Server population, A REAL ISSUE

[orderschvank]

I would like an authentic vanilla experience... BUT.

this would mean an emulation of also the population of the time.

the average server population in vanilla was probably at most 2000 players online. and this was with 40 servers at launch, 40 more later and even more further down the line.

I highly doubt blizzard will provide 40+ servers for the launch of classic. and even if they did. We can expect well over 1,000,000 people to play at launch. but lets assume its only going to be 1 mill. at 40 servers that is 25 THOUSAND people per server if everyone was evenly spread. this is 10 times to server cap for vanilla servers.

So the question is.. to support an "authentic" vanilla experience. what should blizzard do?

should they incorporate phasing to split people up into their own versions of a zone when there are too many present?
should they have dynamic spawn rates for mobs/quest items/nodes?

If you suggest that they should do nothing because changes mean "its not vanilla".. then you are wrong.. because 25,000 players is not vanilla, 2000ish is.

[Tonkaden]

I would like an authentic vanilla experience... BUT.

this would mean an emulation of also the population of the time.

the average server population in vanilla was probably at most 2000 players online. and this was with 40 servers at launch, 40 more later and even more further down the line.

I highly doubt blizzard will provide 40+ servers for the launch of classic. and even if they did. We can expect well over 1,000,000 people to play at launch. but lets assume its only going to be 1 mill. at 40 servers that is 25 THOUSAND people per server if everyone was evenly spread. this is 10 times to server cap for vanilla servers.

So the question is.. to support an "authentic" vanilla experience. what should blizzard do?

should they incorporate phasing to split people up into their own versions of a zone when there are too many present?
should they have dynamic spawn rates for mobs/quest items/nodes?

If you suggest that they should do nothing because changes mean "its not vanilla".. then you are wrong.. because 25,000 players is not vanilla, 2000ish is.

You also need to look at it from the cross realm BG point of view and why I think battlegroups should be implemented.

Once servers stabilize and there are faction imbalances, queues for BGs are going to be an absolute nightmare. Queues during vanilla for PvP got to be 30-40 minutes on some servers and at lower level brackets, sometimes the queues wouldnt pop at all. Their will be many tears once this happens and trust me , It WILL happen.

[Super Kami Dende]

If you suggest that they should do nothing because changes mean "its not vanilla".. then you are wrong.. because 25,000 players is not vanilla, 2000ish is.

Well. This is certainly one of the more reaching things I've seen someone bring up. You realise splitting up the classic community over multiple servers will leave the Classics servers with the exact issue that brought in cross Realm in the first place.

Imo give Classic 4 servers. 1 for each servertype.

[Tonkaden]

Well. This is certainly one of the more reaching things I've seen someone bring up. You realise splitting up the classic community over multiple servers will leave the Classics servers with the exact issue that brought in cross Realm in the first place.

Imo give Classic 4 servers. 1 for each servertype.

You cannot raise the concurrent limit on players to an abnormal level. If they even raised it by double to 7000 (they said 3500 was the cap during vanilla), the community would literally be cut in half. You would know way less people. Its like going from vanilla pop (a decent sized town) to a small city. It just won't work.

The concurrent population caps made sure the community stayed close knit. If you raise this cap, that will start to dwindle.

[garneroutlaw]

Well. This is certainly one of the more reaching things I've seen someone bring up. You realise splitting up the classic community over multiple servers will leave the Classics servers with the exact issue that brought in cross Realm in the first place.

Imo give Classic 4 servers. 1 for each servertype.

I agree. The first 2 weeks will be a shit show with server ques. I expect to see an active pop of 50k based on the demographics I saw on Nostalrius (logging in once a month doesn't count as active). What you need for a healthy vanilla server is about 5-10k active for each faction. If I remember right a low pop would have 15k back in the day for both factions. 4 servers would facilitate that. Open a 5th at a later time if need be.

[Super Kami Dende]

You cannot raise the concurrent limit on players to an abnormal level. If they even raised it by double to 7000 (they said 3500 was the cap during vanilla), the community would literally be cut in half. You would know way less people. Its like going from vanilla pop (a decent sized town) to a small city. It just won't work.

The concurrent population caps made sure the community stayed close knit. If you raise this cap, that will start to dwindle.

And as soon as the servers started dying, you would have problems with populations. Which would bring them to the issues that brought Cross Server.

Which would result in either Dead Vanilla servers where there aren't enough people because they had a low cap to begin with then lost people worn out on the nostalgia. And you would start a giant shit fest at people that would ask for cross realm to help them find groups vs people that still want their nostalgia server.

Basically limiting server populations and spreading the community across a ton of servers would be a nail in the coffin for Classic servers after the first year..

[Sangris]

Don't worry. Most people new to vanilla will probably stop before they hit level 30.

[Tonkaden]

And as soon as the servers started dying, you would have problems with populations. Which would bring them to the issues that brought Cross Server.

Which would result in either Dead Vanilla servers where there aren't enough people because they had a low cap to begin with then lost people worn out on the nostalgia. And you would start a giant shit fest at people that would ask for cross realm to help them find groups vs people that still want their nostalgia server.

Basically limiting server populations and spreading the community across a ton of servers would be a nail in the coffin for Classic servers after the first year..

Nah, you just merge servers then.

Im telling you right now. They throw 8-10k concurrency on a server, you might as well shut the servers down. Their wont be community period. Instead of those 1-2 enchanters you knew had the good shit, now you have 60. It would be a train wreck.

[owbu]

why wouldnt they offer more than 40 servers? Its not like every server actually needs to be a physical machine anymore. Trying to get the server populations to vanillaish numbers seems like a pretty high priority to me. "you cant be an asshole, because people will know your name" is one of the reasons vanilla is better than current wow that comes up alot.

[Tonkaden]

Don't worry. Most people new to vanilla will probably stop before they hit level 30.

I love ignorant comments like this. There are stats out there that show almost 90% of priavate server players never hit 60. 80% of them never got past 40.

This includes the old guard who are so called vanilla vets.

[God Save The King]

This makes the large assumption that there will be massive amounts of people playing.

We can probably expect around 100k to play regularly, which a dozen or so servers would be fine for. The initial flood will dwindle quickly, so there's no need to make a bunch of servers for the surge. Plan for the long term.

[Tonkaden]

why wouldnt they offer more than 40 servers? Its not like every server actually needs to be a physical machine anymore. Trying to get the server populations to vanillaish numbers seems like a pretty high priority to me. "you cant be an asshole, because people will know your name" is one of the reasons vanilla is better than current wow that comes up alot.

Yep. Raising the pop cap on servers would be almost as bad as putting in LFD.

[Super Kami Dende]

Im telling you right now. They throw 8-10k concurrency on a server, you might as well shut the servers down. Their wont be community period. Instead of those 1-2 enchanters you knew had the good shit, now you have 60. It would be a train wreck.

Lolwut. Well you just outted yourself as someone who never played Vanilla. My Guild alone in Vanilla had like 400+ people, many that worked on professions, Hell when it came to doing the Charger quest on my and other guildies Paladins, we had so many people that could make the Arcanite Bars and such that it was never even an issue. And there were far more than just 10 large guilds on the server, ours wasn't even close to the biggest.

[Tonkaden]

This makes the large assumption that there will be massive amounts of people playing.

We can probably expect around 100k to play regularly, which a dozen or so servers would be fine for. The initial flood will dwindle quickly, so there's no need to make a bunch of servers for the surge. Plan for the long term.

The surge is where you need the servers. You can always merge down realms or offer free xfers. If you have x amount of servers but they cant handle the amount of players, you end up with 1000 player queues and people wont bother anymore. That would be bad.

[Super Kami Dende]

"you cant be an asshole, because people will know your name" is one of the reasons vanilla is better than current wow that comes up alot.

A concept that people over-exaggerate largely about Vanilla.

[bmjclark]

Honestly, I think the best compromise is going to be having their sharding tech from legion for the first few weeks on a smaller number of servers. Entirely because I think there's going to be a huge drop off of players and I'd rather see a small number of servers that are well populated than a shit ton that are dead, which is exactly what you'll get if you open 50+ servers. With the sharding temporarily enabled it would let you level without fighting hundreds of people for mob tags (but still seeing quite a few people in theory) and it would allow them to keep the number of servers small.

Blizzard rarely merges servers on live and it's very needed in some cases, i wouldn't hold my breath on them doing it with vanilla if a bunch of servers die down.

[Uselessrouge]

i cant wait to see 5000 poeple in the start zone with no phasing and fighting for 3 mobs cause there was no mob sharing :P

[Tonkaden]

Lolwut. Well you just outted yourself as someone who never played Vanilla. My Guild alone in Vanilla had like 400+ people, many that worked on professions, Hell when it came to doing the Charger quest on my and other guildies Paladins, we had so many people that could make the Arcanite Bars and such that it was never even an issue. And there were far more than just 10 large guilds on the server, ours wasn't even close to the biggest.

Im not having this argument with a "lol never played vanilla" accusing douche. I had to post proof to kids on the official forums. Not gonna bother here.

I ran 2 guilds, an alliance guild on Thunderhorn and later a horde guild on Garona. I guess you are right if you are talking about playing at the end of vanilla. I knew every crafter that had what patterns by name. I knew what guilds had what fire resist patterns. I knew who the ninjas were. Hell, I even knew who the gold farmers were. We had one in our guild actually. Even let her come to raids.

Playing later during vanilla meant you pretty much missed the bus. Sorry bro.
[Infracted]

[Orbusg]

i cant wait to see 5000 poeple in the start zone with no phasing and fighting for 3 mobs cause there was no mob sharing :P

That's when you party up, brah.

[God Save The King]

The surge is where you need the servers. You can always merge down realms or offer free xfers. If you have x amount of servers but they cant handle the amount of players, you end up with 1000 player queues and people wont bother anymore. That would be bad.

Oh Blizzard's server tech can easily handle the couple hundred thousand people trying out vanilla.

Let me illustrate this with an example, since you're not following.


Let's say ideally we'd want 2500 people on each vanilla server.

We expect around 50-100k players. So around 20-40 servers. Let's say 30.

Now the initial rush of players will flood these servers with say 300k people, or 10k each. They will dwindle down, and will likely end up around the 2000~ mark, depending on final population.

Blizzard's server tech can easily, easily, easily handle 10k players. I'm saying to allow these servers to surge up for the few weeks, until classic dies down closer to its final mark.

If things don't go super well and there's a dead server, people can always pay to transfer off of it.


This handles both the initial surge, and will help keep the populations healthy. Planning for 300k players, when it'll be closer to 75k, is a bad idea.