MegaServer?

[bash the fash]

I wouldnt say impossible.

No when the servers launch and all 10-15k+ people pound it at once, it's impossible.

Vanilla is slow and tedious enough as it is; it doesn't need the extra layer of irritating. Grouping to kill named bosses is one thing; having 6 different groups camping a 5-10 minute named spawn is another. This isn't taking into account gathering, increased pool of money making the economy unmanageable, among other things. A PvP server with 15k+ people on it at once would be absolutely unplayable.

Again, there's a reason server population caps exist in every game, and it's not technical limitations.

[Cracked]

If I'm waiting for defias looter and trapper to respawn, I'm logging out and never looking back.

[Marston]

I am thinking, 4 Servers for now - nothing more. 1 EU PvE, 1 EU PvP, 1 US PvE and 1 US PvP. And I don't think they'll bring them all to life before they start seeing numbers.

Due to the language barrier alone, each language would need 1 server minimum.

[Deleted]

Due to the language barrier alone, each language would need 1 server minimum.

not true. we hadnt such a thing as a language barrier in vanilla so we dont have such a thing now.

[drivec]

there is no reason to have more then 1 server now days. blizzard can just have multiple instances of areas with a limit on amount of players(with higher limits in prime pvp areas.

[Mullet Man]

there is no reason to have more then 1 server now days. blizzard can just have multiple instances of areas with a limit on amount of players(with higher limits in prime pvp areas.

No... no... no... kill it with fire.

No sharding, no CRZ. This killed the community.

If I play on a server, I want to see all the players on that server. No gimmicks.
If this means we have multiple servers, I'm fine with that.
But then we need to figure out how to deal with launch levels of players, versus the ongoing state of the game.

[Warrax]

If server is too big, they will have to mess with respawn rate time and other stuff to accommodate the big population.
IIRC servers at the time were 2-3k max...and Nostalrius was 10-15k (which was too much, lag was atrocious) so I guess something around 5k would be good and make a healthy economy.

[Marston]

not true. we hadnt such a thing as a language barrier in vanilla so we dont have such a thing now.

So you would be happy if the only US Server would be a spanish one? And the only EU Server french?

[Dhrizzle]

If I could choose between a megaserver or a smaller server, I'll most likely go for the latter.
Back during vanilla I was on the EU Earthen Ring realm. To give an indication of it's size, there where about 3 to 4 guild on H/A combined able to fully clear raids.

The server was small and large enough to recognize a lot of people inside the capitols by name, but wasn't so small people all knew each other. Hence bad-rep is something you'd wanted to avoid ask talk would go around town at some point.

Currently I'm on Draenor EU and that server in comparison is so large it's hard to recognize names at all.

Dunno how big we were for total players but ER-EU was often full enough to give us queues for an hour or two.

Raid team wise I know the Alliance had three raid groups with a chance of getting the Scarab Lord - Lost Chapter, Unity Path and another I forgot. There were also numerous smaller ones who at least got through Molten Core and BWL (Order of the White Rose, who I joined in TBC, were quite far through AQ40 when Vanilla ended.) If we were short on raiders it's probably because our guilds were busy patroling Ironforge trying to enforce the red hat ban (RP servers are the best :-)

- - - Updated - - -

One thing that is probably for certain is they will need a lot more servers at launch than they will 3-6 months down the line. At that point they will likely need to do something to alleviate the problem of players stranded on dead servers, either free transfers, realm mergers or CRZs to give the illusion of servers being populated.

[NihilSustinet]

No... no... no... kill it with fire.

No sharding, no CRZ. This killed the community.

If I play on a server, I want to see all the players on that server. No gimmicks.
If this means we have multiple servers, I'm fine with that.
But then we need to figure out how to deal with launch levels of players, versus the ongoing state of the game.

this. instancing, phasing, megaservers, etc has no place in vanilla. having a server community is one of the biggest things people miss about vanilla. I'd be ok with them having server xfers, but they should have the original limit. i think it was 30 days? server hopping became too prevalent when they lowered it. i would also be ok with no xfers at all.

[NihilSustinet]

I see no reason there can't be several servers with cross realm and shading technology. It doesn't take away from anything vanilla advocates have argued for.

no cross realm anything. and no sharding. this is against EVERYTHING vanilla stands for. please understand this.

[NihilSustinet]

How? Seriously, how does it affect anything at all about the game play other than making sure you're not on a dead server? Does it matter if the people you're playing with are another server or not? All I ever hear is "no it's bad!!" Without anyone actually saying why it's bad.

because in vanilla, servers had community. you grouped with people on your server, if you knew someone was in stv, if you went there, you would find them. world pvp was a thing. having a good reputation to find groups was a thing. it wasnt a game where you just randomly queue up with 4 people and never talk to any of them while you go through a dungeon. you saw the same people every day, you made enemies and hunted them down in pvp. you went to wsg and saw the same familiar enemies. i know the idea of actually having a community in wow is alien to today's players, but its important, and wow has lost it completely.

this was especially fun for things like the dragons of nightmare. i was in the top horde guild on my server, and we fought the top alliance guild for almost every spawn for weeks. sharding would destroy that.

[NihilSustinet]

All of this still exists with cross realm. And newsflash, if your server is dead there is no community.

coming from a player who played legion, and played vanilla.. no, it doesnt exist now. sorry. and you can leave dead servers. even before server xfers, blizzard would let you move for free. i started vanilla on frostwolf, which became one of the first "dead" servers, and we were given free xfers to frostmane. also, some people prefer playing on low pop servers.

[NihilSustinet]

It's not because of cross realm though. It's more because of LFD and such. Even then, if you're a mythic raider in a serious guild on your server, there is 100% a community even on super populated realms. I've played on Sargeras and Zul'jin. Two of the most populated realms with some of the best guilds and there are plenty of players known across the realm even today.

So yeah, cross realm has zero effect on this. The people you play the game with are still there on your server. It just helps fill in dead areas.

I played on Illidan. lol. guilds arent the only form of community. this is a subject you obviously know nothing about. i assume this stuff wont exist on vanilla, so play it, and youll see how different it is. a server is not just dalaran. every area having the same players is a server. i used to hang out on ironforge on my druid and assassinate (or try to) people i didnt like. and you could find them. LFD has nothing to do with how much sharding and cross-realm destroyed server community (though LFD destroys it too, in a different way).

[Mullet Man]

...if you're a mythic raider in a serious guild on your server, there is 100% a community...

Now expand this to the entire realm, top to bottom, and you get an idea what vanilla was all about.
From level 1 to 60. Adding CRZ kills this. Only at the top end, with mythic raiding guilds, do you have any sense of community.

CRZ was Blizzard way of not shutting down dead servers and creating bad press.
Shutting down dead servers would have been much better for the game in the long run.

[precious]

Current max capacity on live is 35k if im not mistaken. At this point it goes locked and u cant create or transfer in any toon on that server, correct me if im wrong, and thats after they upped the load. Previously was on 25k if im not mistaken again.

How on earth 200-300k ppl will be able to play on 4-8 servers without being on queues for days? Now take account if the pop surges to one million or whatever? And as someone mentioned language barrier will be there, for example russian players. Blizz needs to lay out what their plans are months before realease so ppl know what to do.

[Deleted]

Personally I hope for more than 1 server.

For 2 reasons:
1. Servers back then were smaller, you knew the people on them after some time since even the biggest servers couldn't handle more than 2500 players at once.
2. I really hope for a RP Server per region and this will of course not happen if we only get one or two really big servers.

[NihilSustinet]

My point was that LFD removed a lot of the community that existed without guilds or without raiding but since you still need that community for mythic raiding then that portion still exists regardless of cross realm. Which goes to show that cross realm isn't really the issue but LFD is. I played vanilla.

Once again, you can still do what you just gave an example of with cross realm. So, do you actually have a relevant argument?

- - - Updated - - -



It's not cross realms though. It's LFD. Read above.

its hard to reply to you when you clearly dont understand what words mean. LFD destroyed the dungeon running community, crossrealm and sharding destroyed the rest. i dont know how else to explain it to you. if yoiu did play vanilla, which i very much doubt, i feel likr you were probably in your teens and didnt really get into the game very much.

[Mullet Man]

It's not cross realms though. It's LFD. Read above.

No, it was CRZ, sharding, zoning, and LFD.
Which made the entire leveling process anonymous.

Now you have a bunch of players that have no in game friends, no reputation, and no community, that need LFR to experience end game content.

[NihilSustinet]

Personally I hope for more than 1 server.

For 2 reasons:
1. Servers back then were smaller, you knew the people on them after some time since even the biggest servers couldn't handle more than 2500 players at once.
2. I really hope for a RP Server per region and this will of course not happen if we only get one or two really big servers.

its gonna be more than 1 server for sure. at some point im sure they will set a target number of players per server, based on the hardware and software they have the servers running on, then gather some data for the amount of players they will get, and establish how many servers to create from there. because there wont me sharding, xrealm, etc, individual servers will have to be much smaller than they are now. with virtualization and cloud functions, they will be able to host several servers for the same resource cost as 1 modern day server, and then easily combine them when the player base starts to fall after the initial rush of new players.