Server Populations and YOU!

[naum]

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.

I did read a dev post that said this:

Guards spawn exponentially when you kill them; this is to avoid griefing towns and quest NPCs.

Of course, this doesn't help you when outside of town or posts w/guards, which covers about 98% of the game...

[Samprimary]

If guards spawn exponentially, that's sort of good news and sort of bad news. Good news is we won't have night elf guilds owning our towns for daylong stretches of time. Bad news is .. that all raids are pointless.

Trying to solve the server population disparity by making both factions  totally invincible is a crude terrible quick fix. Almost like trying to cover for their immense server population mistakes by attempting to break Census.

[Samprimary]

Oh ouch.

[Shockeye]

The problem with census stats is you don't know how many people are updating the stats. The Horde stats might only be coming from 1 person who logged in once. Without some kind of quality control for the stats being submitted, you can't really rely on it.

For example, I know there are at least 500 unique Horde names for Cenarion Circle from my own census stats.

[naum]

I give those numbers as much creedence as the server population tags (low, middle, high) on the official WoW server status page that they've acknowledged are inaccurate (today showing people logged on when in fact they had been taken down for patching)...

[Samprimary]

We did some studying earlier by observing the people over time featured in the Auction Houses which put Alliance/Horde at 6:1. I'd say 5:1 is a safe bet, maybe. Just to be clear, I expected the 10:1 ratio to be skewed but vaguely indicitive of a trend - Alliance magnitude.

[Paelos]

I would have chosen Horde if my guild didn't insist on an Alliance server choice. That being said, it really didn't matter much on a normal server.

[chinslim]

I've always had the impression that if you wanted to get your rp cyber on in your MMO, you'd go Alliance on an rp server.  What else do you do on RP servers anyway besides name-reporting?  PVP servers aren't as greatly imbalanced from what I've seen.

Population imbalances suck in games like DAOC where you had relics, keep zergs, and realm-wide stuff like dragon and ML raids, but WoW is not DAOC, at least not yet.  I personally prefer being on the "harder" side playing the "toughest" class.  Being outnumbered is a great excuse whenever you need one for losing.

[WayAbvPar]

I personally prefer being on the "harder" side playing the "toughest" class. Being outnumbered is a great excuse whenever you need one for losing.

Heh- I am the same way. I played Allied in WWIIOL, Hibernian in DAOC, and am now a Horde in WoW. It makes for more plentiful PvP targets, at least =)


Did the servers ever unfuck themselves last night? I had trouble logging in, but once I got in, things were fine. Friends reported a different (and wholly annoying) experience.

[Paelos]

I never got in, but of course I wasn't spamming the login screen either. I tried about every hour or so in between playing Rome:TW. No luck on WoW, but my blue-faced Britons are holding Rome!

[naum]

It took awhile to get in, and then after getting in it was OK, but target nearest enemy seems to be severely restricted now (its range < aggro range) and my Track Humanoids ability seemed to not work at all, or be on some kind of 8 second satellite delay... ....even though my ping was ~100ms... .

I think there's going to be a mass exodus of players from PvP to Normal servers, considering that (a) you can do "consensual" PvP on the normal servers w/Battlegrounds and just the normal faction NPC/duel deals and (b) high levels coming in to gank, especially the stealthed rogue deal... ...wouldn't mind so much if as a hunter, my "Track Hidden" ability actually fucking worked (it is useless as I have tested and found).... .

Soon there's going to be a good number of high levels that for amusement will go into lvl 20 areas -- gankage for teh win! If you have a group, it's fun and not a big deal, but kind of rules out solo-ability, or at least making any meaningful progress... ...that is unless they give XP for killing someone at your level range or higher....

[Sky]

I was able to play for a few hours last night without any problem. Servers went down and I played some guitar, when I came back, everything was fine.

Naum - target nearest enemy has never worked good for me.

[chinslim]

I think there's going to be a mass exodus of players from PvP to Normal servers, considering that (a) you can do "consensual" PvP on the normal servers w/Battlegrounds and just the normal faction NPC/duel deals and (b) high levels coming in to gank...

That's what I love about the pvp servers - they encourage you to group up for protection.  If players can solo PVE without any danger, they'll just solo away.  I don't think I can take nonstop PVE grinds anymore.  It's a nice balance between the "you against the world" hardcore pvp style and the "realm vs realm" thing, where you can count total strangers as on your side.

There's also far less ganking going on than pve players tend to imagine.  There's usually an uneasy truce at the Nesingway camp in Strangethorn, for example, where Alliance and Horde will stand side by side getting and returning quests.  #$#&& hits the fan plenty of times, however, and all goes to hell and fun.  There's plenty of times where we leave people alone and focus on our quests, other times where we get into revenge gank feuds with another group.

[Trippy]

Naum - target nearest enemy has never worked good for me.

Try this:

In your World of Warcraft folder open up WTF\config.wtf with a text editor, preferably one that can handle Unix style line endings like Wordpad (not Notepad).

Edit or add the line that begins with:

SET TargetNearestDistance

and adjust the distance to suit your tastes. E.g.:

SET TargetNearestDistance "60.000000"

[geldonyetich]

Being able to authenticate was fun while it lasted.   It'll probably be the wee hours before I'm able to get on again.

[Viin]

Being able to authenticate was fun while it lasted.   It'll probably be the wee hours before I'm able to get on again.

You logged out? Tsk tsk!

[Calantus]

That's what I love about the pvp servers - they encourage you to group up for protection.  If players can solo PVE without any danger, they'll just solo away.  I don't think I can take nonstop PVE grinds anymore.  It's a nice balance between the "you against the world" hardcore pvp style and the "realm vs realm" thing, where you can count total strangers as on your side.

I've never had a problem in grouping with anyone. If I see someone killing what I'm killing and I'm not in my solo phase I'll invite them to join. Never been refused, and I've done it alot. I also help out whenever I can and that often gets me an invite. Just this morning I had a 5 person group that just came together over a few hours of questing, picking up people as we went along (to be fair I invited in a friend I'd met on another char and noticed in the same town).