Here’s something I find curious. When people complain on the Warcrap forums about the login queues, game drops and/or crushing lag on the high-population servers, someone (usually several someones) is sure to post, “you shouldn’t have made a character on a hi-pop server”, or “remake on a lo-pop server”, or “no lag on my server, quit yer bitching.”
Really, how are any of those responses relevant or helpful?
How long should a player give a gaming house to get their launch shit together? One week at least, I’d think. After a month, certainly two, shouldn’t players expect some relief?
Maybe the guy on the hi-pop server made his character on launch day. Maybe he believed the Blizzard Company Line that they’d get things under control soon. Maybe after level 30 or so, he still believed the Company Line. Probably now, he’s doubting.
Y’see, when I read that crap about queues just being for beta to test the load, I was skeptical, of course, but, what do I know about server architecture, hardware or backends? Answer: next to nothing. So, I happily made Character01 on a server mutually selected by my circle of e-friends and got busy with leveling … for many consecutive hours on Launch Day.
Next day, here’s the server queues again. And now I know they’re liars.
Because, what they should have said was … before we take your money for this game, you should know that we are going to have upwards of 600k boxes out there for sale, and if all 600k boxes are sold, the beta queues may be back — we hope not, but just so you know.
Hell, I would have bought it anyways. All 600k of us would have still bought.
But, Blizz made the new guys lean into the punch. I didn’t. I have already done my share of leaning into the punches. Once I find out someone’s a liar, their words mean nothing to me. When Blizz said: we’ll have this straightened out soon — I think: months. Best to cut my losses and find greener pastures on a newer server.
And that decision has worked out rather well, so far, because I took the initiative, not because of anything they did on their end. My Server02 has problems, to be sure, but server queues is not one of them. Yet.
I realize that the Blizzard asslickers will think the term “liar” entirely uncalled for, and others may find it too harsh or hyperbolical. I could say “they neglected to communicate a few important facts and considerations before they got my money”, but that’s what I call lying.
Poor new guys. Caught between that proverbial rock and hard spot.
On the bright side, it’s been months already, so maybe some relief is in sight now. Like maybe only a few weeks or a month … or two … and, the odds are good that the new guys won’t ever lean into another punch.
That might make it rough on the next gaming house to pitch a game.
Oh man it must really suck to be you. You are such a loser. Picked a crappy server to play on and are too stupid to move. I have never seen a queue. Haven’t seen any lag. Game plays great all the time. Oh well keep bitching.
heh. My server doesn’t have queues. Which you would know if you didn’t skip over the words with more than 6 letters.
Here’s a tip. Break the words into chunks. Example: Ass-lick-er. One who licks ass until they like the taste.
I’ve been extremely lucky till now (Mannoroth, alliance).
My first two worries are exactly the opposite of everyone else: the population unbalance between horde and alliance, a solid, big community that won’t vanish with the time.
Mannoroth, for now, is good for both. During my checks to establish the horde/alliance ratio I obtained satisfactory results (1900/1400 players at peak times) and the server was the most popular during the first days, now it has moved down a few positions which isn’t a bad thing since I never see queues.
What matters is on the long run. I’m not one of those players creating multiple alts on various servers. I make a character and play that one, so my need is to choose the best server with an healthy and rich playerbase that won’t leave the server barren and unplayable with the time.
And despite now it’s extremely popular it’s still not so easy to find healers to finish that hellish Uldaman.
The luck, instead, is because Mannoroth has been one of the most stable, lag and queue free servers. But I still care more about the long run.
Those guys don’t know what they’re talking about – you shouldn’t have to move server.
On the other hand, I live in New Zealand, so I miss the US peak time and don’t see any server queues and despite the distance have a 250ms ping to Proudmoore which is fine. You should stop your bitching and just move country. Problem solved.
Realm/faction imbalance is a concern, also. In SWG, by way of an example, we swapped factions a few times when our side would get bloated with PVPers and the other side was lacking.
No fun flying all over the game universe looking for a fight. Obviously, switching sides, professions even, was a much easier matter in SWG. It would take quite an effort to maintain 2 (or more) level 60 Warcraft characters, suitably outfitted for PVP.
Other than allowing dynamic server selections for everyone, how could they even address this? Limiting server pops in some way? Monthly incentives or powerups for the weaker faction?
> Other than allowing dynamic server selections for everyone, how could they even address this? Limiting server pops in some way? Monthly incentives or powerups for the weaker faction?
You know I’m a crazed wannabe lost designer so:
– If you can build the game from zero, here
– If you need to solve it without changing the structure, here (hidden into that long entry)
In particular:
use the unbalance to originate fun and interesting gameplay.
The idea is to unsderstand and accept that your game will have serious balance problems. You can try to solve them directly at the root, like I suggest in the first link, or you can still consider the problem and manage directly the gameplay so that you can use the unbalance aa a strength.
I start from the idea that playing in an overpowered faction isn’t so interesting or cool. From a roleplay point of view it’s a lot more exciting to play in the faction that is outnumbered. It will give your actions a bigger epic purpose and what you’ll achieve will have a greater value. This is exactly where the unbalance can become DIRECTLY a strength for the game, instead that a big issue.
The strategy, so, it’s exactly about how you can make the gameplay still fun when fighting for a faction that is outnumbered. The unbalance isn’t anymore a gameplay problem, instead it can be transformed in a source for interesting gameplay. The rules of the game must obviously support and incentivate the fun of playing within these conditions.
In WoW it’s still impossible to shape all this because we don’t know the reward nor the purpose of the PvP (if it will have one). And unbalance problems can only be solved by shaping “systems”. WoW at this moment lacks completely of any game system that isn’t grief. Because, as I said, griefing is the only impact you can have on the world.
My suggestion was about fleshing out a complete battle system that is aimed to give depth to the zerg play. Because I consider it a lot of fun if designed in a good way. The unbalance problem wasn’t adressed because it lies on a level above. The control and purpose of various structures that you can conquer will have a role into this.
The strategy is about making a list of the strength of an unbalance faction. This is easy to do even by looking at DAoC. Large zergs are unorganized, chaotic. They move slowly and have a general “dumb” reaction. A smaller group could be able to attack the bigger realm on different points, quickly and before the bigger realm can react. The goal is exactly to focus on all these dynamics to then give them value into the game and incentivate them.
There was also a great idea about drawing the population for the PvP battlegrounds from ALL the servers. Instancing them perfectly by level and faction. This would have solved radically both the problem of barren servers and off-peaks.
The simple conclusion is that everything can be solved in the case you think the issue is important and needs to be a strong element of the gameplay structure. Instead of ignoring/crossing fingers like both Mythic and Blizzard are doing.
As a player I just analyzed the situation, hoping to make the best choice on the few elements I have.