Blizzard Explains Why Medium Population Classic Servers Have Login Queues

Posted 2019/08/27 at 11:10 AM by perculia

NA/OCEU

Blizzard

The way realm population display currently works once the servers are live is that High, Medium, and Low are determined dynamically, in terms relative to the most crowded realms. So a realm with pretty rough queues (say 4k-5k) might end up showing as Medium because you aren’t Faerlina, Herod, etc.

This is how it’s worked for a long time, but the unprecedented size of the queues on the handful of outlier realms is skewing the algorithm. The team’s first priority is stability and getting new servers online as needed, but beyond that, we’ll look into changing this logic to be more intuitive (i.e. showing “Full” when a server has a queue, for starters). I know, this is technically not #nochanges, but then again neither are 20k people waiting to log into the same realm…
I understand the frustration: Anticipating and planning around jumping back into this world we’ve all missed, only to be stuck in a long queue, is not the experience we want anyone to have.

But from the start of planning for this launch, we’ve tried to prioritize the long-term health of our realm communities, recognizing that if we undershot the mark in terms of launch servers, we could move quickly to add additional realms in the opening hours. But if we went out with too many servers, weeks or months down the line we’d have a much tougher problem to solve. While we have tools like free character transfers available as a long-term solution to underpopulated realms, everything about that process would be tremendously disruptive to realm communities, and so it’s something we want to avoid as much as possible.

Thus, we took the path of launching with few enough realms to still thrive in the event that our most conservative estimates ended up proving accurate, while having enough servers ready to activate at a moment’s notice if needed. And clearly they were, and are, needed.

We’ve released over 20 new realms worldwide so far since launch, and we’ll be up around the clock continuing to do so until everyone who wants to experience Classic is able to. But even still, as we bring new realms online in a given region, we wait for them to fill before opening new ones, because we want to make sure that each and every realm has a healthy population in the long term.

Comment by TuulaniWAs it should be. They're approaching this in a very logical manner.Comment by SultxJ Allen Brack (Blizzcon 2017): "We want to reproduce the Game Experience that we all enjoy from the original classic wow, not the actual Launch Experience"

Source: https://clips.twitch.tv/MuddyApatheticElkTakeNRGComment by Kikmast"Now that you all created your character on a realm with your friend, we open new realms ! Restart with your guild on a different realm or wait the 3 hour login queue"

Players were asking for new realms on Blizzard forum these past few month, it would've been nice if they listened :(Comment by RedexxWhat about random Disconnects into 20k queue?
Here is proof;
https://clips.twitch.tv/ObservantProductiveHedgehogPeoplesChampComment by GunhedoHe does not understand my frustration to wait 6 hours in a queue!Comment by dksprideHow crazy is that! :DComment by Dragunovkayeah, lets open more dead realms and not increase servers pop
best logic of a billion dollar companyComment by Kevlarkentthey were basically in the middle ages, thats how conservative they were being with the serversComment by trolloneWe asked for Classic. Now we have it ! including the Queues and the waiting :-(Comment by starfire713They can't raise server population caps without it ruining the server. They were made for x amount of population with the resources it had,Comment by dumenc"Now that you all created your character on a realm with your friend, we open new realms ! Restart with your guild on a different realm or wait the 3 hour login queue"

Players were asking for new realms on Blizzard forum these past few month, it would've been nice if they listened :(Comment by UnkuthmaI think a small part of this problem is VPNs saw many spanish players on my realm once their servers open that should reduce some servers populations I would imagineComment by AcolyyteName reservation *!@#ed everything up. When your entire guild commits to a server and gets good names, it's really #$%^ing hard to say "just kidding ya'll, let's go to this new server instead!"

Blizz !@#$ed up by letting far FAR too many people name reserve. They should have capped it at a certain percentage of the actual server population. Then record how many people over that cap attempt to create characters, i.e. count error messages. use that as a litmus test and release more servers.

Instead, they let way to many people commit to certain servers, then opened the &*!@ing queues over an hour before actual launch WITHOUT EVER SAYING THEY WOULD DO THAT. At my LAN party, two people got in almost immediately, and 3 minutes later, my friend and I were sitting in a 6.5 hour queue. After finally getting into the world, i played for about 45 seconds and the power flashed from the storm outside. While my two friends who had been playing that entire time were able to get right back in the world after the internet came back up, I was shunted to an 18,000 deep queue.

Blizzard royally &*!@ed up the launch of Classic and it's a damn shame. I was looking forward to a memorable night of questing and camraderie and instead got the short end of the stick because blizz's solution to overpopulation is "Uh....move your entire guild to this new server and abandon the awesome names you already have reserved."Comment by CiaeKind of a joke when you've been in a queue for 5 hours to then be kicked from the queue.
Attempted to rejoin Firemaw as I heard my spot may he saved. NOPE back to 21k.Comment by NinoPozeRemovedComment by TheBeardedFetusAs it should be. They're approaching this in a very logical manner.Comment by solarionyup, same here.

super ridiculous that they let people queue before launchComment by koodooI feel like all the problems we're experiencing now are rooted in the failure of retail's realm system, which is brimmed with dead realms and communities ...few enough realms to still thrive in the event that our most conservative estimates ended up proving accurateComment by Gumboyeah, lets open more dead realms and not increase servers pop
best logic of a billion dollar companyComment by bgalakazamHow can a multi million company like Activision Blizzard not handle this but third world private servers can? Asking for a friend.