Server size options.....

[Deleted]

I played vanilla and every expansion since. Large servers would work fine with well thought out dynamic respawn.

Sure but you didn’t say that. And dynamic respawns are a lot more intrusive then sharding

[Aphrel]

Yet large servers with sharding completely deals with both of these.

The downsides of sharding is that you never ever can find yourself alone on a farming spot. (unless there litterarly arent a single other player in all of europe at that spot.)

And that kinds sucks imo.
Sharding = everything is always half full.
Few Highpoprealms = at most times places are overcrowded and at some times halffull to near empty.
Many mediumpop realms = halffull at peak ours and freefarm/near alone at odd hours.

Viewing that from this aspect sharding really isnt that attractive in regards to farming stuff in the open world.

Sharding and shared servers are ofc the byfar best option when looking at finding guilds/raiding grps/dungeon grps. But then, with sharding it pretty much forces blizz to also add the custom grp finder, cant have that many ppl in shared chatrooms. Will be superspammed.

[Chaelexi]

I agree! I think it'll be interesting to have really high pop servers.

When you put 4-6 thousand players in a starting zones attempting to kill a set reset mob(remember the is no dynamic respawn rates). that is going to lead to players leaving. and no company is going to willing do this.

[Unholyground]

They have the tech to make things a lot larger for one server so that is the best bet for community forming and group creation.

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When you put 4-6 thousand players in a starting zones attempting to kill a set reset mob(remember the is no dynamic respawn rates). that is going to lead to players leaving. and no company is going to willing do this.

They made changes early on for just the starting areas to have quicker re-spawns I am pretty sure, it was not dynamic though.

[A Chozo]

Since the servers of old were smaller than what I got today, we'll have to go with smaller servers.

Keeps the community small n cozy. Otherwise it wouldn't be Classic WoW.

[Chaelexi]

Since the servers of old were smaller than what I got today, we'll have to go with smaller servers.

Keeps the community small n cozy. Otherwise it wouldn't be Classic WoW.

What happens when the initial rush of players leaves and most of the servers go from 3000 logins to 600 hundred or less? What is your plan to deal with this.

[Echocho]

What happens when the initial rush of players leaves and most of the servers go from 3000 logins to 600 hundred or less? What is your plan to deal with this.

Free transfers from low pop servers to medium pop ones. Problem solved.

[anon5123]

Private servers with 10k online are not ideal. They require heavy amounts of un-blizzlike dynamic respawn changes just to function properly. Vanilla was not designed for that many players online at once. It's especially bad on PvP realms, because every single zone turns into a 24/7 battleground; it's impossible to just quest in peace because you get ganked every 5 minutes.

Classic servers should be capped at 4-5k.

What happens when the initial rush of players leaves and most of the servers go from 3000 logins to 600 hundred or less? What is your plan to deal with this.

Merge low pop servers. Duh. That's what Blizzard has been doing for years now.

And before you even cry "b-but muh community!", merging two communities of WoW players together does not ruin each individual one. Especially when the server is at an unplayably low population.

[Kelathos]

You can allow a large number of small servers, but they'll empty out and be ghost shards. That is solved if Blizzard simply let players transfer characters for free.

[Chaelexi]

Free transfers from low pop servers to medium pop ones. Problem solved.

You can allow a large number of small servers, but they'll empty out and be ghost shards. That is solved if Blizzard simply let players transfer characters for free.

This does not solve the issues though, it only compounds them. First unless you force migrate people(something blizzard has never done and has been on the record of saying they never will, also this is no something from vanilla they never offered free xfers off of a dead realm it was always the opposite and that proved to just move the issues) you are not going to get all the players to move, so you are stuck with an even smaller server that is still sitting on a similar hardware footprint to the larger server. This is not a functional solution and if it was Blizzard would still be using it today. The only option for the is CRZ merged realms but that is against #NoChanges because in a merged realm situation which night elf hunter gets to keep legolas and which pally gets to keep leeroy...... Blizzad has been on the record saying that they will never close a server down or force merge them because that is the kiss of death to an MMO is forcing players to leave their server because you are forcing them to surrender their Identity.

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Private servers with 10k online are not ideal. They require heavy amounts of un-blizzlike dynamic respawn changes just to function properly. Vanilla was not designed for that many players online at once. It's especially bad on PvP realms, because every single zone turns into a 24/7 battleground; it's impossible to just quest in peace because you get ganked every 5 minutes.

Classic servers should be capped at 4-5k.



Merge low pop servers. Duh. That's what Blizzard has been doing for years now.

And before you even cry "b-but muh community!", merging two communities of WoW players together does not ruin each individual one. Especially when the server is at an unplayably low population.

Sharding fixes all of that though. No need for dynamic respawn because the dynamic portion is happening on server side by spawning new realms as needed.

[anon5123]

Sharding fixes all of that though. No need for dynamic respawn because the dynamic portion is happening on server side by spawning new realms as needed.

Sharding is not blizzlike for patch 1.12.

What next, are you going to ask for personal loot in vanilla as well?

[Echocho]

This does not solve the issues though, it only compounds them. First unless you force migrate people(something blizzard has never done and has been on the record of saying they never will, also this is no something from vanilla they never offered free xfers off of a dead realm it was always the opposite and that proved to just move the issues) you are not going to get all the players to move, so you are stuck with an even smaller server that is still sitting on a similar hardware footprint to the larger server. This is not a functional solution and if it was Blizzard would still be using it today. The only option for the is CRZ merged realms but that is against #NoChanges because in a merged realm situation which night elf hunter gets to keep legolas and which pally gets to keep leeroy...... Blizzad has been on the record saying that they will never close a server down or force merge them because that is the kiss of death to an MMO is forcing players to leave their server because you are forcing them to surrender their Identity.

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Sharding fixes all of that though. No need for dynamic respawn because the dynamic portion is happening on server side by spawning new realms as needed.

If people don't want to move that's their choice.

[A Chozo]

What happens when the initial rush of players leaves and most of the servers go from 3000 logins to 600 hundred or less? What is your plan to deal with this.

Why do you think that would happen? Classic WoW is a very good game and I'm sure it will have longevity.

[Chaelexi]

Why do you think that would happen? Classic WoW is a very good game and I'm sure it will have longevity.

Every video game currently experiences it. They see a large initial rush to the game as it is something "new" after a large portion of players see the game and realize it is not for them because it is not for them or they get bored quickly. This will happen on most servers across the board. After this initial exodus of players for the first couple months there will be a slow trickle of players leaving and since there is no true new content being released there will be no draw to bring players back. This is why small servers are not the answer.

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If people don't want to move that's their choice.

Yes but kills scalability though. Because running servers on a cluster that has low logon numbers means all zones have to running at all times anyways even if there is no characters there. The fact you are completely ignoring or a concept you just do not understand. And still does not fix the issue of the dead server. Please provide an actual functioning solution to the low pop/empty servers, free character transfers is not a solution it is putting a bandaid on a shotgun wound. You have has stopped the bleeding from one hole but you are not fixing the damage done.

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Sharding is not blizzlike for patch 1.12.

What next, are you going to ask for personal loot in vanilla as well?

No sharding handles server populations, and will only positively effect gameplay, less lag, no queue times, better mob density, not having to deal with 2000 characters in Northshire or 3500 in the Troll/Orc starting area. That will only push players away from the game. As well as small server populations, especially when they go from FUll to Locked like they did in Vanilla with ultra high population servers. Lets say you convince your friend to come join you to play but you are already level 35 and your server is locked. You do not want to give up your 4 days played to get there at the same time your friend can not join the server because it is locked or has 3 hours queues(those existed in vanilla on Shattered Hand-US, I remember because I would get home 2 hours after my brother and log into Laughing Skull-US while he was still fighting the queue boss). These issues were vanilla issues why bring them into Classic? Compared to 2004, gamers are more willing to drop a game since they have so many choices and less patience when it comes to issues now.

[unbound]

Sigh. The server sizes have more to do with the times they operated, not as "options" anymore.

Vanilla would have been huge servers with zone sharding if it was cost effective back in 2004. It was not. They used, for that time, pretty powerful servers that were reasonably priced and maxed them out as much as possible. VMs were not really running back then (certainly not effectively). The number of physical servers was simply a matter of the number of players.

The listed size 2 didn't start coming efficient until a few years later (so more like Wrath timeframe).

I guarantee Blizz will not be using those older concepts. They will most likely use virtualized servers, and, as a player, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference anyways.

[Echocho]

Yes but kills scalability though. Because running servers on a cluster that has low logon numbers means all zones have to running at all times anyways even if there is no characters there. The fact you are completely ignoring or a concept you just do not understand. And still does not fix the issue of the dead server. Please provide an actual functioning solution to the low pop/empty servers, free character transfers is not a solution it is putting a bandaid on a shotgun wound. You have has stopped the bleeding from one hole but you are not fixing the damage done.

Again if people don't want to move that's their choice. If there are dead servers and players refuse to migrate from them that's their problem, the important thing is that we don't make ANY FUCKING CHANGES to vanilla. 2500 server cap realms just like it was, everything like it was, if you don't want to play authentic vanilla I'm sure there are other games you can play that suit your needs.

[Chaelexi]

Again if people don't want to move that's their choice. If there are dead servers and players refuse to migrate from them that's their problem, the important thing is that we don't make ANY FUCKING CHANGES to vanilla. 2500 server cap realms just like it was, everything like it was, if you don't want to play authentic vanilla I'm sure there are other games you can play that suit your needs.

So you would be willing to pay more monthly than a live subscription for the extra hardware, extra management costs and extra labour costs to run all these extra servers.....say 25 or 30 dollars a month since this is likely the price point to run your extra hardware space. Remember because of sharding and CRZ it has shrunk the cost of running live WoW does since they only have to run chat servers for the individual servers and everyone else ends up in shared resource servers. So you can put 10 low pop servers sharing a container. With yours each low pop server will needs its own container.........You have yet to actually provide a solution for your lack of scalability, high hardware costs or server population issues.


Also you are not getting authentic vanilla, you are getting Classic the vanilla experience, sharded servers will still provide the majority of that experience and that is their end goal. You want a game that will fail miserably, I want a game that will have success due to well thought out technical design that uses the best that a virtual platform has to offer......this is not your daddies Vanilla anymore.

[Worgoblin]

Larger servers, no sharding.

[Echocho]

So you would be willing to pay more monthly than a live subscription for the extra hardware, extra management costs and extra labour costs to run all these extra servers.....say 25 or 30 dollars a month since this is likely the price point to run your extra hardware space. Remember because of sharding and CRZ it has shrunk the cost of running live WoW does since they only have to run chat servers for the individual servers and everyone else ends up in shared resource servers. So you can put 10 low pop servers sharing a container. With yours each low pop server will needs its own container.........You have yet to actually provide a solution for your lack of scalability, high hardware costs or server population issues.

Vanilla didn't cost 30 dollars per month despite lacking both sharding and CRZ, in fact it cost less than WoW does now so running costs seem to have increased despite actual hardware becoming cheaper. Since hardware cost seem to be the only thing affecting sub cost according to you I'd prefer to them going back to what it used to be so we can get a cheaper subscription than retail.

[Chaelexi]

Vanilla didn't cost 30 dollars per month despite lacking both sharding and CRZ, in fact it cost less than WoW does now so running costs seem to have increased despite actual hardware becoming cheaper. Since hardware cost seem to be the only thing affecting sub cost according to you I'd prefer to them going back to what it used to be so we can get a cheaper subscription than retail.

Yes what is 15 years of inflation? 15 years of wage increases of these employees. Actually server hardware is less expensive now for the capabilities it has to be designed in a way that is scaleable but the way you want to run a server is horribly inefficient server setup that will waste server VM slots, that is the issue. You want to run something designed for baremetal chasis on VM environment where you can use container based programming(that Current wow is based off of). Your ideas are a poor design that is based in an era that is not compatible or logical. Where as now they can run 10 servers off of the hardware you are suggesting for 1 server. That is the issue. Also not sure what you are talking about I have paid 15 USD the whole time to play.