Oh Icecrown never has queues. We just seem to have goblins inside the actual server loose with a wrench and destire to 'fix' it. No offense to goblin engineers but it's going boom so many times in one night there must be a goblin involved somewhere. Today we're on the 3rd intentional restart, I think 17th time I've logged in after a crash, and I've ran across the frigging stranglethorn valley so often on the same run, that I'm either a Star Trek character in a temporal causality loop or Bill Murray. The rubber band effect is quite interesting. I'm coming to know that specific part of the zone so well.
heh well I moved (again) a couple days ago with some friends to a non-pvp server, which I forget the name of. it's pretty good, though strange - all the "high levels" I'm seeing are in their 30s, whereas on blackrock/laughing skull/tichondrius, most of the people you saw in ironforge and orgrimmar were in their 40s-50s.
plus there are a hell of a lot more newbies on this server, too. but yeah, nice not having those gigantic queues as soon as I get home from work.
The real problem stems from the fact that while Blizzard added more servers, they are in no hurry to add character transfers from overpopulated servers to those new ones.
As a result, little changed.
I don't care what the limitation is... man-power, time, cost, equipment ...the point is if Sony can move characters from server to server, Blizzard sure as hell should be able to.
As an aside, my server is fine. Never had a queue.
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dremel . second-gunman . darkspear
'It's only time before it catches up to you and all your broken luck'
They added servers a week after release....if you are to lazy to switch if you dont like your first server, then dont complain about the population.
I have yet to see a wait on Medivh...I only remember once since release it was very bad and kept crashing and rolling back the characters, and that was only one night.
Had an intresting one last night. I had just gone and killed the king getting his head, ran to the camp and turned it in for the rifle. Hearthed back to BB and the server kicked me.
I log in and im standing where I looted the king again, Sure enough, I had his head again and the quest was uncomplete.. However I still had the rifle reward too, and the xp! So I went and turned in the quest a second time getting the xp and rifle again. Figured that made up for it abit.
Ended up selling both rifles for about a gold each though because I can make better on my own.
Last night was pretty awful on Argent Dawn. I was fortunate and didn't get kicked, but most of the other guildies couldn't stay online for more than an hour (even my girlfriend, who sits right next to me).
I made the choice when the new servers came out to stick with the ones I originally chose, so I don't see where I have anything to fuss about. They begged people to move to the new servers, but very few people seemed to -- and more people kept joining on servers that were HIGH population. Never did they indicate they would do server moves, and considering it was just a few days after release, the levels made could have easily been recovered on a new server. People just didn't want to move, and now they're complaining about it. Too bad.
But there is a more valid arguement (in my mind) concerning maintenance (and patches, I suppose). No, it isn't "the servers", it's either a code issue, or it's got to do with the way they bring them up after maintenance. Blizzard has really got to do something about this post-patch crap. I had five years of that in EQ, and would have hoped that SOMEONE could do a patch/maintenance and not screw everything up. And I guess that's what gets me -- there has only been one real patch. The rest of this is "maintenance", yet the servers are always in bad shape afterward. About a dozen were listed this morning for post-maintenance maintenance in order to fix what they did yesterday.
As for the commentis about EQ, I beg to differ. The first few months of EQ were absolutely horrid when it came to logging in. They had to give us free time to make up for the horrible connectivity and login issues. I remember clicking the login button for long periods of time just to get to the server select. I have never had as many bad experiences with logins (remember the 1018s, several years into EQ release?), patches, downtime, and disconnects (recall the zone-kick problems as recent as last year?) as I have with EverQuest. Maybe that's because I played it for so long, but I don't forget the awful times -- none of which WoW has done to even compare.
Anyway, while it might be nice if Blizzard offered server moves (at least one time ones), I don't expect it. I recall when Bristlebaners were allowed to server-move to Sarryn (sp?), yet a large chunk didn't do it and the server remained horribly overpopulated. People generally just want a server move in hopes that others do it.
The game is very, very young. I suggest if you absolutely hate the queues on your server, then start up a new toon on one of the many LOW population servers. The curve is nothing like EQ, so it isn't like you can't catch up fairly fast -- assuming you're high level. As for those that say "well, they'll eventually get filled up to", historically that hasn't been the case with most MMOGs. There is a huge rush at the beginning of a game's release, which relatively quickly levels off to pretty stable server populations. While there will always be new folks coming in, I think the biggest rush is over for WoW.
But who knows... I'm just pissed because I'm stuck working instead of playing.
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Harvey - Forsaken Rogue
<Seeds of Chaos>
Argent Dawn
Verant gave free time for people that had created a character within the first week of release because the login servers were so absolutely horrendous. Unfortunately, the problems continued after they gave the free time - and it was a pretty lame amount... something like four extra days toward your "free month". It was certainly hardly worth remembering.
not gonna go looking for the post(that forum is crazy fast) but I remeber tyren or one of the other community guys saying there trying to come up with a way to rebalance the servers but no specifics or eta was given.
Well, if those numbers are true Jhani, my server has 19,127 people on it. Not only do I not have any wait to log on (even at peak on the weekend), but I have little to no lag (except in places like Ironforge at the AH).
They added servers a week after release....if you are to lazy to switch if you dont like your first server, then dont complain about the population.
I have yet to see a wait on Medivh...I only remember once since release it was very bad and kept crashing and rolling back the characters, and that was only one night.
you're also conveniently ignoring guilds, friends, etc. it's much harder to switch when you may have a guild of 30 people + outside guild friends that you want to play with, all of whom might not want to also switch at the exact same time (or even at all).
According to www.worldofwar.net, the only servers with low population are PvP. Come to think of it, theres a helluva lot of PvP servers, considering how other games tend to have 2 or 3.
I'm with Dulben ... I'm on Silver Hand the 2nd largest server and I've not once had to wait in line and besides the first 2 weeks ... never had any lag.
According to www.worldofwar.net, the only servers with low population are PvP. Come to think of it, theres a helluva lot of PvP servers, considering how other games tend to have 2 or 3.
wow, that goes against what my server listing shows. highest population servers I see are always pvp servers (with blackrock usually in the top or first couple places), whereas the lower pop ones are usually pve.
personal experience is the same - blackrock/tichondrius/laughing skull (to a lesser degree) have had far more people than I've seen on uldum or dragonblight. then again, dragonblight's whole server population is probably equal to a normal day of orgrimmar's residents on blackrock :P
The servers with the low population are PvP servers but also the ones with the highest are also PvP. I assume that no one was interested in start on the new PvP server when they brought them on.
Argent Dawn is absolutely horrendous. I heard that it doesn't have to do with population, but rather a server "issue" that Blizzard can't nail down. So we're dealing with constant lag, server restarts, and rollbacks. :( Even in the mornings during the week, the lag is bad. I think I've gotten 1 level the past week because it's unplayable most of the time. Nearly my entire guild has now created Horde alts on Laughing Skull, for those times we can't function on our own server.
you're also conveniently ignoring guilds, friends, etc. it's much harder to switch when you may have a guild of 30 people + outside guild friends that you want to play with, all of whom might not want to also switch at the exact same time (or even at all).
I don't think anyone is conveniently overlooking any of that. The comment was made in the original post that mentioned character moves. It would have been far easier to coordinate a move in the opening week than it would be now... and that's speaking from experiences in EQ. The longer you play on a particular server, the less likely anyone will move.
Blizzard is dealing with valid limitations when it comes to server and application load. The queues were a very good way to "encourage" people to balance out server populations without directly forcing them to do so.
They could have done like other MMOGs and let the first sets of servers become horribly overcrowded which leads to far more system downtime. Or they could have put hard caps on server population, which would have infuriated most folks that joined the game early but talked friends into playing with them later. That would have been ugly.
Personally, between those three choices, I think the queues are by far the best route to go.
On a side note, I hope for those folks that "gambled and lost" when it came to staying on an already crowded server - that they put in a one-time character move process. But that's got potential problems as well, the biggest being limiting too many people from moving, which would then cause the low and high population servers to swap places. But more likely you would still have the same problem from EQ days, where most people don't take advantage of it and the high pop servers stay full and the low pop stay empty.
I don't think anyone is conveniently overlooking any of that. The comment was made in the original post that mentioned character moves. It would have been far easier to coordinate a move in the opening week than it would be now... and that's speaking from experiences in EQ. The longer you play on a particular server, the less likely anyone will move.
I'm not sure you read what I was replying to, because you're basically making the same point I did, that you just quoted yourself.
he accused people who didn't want to move a week after they started as being "lazy". I said there are far more factors to it than just laziness. that really has nothing at all to do specifically with blizzard-initiated character moves/transfers; he was talking about switching servers on your own WITHOUT aid from blizzard, as far as I could see.
I havent had to wait in a queue on Proudmoore yet, but constant server crashes, rollbacks, are making me seriously think of putting of WoW for a month until they sort their **** out. And it seems to be getting worse, when they put their emergency patch out today the server has just been a pile of **** since.
Gnmish commented about Blizzard offering character moves and I assumed Kebin response was directed at him. That's what I was referencing (rather than the OP, which I stated incorrectly in my last reply).
Anyway, it doesn't really matter. Play where you want to play.
Wow. Apparently none of you played Diablo II for its first month. You couldn't log into Battle.net for more than 20 minutes before it crashed, kabooooom! And I mean all of Battle.net, not just your client. This, by comparison, is beautiful and easy!
Blizzard has some kinks to work out, but they're doing well, I think.
