Blizzard: Splitting Servers Whether You’re Ready Or Not

Posted on January 8, 2007 by Scott Jennings| 21 Comments

Clearly, Blizzard is getting ready for the onrush of reactivated accounts for Burning Crusade by any means necessary.

Will I be able to choose my new realm?

When a realm is chosen to undergo a split, an in-game message at the character-selection screen will prompt all affected players to choose between one of the two new realms being created. The player will be able to make this decision (or change his or her decision) up until the realm-split process has been completed. The realm that the player chooses will be the destination for all characters that the player plays on that realm.

What happens to my characters if I don’t choose?

If a realm is not chosen by the player, each character will be individually relocated to one of the two new realms based on a priority system. The system will first determine whether the character is in a guild and move the character based on the destination of the guild’s leader. If the character is not in a guild, the system will then check if the character is part of an arena team and move the character accordingly. If these conditions do not apply, Blizzard will make the decision for the character(s).

Uh… OK. Yeah, no possibility for disaster here, nuh uh.

Assuming that most of the “server data” is simply tables in an Oracle RDBMS, some bright sparky coder figured out that overcrowding on launch day was a solvable problem. Hey, we can fix this with a smart query!
Too bad it’s doubtful that the server tables have fields for “community”, “friends”, “drama” and “postlaunch decline”. I’m sure those will be hotswapped in next patch.

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  • http://therrik.blogspot.com Therrik

    Yep. My guild was talking about this last night…no good is going to come of this. People are going to end up all wanting to go to the same option of the split, and then you’ll have one server that is almost like what it used to be, and one with very few on it. It’s just not likely that people are going to be happy with this solution at all.

  • http://www.lietcam.com Lietgardis

    You forgot the part where they charge you to move back to your friends’ server.

    Post-launch server management is tricky. Nobody ever thinks about managing sub-optimal populations until it’s too late.

  • http://www.cesspit.net Abalieno

    I’m starting to wonder why WoW is all that different. It’s not the first mmorpg to launch an expansion.

    Okay, it has more players, but also more servers. Things should scale uniformly. Why is for Blizzard significantly harder to deal with an expansion launch than, say, SOE?

    Echoes of Faydwer launched without any major issues (and I downloaded it right from their servers on launch day). So why The Burning Crusade cannot do the same?

  • Freakazoid

    I wouldn’t care too much if ALL of my characters on a server stayed together during the move, but it sounds like they want to divide individual characters anywhere.

    I don’t even care about this game anymore, but in the back of my mind, there exists a concern that some day the game may turn into fun. On that day, I want to return with my previous account with all that I left intact. If my characters get moved around into different servers, this guarantees I won’t ever return.

  • blachawk

    The problem Abalieno/innsmouth/hrose is that queues also scale. In DAoC/EQ if there was overcrowding on a launch day it was in the hundreds. I can see queues of thousands on some of the more popular WoW servers, the ones with cool names like Skullcrusher/Blackrock. Servers are going to be hit hard when everybody and their brother is trying to 5-man the instances.

    I’ve always found it amousing that people flock to servers with recognizable/cool names. DAoC Merlin was swamped with people in its heyday, and lesser knowns like Gawaine/Bors were dead by comparison.

  • Naladini

    Its not that surprising really, and its not just confined to the “cool sounding” names. I started my first EQ character on Quellious, mainly because with all of the confusing server names, it was the only one that began with Q and was easy to pick out of the list.

  • Jon R.

    The running of MMOs, i’ve come to the conclusion, is a bit like Darwinism. Except instead of killing off the losers, you cultivate and base your entire business model on them.

    Why is Blizzard’s answer for everything to ram straight into the wall? How can you be this collectively retarded and not drown in your own drool? I’m sure Lum has at least some anecdotal explanation, and i’d really like to know what secret device keeps them upright long enough to be mobile. Did Diablo just buy a whole lot of Segways?

  • Aufero

    Echoes of Faydwer launched without any major issues (and I downloaded it right from their servers on launch day). So why The Burning Crusade cannot do the same?

    Echoes of Faydwer was what, SOE’s 16th game expansion or so? WoW has on the order of thirty times more customers than EQ2, and Blizzard has a lot less experience rolling out major expansions to popular MMOGs. They’re in a semi-controlled panic, second guessing what might happen. They’re going to screw up, the only question is how fast they’ll learn from it.

    It’s easy to say “things should scale uniformly” until you try to design tap dancing shoes for an elephant.

  • Mahkno

    Revenue padding at its finest. Some of those misplaced people will no doubt pay up to transfer. $$$ Brilliant !!!

  • http://......right MrOrange

    Well, More servers or not, 600k USA players jammed onto 115 servers seems divided enough. I also assume its for a specific server type IE: High pop. It does say realm, not server as well so i would assume it would show up as Skullcrusher 1 skullcrusher 2 to them and when you logi n, based on your character ID, it would just show up as skull crusher.

    And Jon R., your refferance is pointless in the face of billions in income in a society where intelligence is moot in the face of the man with the biggest bankroll. Sounds more like envy than anythign else.

  • Gir

    I’m confused here. Horrifically successful MMO has tried a variety of different ways to get people to move from horrifically overpopulated servers to unpopulated servers. Apparently this hasn’t quite worked yet or they just want to make sure that they have the ground zero option available.

    So what do you do when one server is dying from overpopulation? I think upgrading the server and DB can only go so far so fast.

    I think we’re also overestimating the how much of each server actually cares about where they are exactly. Sure uberguilds and raiding guilds will all want to be together, but do they make up most of these servers (or that they’ll be even more organized to move together in order to keep teh dr4m4)? Or are they filled with these casual players that have a few friends, might make plans or just not care and keep trying to level their 32 hunter in Desolace?

    What I’d really like to see someone fix is the Horde/Alliance imbalances. On my cluster, I have to wait 20-40 minutes for an AV game (15 instances shown) and 6-20 minutes for a WSG or AB game. Horde gets into anything instantly. I’m beginning to regret my choice of Alliance. Well, at least its better than before where I could wait hours to get into AV/AB/WSG only to face the Horde ultra PvP honor farming group and get crushed in 2.1 minutes.

  • Baroo

    /agree Gir. Whats the big deal here? Most likely the splits will be closer to 75-25 as one server becomes the “preferred choice”.

  • Mercilius

    Well, in my experience there really isn’t much of a server community in Wow. As long as my guild isn’t split up, i doubt I would even notice that the other random people walking around had different names. It’s not like in Daoc. Back in the day if Mythic tried to move me off Nimue I would have QQ’ed.

    That said, I’m sure this will cause an extreme amount of drama because…people love drama.

  • http://......right MrOrange

    Oh you,i believe those without beta access can view the beta.worldofwarcraft.com site forums. I have been mostly teasing people there tonight screaming BOO HOO Wheres my beta server !@!@!@

  • Jon R.

    Fucking well right it’s envy, MrOrange — if there’s anything we’ve learned, it’s that a geniuine desire for things to make sense simply is not plausible. I would be FAR more tolerant of this industry if i could at least make gobs of barely-earned money from it.

    You know, people like Gir. I think i should actually like to mug you.

    The point is that people don’t care what server they’re on — so long as it’s with their friends. Friends who may be unguilded, or spread across guilds. Or may be currently unsubscribed from WoW because they did the sensible thing: cancel when it’s no longer more than a grind. Which is pretty much the entire strength of WoW.

    Other than that extremely important point, which you so blithely missed? Yeah. No point at all. It’s a given that the rest of the experience is going to be the same across servers, with the populace being uniformly moronic and the economies being unique merely in the particular aspect in which they are completely fucked.

  • http://......right MrOrange

    Why does shit have to make sense to you ? You sound like a well educated bitch in your posts. you clearly only see 1 side of a coin . And while having a right to expect certain things out of a game your playing is fine, understanding that things do not have to make sense to you for them to be “working as intended”. Is there a point to the realm issue ? Sure. Cost effectivness IMO. God forbid a company that shows XX profit per quarter would lower the number value of XX to make YOU happy knowing full well your too much of an addict to quit just like the 500k lemmings standing behind you. So, rant about what YOU want and what YOU desire and realize that its clearly YOU and people like YOu who do not matter at all.
    Anxiously awaiting your self-centered, everyone else is a douche,reply :)

    With spite,
    MrOrange

  • Gir

    I’m confused, are you (Jon) mad because I’m questioning whether most WoW players care about being near each other or that you can’t make WoW players care about the same things you care about?

    I’m in it for socialization as well, but given that the at least 6 monsters on the “Most Dangerous NPCs” list are Defias somethings (and another 5 are high level aggros walking through lower level areas) seems to make me feel that there are a _lot_ of people playing the sub20s game. Sure they die more, res back up, die again, so it may not be that definite.

    So anyway, I disagree with your point. You care about your friends. _I_ care about my friends, but I honestly believe that most people playing WoW could give a crap. They group because they have to, and even then many just grind around outside. I’d love to see statistics on how many characters have actually been inside Scarlet Monastery, Stockades, or even the Defias one (whose name escapes me).

    Defias Pillager, I salute you.

  • blachawk

    Gir is right.

    When I first heard the news I figured people would be pissed about moving to a new community they don’t even know. But then I realized, there really isn’t much of a community.

  • Jon R.

    Dear MrOrange,

    Thank you for informing me of the complicated economic reasons that make Blizzard collectively retarded. I did not truly realize that this was a pre-requisite for making money, and i am constantly in awe of how all cases of incompetence and mediocrity can be explained by a bottom line that, itself, is never explained. You were right the first time: this is envy. I desperately want to understand this strange and wonderful way that business works in America.

    P.S. I quit WoW a year ago because the huge factors it took to get me into it in the first place disappeared. Welcome to the concept of someone actually having standards; i would be happy to teach you about the strange and wonderful things that come with having them.

    Dear Gir,

    You seem to be confused a lot. I think it may be because you are stupid. This may be a serious medical condition. Or, evidently, an indication of a keen business acumen.

  • Gir

    I guess I got served?

  • Arilaw

    Gir, not really. Jon R.’s posts began losing validity from the start when their ratio of incendiary-blathering-to-intelligent-discussion ratio went askew.

    I agree with you that there are a large number of players that won’t really care one way or the other, or who know a small enough number of other players that they can easily plan ahead and avoid any kind of problem. However, it’d be nice if you’d acknowledge the large number of players at 60 and the trickier situation many of them face. Maybe they’re guilded, maybe not; maybe they raid, maybe they stick to smaller PUGs. Regardless, chances are good that in the time it took them to reach 60 they’ve met a fair number of people they consider friends, and now they’re faced with the task of trying to end up with as many of those friends as possible.

    Honestly as a player I think the situation sucks, but I can understand why Blizzard would want to this sort of thing as an option. I also haven’t seen any meaningful alternatives proposed from the posters here yet. As you stated, the steps Blizzard has taken in the past have a limit to their effectiveness — you can only throw so much money at the servers, or hope that when given the option to move to a lower pop server that the players take advantage of it.