Zone Phasing Vs Dynamic Respawn Vs Population Cap

[Clozer]

waiting 2 hours to get that one mob for your quest, 'cause everyone else is spamming aoe to tag him before you - ye that will be fun. But hey classic will be dead after 2 months anyway so w/e.

[Rafoel]

why ban clients when a simple sharding server fixes this issue completely. Blizzard likes money, sharding = more money and less server infrastructure used as the current hardware can handle more than the 3500 limit.

Sahrding = 0 money because noone will play the game.

[Echocho]

Sahrding = 0 money because noone will play the game.

None of the private server players, but I'm sure a lot of retailers will.

[Chaelexi]

Sahrding = 0 money because noone will play the game.

What does sharding effect other than allowing the server to survive the initial surge and later fall off of player.

[Accendor]

So that means forever static game world, where nothing changes no matter what you do. Why would that be preferable?

Why forever? Things could still change with patches, but everyone would see the same world and not be separated from each other.

[Alkizon]

What does sharding effect other than allowing the server to survive the initial surge and later fall off of player.

Breaking game world integrity, its identity in eyes of all game (=> server) participants, divide what is supposed to be whole and unified. Thus creating opportunities for exploits and disrupting players' interaction. You forget that player is part of the server, and therefore part of the world (his/her model and opportunities for interaction/change of game world). And that's the way it should be treated. You can't just hide/change one part of the world from/in eyes of the other, it will require in-game mechanic (magic/physical laws of this particular universe), but this is exactly what you propose to do.

Yeah, yeah, I remember this stupid mantra even in models topic: "if you don't see/know it - it doesn't affect you" - that's dog sh*t.

8. Servers types and organization (pvp toggle topic&MMO+soc.psycho.res.of changes+auto.ref.) +(+/+/+)+/+/+ (+/+/+)+

(2 middle links)

Now you avoided my question previously but I will propose it again

No, I answered here. Furthermore, "dynamic" max population discussed earlier in a separate topic (start 1.5k with 6 starting areas, no? week - 2k, month - 3k, year - 5k, or something like this), which quite easy will help to avoid rules violation... need time to find. Here you go, you saw this. Bad try, I answered (even here, to Embriel, similar question type), you need to be more resourceful

They have enough methods and resources to avoid it and no need to go against the rules.

ps. The most funny part in your message is mention of people who will go to play MOBA's and etc. As far as I know, those who love Classic are characterized by sufficient patience. And those who "will go to play MOBA's" may not worry much and just stay there.

[kamuimac]

Has Blizz spoken on how they plan on handling population per server?

Vanilla servers had a hard population cap which inevitably lead to a server feeling quite small -after the initial leveling zerg passes.

Today, servers are able to hold folds more players without any technical issues whatsoever BUT need to implement Dynamic Re-spawn or quests/mobs would simply take far too long.

While I want active servers with thousands of players online on both sides, I really don't like Dynamic Re-spawn seeing how not only does it lead to random player deaths -multiple mobs insta spawn on you- to player abuse to grind/farm in the same spot and again quests are hard to complete.

I would much rather have zone phasing that allows same guild/party/friends to be together but would phase out players entering that zone based on population in said zone. Thoughts?

ofc that you will have every single of those

its exackly why they are building classic on current wow technology and data.

[Chaelexi]

Breaking game world integrity, its identity in eyes of all game (=> server) participants, divide what is supposed to be whole and unified. Thus creating opportunities for exploits and disrupting players' interaction. You forget that player is part of the server, and therefore part of the world (his/her model and opportunities for interaction/change of game world). And that's the way it should be treated. You can't just hide/change one part of the world from/in eyes of the other, it will require in-game mechanic (magic/physical laws of this particular universe), but this is exactly what you propose to do.

Yeah, yeah, I remember this stupid mantra even in models topic: "if you don't see/know it - it doesn't affect you" - that's dog sh*t.(2 last links)

Yet there is no plan to handle the thousands of people at launch because low server population login caps with a tonne of servers will not work. It is going to lead to fragmentation of player bases that want to play together, long queue times at prime time during the first 3 months(which leads to people quitting), once you get in for some areas(human, orc/troll, dwarf/gnome) you will be stuck competing for mob tags against a couple hundred to a thousand players(leading to people getting frustrated and leaving the game). Yes there are the purists that want the game in its raw vanilla form but that is a loud minority, and I agree that for the most part there the game should be as close to the original experience as possible but in order to achieve that experience, changes will have to be made to some aspects of the game. But there are also some sacrifices that will have to be made to also ease the experience of the younger player base that has not played vanilla, Remember these players are the players that have short attention spans and something has to hook the quickly, waiting 2 hours to finish the opening quests because there are 700 players killing slow respawn mobs will only lead these players to going back to playing MOBA's, Battle Royal games, etc because they can get their 20-30 minutes of gaming in and feel like they accomplished something.

This also does not address the issues with having 500+ players in a starting zone and people's computers not having the ability to handle it. Think of Panda launch and the crashes that happened in the first quest. Putting that many players in a starting zone is going to cause huge lag and stability issues all in the name of "immersion".

This is why sharding during launch makes sense with higher population cap servers. You can still make the shards larger than live in general to get that feel you are looking for but this will minimize the lag, keep more players engaged in the game and keep server populations higher for a longer period of time. And once the initial attrition is done you can turn up the shard caps to the point that they only engage when zone populations hit the point where game stability is an issue and leave it off in major cities.

Now you avoided my question previously but I will propose it again

I have posted it in other threads but here it is again because everyone ignored it because it was logical.
There are 3 situations and think about which one sounds the most plausible and best player experience.
1)First you make smaller servers but many of them to handle the initial rush of players but once the first wave leaves these servers will be relatively quiet and the experience will be poor since there will be many players but spread across many servers in small numbers making the organization of and pvp poor. Thus forcing Blizzard to either run combine realms or worse forced xfers.

2) You make a small number of servers with high population limits to handle the initial rush. On these servers you have high cap sharding allowing them to handle that high pop and people can still complete quests, get mob tags, etc but at the same time preserving the experience of vanilla of competing for tags. Once the initial rush leaves this server you will still have healthy population on the server and depending on server populations you then can disable sharding or atleast move up the thresholds.

3) You make high pop servers with no sharding and endup with 3-5000 players per starting zone competing for mobs for the first week and only the lucky get passed those quests quickly. The rest of the player base will get frustrated with the game and likely leave since they have not been able to get passed the starting zone in 12+ hours played since it is a competition for every tag. This will cause many players that may have stuck around to leave, it is bad business practice to drive good customers away when you have a great solution at hand that will not really damage the "experience". This will also cause huge lag and connectivity issues for players with less than top-end gaming rigs as trying to render and track a couple thousand players will be terrible.

Remember the end goal of Blizzard is keep people playing and not appease a small but loud contingent of people who wave the no changes flag. They are a business that makes it's money of repeat clients.

[Segus1992]

If you want vanilla, you ain't getting new tech for it like zone phasing. You're getting the vanilla experience, not a sort-of-Vanilla experience.

It is 100% likely going to be a sort-of-vanilla experience, no matter how perfectly Blizzard makes it. The resources we have these days (biggest part of the Vanilla nostalgia is being new to the game, which is literally impossible to recreate perfectly), the connection issues and bugs we won't have, the 5 FPS raids we won't have - these were all part of the actual Vanilla experience.

Absolutely guaranteed that isn't happening again.

[Ineluki]

No phasing, I HATE phasing. It so freaking annoying to be standing right next to my brother's character and he isnt there until I group with him.

[Worgoblin]

Give me dynamic spawns for sure. People aren't interested in Classic because they have fun waiting 15 minutes for a spawn.

[Deficineiron]

Many people in this thread are conflating total player population with players online at once. Population caps are for the latter and work quite well.

also, ps PCU numbers need to take into account there are 3 peak periods. the largest is china evening peak, then euro peak and NA peak. this means ps PCU levels suggests a much higher multiple of active accounts/PCU than a single regional blizzard server did - I would think double the ratio would work.

[Easo]

Why forever? Things could still change with patches, but everyone would see the same world and not be separated from each other.

But patches have months between them, phasing allows reasonable changes to occur as soon as I make them. And isnt the idea of phasing that you still can play with your friends? It just might look wierd, from time to time (hitting empty air, for example).

[Accendor]

But patches have months between them, phasing allows reasonable changes to occur as soon as I make them. And isnt the idea of phasing that you still can play with your friends? It just might look wierd, from time to time (hitting empty air, for example).

Yes, but this "looking weird" is breaking immersion soooo much. And nothing is more frustrating than wanting to meeg up with somebody and you can not see each other.
But it got really worse together with sharding, Phasing alone might habe been "ok" if it hadn't been used so exzessive.

[Deficineiron]

Yes, but this "looking weird" is breaking immersion soooo much. And nothing is more frustrating than wanting to meeg up with somebody and you can not see each other.
But it got really worse together with sharding, Phasing alone might habe been "ok" if it hadn't been used so exzessive.

Telling a Story (mandatory story, given linear questing) became a design priority. It only was in 1 zone in wotlk, but apparently was deemed such a success that in cattokissem it was felt the best design approach was make most zones mandatory, down-your-throat stories with exactly one path. Mandatory fun must have looked great in the participation.completion metrics.

There was a limited form of phasing in caer darrow in classic, btw, but it only added npc's, rather than terrain and building, and did NOT make players in different phases invisible to each other.

[cparle87]

Phasing is something that never should have made it into the game, like sharding. If one of them is used in Vanilla this also has the power to destroy the whole project.

Do you mean phasing of players or phasing of terrain and npcs. Cause the latter is an important worldbuilding tool.

[Deficineiron]

Do you mean phasing of players or phasing of terrain and npcs. Cause the latter is an important worldbuilding tool.

blizzard apparently finds the two inseparable, or at least they did in 4.0.

[cparle87]

blizzard apparently finds the two inseparable, or at least they did in 4.0.

It first got unveiled to a large extent in Wrath. With evolving areas like the death knight starting area, frost giant daily area, and of course argent tournament area. Where the mobs, terrain and such evolve and change as you quest. That's the kind of terrain phasing I was referring to. Not the whole "there's too many people in an area so you won't be able to see them all" thing they added later.

[Accendor]

Do you mean phasing of players or phasing of terrain and npcs. Cause the latter is an important worldbuilding tool.

Since you can not have one without the other: Both.

[cparle87]

Since you can not have one without the other: Both.

Not quite sure what you mean here. Sure as a zone phases and advances there are times you can't see players in earlier or later phases but eventually everyone finishes the zone and are in the same phase again.