…of a fun ride.
> IMO, Blizzard needs to do two things. First, more servers.
I wrote this on many message boards but it’s a recurring topic: adding more servers INCREASES the problem, it doesn’t reduce it.
There are two problems here (three actually). The first is what everyone sees and it’s about servers too crowded. The second is less considered right now because it will become serious with the time. It’s about servers too empty to be playable.
The problem is that the PvP servers are BOTH those too overcrowded and those completely empty of players. They are at the top of the list with an 800 player queue (when things are good) and at the bottom with 300 or so players logged in.
The point is that there are servers completely packed up and there are servers completely empty. It’s obvious that the problem isn’t *capacity*. The problem is the *balance*. Or better: how you spread uniformly the players on all the servers.
It’s not a case that the PvP servers are or overcrowded or desolated. The players are more intelligent than Blizzard and they know that without a very active servers there’s no fun. So they search where they can be sure that they’ll find players in the long run. New players continue to pick the servers more popular becauser they are sure that they can find a valid community.
With the time the overcrowding problems will decrease and the balance will lean toward the second problems. There will be a 70% of the PvP servers completely obsolete and unplayable because there aren’t enough players to group with and get involved in the PvP.
So, again, this is a *design* problem that Blizzard completely overlooked (because they are MMORPG-noobs). I suggested my personal solution but it’s obvious that now it’s too late.
The more time will pass and the more these problems will increase.
I won’t discuss the third problem I hinted because it requires me to write more than I’d like to but I’ll paste here a comment from Darniaq that starts to define it:
Now, the Eastern Continent doesn’t crash for population quantity reasons, because it crashes most often on less populated servers.
What I’m seeing is that the EC crashes happen on servers with the highest percentage of Alliance players. The server has less people, but more of them are on one side of the world.
The server wasn’t designed for that. These games aren’t just about a single server population cap. Anyone who’s played EQlive knows that three thousand people online is a nice number, but it’s three hundred that is the magic number. At that point, old world zones start crashing.
Just like EC.
I don’t know how much of the tech is solid state. They may not be able to fix this problem. They’ve hinted at that by admitting they’re considering letting people move characters off server.
Unfortunately, there are more Alliance than Horde on all servers, so moving characters won’t solve the underlying problem.
Have fun.