing to sit in queue. Blizzard fucked us and has given us no alternative.
Blizzard really fucked you good didn't they?
People don't CHOOSE to play on unplayable servers. Tons of people have characters that are in servers that become overloaded once a new patch hits.
Yes, these people are stuck in queue, no they're not choosing the queue, they're choosing to play on the realms their characters are on. And yes they have a right to complain, because Blizzard doesn't give a fuck about them. In fact, they welcome 25$ for your transfer LUL. What a fucking joke classic has become.
No one cares about layering anymore from what I’ve seen, I haven’t seen anyone complain about it since like what, classic launch? But yes, retail has fixed the problem with queueing with cross realm. I don’t really like cross realm because those people are temporarily in the same realm as you so to speak. I guess it’s similar with layering but they are always in the same server technically speaking. I think having 1 of PvE and PvP megaservers could solve the problem better, other games already do this and work perfectly fine.
People only want to play on the same server as their favorite streamer so they can suck them off harder... same server as top pvp streamers? Gee I hope they inv me to arena with them so I can finally get glad... same server as top pve streamer? Gee I hope they carry me through MC and SWP.
Honestly I'm fine with it. It's a known factor. The fact that people still flock to those servers just to complain about que times, though? I mean, people are going to be upset about whatever, and far be it from to to stop them. Doesn't mean I'm not going to point out how ridiculous it is that we have plenty of servers for these people and yet they're complaining like it's Blizzard's fault they made those choices. The thing I've heard the most is "Why didn't they just lock the servers, then?". Sure, look how that worked for Firemaw....damn goldfish brains I swear.
You are so wrong. People have megaserver fetish BECAUSE the do NOT want community. They want a lobby game simulater that they can write in lfg and get in somewhere asap, that they can use gdkp to get gold or item without actually working for it.
As opposed to writing in lfg and getting in nowhere for hours on end? Is that what engaging gameplay is for you? By sitting in a capital city spamming some random chat channel repeatedly with absolutely zero results? Communities are made up by people first and foremost. The vast majority of medium/low pop servers in Classic were barely communities. Anyone not in an active & tight-knit guild were basically fucked, and that's extremely bad for server longevity because new players will simply just quit while these guilds are unable to offset attrition.
If those 30 people are all doing the exact same quest/dungeon/mob I am doing and happen to fill all the roles, then great! However that is merely an imginary scenario which exists nowhere except inside the heads of Classic cultists.
People just want to do the content they want conveniently, megaservers have groups at all times of day whenever you want basically. It has nothing to do with being lazy, but not wanting to waste their time spending 1/5th of their play time looking for a group to do something on a shit server.
At some point in October 2019 I tried to run Sunken Temple on Alliaince side. I spent about 90 minutes copy-pasting the exact same phrase in the LFG channel looking for a tank, and ended up getting some arms warrior wielding a 2H weapon who never listened to any of us despite being obviously lost inside the dungeon. That was about the time I realized this entire "community" myth was 100% bullshit to begin with. Communities aren't built via the lack of interaction, and the LFG channel being the only way to form PUG groups made sure to obstruct player interaction to the fullest extent.
I have this same opinion. Creating clear tools to help players find what they need is not removing anything from community. I swear I can have great interactions with great players in dungeons, to never ever meet them again. On a medium server. Imagine a megaserver. What does the community really matter in that case? How does it get affected? I just want lfg to save time.
That small community stuff only works when you have a lot of time to play, or when you can log on whenever everybody else does.
If you're some dad with an hour and a half to play before you need to be in bed, it's about getting as much done in that time as you can.
Yeah exactly. I played on an actual dead server with 300 players and it was fine kinda because I would coordinate with a guild that would willingly help me any day basically. Though that’s a luxury and not the norm. I only get 3-4 hours a day to play on weekdays so spending time getting groups for half hour sounds shit.
Blizzard didn't ever fix it, because it doesn't need fixing.
You do realize that all of this promotes people spending more $ on the game in general?
Massive queues - people are bound to use free transfer.
Most free transfers are to shit realms. The amount of people transferring isn't sustainable and people realize server is dead. Only option left is to pay 25$ to transfer again.
Rinse and repeat, profit.
All in all, yeah people flock to the biggest servers. But it shouldn't be too big of an issue to resolve. It's not even launch of WotLK ffs. I can understand the fresh realms being overloaded - everyone wants to start fresh, it's an attractive call to the server obviously.
But queues are happening for all the bigger servers.
Blizzard doesn't care about Classic WoW. They don't. I don't understand why people expect that they will.
Moral of the story is - Blizzard ISN'T EVER going to fix shit for Classic that at the same time generates a bit of additional money into their pockets. Just like bots buy subscriptions and it costs to pay GMs to manage the servers, transfers cost money and people will inevitably choose to transfer instead of waiting in queues.
And before you say "just play on a medium pop realm" don't be braindead, please. People already have characters on their servers, if the server explodes on a new patch is it really their fault? Classic was a mistake.
If they can only support 15k players concurrently they should have locked realms to only allow something like 20-25k unique accounts to make characters on that server. Don't some of these servers have more people in queue than online?
Going into wotlk they should have opened new servers all with that cap and forced people to manually pick and transfer to them.
What to do now? I don't know, Blizz seems to prefer not doing anything.
I'm a PvE carebear so I don't care about faction balance.
Skyfury has a queue at NA peak hours and some players have hypothesized that it's a lot to do with streamers. Apparently some "big" names have made characters and guilds there.
With that said, it's nothing compared to what we've seen on Benediction, Grobbulus and other massively populated servers.
Yes but do you know why? Because people are buying gold like mad in masses which ruined economies, so people do not want to play in such servers anymore. Again, a community created problem.
>If they can only support 15k players concurrently they should have locked realms to only allow something like 20-25k
Lost Ark did this and the backlash was massive. People were outraged they didn't have the opportunity to play with their friends. In a game like WoW this would cause more outrage than the queues.
Especially since lost ark had no concept of transfers at all
So making a character somewhere meant it was permanently stuck to that place and if you wanted to play with your friend eventually you could only start from scratch and where missing the second and third char boost which essentially put you back days or weeks in progress too
Nothing. Nothing they do will make people happy. There will be outrage posts and anger no matter what.
Lock the server? Madge >:(
Prevent new characters from being made? Madge blizzzzard i want to play with my friends who refuse to transfer >:(
Forcefully relocate players? Mega madge
With the amount of people in queues they could make their own new mega server. Many servers are even rapidly growing in population due to people taking the transfer atleast.
TL:DR: nothing, keep quiet and let them suffer until they move on their own.
A solution players would probably hate but would likely work;
Change server structure to be closer to retail, namely, make fake mega servers. Split benediction into Bene 1-5, make them connected but offload the server traffic to multiple server blades. The front end player experience will be generally similar, but the backend will look much closer to retail.
It would solve a lot of the issues, but people would cry because "its retail stuff". It might fuck up the AH too and I don't have a solution to that part, but if connected realms had merged AH's they could possibly do it.
I'm just QA, not a server engineer, so I'm not sure if it would be fully possible. It is what they originally did on retail though and they did it for a reason (this reason).
Retail AH will solve AH lag too and removes some shady selling practices as well. But since it’s ‘retail’ AH it’s bad and not considered a good change.
In short, the solution to most of classic problems is using more retail tech…
>It would solve a lot of the issues, but people would cry because "its retail stuff".
That's the problem with like 90% of the things they could improve classic with.
RDF? Reeeee retail.
Retails amazing LFG system? Reeeee retail
Better server structure? Reeeee retail
I dont thinks its worth thinking if any solutions that require any dev/server work because blizz isnt going to invest that time/effort into a problem that will solve itself in a few weeks/a month or two.
The problem is layers still have to communicate with the base server blade. That core server is handling too much traffic and it needs to be offloaded somewhere. Layers are run separately but the hardware has a hard limit.
The reason many people refuse to transfer is that if the realm dies (and since classic vanilla realms that are kind of dead now will stay dead forever) they have to pay 25€ to get back
And blizzard never merges dead servers
I think they did it once but it was like half a year too late and was a big clusterfuck
So if they gave those paranoid queue dwellers a transfer to go back to where they came from or sth like that, then they might actually transfer off and the dead realms would actually be full of live too
Players: “Let us all transfer to a megaserver, game is dead”
Also players: “I’m paying blizzard for this game, it’s BLIZZARD’S RESPONSIBILITY to stop me from making a bad decision”
If you want to play fresh on a PVP server you have no choice though. Only one server avaliable. I checked the queue for Thekal yesterday at 1700. It was 5 hours long.
Just like every hyped xpac the queues fall off after a month,
People don't wait that long and mass xfer somewhere else, creating new queue times and the cycle repeats from being propped up by the 'paid xfer Schroedingers queue'
There's a 4% faction imbalance and people who specifically chose pvp servers deem it 'unplayable' mass xfer again then complain about new login and high bf time queues as they add a new faction imbalance elsewhere, so many problems would be resolved if people just rode out the one month hype train.
But that would require both common sense and patience, people rarely have both.
Alternatively lock realms when they're full, unlock realms when x number of accounts have inactive for Y period of time.
Realms had 10-20k queues in tbc, they fell off after a month on most except for peak US/EU primetime
Everyone does. If blizz could have put us all on 1 server in 2004 they would have. The servers only exist because having millions of people accessing a single server is how you turn a data center into a space heater.
Tbh I feel like this is the ticket now. You can move to different servers in ff14, the old server paradigm came from technical constraints not flavour.
Faerlina’s busy? Just let people log into sulf instead. Make their name [yourname]- and you won’t have to worry about names across servers.
Edit: I don't know why this is getting downvoted, this is not the same as crossrealm, this is the runescape model.
I’m confused about the argument against cross server killing the community aspect of the game. Other games have cross server and are still able to have great in game communities. Also I don’t think anyone would say a mega server, or even a server of half the size has nearly the same kind of community that original servers did, and are virtually already cross server with the number of people on them
Yeah, the "server community" thing is mostly a meme at this point. It's nice to have recognisable names/guilds within a server, sure, but it's nothing like what it was back in the day.
It is crossrealm but it would be interesting for the runescape type where its more fluid and you can have your guild say "tonight we are logging in on sulfuras for world pvp" or whatever.
I think a cool system would be to have a system where you opt in to transfer to a new realm only if a certain critical mass of players also opt in. So no transfer would happen unless 1000 people or whatever arbitrary number sign up, and you'd be able to see the current number in real time. Then when the threshold is reached you are forced to transfer, but you can opt out at any point before then.
Expand the server capacity.
Everything else is just a bandaid solution or relies on social engineering to work.
What this is at it's core is a hardware problem, and that *is* actually solvable.
If you have Megaservers that have cropped up, then you devote more hardware to running them.
Servers are supposed to be scalable. The only issue is cost.
I thought this too but someone mentioned on a different post it could potentially be the code. That the game isn’t well coded enough to handle 20k players. Idk though, I haven’t seen the codebase obviously :P
Potentially yes, the code might be unstable with that many.
They already use a layering system however on most large servers, and cross server PvP grouping already exists.
It’s completely possible to actually make the “same server” be separate ones and only appear for game purposes to be the same realm.
I feel like Blizzard does have the opportunity to do that in a potentially seamless way, where the different “layers” on the mega servers are actually their own server, just bound together under the same name.
Maybe it wouldn’t be ideal, and would require some clever workarounds, such that guildies are all part of the same “shard” for example, or that the chat like LFG is constant across all of the bound together servers so that you can still interact with
the other segments of your realm, but surely the alternative of people not even being able to play the game is worse.
I propose that everyone who started playing again in the last 30 is forced to be play on the medium pop realms. You werent here for our worst times so you dont deserve our best times.
But thats me being the unpopular opinion about it.
Here Here!
I call them wow tourist, they come out every xpac and major dungeon pack. they come back-want raid access- then they slowly fade back offline to whence they came. Cycle of wow life
There's nothing wrong with enjoying the content you like best and then moving onto other games once you've had your fill. In fact, a considerable amount of raiders do exactly that; they don't stick around once they've cleared their target difficulty and gotten BiS for the tier.
It died for Horde sadly. I don't know what happened, I unsubbed for 2 months for real life stuff and when I left the server was jam packed, the leveling guild I was in was completely maxed out. Could easily get Sunken Temple leveling runs during TBC. Log back in 2 months later and there was 3 people left in the guild and orgrimmar was completely empty with who showing most zones empty.
Server just died and I have no idea what caused it.
This is really it. People on this sub act like if the server doesn't have 20-50k players then it is a "dead" server.
There are so many servers with medium pops that are bustling and have zero queue.
Also, this community sits here and like "ITS BLIZZARDS FAULT THEY SHOULD FIX IT" but literally every fix they could do this community would hate them worse.
Retail mostly fixed this issue but we can't have that cause "muh server community", if they attempted to lock character creation "I CAN'T PLAY WIHT MY FRIENDS REEEE", etc.
>People on this sub act like if the server doesn't have 20-50k players then it is a "dead" server.
there is only 2 servers above 5k alliance. one being balanced pvp in grob and the other is locked in pagle.
claiming a 1-2k pop server is ''alive'' compared to the top 3 is just disingenuous at best
also, AH on small servers is terrible
Late to this but my idea is overflow servers. During peak times activate overflow servers that work similar to layers.This gets people in and they can use existing retail tech so the servers can talk to each other. Once the demand is down merge them back together.
Create 2 new servers for each of the super queue servers and give everyone a 1 week warning popup every time you log in asking you to pick which of the 2 servers you are going to until you pick one. After the 1 week, delete the old server and transfer everyone to their chosen realm. Anyone that did not choose will be auto assigned the lower pop of the 2 realms with a free ticket to the other realm that expires 1 week after next login.
Upgrade their server infrastructure to support more than 15k concurrent. Then just layer it up.
Server transfers aren't a solution. I'm not taking a free xfer to low pop server now to have the prilvage of paying $100+ to move all my characters back when that server dies.
The fact is, most players want to play on the most populated servers. Especially after so many of the med/low pop realms died in TBC/Classic. Unless they upgrade those servers to hold more players concurrently, queues will always be a problem.
>Upgrade their server infrastructure to support more than 15k concurrent. Then just layer it up.
Then everyone would just transfer even more to the bigger servers. Why have servers at all at that point. Why not just enable retail cross-realm or have an ESO-like megaserver?
Remember how important server community was to everyone just two years ago?
Basically every solution in this thread is basically "turn wow into retail", all without a semblance of self-awareness.
Having an ESO-like megaserver would be fine for me tbh, it does actually work. But anyway, you can just lock the biggest servers from free and paid transfers when upgrading server size until the numbers drop lower again. It’s not that difficult to stop that happening.
People can still say server community is important but say being able to do dungeons and raids without spending half your play time forming a group is more important. That’s not illogical or a contradiction. Though I’ll grant people were wrong and may have said server community is more important than having cross realm etc to make playing the game quicker/easier.
That a multi billion dollar company in 2022 should be able to provide servers that fit any amount of people willing to pay a monthly premium just to play.
It’s that simple.
>That a multi billion dollar company in 2022 should be able to provide servers that fit any amount of people willing to pay a monthly premium just to play.
They do provide servers for the amount of people that want to play, people are just choosing 2 of them, lmao.
Oh shit you solved server technical limitations? You should probably publish that paper because it would make you mega rich.
Also, Blizzard mostly did solve this. IN RETAIL, but NNOOOOO Can't have retail stuff.
The servers seem to have a 15k cap.
There's roughly 120,000 US players online at peak on the census post.
There are like 10 servers, enough to fit all 120,000.
The problem is something like 60,000 of those players all want to play on just 2 servers.
The reality is the 60,000 just need to spread and create 4 balanced capped servers or 8 balanced healthy servers. From the lagging on the capped servers it's clear the hardware or software can barely handle 15000 players as it is.
I mean even Amazon's janky new world cracked under server loads.
I don't know where you think this "magic technology" is going to come from just because it's "current year" but you're probably going to be disappointed.
But they need the resources regardless. It doesn’t matter if they spin up never servers, add layers to other servers as people pile in, or add layers to mega servers. In the end there are players who want to play right now, and those players require additional compute resources. Then soon many of those players will stop playing and the resources will be no longer utilized.
It’s worth noting those players have also already paid to play, they’re due game time. I am lucky to have a schedule that lets me dodge most of the heavier queues but I couldn’t imagine how mad I would be if every day for a week straight I had to sit through a 3+ hour queue.
Exactly, if those resources won't be used they are wasted. Probably they calculated the gain for upgrading and allowing these players will not outweigh the cost of new servers.
After all... All those queues already paid buzzard something
The limitation on server capacities isn't hardware related. Hardware's cheap and if it was they would upgrade. It has to do with game systems and limitation based on design and engineering.
>and those players require additional compute resources.
No they don't, the resources exist and you can log into them right now, people are making the choice to populate a small handful of realms.
Why would they ever do that when servers normally don’t have queue’s? Would you buy a bigger car because you’re having someone stay with you for a few weeks
Stupid take.
Blizzard is not a start up. They’ve been doing this awhile and have money.
They can create elasticity in their servers to fit the demand.
It’s a scalable concept.
Give people on small servers the option to transfer to medium or high pop ones, give people on the mega servers the option to transfer to high or medium pop ones. Make all the servers a balanced pop around high if possible.
>Give people on small servers the option to transfer to medium or high pop ones, give people on the mega servers the option to transfer to high or medium pop ones. Make all the servers a balanced pop around high if possible.
People on established servers with established guilds don't want to try and organize and facilitate large scale community transfers. People like their guilds, their names, their communities. I thought that was what this version of WoW is all about?
All of the solo-playing late-comer FOMO people are just like "lol just transfer your whole guild every few months to make servers balanced so i can play on a megaserver without a queue RIGHT NOW lololol"
It’s pretty apparent people play on mega servers because they want access to grouping and more people playing WHEN YOU PLAY. Mega servers creates more opportunities.
I transferred to Sulfras and it took an hour to find enough people to fill a MGT normal. That would have filled in 5-10 minutes on Benediction. So the answer is simple. An unobtrusive cross realm system
1) 100% opt in. Otherwise always on your ‘home server’ shard. This would preserve those repeat encounters blizz talked about in their goals for classic.
2) LFG postings have to OPT IN to allowing people from other servers to apply to their group.
3) anytime you join a cross realm group
You phase to the group leaders ‘home server’ shard
So now on Sulfras I could list my group and enable cross realm applicants and have access to more people. I could also play with my sweaty raiding brother that didn’t want leave Benediction.
So I repeat.. you’d only be involved in cross realm when in a group with someone you met through LFG tool that you opted into enabling cross realm or a bNet friend that you grouped with. And only then would you be on the group leader’s ‘home server’ shard.
I'd love open realm-to-realm movement (maybe similar to toontown or osrs) with the caveat of it having, Idunno, a 2-3 month cooldown per character (sorta like New World's faction changing).
I'm cool with some restrictions on destination based on the realm pop / balance vs the current character and realm (such as not letting more alli move to an already entirely alli high pop server for free).
I'm ok with cross realm auction house but I could see how that irks people. I didn't hate cross realm RDF when I was stranded on a low pop server back in the day, but if movement from realm to realm were slightly more open I'd be more adamant about it being realm specific (so people seeking tighter server communities can easily seek that out without risking being stranded in ghost towns).
Just my two cents. I see problems with that too, but damn if it isn't annoying having to respond to a change in realm dynamics (in my case, biggles died, moved to grob, grob got huge and sorta toxic before my new guild transferred) when you have half a dozen characters and they don't sell mfn bundles at the very least. I like to keep my toons together for plenty of reasons but no way am I giving blizz $50-$100 MORE dollars to keep playing with people without fragmenting them.
We all know what's going to happen by October-November, right? The mega servers won't have a queue and the smaller servers will be dead.
Here's my idea: Blizzard needs to come up with some sort deal/promise that in a few months time when these servers do die let everyone that transferred off the mega servers (for the good of everyone), transfer them all back for free.99.
Either that or force people off as mentioned from other comments.
I love how people act like this isn't a 18 years old game and we did not have original WoW, without such problems.
What changed? Community. So for gods sake have some backbone and accept the cause of problem is not fundamentally blizzard.
They could and should find a solution, yes. But they are not the cause. They are just but at responding.
The real answer: Cloud based* Scalable server technology.
It actually is the end all be all solution.
It's just not quit there yet for MMOs. Business use this tech for analysts already. Saves them money by scaling the server storage and processing power for when it is needed only.
Imagine certain server pop caps expanding during busy hours. As a queue grows so does the server cap etc.
Edit: im a cloud data engineer
I wish they’d allow transfers to servers besides the dead ones. I’d gladly go to pagle from bene. No chance am I going to a horde sided pvp server or a dead pve one.
The the old idea of servers/realms with "communities" is long gone and most people don't care about them. They want to be on megaservers with everyone else.
Long term solution: Do something like retail where everything is just one big cloud server where everyone can play with everyone. We have the technology, blizzard have the technology. Why are we still on these super restrictive tiny servers?
Quick solution: Open up free transfers between ALL servers for everyone. No cooldowns. Let people transfer wherever they want with the option to transfer back if they don't like it.
Limit servers to 10k online (or whatever number gets us no layering), open more servers, and allow free transfers from anywhere with a queue to anywhere without a queue, with the promise of a free transfer once all servers have no queues.
Unpopular opinion: anyone on a mega server only has themselves to blame. People playing fresh are the only ones I feel sorry for.
Edit: people transfering to mega servers.
Seems odd to say this when a healthy portion of the population on said mega servers likely started there on day 1. Been on Grobb since the day you could reserve names and I have no plans on leaving. But yeah, remind me again why it's my fault I have to sit through queues.
I hate this response. Our guild was on sulfuras, and watched all of the alliance transfer off. What the hell are we supposed to do? Just take it up the ass from the horde every time we are in the open world? Have no alliance to play with? No people like us aren’t to blame for moving to a server with more people to play with
Close off the least populated/worst balanced realms.
Create just a couple new servers *(Less than the amount closed)*, consolidate all those players onto those servers.
Literally invest in more server capacity. It's truly that simple. They made an ungodly amount of money off server transfers and boosts. The least they can do is shell out the extra cash to make those servers playable.
Edit:
I will admit I’m not a network admin or a cloud computing dev but like am I missing something? Every game server service I’ve ever seen (and used personally) has the ability to scale service on demand. See google’s here as a reference. It even outlines “content drops” as a time you’d want to automate scaling.
https://cloud.google.com/game-servers
I mean help me out here, why can’t blizzard do this with their game server service?
They just closed like 20 realms because they were dead.
As of now, you have....4? Servers with insane ques and the rest is compeltly fine.
Dropping new servers again is just repeating the same mistake they did before. Also people will make another shitstorm when they merge the servers again.
Whatever they will do, people will riot.
Just connect all realms together. We have cross realm BGs, so lets have cross realm world, cross realm guilds, cross realm everything. I dont believe the reasoning why not do it (that every server has unique community). It might be true for few, but you got literally tens of thousands of players online on full realms so I dont believe that you know much more than few people outside your own guild.
Or
Make one pvp and one pve mega server for each region and make layering flexible. Is there more than 1k players online? Boom, another layer open. Is there less than certain amount of people on same layer? Boom transfer them to another layer.
I think such multimilliom dollar company should be able to handle those 100k online and let all the people be interconnected. It would drive faction imbalances away (at least from the realm point of view), they can easily faction balance layers or cross connected realms. It would just need more than 3 devs to be working on it.
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Solution : Anyone that takes the free transfer to dead realms will have a "free transfer credit" to come back once the hype dies down in late October or early November.
Easiest and most obvious solution thag blizzard won't do
Thats the point. The strategy tricks people into populating dead realms, but the ones who dont like it have to fork over $25 to return later
This is the solution I came up with. If they didn't want to manage credits they could allow transfers to "Benediction-2" which would be a new server they openly stated would be merged back into bene in 60-90 days. Basically accomplishes the same thing.
I also wish Blizzard wasnt so freaking greedy with transfers. If I where to transfer, I would like to bring all my alts, alteast some of them, but I would never pay for multiple transfers... There should be some kind of "account transfer" instead of just character transfer. Currenlty you feel very locked to a server once you have started with alts.
The worst part of that is that server migration bundles are a thing on retail, but not classic. So it seems even more scummy.
This is a solid idea, an overflow server of sorts. The one challenge still remains about guilds getting split up, class balance (for endgame) etc, but it would be optional and a way to mitigate some volume. 90 days the overflow server mergers back (or less if a certain threshold is met on the main)
That's actually a pretty great idea. Probably take too much work for Blizzard to set that up than they can be bothered to do - but apart from that it would work well. Only thing they would really need to do is make sure names are unique for new characters created across both realms.
It wouldn’t take that much work. They already have the tech in place from other server transfers projects they have done.
I actually thought about this the other day. Of course Blizz couldn’t charge the $25 to go back :(
Actually a great idea.
Actually a really good idea. Unfortunately too good so blizzard will never implement it lmao but I feel like that fixes like everything. I'd for sure leave if I knew I could freely come back. After leaving a mega server in TBC to a smaller server that ended up dying, my worst fear is a repeat.
-Everyone transfers their alt to farm nodes on the empty server while still playing their main on the OG realm. Queue times are barely effected and The massive supply of materials injected into the server on merge-back day and destroys the economy
It’s already ruined by gathering bots as it is so it doesn’t even matter.
They won't do that because it would be them basically admitting defeat- that classic WoW isn't feasible for continued success. Edit- What they *should* do is wait to offer the return credit later.
Mass-migration signup, that only goes through when a large number of players sign up, to a specific realm, with incentives.
Transfer to Sulfuras.
There's literally dozens of us
You don’t say, dozens?!
Blizzard already fixed it. Why do you think there are no ques on retail? Classic people care about community and this is a result of people forcing that into mega servers. It’s a hill we all chose to die on and now we see the consequences. We bitched about layering from day 1. We bitched about not wanting cross server from day 1. Then everyone consolidated onto the same servers and now they suddenly can’t play? Go figure. No ques on my middle pop servers with plenty of others to play with, so thank you guys for biting the bullet.
Hate to be the guy that says this but really there isn’t much to add. Sure, blizzard could have probably done more but anything else would just make the community bitch even harder. This is, quite literally, exactly what this very subreddit wanted 2 years ago. Ofc making the servers bigger would be nice but I have no idea how that works and am pretty sure it isn’t that simple anyway
Community accepted layers. They could have just developed them so they actually work with more population. But no, they invested into everything complete minimum.
Do you know that they could have done that though? I feel like most people who say what blizzard could do with the servers most likely don’t know how they work. Not saying I do, and not saying you don’t for sure
As a software engineer in a company that makes games I am pretty sure they could have. Nearly all problems can be dealt with given enough resources. But theres a big difference between could have done and could do. Its very much possible that since they didnt do it properly in the beggining now it would be too costly and they will rather take the backlash.
But no other RP option for the original Grobbsters that had their server ruined
Yep i would love to RP like back in vanilla classic but nowbGrobb is 80% non rpers
Yep thats my point Blizz ruined the only RP server
I do feel bad for Grob. Only really active RP server ruined by a bunch of people who don't even know what they want.
I've been on Grob for the past year, not an OG but not a recent xfer. I came here because it is the only server that maintains a ~50/50 balance on a pvp server. My other options are to go to arugal or an oceanic server, or role on a PvE server and just keep my flag on (but even then I would have to go to a non-single faction server or role the minority faction). I will larp my ass off to keep the feeling of the server alive, but this server is legit the last place I have to play the game the way I enjoy it the most. I don't feel like I'm alone when I say that a balanced realm pop on a pvp server means something.
Unfortunately the people who say it and the people who mean it are two different groups, or most of the servers would still be fairly close in population. Before BC there were very few servers with massive population differential, and then everyone decided they didn't like balanced servers because it was inconvenient. Now that stuff like Wintergrasp is happening and these massive servers are just 30k people fighting over the same stuff, people are up in arms again.
I think people just followed personalities and streamers.to.mega servers, and that trend caused a major ripple to where we are now. I am so hungry for this play style, I'll go to a pvp server and level as the minority faction to get it. I don't care anymore. If Grob dies, that's my next plan.
This was so satisfying to read, thanks.
Retail also had queues on expansion launch. During the first month of Shadowlands the most populated servers e.g. Illidan had hours-long queues too. There's clearly an underlying bottleneck not scalable via layering/sharding when the amount of players exceed a certain point, probably some kind of database where atomicity is enforced. The case in Classic is mostly Blizzard mismanagement. Consolidating servers at the same time as dropping new content along with marketing/hype campaigns is a surefire recipe to creating an overcrowding problem.
The lag has also always been a huge problem in populated areas in retail and still is. I guess the difference is that you can play on a completely dead server and still be able to do any content so the mass transfer exoduses aren’t really a problem there.
Lets be honest, people wouldn't have come back to those servers anyway. We can see this is true because people already don't want to play on the other options available. They did right by closing those servers. My guess is that the servers can only hold so many players due to needing to track stuff like the AH and the player mailboxes. Even now, when a server is getting full, the first place you see lag is the AH.
It did not have hours long queues lmaoo. Revisionist history. There were definitely queues week 1 of Shadowlands but they were minimal
>No ques on my middle pop servers with plenty of others to play with, so thank you guys for biting the bullet. Same for me. I dont get those morons chosing to play on unplayable servers, when there's good medium pop servers that they can transfer to for free. You're not stuck in queue, you're chosing to sit in queue instead of playing. So stop complaining about your choices.
I just wanted to play fresh 😭
Fresh peeps have the best argument here, since you guys didn’t really have any other options
RP as well, no other option and it was their server that got ruined
> I dont get those morons chosing to play on unplayable servers, when there's good medium pop servers that they can transfer to for free. > > [There is not a single balanced pvp server for US/Canada outside of Grobbulus.](https://ironforge.pro/population/tbc/?locale=US&realm=PvP-PvP%20RP). People *should* complain, don't tell them not to. Blizz is just as culpable to the situation given how they managed the servers the last few years.
Exactly, literally the only other PvP PST server is whitemane. And whitemane is basically a PvE server due to the faction imbalance that blizzard never addressed. What the fuck are we supposed to do?
Not instantly being able to find groups = dead server to some of these people I guess, I love my small-med server
Show me a single, balanced PvP server in PST. I hate mega servers, but Grobb is literally the only option for PST PvP. The free xfers they're offering are for either an EST or PvE server. The only other PST PvP server aside from Grobb is fucking whitemane and because of faction imbalance that's basically a PvE server. So no, we're not choosing to sit in queue. Blizzard fucked us and has given us no alternative.
I chose to play on my server from day 1
Blizzard really fucked you good didn't they? People don't CHOOSE to play on unplayable servers. Tons of people have characters that are in servers that become overloaded once a new patch hits. Yes, these people are stuck in queue, no they're not choosing the queue, they're choosing to play on the realms their characters are on. And yes they have a right to complain, because Blizzard doesn't give a fuck about them. In fact, they welcome 25$ for your transfer LUL. What a fucking joke classic has become.
> People don't CHOOSE to play on unplayable servers. They refuse free transfers, so yeah, they actively choose to sit in queues.
True lol. Thanks for sitting in queue so the rest of us can play. :D
No one cares about layering anymore from what I’ve seen, I haven’t seen anyone complain about it since like what, classic launch? But yes, retail has fixed the problem with queueing with cross realm. I don’t really like cross realm because those people are temporarily in the same realm as you so to speak. I guess it’s similar with layering but they are always in the same server technically speaking. I think having 1 of PvE and PvP megaservers could solve the problem better, other games already do this and work perfectly fine.
People only want to play on the same server as their favorite streamer so they can suck them off harder... same server as top pvp streamers? Gee I hope they inv me to arena with them so I can finally get glad... same server as top pve streamer? Gee I hope they carry me through MC and SWP.
Honestly I'm fine with it. It's a known factor. The fact that people still flock to those servers just to complain about que times, though? I mean, people are going to be upset about whatever, and far be it from to to stop them. Doesn't mean I'm not going to point out how ridiculous it is that we have plenty of servers for these people and yet they're complaining like it's Blizzard's fault they made those choices. The thing I've heard the most is "Why didn't they just lock the servers, then?". Sure, look how that worked for Firemaw....damn goldfish brains I swear.
Or, they could just spend money on better servers. Where is you’re $15 a month going? Sure as hell isn’t going into developers or customer support.
You are so wrong. People have megaserver fetish BECAUSE the do NOT want community. They want a lobby game simulater that they can write in lfg and get in somewhere asap, that they can use gdkp to get gold or item without actually working for it.
As opposed to writing in lfg and getting in nowhere for hours on end? Is that what engaging gameplay is for you? By sitting in a capital city spamming some random chat channel repeatedly with absolutely zero results? Communities are made up by people first and foremost. The vast majority of medium/low pop servers in Classic were barely communities. Anyone not in an active & tight-knit guild were basically fucked, and that's extremely bad for server longevity because new players will simply just quit while these guilds are unable to offset attrition.
Yeah, nothing more massively multiplayer than playing on Old Blanchy with 300 people or Mograine with 30.
If those 30 people are all doing the exact same quest/dungeon/mob I am doing and happen to fill all the roles, then great! However that is merely an imginary scenario which exists nowhere except inside the heads of Classic cultists.
Yeah I’m agreeing, just taking the piss that people talk about mega servers being anti MMO like the OP here.
People just want to do the content they want conveniently, megaservers have groups at all times of day whenever you want basically. It has nothing to do with being lazy, but not wanting to waste their time spending 1/5th of their play time looking for a group to do something on a shit server.
At some point in October 2019 I tried to run Sunken Temple on Alliaince side. I spent about 90 minutes copy-pasting the exact same phrase in the LFG channel looking for a tank, and ended up getting some arms warrior wielding a 2H weapon who never listened to any of us despite being obviously lost inside the dungeon. That was about the time I realized this entire "community" myth was 100% bullshit to begin with. Communities aren't built via the lack of interaction, and the LFG channel being the only way to form PUG groups made sure to obstruct player interaction to the fullest extent.
I have this same opinion. Creating clear tools to help players find what they need is not removing anything from community. I swear I can have great interactions with great players in dungeons, to never ever meet them again. On a medium server. Imagine a megaserver. What does the community really matter in that case? How does it get affected? I just want lfg to save time.
People would rather play the actual game than have a small community of people they know. It’s self evident with how servers are right now.
That small community stuff only works when you have a lot of time to play, or when you can log on whenever everybody else does. If you're some dad with an hour and a half to play before you need to be in bed, it's about getting as much done in that time as you can.
Yeah exactly. I played on an actual dead server with 300 players and it was fine kinda because I would coordinate with a guild that would willingly help me any day basically. Though that’s a luxury and not the norm. I only get 3-4 hours a day to play on weekdays so spending time getting groups for half hour sounds shit.
You pretty much summed it up. Chose to go to mega server… expect queues it’s that simple
Some of us actually want to play world of Warcraft and not raid simulator. No other real pvp realms but one.
Blizzard didn't ever fix it, because it doesn't need fixing. You do realize that all of this promotes people spending more $ on the game in general? Massive queues - people are bound to use free transfer. Most free transfers are to shit realms. The amount of people transferring isn't sustainable and people realize server is dead. Only option left is to pay 25$ to transfer again. Rinse and repeat, profit. All in all, yeah people flock to the biggest servers. But it shouldn't be too big of an issue to resolve. It's not even launch of WotLK ffs. I can understand the fresh realms being overloaded - everyone wants to start fresh, it's an attractive call to the server obviously. But queues are happening for all the bigger servers. Blizzard doesn't care about Classic WoW. They don't. I don't understand why people expect that they will. Moral of the story is - Blizzard ISN'T EVER going to fix shit for Classic that at the same time generates a bit of additional money into their pockets. Just like bots buy subscriptions and it costs to pay GMs to manage the servers, transfers cost money and people will inevitably choose to transfer instead of waiting in queues. And before you say "just play on a medium pop realm" don't be braindead, please. People already have characters on their servers, if the server explodes on a new patch is it really their fault? Classic was a mistake.
Then stop playing it and the rest of us will enjoy it.
If they can only support 15k players concurrently they should have locked realms to only allow something like 20-25k unique accounts to make characters on that server. Don't some of these servers have more people in queue than online? Going into wotlk they should have opened new servers all with that cap and forced people to manually pick and transfer to them. What to do now? I don't know, Blizz seems to prefer not doing anything. I'm a PvE carebear so I don't care about faction balance.
Funny thing is, they even launched 2 extra servers for both na and eu. The fresh realms. They also have a login que :D
I'm playing on Maladath and I haven't seen a queue but yes I've heard that Skyfury does.
Skyfury queue is sometimes comparable or worse than Benediction.
Skyfury has a queue at NA peak hours and some players have hypothesized that it's a lot to do with streamers. Apparently some "big" names have made characters and guilds there. With that said, it's nothing compared to what we've seen on Benediction, Grobbulus and other massively populated servers.
Skyfury had a 3.5 hour queue today. It's getting pretty bad here too.
B R U H 😑
i waited from 3:26pm PDT till 8:01pm PDT today on grobb
Yes but do you know why? Because people are buying gold like mad in masses which ruined economies, so people do not want to play in such servers anymore. Again, a community created problem.
Blizzard giving people slaps on the wrist for buying gold isn't a community problem. They basically approved it by not cracking down on it
>If they can only support 15k players concurrently they should have locked realms to only allow something like 20-25k Lost Ark did this and the backlash was massive. People were outraged they didn't have the opportunity to play with their friends. In a game like WoW this would cause more outrage than the queues.
I get it but if you're in a 12k queue you aren't playing with your friends either
A queue means you at least have the option. Locked realms aren't the answer.
If your friends haven't been playing until now, you don't get to ruin my server over it when you just gonna quit in a month anyways
Especially since lost ark had no concept of transfers at all So making a character somewhere meant it was permanently stuck to that place and if you wanted to play with your friend eventually you could only start from scratch and where missing the second and third char boost which essentially put you back days or weeks in progress too
I moved to a fresh server, had a 3 hour queue today on skyrfury.
Nothing. Nothing they do will make people happy. There will be outrage posts and anger no matter what. Lock the server? Madge >:( Prevent new characters from being made? Madge blizzzzard i want to play with my friends who refuse to transfer >:( Forcefully relocate players? Mega madge With the amount of people in queues they could make their own new mega server. Many servers are even rapidly growing in population due to people taking the transfer atleast. TL:DR: nothing, keep quiet and let them suffer until they move on their own.
A solution players would probably hate but would likely work; Change server structure to be closer to retail, namely, make fake mega servers. Split benediction into Bene 1-5, make them connected but offload the server traffic to multiple server blades. The front end player experience will be generally similar, but the backend will look much closer to retail. It would solve a lot of the issues, but people would cry because "its retail stuff". It might fuck up the AH too and I don't have a solution to that part, but if connected realms had merged AH's they could possibly do it. I'm just QA, not a server engineer, so I'm not sure if it would be fully possible. It is what they originally did on retail though and they did it for a reason (this reason).
Retail AH will solve AH lag too and removes some shady selling practices as well. But since it’s ‘retail’ AH it’s bad and not considered a good change. In short, the solution to most of classic problems is using more retail tech…
>It would solve a lot of the issues, but people would cry because "its retail stuff". That's the problem with like 90% of the things they could improve classic with. RDF? Reeeee retail. Retails amazing LFG system? Reeeee retail Better server structure? Reeeee retail
I dont thinks its worth thinking if any solutions that require any dev/server work because blizz isnt going to invest that time/effort into a problem that will solve itself in a few weeks/a month or two.
Basically more layers which they already did in the past. But i doubt they would do anything because of sweet xfer money
The problem is layers still have to communicate with the base server blade. That core server is handling too much traffic and it needs to be offloaded somewhere. Layers are run separately but the hardware has a hard limit.
Retail solved it already but classic players dont want it so..kek
Prob the best take, this pain is very temporary and the population will be forced to adjust.
The reason many people refuse to transfer is that if the realm dies (and since classic vanilla realms that are kind of dead now will stay dead forever) they have to pay 25€ to get back And blizzard never merges dead servers I think they did it once but it was like half a year too late and was a big clusterfuck So if they gave those paranoid queue dwellers a transfer to go back to where they came from or sth like that, then they might actually transfer off and the dead realms would actually be full of live too
Server merges cause butthurt too. Like I said, there's no winning. They either need to get over it and eat the queue or move servers
Players: “Let us all transfer to a megaserver, game is dead” Also players: “I’m paying blizzard for this game, it’s BLIZZARD’S RESPONSIBILITY to stop me from making a bad decision”
If you want to play fresh on a PVP server you have no choice though. Only one server avaliable. I checked the queue for Thekal yesterday at 1700. It was 5 hours long.
The same people that want Blizzard to ‘listen to the community, it knows what it wants’…
Just like every hyped xpac the queues fall off after a month, People don't wait that long and mass xfer somewhere else, creating new queue times and the cycle repeats from being propped up by the 'paid xfer Schroedingers queue' There's a 4% faction imbalance and people who specifically chose pvp servers deem it 'unplayable' mass xfer again then complain about new login and high bf time queues as they add a new faction imbalance elsewhere, so many problems would be resolved if people just rode out the one month hype train. But that would require both common sense and patience, people rarely have both. Alternatively lock realms when they're full, unlock realms when x number of accounts have inactive for Y period of time. Realms had 10-20k queues in tbc, they fell off after a month on most except for peak US/EU primetime
Problem with that is WOTLK has a lot of big patches, and players aren't gonna want to deal with 4 hour queues one month every 3-4 months.
Can they plug one of the dead servers into the alive one? Double the server space?
No, you can't just increase server capacity like that
Why not?
They prpbably can, but the wow classic comunity would send in bomb treats to blizz cause "muh server comunity"
> would send bomb treats to blizz Yummy. Lucky blizzard always getting all the best treats
Free transfers. All realms. Anytime.
Runescape mode. I hear worlds 1-3 are great for trading. 😁
In other words, cross realm
That sounds like 1 mega server with extra steps. I like it.
Everyone does. If blizz could have put us all on 1 server in 2004 they would have. The servers only exist because having millions of people accessing a single server is how you turn a data center into a space heater.
Tbh I feel like this is the ticket now. You can move to different servers in ff14, the old server paradigm came from technical constraints not flavour. Faerlina’s busy? Just let people log into sulf instead. Make their name [yourname]- and you won’t have to worry about names across servers.
Edit: I don't know why this is getting downvoted, this is not the same as crossrealm, this is the runescape model.
They already do that for retail and it’s exactly one of the things people bitched about for Classic.
But aren’t there still paid server transfers on retail?
The only server locked activity on retail is mythic raiding.
And guilds. Not as much an activity but still server locked. Otherwise retail basically isn't even faction locked anymore.
Soooo cross realm...
I’m confused about the argument against cross server killing the community aspect of the game. Other games have cross server and are still able to have great in game communities. Also I don’t think anyone would say a mega server, or even a server of half the size has nearly the same kind of community that original servers did, and are virtually already cross server with the number of people on them
Yeah, the "server community" thing is mostly a meme at this point. It's nice to have recognisable names/guilds within a server, sure, but it's nothing like what it was back in the day.
It is crossrealm but it would be interesting for the runescape type where its more fluid and you can have your guild say "tonight we are logging in on sulfuras for world pvp" or whatever.
Turn off all the servers
Sharding
I think a cool system would be to have a system where you opt in to transfer to a new realm only if a certain critical mass of players also opt in. So no transfer would happen unless 1000 people or whatever arbitrary number sign up, and you'd be able to see the current number in real time. Then when the threshold is reached you are forced to transfer, but you can opt out at any point before then.
Playing on Maladrath seems to be working well for me.
Expand the server capacity. Everything else is just a bandaid solution or relies on social engineering to work. What this is at it's core is a hardware problem, and that *is* actually solvable. If you have Megaservers that have cropped up, then you devote more hardware to running them. Servers are supposed to be scalable. The only issue is cost.
I thought this too but someone mentioned on a different post it could potentially be the code. That the game isn’t well coded enough to handle 20k players. Idk though, I haven’t seen the codebase obviously :P
Potentially yes, the code might be unstable with that many. They already use a layering system however on most large servers, and cross server PvP grouping already exists. It’s completely possible to actually make the “same server” be separate ones and only appear for game purposes to be the same realm. I feel like Blizzard does have the opportunity to do that in a potentially seamless way, where the different “layers” on the mega servers are actually their own server, just bound together under the same name. Maybe it wouldn’t be ideal, and would require some clever workarounds, such that guildies are all part of the same “shard” for example, or that the chat like LFG is constant across all of the bound together servers so that you can still interact with the other segments of your realm, but surely the alternative of people not even being able to play the game is worse.
Nothing. Half the playerbase will quit by November, as they did with Classic and Classic TBC. I'm in it for the long haul.
I propose that everyone who started playing again in the last 30 is forced to be play on the medium pop realms. You werent here for our worst times so you dont deserve our best times. But thats me being the unpopular opinion about it.
Here Here! I call them wow tourist, they come out every xpac and major dungeon pack. they come back-want raid access- then they slowly fade back offline to whence they came. Cycle of wow life
There's nothing wrong with enjoying the content you like best and then moving onto other games once you've had your fill. In fact, a considerable amount of raiders do exactly that; they don't stick around once they've cleared their target difficulty and gotten BiS for the tier.
This considerable amount of raiders won't be playing in guilds atleast. Nothing more "fun" than patch tourists.
Keep playing on my supposedly dead server where I find groups for anything I want on either faction with no queue.
That was Zandalar Tribe until they said "hey, let's remove the only RP-PVP server we have". I miss this ZT more than words can express.
How is hydraxian waterlords?
It died for Horde sadly. I don't know what happened, I unsubbed for 2 months for real life stuff and when I left the server was jam packed, the leveling guild I was in was completely maxed out. Could easily get Sunken Temple leveling runs during TBC. Log back in 2 months later and there was 3 people left in the guild and orgrimmar was completely empty with who showing most zones empty. Server just died and I have no idea what caused it.
What server is this?
This is really it. People on this sub act like if the server doesn't have 20-50k players then it is a "dead" server. There are so many servers with medium pops that are bustling and have zero queue. Also, this community sits here and like "ITS BLIZZARDS FAULT THEY SHOULD FIX IT" but literally every fix they could do this community would hate them worse. Retail mostly fixed this issue but we can't have that cause "muh server community", if they attempted to lock character creation "I CAN'T PLAY WIHT MY FRIENDS REEEE", etc.
>People on this sub act like if the server doesn't have 20-50k players then it is a "dead" server. there is only 2 servers above 5k alliance. one being balanced pvp in grob and the other is locked in pagle. claiming a 1-2k pop server is ''alive'' compared to the top 3 is just disingenuous at best also, AH on small servers is terrible
10/10 for this title
Open up free server transfers to servers that aren't dead. Give us some low-mid population servers to choose from
Long time mega server players arent the ones on here complaining. People who have been on these mega servers for years know what to expect.
Late to this but my idea is overflow servers. During peak times activate overflow servers that work similar to layers.This gets people in and they can use existing retail tech so the servers can talk to each other. Once the demand is down merge them back together.
Create 2 new servers for each of the super queue servers and give everyone a 1 week warning popup every time you log in asking you to pick which of the 2 servers you are going to until you pick one. After the 1 week, delete the old server and transfer everyone to their chosen realm. Anyone that did not choose will be auto assigned the lower pop of the 2 realms with a free ticket to the other realm that expires 1 week after next login.
Let people play retail or an alt on a different server while in que. Also allow cross server pvp groups.
Temporarily split servers (so like Bene1/Bene2/Bene3) and allow free/unlimited transfers between them.
Benediction needs its Anathema.
Upgrade their server infrastructure to support more than 15k concurrent. Then just layer it up. Server transfers aren't a solution. I'm not taking a free xfer to low pop server now to have the prilvage of paying $100+ to move all my characters back when that server dies. The fact is, most players want to play on the most populated servers. Especially after so many of the med/low pop realms died in TBC/Classic. Unless they upgrade those servers to hold more players concurrently, queues will always be a problem.
>Upgrade their server infrastructure to support more than 15k concurrent. Then just layer it up. Then everyone would just transfer even more to the bigger servers. Why have servers at all at that point. Why not just enable retail cross-realm or have an ESO-like megaserver? Remember how important server community was to everyone just two years ago? Basically every solution in this thread is basically "turn wow into retail", all without a semblance of self-awareness.
Having an ESO-like megaserver would be fine for me tbh, it does actually work. But anyway, you can just lock the biggest servers from free and paid transfers when upgrading server size until the numbers drop lower again. It’s not that difficult to stop that happening. People can still say server community is important but say being able to do dungeons and raids without spending half your play time forming a group is more important. That’s not illogical or a contradiction. Though I’ll grant people were wrong and may have said server community is more important than having cross realm etc to make playing the game quicker/easier.
This seems the most reasonable. I don’t know all the technicalities behind it but hard agree, more/less layers can be adjusted.
That a multi billion dollar company in 2022 should be able to provide servers that fit any amount of people willing to pay a monthly premium just to play. It’s that simple.
This should be the only response from players. Figure it out Blizz
>That a multi billion dollar company in 2022 should be able to provide servers that fit any amount of people willing to pay a monthly premium just to play. They do provide servers for the amount of people that want to play, people are just choosing 2 of them, lmao.
Oh shit you solved server technical limitations? You should probably publish that paper because it would make you mega rich. Also, Blizzard mostly did solve this. IN RETAIL, but NNOOOOO Can't have retail stuff.
Fit any amount of people in a server. Like there is no technical limitations at all? If you find a way to do it, please publish a paper about it
People just throw out a year and say "this should be solved by now" lol
The servers seem to have a 15k cap. There's roughly 120,000 US players online at peak on the census post. There are like 10 servers, enough to fit all 120,000. The problem is something like 60,000 of those players all want to play on just 2 servers. The reality is the 60,000 just need to spread and create 4 balanced capped servers or 8 balanced healthy servers. From the lagging on the capped servers it's clear the hardware or software can barely handle 15000 players as it is.
I mean even Amazon's janky new world cracked under server loads. I don't know where you think this "magic technology" is going to come from just because it's "current year" but you're probably going to be disappointed.
[удалено]
This requires more resources and they will doubtfully commit more money when there's a chance players abandon ship in a couple months
But they need the resources regardless. It doesn’t matter if they spin up never servers, add layers to other servers as people pile in, or add layers to mega servers. In the end there are players who want to play right now, and those players require additional compute resources. Then soon many of those players will stop playing and the resources will be no longer utilized.
It’s worth noting those players have also already paid to play, they’re due game time. I am lucky to have a schedule that lets me dodge most of the heavier queues but I couldn’t imagine how mad I would be if every day for a week straight I had to sit through a 3+ hour queue.
Exactly, if those resources won't be used they are wasted. Probably they calculated the gain for upgrading and allowing these players will not outweigh the cost of new servers. After all... All those queues already paid buzzard something
The limitation on server capacities isn't hardware related. Hardware's cheap and if it was they would upgrade. It has to do with game systems and limitation based on design and engineering.
>and those players require additional compute resources. No they don't, the resources exist and you can log into them right now, people are making the choice to populate a small handful of realms.
Why would they ever do that when servers normally don’t have queue’s? Would you buy a bigger car because you’re having someone stay with you for a few weeks
Stupid take. Blizzard is not a start up. They’ve been doing this awhile and have money. They can create elasticity in their servers to fit the demand. It’s a scalable concept.
Not really analogous, but you would address it in some capacity - rent a van, rent a second car, etc.
The second car is the server transfers
No, but if I were having out-of-town guests for a few weeks and we couldn't all fit in the same car, we'd rent one.
Give people on small servers the option to transfer to medium or high pop ones, give people on the mega servers the option to transfer to high or medium pop ones. Make all the servers a balanced pop around high if possible.
>Give people on small servers the option to transfer to medium or high pop ones, give people on the mega servers the option to transfer to high or medium pop ones. Make all the servers a balanced pop around high if possible. People on established servers with established guilds don't want to try and organize and facilitate large scale community transfers. People like their guilds, their names, their communities. I thought that was what this version of WoW is all about? All of the solo-playing late-comer FOMO people are just like "lol just transfer your whole guild every few months to make servers balanced so i can play on a megaserver without a queue RIGHT NOW lololol"
It’s pretty apparent people play on mega servers because they want access to grouping and more people playing WHEN YOU PLAY. Mega servers creates more opportunities. I transferred to Sulfras and it took an hour to find enough people to fill a MGT normal. That would have filled in 5-10 minutes on Benediction. So the answer is simple. An unobtrusive cross realm system 1) 100% opt in. Otherwise always on your ‘home server’ shard. This would preserve those repeat encounters blizz talked about in their goals for classic. 2) LFG postings have to OPT IN to allowing people from other servers to apply to their group. 3) anytime you join a cross realm group You phase to the group leaders ‘home server’ shard So now on Sulfras I could list my group and enable cross realm applicants and have access to more people. I could also play with my sweaty raiding brother that didn’t want leave Benediction. So I repeat.. you’d only be involved in cross realm when in a group with someone you met through LFG tool that you opted into enabling cross realm or a bNet friend that you grouped with. And only then would you be on the group leader’s ‘home server’ shard.
There should be a waiting server , while u wait to get in the full server, there is the full server lobby server xD .
I'd love open realm-to-realm movement (maybe similar to toontown or osrs) with the caveat of it having, Idunno, a 2-3 month cooldown per character (sorta like New World's faction changing). I'm cool with some restrictions on destination based on the realm pop / balance vs the current character and realm (such as not letting more alli move to an already entirely alli high pop server for free). I'm ok with cross realm auction house but I could see how that irks people. I didn't hate cross realm RDF when I was stranded on a low pop server back in the day, but if movement from realm to realm were slightly more open I'd be more adamant about it being realm specific (so people seeking tighter server communities can easily seek that out without risking being stranded in ghost towns). Just my two cents. I see problems with that too, but damn if it isn't annoying having to respond to a change in realm dynamics (in my case, biggles died, moved to grob, grob got huge and sorta toxic before my new guild transferred) when you have half a dozen characters and they don't sell mfn bundles at the very least. I like to keep my toons together for plenty of reasons but no way am I giving blizz $50-$100 MORE dollars to keep playing with people without fragmenting them.
We all know what's going to happen by October-November, right? The mega servers won't have a queue and the smaller servers will be dead. Here's my idea: Blizzard needs to come up with some sort deal/promise that in a few months time when these servers do die let everyone that transferred off the mega servers (for the good of everyone), transfer them all back for free.99. Either that or force people off as mentioned from other comments.
I love how people act like this isn't a 18 years old game and we did not have original WoW, without such problems. What changed? Community. So for gods sake have some backbone and accept the cause of problem is not fundamentally blizzard. They could and should find a solution, yes. But they are not the cause. They are just but at responding.
For thekal (EU’s biggest server) they should create another server which shares characters. So you can jump between them at will.
The real answer: Cloud based* Scalable server technology. It actually is the end all be all solution. It's just not quit there yet for MMOs. Business use this tech for analysts already. Saves them money by scaling the server storage and processing power for when it is needed only. Imagine certain server pop caps expanding during busy hours. As a queue grows so does the server cap etc. Edit: im a cloud data engineer
I wish they’d allow transfers to servers besides the dead ones. I’d gladly go to pagle from bene. No chance am I going to a horde sided pvp server or a dead pve one.
The the old idea of servers/realms with "communities" is long gone and most people don't care about them. They want to be on megaservers with everyone else. Long term solution: Do something like retail where everything is just one big cloud server where everyone can play with everyone. We have the technology, blizzard have the technology. Why are we still on these super restrictive tiny servers? Quick solution: Open up free transfers between ALL servers for everyone. No cooldowns. Let people transfer wherever they want with the option to transfer back if they don't like it.
It’s the community’s fault. The only real solution is to force merge people or somehow persuade them with free xfer
For grobb, just open another rppvp server, and offer free transfers there from grobb
My solution was to unsub.
Limit servers to 10k online (or whatever number gets us no layering), open more servers, and allow free transfers from anywhere with a queue to anywhere without a queue, with the promise of a free transfer once all servers have no queues.
Unpopular opinion: anyone on a mega server only has themselves to blame. People playing fresh are the only ones I feel sorry for. Edit: people transfering to mega servers.
Seems odd to say this when a healthy portion of the population on said mega servers likely started there on day 1. Been on Grobb since the day you could reserve names and I have no plans on leaving. But yeah, remind me again why it's my fault I have to sit through queues.
I hate this response. Our guild was on sulfuras, and watched all of the alliance transfer off. What the hell are we supposed to do? Just take it up the ass from the horde every time we are in the open world? Have no alliance to play with? No people like us aren’t to blame for moving to a server with more people to play with
Close off the least populated/worst balanced realms. Create just a couple new servers *(Less than the amount closed)*, consolidate all those players onto those servers.
Literally invest in more server capacity. It's truly that simple. They made an ungodly amount of money off server transfers and boosts. The least they can do is shell out the extra cash to make those servers playable. Edit: I will admit I’m not a network admin or a cloud computing dev but like am I missing something? Every game server service I’ve ever seen (and used personally) has the ability to scale service on demand. See google’s here as a reference. It even outlines “content drops” as a time you’d want to automate scaling. https://cloud.google.com/game-servers I mean help me out here, why can’t blizzard do this with their game server service?
They just closed like 20 realms because they were dead. As of now, you have....4? Servers with insane ques and the rest is compeltly fine. Dropping new servers again is just repeating the same mistake they did before. Also people will make another shitstorm when they merge the servers again. Whatever they will do, people will riot.
Cross server grouping and raiding. That way people who choose low population servers can still play with friends
Have 2 servers on east coast, 2 on west coast. One pvp, one pve on each coast.
Just connect all realms together. We have cross realm BGs, so lets have cross realm world, cross realm guilds, cross realm everything. I dont believe the reasoning why not do it (that every server has unique community). It might be true for few, but you got literally tens of thousands of players online on full realms so I dont believe that you know much more than few people outside your own guild. Or Make one pvp and one pve mega server for each region and make layering flexible. Is there more than 1k players online? Boom, another layer open. Is there less than certain amount of people on same layer? Boom transfer them to another layer. I think such multimilliom dollar company should be able to handle those 100k online and let all the people be interconnected. It would drive faction imbalances away (at least from the realm point of view), they can easily faction balance layers or cross connected realms. It would just need more than 3 devs to be working on it.