3-4 Hour Wait Times... is Your Server Always Full also?

[KOUNTERPARTS]

For those playing Classic right now during pre-patch, is your server perpetually full and making you sit in queue for hours on end?


Did you transfer? Are you going to wait it out?


I live on the east coast but my server is PST and even at 12pm/1pm PST I have an hour wait time. It jumps to 3-4 hours around 4pm PST (7pm EST) and it's crazy nutso.


And forgive my ignorance in asking, but why is Blizzard's current (if not only) solution just offering free transfers to absolutely dead servers? Could they not do more layers/phasing/whatever-I-don't-know-how-it-works-hence-me-asking?
Why not not more options for other medium-populated servers as well? I really don't want to leave my server to only pay $30 to transfer back eventually... although, Blizzard would love that.

[csguba]

Thekal (eu fresh pvp server) queue starts at like 1pm. It will have been 4 1/2 hours in the queue by the time I get in at which point I'll probably play for like 30 mins before going to bed.

It's a difficult situation though because if they open more up naturally they'll become one sided faction wise. But having 13-14k queues every day is also bonkers.

[tru]

Same song different verse? Its always been a thing when something new comes out and everyone rushes back day 1. It will settle with time. Few times they have made remarks about they didn't handle it properly and should have raised caps / shards or whatever and maybe even opened a new server but with everything being on the heels of a new retail expansion its kinda a mute point. I started on some random realm that was on EST and I've been fine. Maybe you should play on one in your time zone?

[Lochton]

Nothing new. Queues is going to happen because people flood and all believe that should stick to their choice, so some servers get massive queues while others are almost dead. I thought people wanted the full experience? Heck, this also happens on progression servers when pre-patch/expansion launches.

[SinR]

For those playing Classic right now during pre-patch, is your server perpetually full and making you sit in queue for hours on end?


Did you transfer? Are you going to wait it out?


I live on the east coast but my server is PST and even at 12pm/1pm PST I have an hour wait time. It jumps to 3-4 hours around 4pm PST (7pm EST) and it's crazy nutso.


And forgive my ignorance in asking, but why is Blizzard's current (if not only) solution just offering free transfers to absolutely dead servers? Could they not do more layers/phasing/whatever-I-don't-know-how-it-works-hence-me-asking?
Why not not more options for other medium-populated servers as well? I really don't want to leave my server to only pay $30 to transfer back eventually... although, Blizzard would love that.

First question: Faerlina has a ~1hr queue at 4pm PDT, at least it was this last week. I pretty much spent my weekend playing on Pagle logging in first thing in the morning and never actually logged off (maybe a total of ~30min actually AFK). I really don't know if I want to stay on Faerlina or not, I kinda want to play the Paladin in Wrath, hes got a good name, and i got Rivendare's yesterday on him on kill #2. Druid's kinda boring right now but at least its easy to gear him up.

Second question: its a matter of server capacity. they can layer all they want (first days of Faerlina there were at least 5 layers) but if the server can only hold XYZ number of people then all the layers in the world won't help. they specifically "Target" the super low population servers in an effort to (A) get people onto these servers to keep them afloat and (B) to deal with the overpopulation on servers like Benediction or Grobb.

The problem is the people.

You know that Pawn Stars meme? where they're arguing?

"Server queues are out of control"
"THEN TAKE THE FREE TRANSFER"
"But I don't want to leave why should I I've been on Grobb since day one"
"THEN PUT UP WITH THE QUEUES"
"But Queues are bad"

[Nerph-]

I play on Golemagg EU, queues are reasonable whenever I decide to log in and play. Luckily at the moment my hours are rather flexible, so I'm not only stuck to evenings and weekends.

As others have posted, it's a tricky situation for Blizzard to solve really. They offer free transfers away but people don't want to move. Increasing the allocated amount of players online at one time would diminish the experience for all those online. Not sure what else they can do really.

[Chickenfing]

I play on Golemagg EU, queues are reasonable whenever I decide to log in and play. Luckily at the moment my hours are rather flexible, so I'm not only stuck to evenings and weekends.

As others have posted, it's a tricky situation for Blizzard to solve really. They offer free transfers away but people don't want to move. Increasing the allocated amount of players online at one time would diminish the experience for all those online. Not sure what else they can do really.

Yeah I really wish they had some solution where they could shard or instance the popular servers into multiple virtual servers. This would keep queues down and improve the player experience.

[helusay]

I play Horde on Atiesh - PVE - US West and have no wait time.

The population is only about 6k players right now and Horde are outnumbered nearly 5 to 1 right now. The only issue that we had was on patch day.

[Kralljin]

Gehennas EU.

I experience this rather weird situation where the game itself is very much playable, but any interaction with the inventory (trading, looting, etc..) causes a 20-60sec lag and the risk of a DC.

[Fkiolaris]

I checked with a couple of people I know and Nethergarde Keep (EU pve) has no queues. Going to ironforge.pro to check the population, it seems that it fell off a cliff during the last 4-5 months which I find quite shocking, since during the whole of Classic and the first 3 months of TBC it was quite a healthy and stable server.

But anyway, on topic, I believe Nethergarde Keep does not have queues.

[w0nderd0g]

Gehennas EU is a complete mess - constant server wide DC's, horrific loot/trade/res latency (minutes per activitiy), really hope they do something about it tonight during maintenance - the complete silence from Blizzard EU support is quite concerning.

[Ave07]

Faerlina queues are not as bad as Benediction or Grobbulus queues.

[deenman]

Same song different verse? Its always been a thing when something new comes out and everyone rushes back day 1. It will settle with time. Few times they have made remarks about they didn't handle it properly and should have raised caps / shards or whatever and maybe even opened a new server but with everything being on the heels of a new retail expansion its kinda a mute point. I started on some random realm that was on EST and I've been fine. Maybe you should play on one in your time zone?

imagine having this dumb take if the discussion was about netflix,or phone sub,imagine waiting 4-5 hours for your movie to load or phone call..ykes dude...this situation is completly unacceptable,any company that pulls this shit is dogshit,objectivly...no dicussion

[Bigbazz]

It took us 90mins to get a full raid online and inside Sunwell, due to lag, disconnects, people being unable to log in etc. Also took about 10mins to get the loot from each boss, because it had to be done one item at a time and took about 2mins per.

[Mikehuntz]

Best part is, Blizzard won't do anything more about it until launch day with the adding of all those layers to reduce the que times. Asmongold said it best that if they're having problems now; it's going to be so much worse on launch day.

[Nerph-]

Yeah I really wish they had some solution where they could shard or instance the popular servers into multiple virtual servers. This would keep queues down and improve the player experience.

Heh yeah, oversight on my part, I blame covid fevers.

Shards work, however I'm not completely into the technical know-how as to why they've not already implemented this more for servers with such long queues.

[OrangeJuice]

how about they just fucking increase the server cap? oh right because they think it makes them look better when people post screenshots of their q times.

[PtectheWise]

I checked with a couple of people I know and Nethergarde Keep (EU pve) has no queues. Going to ironforge.pro to check the population, it seems that it fell off a cliff during the last 4-5 months which I find quite shocking, since during the whole of Classic and the first 3 months of TBC it was quite a healthy and stable server.

But anyway, on topic, I believe Nethergarde Keep does not have queues.

Yeh Nethergarde Keep doesn't have any queues at any time. The server population was great and then that loophole where you could transfer to a dead server then to golemag happened and loads of people's FOMO kicked in and about half the guilds left. There has been a lot of new or returning players though so its fun to play on.

The only thing the server is lacking at the moment is Pugs. A lot of people left because they heard there were always pugs going on golemagg but I suppose it all evens out. Takes you hours to log on then you can find a pug quickly or you wait 30 mins for your ZA group to form.
There is only a couple of active pug servers so there isnt a lot of 25 man raids to do without your guild but if you are in a guild its great. So come join my guild and my pugs!

[Ringthane]

imagine having this dumb take if the discussion was about netflix,or phone sub,imagine waiting 4-5 hours for your movie to load or phone call..ykes dude...this situation is completly unacceptable,any company that pulls this shit is dogshit,objectivly...no dicussion

Please. Somebody obviously just started playing WoW recently.

I remember queues like this back in Vanilla in 2005. Every expansion brings them. Especially something like Wrath, which was WoW at its biggest.

If you don't have the patience for queues, wait a couple of weeks or go play a different game.

[deenman]

Please. Somebody obviously just started playing WoW recently.

I remember queues like this back in Vanilla in 2005. Every expansion brings them. Especially something like Wrath, which was WoW at its biggest.

If you don't have the patience for queues, wait a couple of weeks or go play a different game.

been playing since 2006 lol,also back then the tech wasnt as good,and i wasnt mad enough to play on an extremly high pop realm,but doesnt wrath have like only 2 realms?

at any rate,there is no reason why high ques should exists today,there are multiple solutions to this,but blizz needs $$$ more than their players satisfaction

also i like how you completly ignored my actual point