Server population, A REAL ISSUE

[Tonkaden]

A concept that people over-exaggerate largely about Vanilla.

It definitely wasn't an exaggeration. Now who is showing the fact that they never played Vanilla. I can tell you the names of guild leaders from back then, the guilds they led. Which players were douches from said guilds, which were nice and helpful. I can list off people who didnt really join guilds that I used to bring to raids. I can list off a few people who used unconventional specs. Please, jsut stop while you are ahead... wait. You haven't been ahead at all.

[orderschvank]

Im not not focused on the longevity population. Im confident that will stabalize.

im talking about the launch experience.

WHY should blizzard make a hundred servers to mimic the first week of wow. only to begin merging them a month later.

it would make much more sense to just implement sharding to make it "feel" like there are a hundred servers that eventually merge because the tourists quit.

you are asking blizzard to do a crap ton of work all for the sake of "no changes" when sharding would emulate the exact same thing.

[Derpling]

We can expect well over 1,000,000 people to play at launch.

Knock a zero off that number for day one, then another after week one, and one more after month one, and you'll have something a little more accurate.

[Super Kami Dende]

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.

I'm talking more around the War effort time. You know, that event that basically killed smaller servers because they could never get enough people participating to make keep up to date. Basically the same thing that would happen on Classic if you only allowed tiny populations on a server.

[Tonkaden]

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.

And what happens if these people never leave? What happens if people exceed your expectations and the amount of constant players is too high? What then? You are also acting like they have to break out physical servers like they had to back in the day. This is no longer the case.

[Super Kami Dende]

It definitely wasn't an exaggeration. Now who is showing the fact that they never played Vanilla. I can tell you the names of guild leaders from back then, the guilds they led. Which players were douches from said guilds, which were nice and helpful. I can list off people who didnt really join guilds that I used to bring to raids. I can list off a few people who used unconventional specs. Please, jsut stop while you are ahead... wait. You haven't been ahead at all.

I can also tell you the names of the few big Assholes on my server, but there were many other assholes that weren't well known. Hence why people would constantly complain about getting fucked over and people would say in trade "oh yeah but he is known for being an ass" well yeah obviously not to everyone.

I mean sure you could have known a large handful of people. but not everyone did which lead to it being no where near as punished as you people like to believe.

Also, the fact you are trying to claim you are somehow "ahead" in an argument where you are completely wrong about things is quite hilarious. Remove the Nostalgia goggles buddy, they are cutting circulation to your brain.

[Tonkaden]

I'm talking more around the War effort time. You know, that event that basically killed smaller servers because they could never get enough people participating to make keep up to date. Basically the same thing that would happen on Classic if you only allowed tiny populations on a server.

We aren't talking about keeping them "tiny". Id say upping the concurrency to 5k would be fine. Anymore than that and you risk losing what made vanilla the "classic experience" everyone is yearning for. You absolutely , without a doubt, cannot have 10k - 20k concurrent users on a server.

[FertsBlert]

We have to have almost WoD like levels (but not quite WoD really was a whole new level of clusterfuck) of lag and queues and disconnects for the first month or so or it won't be the authentic vanilla experience.

[God Save The King]

And what happens if these people never leave? What happens if people exceed your expectations and the amount of constant players is too high? What then? You are also acting like they have to break out physical servers like they had to back in the day. This is no longer the case.

No, I am well aware of how Blizzard's server tech (probably) works. It's fairly common among modern games that have servers.

Assuming that everyone who tries classic will stay is silly.

Most games have somewhere between a 1-30% retention rate for the first year. I assumed the high road and went with 30%. It will likely be much lower, settling around 10%.

Heck, WoW had around a 5-10% retention rate in general. Over 100m people tried WoW, but only around 8m still played, if I recall the sub #s when they released the 100m number.

[Tonkaden]

I can also tell you the names of the few big Assholes on my server, but there were many other assholes that weren't well known. Hence why people would constantly complain about getting fucked over and people would say in trade "oh yeah but he is known for being an ass" well yeah obviously not to everyone.

I mean sure you knew a large handful of people. but not everyone did which lead to it being no where near as punished as you people like to believe.

Also, the fact you are trying to claim you are somehow "ahead" in an argument where you are completely wrong about things is quite hilarious.

Thats the bad thing about people. They always show their true colors eventually lol. I know a druid that ninjaed finkles lava dredger during one of our raids. No one would let him join a guild, dungeon run, raid, nada. All he could do was solo stuff. The dude had to transfer a month later.

- - - Updated - - -

No, I am well aware of how Blizzard's server tech (probably) works. It's fairly common among modern games that have servers.

Assuming that everyone who tries classic will stay is silly.

Most games have somewhere between a 1-30% retention rate for the first year. I assumed the high road and went with 30%. It will likely be much lower, settling around 10%.

Heck, WoW had around a 5-10% retention rate in general. Over 100m people tried WoW, but only around 8m still played, if I recall the sub #s when they released the 100m number.

You're the one making assumptions. I never said everyone would stay. I never said half would stay. I said "what if". You are assuming that there will be a low turn out of players in general. Why do you assume that there will only be a couple 100 thousand that even give it a shot?

[Orbusg]

It would be a royal pain in the butt to have to deal with fifty other people competing with you for kill mats for quests, every single quest every level up to cap everywhere, and not in the "like back in vanilla" way.
Which will be the case if they really do shove 10k people on a single server into the same zones with no unique zone instances to prevent overcrowding.

[Dembai]

Just shard it the way it is now, each server would "split" once it hits about what, 5000 players? You would still be LOCKED to your server, and you could still phase into your friends shard by grouping, but by all means, we don't really need to worry too hard about nonsense like the opening of AQ and 4000 people showing up at once and the server actually lighting on fire and burning the place to the ground. The technology is better now. I'm not worried about that. What I want is my gong experience. I was in the top hardcore guild when transfers started...we were about 3-4 weeks away from banging the gong, and suddenly some jerk transfers and bangs it for us.

I don't CARE about sharding. I just want my beetle mount like I freaking should have gotten!

But man, my real excitement is going to be racing to 60 again! I used to do that for fun! I enjoyed optimizing travel and turn ins, and post-cata, it's been hell. I don't even know how to explain the sadness to other players. T.T I miss the old quests so much.

[God Save The King]

You're the one making assumptions. I never said everyone would stay. I never said half would stay. I said "what if". You are assuming that there will be a low turn out of players in general. Why do you assume that there will only be a couple 100 thousand that even give it a shot?

...........

...........

The numbers were clearly arbitrary to make an example.......

I even said "Let me illustrate this with an example"

Several times, I said "Let's say". The numbers were to describe an idea, and I kept them small and round for ease of understanding.


Also I never said that you said everyone would stay. You asked "And what happens if these people never leave". I replied that assuming everyone who tried vanilla would stay is silly. Which is it. Which is what you asked. I replied to your question.