Server Populations and YOU!

[Nebu]

Question for you WoW folks:

I was reading the Earthen Ring thread and saw the following

WoW Realm (Earthen Ring) Stats

Number of players: 1,411
Alliance Players: 1,052 Horde Players: 359

This brought up a couple of concerns. (these questions are geared at PvP enabled servers using this server as an example)

1) What do you think Blizzard has planned to deal with huge population gaps and their potential effect on PvP.  Have they made any statements?

2) If Blizzard has so many servers that server populations are in the 1-4k range per server, what will happen when server populations beging to decline?  What plans does Blizzard have to maintain server populations for adequate raid/pvp encounters?  Opening all of those servers was wonderful for the opening rush, but seemed terribly shortsighted if pvp and raiding are to be the build for the endgame.

The reason that I even bring this up is that I'm seeing similar issues in DAoC and wonder if Blizzard has learned anything from past mistakes.  In DAoC there are several servers that are suffering both a decline in the player base and a disparity in the realm populations.  The band-aids that Mythic put in place to alleviate the situation really haven't produced the anticipated results.  This has had a profound effect on the endgame as PvP is really no fun if you can run in the realm for an hour without finding any targets or killing the same targets repeatedly.  Similarly, PvE raids (for master levels etc.) are becoming fewer and further between.

For now and the near future a large number of servers will be a wonderful thing.  Down the road a ways, there may not be enough people to generate the type of gaming experience that you had signed on for.  It would be nice to see if Blizzard has given this some thought.

Not a flame, just thinking out loud...

[Rasix]

1. I don't think they care. I believe they think instanced battlegrounds will solve this.

2.  This game is really WAY WAY too young to eve have this consideration.  They completely over-reacted to put so many servers to combat the population crush.  I envision in the future (distant) that there will be server mergers.  I really don't care about this, I don't really identify myself with the server I play on.

Blizzard doesn't seem to learn from other's mistakes too well.  So, they'll likely ignore the issue until they notice a cash savings to be had or the whining takes up the entire first page of the general forum.

Plus, I wouldn't put too much stock in these census apps.  Who knows how really accurate they are? Of course, I'm not saying here that there aren't population balance problems, because there are.  I see too many gay elves all over the place for it no to be the case (seldom see dwarves/gnomes).

[Mesozoic]

Part of the problem seems to be that players have responded so well to the Night Elf concept.  And we know that Humans are always popular.  And those two are both on the alliance side.  On top of that, the Alliance-only class is widely reported to be overpowered. (Or, more relevantly - more overpowered than the Horde class.)

[Nebu]

Rasix, don't mean to SB you, but I wanted to comment.

2.  This game is really WAY WAY too young to eve have this consideration.  

I disagree.  Every good business plan should contain contingencies. I'm sure they've given it thought, perhaps they just haven't articulated it to the masses. If they haven't considered it, then Blizzard rises to the level of EA in the arrogance category.  Small thoughts early can mean profits after the proposed revenue stream was supposed to dry up.

They completely over-reacted to put so many servers to combat the population crush.

I agree.   I think that they would have been much better served to ride the initial rush and then settle in with the 40 or so servers that they had.   This sort of band-aid approach should be a red flag to the consumer.

I envision in the future (distant) that there will be server mergers.  I really don't care about this, I don't really identify myself with the server I play on.

This is true, but I would hope that in an MMORPG that you'd associate with the people/community that you play with.  In every MMOG I've played, each server has its own feel and identity.  I think that as players reach their 40's in greater numbers and raiding/pvp content becomes more dominant that you'll see more social structure being formed.  If not, then WoW would be little more than a single-player game shared with a bunch of people in a chat room.   CoH is close to the experience I felt in WoW and even each of the servers I played there had a differene "feel" to them.  

It's very early for WoW, I agree. I can already see that low populations could beging to have an effect on the game as early as March.  Server mergers may be an alternative, but their feasibility may be linked to how the "honor system" is handled in PvP.  The fact they Blizzard is so willing to accomodate things in the short term just has me wondering if they have any long-term commitment to the title.  Maybe they don't.  It's not necessarily a bad thing if people are getting what they want from the game.  It would be a bit of a paradigm shift from what we've seen in the genre in the past.

[Rasix]

Well, it's typical Blizzard in the way they handled all of it.  They really overreact to any percieved flaw in their game.  This is probably the most annoying thing about their development  outside of their glacial development cycle.

They eventually scale back and return to reality at a point.  Perhaps it would be in their best interests to do server consolidations right now.  Of course, the game has been stable and pretty much lag free this past week or two.  I'm not sure what suddenly sandwich jamming two mediocre populations would do to a server.

Of course, with their track record they'll cut the server numbers in half. Realize what they did was extremely overblown and reverse themselves partially by creating new servers and dumping random people on it. Of course, that's not really possible, but it's fun to apply their theory of mmorpg administration to certain issues.

And by too early, I mean there's just too many other issues right now that these turtle paced devs need to deal with outside of population issues that's impacting the player base more directly.  I'd like to think they're analyzing this and coming up with plans, but I wouldn't fault them if they said, "lets look at this again in 3 months, these instances are stil having problems".

[Shockeye]

What PVP servers are people playing on? I may want to try some PVP in the future and flagging on PVE servers just doesn't thrill me.

[Samprimary]

I can't believe they didn't see this coming.

It astounds me they didn't see this coming. Wouldn't have been an issue if they had put Night Elves on the Horde side. A stretch, so is locking them with the Alliance.

SImply put, aesthetic concerns and visual marketability play a big, big role in race popularity.

And since the Alliance has the night elves AND the humans, they have a virtual monopoly on the large 'clammy skinned, pudgy males who like to play ogle-worthy hot chicks' demographic, a staple of the MMORPG community.

Now that they set up the game like this, dey's stuck with it. Solutions are few and poor. For now, if you want to play Horde, pick a server that has a name that will appeal to a lot of horde players and not to great numbers of elves and whatnot.

The server 'Elune' would - I think - have a much greater ratio of Alliance majority than a server named 'Hellscream'.

Aesthetics.

Now, we know they have to do something about it. Alliance majorities in orders of magnitude are a very significant gameplay-effecting problem how the hell did they not see this coming goddamn.

[sidereal]

XP Bonus for underplayed races for the win.

The server 'Elune' would - I think - have a much greater ratio of Alliance majority than a server named 'Hellscream'.

Nah. . that would be more consistent, but pasty sheeple are not consistent, just predictable.  They definitely prefer 'Spinebreaker' and 'Hellcrunchgrindsmack' and so on, being as they sound tough, and therefore people who play on them feel slightly tougher.

On the other hand, those names also attract PvP zealots, who probably lean Horde, just because they look more like bloodthirsty pricks.

So Reg and RP ruleset servers with tough names should be a no-go zone.  PvP servers with wussy names are probably the best place to be.

[Riggswolfe]

On top of that, the Alliance-only class is widely reported to be overpowered. (Or, more relevantly - more overpowered than the Horde class.)

Please, don't listen to the whiners on the boards and repeat their bullshit. The Paladin is hardly overpowered except when compared to a warrior who was of course horribly nerfed with some promised "awesome" changes.

Most of the whines come from PvPers. Paying attention reveals the following facts:

1) Rarely is anyone killed by a Paladin. At best they just can't quite kill him when all his spells are ready for use. (IE the Lay on Hands with the 1 hour timer)

2) Rogues complain the most. Ok, we've got a lightly armored meleer taking on a walking tank. He should lose. Rogues kill cloth wearers, not plate wearers.

3) The famous "unarmed Paladin kills armed warrior video" was staged. The warrior had a full rage bar the whole time. Why? Because he didn't use a single special ability. It's easy for any class to beat any other class if the opponent does nothing but auto-attack.

4) Priests own Paladins. Hands down. Mages own Paladins. Hands down. Hunters own Paladins. Hands down. A Paladin in group PvP is going to be facedown in the dirt every time.

So please, stop repeating drivel and stick with the facts.

[Viin]

And since the Alliance has the night elves AND the humans, they have a virtual monopoly on the large 'clammy skinned, pudgy males who like to play ogle-worthy hot chicks' demographic, a staple of the MMORPG community.

Hey, Gnome chicks are the bomb.

[Samprimary]

1) Rarely is anyone killed by a Paladin. At best they just can't quite kill him when all his spells are ready for use. (IE the Lay on Hands with the 1 hour timer)

The Paladin vs. Shaman duels seem to have a pattern going: It's real close as long as the Paladin has all those skills at the ready, thus requiring the Shaman to kill him, what, three times? If the Shaman runs dry on mana trying to accomplish this (can't interrupt Lesser Healing Wave with the Improved talent on the restoration tree, so sudden death is all but out) the Shaman gets chased out of the duel ring and forfeits the match. If the Shaman bests the Paladin, there's no running; runners are always shortly dead, especially with 1s Ghost Wolf, chain cast Frost Shock, earthbind totem 45 mana spam, etc

If the Paladin's timers are still running then the PvP Shaman's a real safe bet. Real safe.

The real disparity is in the usefulness of the two classes in PvP groups. Shamans make groups downright deadly in a way the Paladin cannot match as the equivilant Alliance opposing class. Which is important, as your faction's unique class determines much of your faction's PvP dynamic, blah blah ..

Hey, Gnome chicks are the bomb.

Far be it from me to not want to have to think about the overall demographic of males who play gnome chicks.

[Kageru]

I'm looking forward to when the billions of night elf hunters and human warlocks start wondering why they can never find groups.

Blizzard are odd. They're not stupid, but they seem to have some culture that forces them to repeatedly do stupid things.

[Margalis]

From what I hear Alliance is much more popular than Horde, for serveral reasons:

Alliance has humans and night elves.
Alliance has paladins.
Alliance side is more baked overall. (This comes out in various ways - "easier", better/cooler quests, more recipies, contested areas that are less contested, etc - some of these may be perceptions rather than reality)
Horde has no hot chicks.
3 out of the 4 Horde races look the same. This one is unforgiveable. Undead, Orcs and Trolls are all greenish/blueish looking humanoids. They really should have diversified the looks more. They are all the same height, same basic build, same skin tones.

[schild]

If Goblin was a horde race option, I would have had a lot more fun playing as horde. The four current options are just super meh. Undead had the potential to be a LOT more interesting. Unfortunately, I don't think the super low-poly/low res textures were capable of that much more.

[Calantus]

If you ask me, they should allow certain races to flag as rebels on creation and thus serve the opposing side. There's plenty of story reasons to allow most of the races to switch sides even besides the whole free-will issue. The only race I can't see doing this is undead as I can't see the alliance letting them. Adding blood elves to the horde would have been a good idea too. I mean really, you can't have elves and humans on one side without at least an elven race to balance it out on the other.

btw, I'm one of those people who only plays humans and their smaller brethren (gnomes, halflings, and dwarves), or a funny race (schild's suggestion of goblins would have been perfect).

[personman]

Alliance side is more baked overall. (This comes out in various ways - "easier", better/cooler quests, more recipies, contested areas that are less contested, etc - some of these may be perceptions rather than reality)

I started off Horde and tried several combos then did the same with Alliance.  The Alliance quests were certainly "better" in the sense they showed a little more creativity.  Little things like the Foulhoof redemption.  Horde quests didn't seem to bother as much painting clever themes on what is really a very basic quest mechanic, e.g. find the static-spawn pinata or trigger a dynamic one.

I noticed more custom voices, more racial actions (NE flips), and so on.

AS far as NE, I chose NE for my rogue simply to fit a character concept I've used in many games over the years.  The only thing that gets really old to me is watching the ears flop around.  But I'm not a power gamer and once a product devolves to the point I have to have a specific buildout just to quest I usually cancel my sub.

[Mesozoic]

On top of that, the Alliance-only class is widely reported to be overpowered. (Or, more relevantly - more overpowered than the Horde class.)

Please, don't listen to the whiners on the boards and repeat their bullshit.

Pop quiz, jackass:  Did I say "overpowered" or "reported to be overpowered?"  Does a class have to be actually overpowered to cause a population to surge towards it, or just perceived to be overpowered?

The point is population, not class balance.

[El Gallo]

The Alliance has 2 mangina races, the horde has none.  Blizzard's attempt to make Troll females mangina-friendly failed.  They should have put in Blood Elves on the Horde side.

Population imbalances don't really matter to me, so long as there are enough people on my side that I have enough people to do instance groups with while levelling and I have a choice of several decent top-end guilds for raiding purposes.  The PvP that matters will be the instanced battlefields, where population imbalance won't be much of a concern.

It may suck for people on full-out PvP servers, but to my mind, those people have knowingly signed a contract that says "please screw me hard and repeatedly despite my whimpering" so, screw 'em.

There's at least one PvP server where the reverse is true.  The two Something Awful horde guilds on Mal'Ganis have something like 1,500+ members alone, with Alliance players jumping ship left and right, if reports are to be believed.

PS: Paladins are overpowered in flashy solo PvE (i.e. killing elite mobs and mobs well above your level solo) and that attracts a lot of attention.  The fact that rogues and maybe shamans can level faster by mass-slaughtering everyone's best EQ friend, the low/blue mob (yes, grinding is faster than questing by a good bit for most stretches of your levelling life, if you really care about that), doesn't garner  as much attention as LVL 29 PALADIN SOLOS LVL 32 ELITE: DETAILS AT ELEVEN.

[naum]

There's at least one PvP server where the reverse is true.  The two Something Awful horde guilds on Mal'Ganis have something like 1,500+ members alone, with Alliance players jumping ship left and right, if reports are to be believed.

Something Awful (Goon Squad) is Horde on Mal'Ganis but Alliance on Kel'thuzad…

[Zetleft]

There's at least one PvP server where the reverse is true.  The two Something Awful horde guilds on Mal'Ganis have something like 1,500+ members alone, with Alliance players jumping ship left and right, if reports are to be believed.

Something Awful (Goon Squad) is Horde on Mal'Ganis but Alliance on Kel'thuzad…

I believe he stated the 2 goon squad guilds on Mal because they reached a guild cap and had to make a second on the same server.

[Ironwood]

That's a scary thought...

[ajax34i]

I don't know about the number of servers...  I made the same assumption that a Blizzard realm can handle and should have the same number of players as an EQ1 server, and maybe the hardware can, but the quests and the zones seem to be designed for smaller populations.  

At least that's my perception.  I played on a "Low" population server for a while and zone populations seemed just right; now on the medium-load Earthen Ring it's sometimes crowded (I should specify I'm playing Alliance).  

They probably did rush with 80+ servers, but 40 would have definitely been way too low.  I think 70 or so would have been just right to have all of them at medium load and generally packed, but then what do you do with new players that continue to join your playerbase after the initial rush?  I do think that they looked at how many players they wanted per server, and it was a lower number than EQ1's, and rolled out what the math showed + 10 or so.

[sidereal]

yes, grinding is faster than questing by a good bit for most stretches of your levelling life, if you really care about that

Yes, the couple of times when I've been ~10k from the next level and had no good quests to carry me over, I found out that I could get ~180xp for a mob 3 levels below me on chainkill, or ~210xp for a mob 2 levels above me followed by a minute of downtime.  Needless to say, I ground pathetic hyenas for the win.  I believe at one point I cleansed Thousand Needles entirely of hyenas.

Not sure what the thinking is behind that scale.  I guess the idea is that quests should be your incentive for fighting orange mobs, not the non-existant xp incentive.

[naum]

yes, grinding is faster than questing by a good bit for most stretches of your levelling life, if you really care about that

Yes, the couple of times when I've been ~10k from the next level and had no good quests to carry me over, I found out that I could get ~180xp for a mob 3 levels below me on chainkill, or ~210xp for a mob 2 levels above me followed by a minute of downtime.  Needless to say, I ground pathetic hyenas for the win.  I believe at one point I cleansed Thousand Needles entirely of hyenas.

Not sure what the thinking is behind that scale.  I guess the idea is that quests should be your incentive for fighting orange mobs, not the non-existant xp incentive.

I've found that best XP gain rate is by finding a humanoid camp (like Northwatch or the Venture Co. mining sites) and just chain killing those mobs that are ~1-3 levels below you. No downtime whatsoever (I play hunter), continuous killing, and I have to be selective on looting, else my bags all fill up and force me to quit too soon. The respawning of those humanoids seems frequent, a lot more frequent than the beasts in the barrens, and if I was doing beasts, I'd be wasting time skinning. Time skinning is time not gaining XP...

Instances seem to provide a good XP gain rate too... ....I went into RFC @ L20 and gained a half a level in a  little less than an hour... ....figured I might be too high to get good XP there....

[MrHat]

There's at least one PvP server where the reverse is true.  The two Something Awful horde guilds on Mal'Ganis have something like 1,500+ members alone, with Alliance players jumping ship left and right, if reports are to be believed.

Something Awful (Goon Squad) is Horde on Mal'Ganis but Alliance on Kel'thuzad…

Yup, there's about 150 of them on Alliance side Kel'Thuzad.

Always take the time to kill them, even if they're grey to you.  Because they will just wait till you have overpulled or are resting and try and kill you anyways.

[Nija]

yes, grinding is faster than questing by a good bit for most stretches of your levelling life, if you really care about that

Yes, the couple of times when I've been ~10k from the next level and had no good quests to carry me over, I found out that I could get ~180xp for a mob 3 levels below me on chainkill, or ~210xp for a mob 2 levels above me followed by a minute of downtime.  Needless to say, I ground pathetic hyenas for the win.  I believe at one point I cleansed Thousand Needles entirely of hyenas.

Not sure what the thinking is behind that scale.  I guess the idea is that quests should be your incentive for fighting orange mobs, not the non-existant xp incentive.

The XP scale makes zero sense. For instance, in Feralas last night I was killing naga mages in a group of 4. We were getting 90 per kill, and the poor things dropped in literally 3 to 5 seconds. The mobs are like level 44-45, non elite.

On the way back to the mainland, we saw a Deep Strider. A level 48 elite giant. So we kill one of those, an EPIC battle which takes about 2 minutes, draining the priest of mana.

200xp.

[Morfiend]

What PVP servers are people playing on? I may want to try some PVP in the future and flagging on PVE servers just doesn't thrill me.

I have a pretty successful pvp guild on Sargeras Horde side. This is a video a guildmate made.

http://www.dreadguard.com/downloads/redridge.zip

[Samprimary]

Paladins are the best PvP class, if by PvP you mean '1 on 1 duels'. Add numbers and they lose their edge.

[Jayce]

What PVP servers are people playing on? I may want to try some PVP in the future and flagging on PVE servers just doesn't thrill me.

I have a pretty successful pvp guild on Sargeras Horde side. This is a video a guildmate made.

http://www.dreadguard.com/downloads/redridge.zip

Was that from last night? (I haven't watched it, I'm currently at work).

My silly little level 16 gnome mage booty was there in Lakeshire, watching the massive amounts of Horde roll in and getting the occasional non-resisted nuke off, but mostly getting one-shotted by someone of level ??.  Good times...

[Morfiend]

What PVP servers are people playing on? I may want to try some PVP in the future and flagging on PVE servers just doesn't thrill me.

I have a pretty successful pvp guild on Sargeras Horde side. This is a video a guildmate made.

http://www.dreadguard.com/downloads/redridge.zip

Was that from last night? (I haven't watched it, I'm currently at work).

My silly little level 16 gnome mage booty was there in Lakeshire, watching the massive amounts of Horde roll in and getting the occasional non-resisted nuke off, but mostly getting one-shotted by someone of level ??.  Good times...

If you play on Sargeras, then yeah. The video is actually from the weekend before, but that was us this weekend also. What we like about that area, is we can get a lot of allaince to come fight there, but we are not camping the town, or a quest spawn, so we are not shutting down the area for allaince. Fun for all. I think the best part was when our Mage/Warlock unit did their special AE combo attack and we mamaged to kill around 25 allaince in a matter of 5 seconds. Fun stuff. You can see us doing that in the video also.

*edit* Actually, we where there on Saturday, not sunday.

[chinslim]

Paladins are the best PvP class, if by PvP you mean '1 on 1 duels'. Add numbers and they lose their edge.

If you have an undead priest...WOTF, *shields up*, mana burn, mana burn, mana burn.  A pally yelling "low mana", being kited, and wondering why all of a sudden he can't immunity shield is a sight to savor.

[Samprimary]

Paladins are the best PvP class, if by PvP you mean '1 on 1 duels'. Add numbers and they lose their edge.

If you have an undead priest...WOTF, *shields up*, mana burn, mana burn, mana burn.  A pally yelling "low mana", being kited, and wondering why all of a sudden he can't immunity shield is a sight to savor.

I'm pretty sure Paladins beat all other classes in straight up duels. Execepting, of course, when they play stupider than their opponent.

Although I have to agree that WOTF rocks it out. No better way to reduce a Warlock opponent to all the lethality of a tame, newborn kitten.

[Samprimary]

I just found out that my server has a 10:1 Alliance/Horde ratio.

Ten Alliance players to every one Horde player.

I feel that lurching desire to quit now. It's just such a blow to realize that the future for our server is bleak. People will begin maxing out their levels and then just zerg our towns constantly.

[MrHat]

I just found out that my server has a 10:1 Alliance/Horde ratio.

Ten Alliance players to every one Horde player.

I feel that lurching desire to quit now. It's just such a blow to realize that the future for our server is bleak. People will begin maxing out their levels and then just zerg our towns constantly.

Our server, Kel'Thuzad, is 3-1 Horde apparently.  Not sure how I feel about that, but it makes me wonder if Blizzard has any contengincies.

[Ironwood]

In game incentives to move guilds across servers eventually.  I have no doubt.