Debate about the population cap: what's the ideal situation?

[Flarelaine]

If you had actually played on an overpopulated server (without sharding ofc) you would know that it absolutely ruins questing and mob farming.

A moot point since we have sharding.

[Deleted]

Remember there will be no sharding and no shared tagging of mobs so personally I wouldn't want realm pop to be super high because then it'd be a game of camping spawn points.

They said there wouldnt be any sharding?

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A moot point since we have sharding.

Its not since this is a vanilla discussion and we dont know(or apaprently we do) if we will/wont have sharding

[Wries]

They said there wouldnt be any sharding?

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Its not since this is a vanilla discussion and we dont know(or apaprently we do) if we will/wont have sharding

I mean I assume there won't be sharding the same way I assume there won't be transmog, LFD or flying. They said on their presentation their intent was to make vanilla, for better or worse. Sharding is a rather huge feature introduced way later than vanilla, with impact on perceived player population and thus how the community on a realm acts. I really appreciate this feature on our current branch of WoW but I severely doubt we'll see it on classic.

[Flarelaine]

Its not since this is a vanilla discussion and we dont know(or apaprently we do) if we will/wont have sharding

It would be the best if they used sharding. Consider this: there is likely to be a huge spike of interest at the start, followed by droves of people leaving when they realise Classic is not what they expected. Now one of the main points in asking for Vanilla was the desire for close-knit server communities, which means merging servers is probably not a good answer to that. But without merging, if servers start with a medium population, they may become low-pop or even deserted. It is much better, I think, to start with high population, mitigated by sharding for the release frenzy, leaving servers to sink to a normal population naturally.

[MardestyGSOG]

There will be a surge, and then pop will drop off big time, which creates a problem of potential dead servers, so creating a shitload of regular blizz pop servers isn't feasible as people will end up on dead servers and want a transfer.

My solution is simply make less servers with higher cap, 6k feels like the sweet spot, the initial surge will be hell but after a week it will be nicely populated and bearable once people spread out to different zones. Say there is a 100k surge at launch, with 6k cap you need 16 servers at roughly 3k players per faction per server, if that surge dies down to half over a month, then you have roughly 1.5k per faction per server and servers built to handle much more for retail content lulls which will inevitably boost the population a small bit. 1.5k per faction is a very healthy server and the hope then becomes that of those 16 servers, they all stay relatively active and one or 2 doesn't become a total ghost town, along with faction balance where you really don't want a 25/75 split and making that 25 side want to transfer and turning one faction into a ghost town.

High cap to handle the surge while not spreading it too thin is the way to go, it's then on the players to keep things balanced. Blizzard will never implement balance incentives like warmane did on Outland, if the players fuck up the balance it's on them and once a server gets a rep for being unbalanced or dead or full of cancer then it basically won't recover, at which point players start begging for transfers

[Deleted]

It would be the best if they used sharding. Consider this: there is likely to be a huge spike of interest at the start, followed by droves of people leaving when they realise Classic is not what they expected. Now one of the main points in asking for Vanilla was the desire for close-knit server communities, which means merging servers is probably not a good answer to that. But without merging, if servers start with a medium population, they may become low-pop or even deserted. It is much better, I think, to start with high population, mitigated by sharding for the release frenzy, leaving servers to sink to a normal population naturally.

"Sharding. Sharding is definitely the way to go.

Think everyone agrees that vanilla will see a massive influx on players and a very steep decline after weeks/months.

Sharding can solve the problem of not being able to quest at first and not being able to find ppl for groups later on.

I cant see any other viable solution other then having many realms the first few weeks then start merging them , which also has its downsides"

That is my reply to the thread on the first page. I agree. I think sharding is paramount to a smooth and great vanilla experience.

My sig basicly says it all. I'm not for Transmog and LFD and so forth, but there are some logical additions they could add to vanilla to simply make it - Better

[Storfan]

N*stalrius with 10-15k peaks was AMAZING imo. I hope the caps will be ALOT higher in Classic than original vanilla.

[orderschvank]

5,000

10,000

20,000

none of this matters if blizzard implements sharding, which they should.

idk why they would make 3 servers when they could make 1 and just shard it when necessary.

[Storfan]

5,000

10,000

20,000

none of this matters if blizzard implements sharding, which they should.

idk why they would make 3 servers when they could make 1 and just shard it when necessary.

Sharding and xrealm ruined the realm community feeling. No thank you.

[orderschvank]

Sharding and xrealm ruined the realm community feeling. No thank you.

they are 2 completely different things

sharding just splits up the zones into more manageable less clusters of people. but keeps everyone on a server together.

look.. in vanilla you maybe had 50 people in a single zone.

classic could see 100-200 people in a single zone. sharding merely makes it FEEL like vanilla. you would still see everyones chat in /1. and you could see them if you joined groups with them. but it just wouldnt feel overpopulated.

look.. babies keep crying to keep classic as classic as possibly but guess what.. 5000+ players was NOT vanilla. if servers have 5000+ people blizzard has 2 options.

they can either ONLY shard overpopulated zones and then deshard when population reaches a minimum to keep zones feeling like they did in vanilla.

OR

they can introduce dynamic spawning of mobs and material nodes. because again guess what. 300 people farming in a zone was NOT vanilla.

unless blizzard actually is trying to screw over the player base by limiting each realm to a 2500 population cap. they will have to introduce either sharding or dynamic spawns. I know its weird that something being added will actually preserve the vanilla experience.

[Projectmars]

There's really nothing to discuss. Vanilla had 2500-3500 server caps, so should Classic. #nochanges

If it was hardware limitations that resulted in that cap, then it shouldn't be maintained since they'll be using better servers than what was available back then anyways.

they are 2 completely different things

sharding just splits up the zones into more manageable less clusters of people. but keeps everyone on a server together.

look.. in vanilla you maybe had 50 people in a single zone.

classic could see 100-200 people in a single zone. sharding merely makes it FEEL like vanilla. you would still see everyones chat in /1. and you could see them if you joined groups with them. but it just wouldnt feel overpopulated.

look.. babies keep crying to keep classic as classic as possibly but guess what.. 5000+ players was NOT vanilla. if servers have 5000+ people blizzard has 2 options.

they can either ONLY shard overpopulated zones and then deshard when population reaches a minimum to keep zones feeling like they did in vanilla.

OR

they can introduce dynamic spawning of mobs and material nodes. because again guess what. 300 people farming in a zone was NOT vanilla.

unless blizzard actually is trying to screw over the player base by limiting each realm to a 2500 population cap. they will have to introduce either sharding or dynamic spawns. I know its weird that something being added will actually preserve the vanilla experience.

Remember how Blizzard had to turn off sharding on RP realms because it split up people who were trying to hold a major event on one of the servers? Sharding has had an impact on the community as well, it's just less detrimental overall than crossrealm zones. Odds are there will be multiple servers (4 - 7 seems like some kinda sweet spot imo. four, with one of each type may work best, although doubling on the normal pve and pvp servers could help as well) so between that and a slightly higher population cap (4k - 5k) a lot of the issues should be handled.

I mean, sure at the start you'll get an overload of people in the same zones, that can't be helped no matter what, but that's why I say that them releasing Classic alongside a major patch would be the best since it should, in theory, break that giant surge of new players into two waves: the initial group who want to play Classic and only Classic will hop on when they open, then most of the tourists and people who want to play both will arrive later once they go through that major patch's content. Additionally, again in theory, the second wave would more likely come more gradually as people finish content at different paces, resulting in the crowd less likely to stay getting a less crowded starting experience.

[Echocho]

If it was hardware limitations that resulted in that cap, then it shouldn't be maintained since they'll be using better servers than what was available back then anyways.

It doesn't matter. A lot of things were made in a certain way because of hardware limitations, either on the client side or the server side, it doesn't mean that they should be changed. There's already a version of wow with larger server capacity for those that don't want to play classic.

[Projectmars]

It doesn't matter. A lot of things were made in a certain way because of hardware limitations, either on the client side or the server side, it doesn't mean that they should be changed. There's already a version of wow with larger server capacity for those that don't want to play classic.

And yet, what about a version of wow with larger server capacity for those that do?

[Vineri]

I do believe that a very populated server is more fun than an underpopulated one. 6-8k seems fun on an established server, with people spread all over the place.

Since a higher than traditional cap (~2-2.5k) is likely I wouldn't mind dynamic spawning based on the players in an immediate area. This came out sometime around Vanilla / TBC and it does work to keep players interested and occupied.

With regards to launch, one thing people are overlooking is how Blizzard inadvertently staggered new players into the game. Anyone remember 2004-mid 2005 when it was REALLY hard to even find a copy of WoW on store shelves? Blizzard underestimated WoW's popularity, but it worked to their benefit as they slowly added new servers, fixed bugs, and hired more staff.

Launching in multiple waves would be effective today as well. Early launch for buying the collector's box (murloc pet?). Regular launch later. Then the game "free" with some BFA patch, etc for everyone else. Like it, hate it ... something does need to be done to stagger the initial massive load. Blizzard probably has a few surprises as well though.

[Chaelexi]

If it was hardware limitations that resulted in that cap, then it shouldn't be maintained since they'll be using better servers than what was available back then anyways.



Remember how Blizzard had to turn off sharding on RP realms because it split up people who were trying to hold a major event on one of the servers? Sharding has had an impact on the community as well, it's just less detrimental overall than crossrealm zones. Odds are there will be multiple servers (4 - 7 seems like some kinda sweet spot imo. four, with one of each type may work best, although doubling on the normal pve and pvp servers could help as well) so between that and a slightly higher population cap (4k - 5k) a lot of the issues should be handled.

I mean, sure at the start you'll get an overload of people in the same zones, that can't be helped no matter what, but that's why I say that them releasing Classic alongside a major patch would be the best since it should, in theory, break that giant surge of new players into two waves: the initial group who want to play Classic and only Classic will hop on when they open, then most of the tourists and people who want to play both will arrive later once they go through that major patch's content. Additionally, again in theory, the second wave would more likely come more gradually as people finish content at different paces, resulting in the crowd less likely to stay getting a less crowded starting experience.

That is easy, have it turned on by default but have the ability to turn it off as well and then you just get put into the "main" shard if you don't like the idea of it.