Queue QQ

The following editorial contains views that are the opinion of the author and not necessarily the views of Allakhazam.com

I have a hypothetical scenario for you. Let's say you just got off work and decide to meet up with your friends who are currently eating at a restaurant. Of course, everyone else seems to have the same idea as you weave through rush hour traffic worse than the “Office Space” opening scene. You finally get to the establishment and walk toward the entrance, noticing a line has formed. Actually, scratch that. It’s more of a mammoth throng of people vanishing into the distance, waiting to get inside. It’s a bloody queue.

You go up to the greeter and ask how long it'll be until it's your turn. “Five minutes,” she says. Then she pauses. “No, wait, make that two hours.” Another pause, “45 minutes maybe?”

You sigh. You probably should have expected this since it this is the most popular restaurant in town (hell, it's so good that most people try to copy it), but it’s ridiculous to think you should arrive early every time you want to eat. You've asked the management in the past if there’s anything that can be done about the wait time, and you keep getting the same response.

“We've been opening up new locations. There's no wait at most of them. In fact, they're pretty empty right now. Why don't you go try one of them out?”

That could work. It’s just too bad all your friends are in this particular restaurant. You can see them through the window and they’re all wearing matching guild tabards…

OK, I’ve gone too far. You get the idea. World of Warcraft is the most popular MMO on the planet right now. I play it, you play it, and 11.5 million subscribers play it. That's a lot of people to fit into these servers, and it’s no easy task. Some MMO developers nowadays only have to keep track of a handful of servers, but Blizzard has literally hundreds of carbon-copied Azeroths, Outlands and Northrends to oversee throughout the globe.

On one hand, the vast amount of players is a testament to the quality of their product. On the other hand, should a gigantic company with such money and resources at its disposal have the server instability and queues that many players face? Activision Blizzard won't release its year-end 2008 results until February, but CEO Robert Kotick predicted, in November, an outlook of $4.9 billion in revenues and $1.2 billion in operating income. Even though the economy's not doing so hot right now, I’m betting some of that money could go toward alleviating the massive queues on some realms while stabilizing lag.

According to the official realm FAQ, each server has an optimum number of players, in the thousands, to foster a sense of community and prevent overcrowding. “Thousands” sounds a bit low to me. Overcrowding is only a problem in popular areas; some days it's hard to wade through the mass of avatars in Dalaran, but step foot in a vanilla zone and you may not see another toon for hours. And as for a sense of community, guilds create that. It’s a nice thought that players may walk into an inn where everybody knows their name, but it's a bit unrealistic. If Blizzard could lower queues by increasing the population cap on servers without introducing lag, I doubt most players would mind. It is called Massively Multiplayer for a reason, after all. Sure, some popular leveling areas can be packed, but players could work together or you can venture off the beaten path for a bit.

The problem with queues is that they happen during peak times. If you're a night owl and log on at 2 a.m., you're probably fine and may be wondering what a queue even is. If you're like most players and have a specific window of time in the evenings, you're out of luck. Personally, I'm not even sure why some servers are more popular than others. It's like the people who don't have to wait to log on are missing out on something amazing, like an “Everything’s 75% Off!” sale on the Auction House.

Blizzard, to its credit, has been open about the queue issue. Zarym mentioned this month on the official forums that about 75 realms have queues right now and even ranked some servers regarding their wait time. As of Jan. 7, Warsong had the highest queue, followed by Illidan. Both are PvP. Arthas and Kel'Thuzad, two more PvP servers, were also in the top five. So yeah, PvP realms are popular, especially if they have highly recognizable names. They should name some servers Legolas and Sephiroth and watch the servers collapse at the mad rush.

In order to help alleviate queues, Blizzard has been offering free transfers from high population realms to lower population realms with no wait. In the same thread Zarym acknowledged that such offerings don’t solve the problem, but it is “certainly a start.” I will agree that the free transfers are beneficial and necessary, but in some ways it seems like an unfair alternative to some players. What should you do if your friends and guild are on a specific server? Ask everyone to move all at once? And the response to finding a new server is always to research the forums, but that’s not so easily done when there are hundreds of realms to choose from. You may as well throw a dart at a list of names and hope for the best. And of course for every packed realm like Warsong, there’s a desolate server somewhere else.

In fact, it could be argued that more servers create less of a sense of community. Whenever I find out someone I know plays WoW (and it happens a lot) I ask them, “Which server?” The answer is always something different. I'd feel like I’d won the lottery if somebody actually mentioned my server. Sure, you can roll alts to play with different friends on different realms, but for many players that’s just time away from their main.

Another option is that Blizzard sometimes locks realms to new character creation. This can be a step toward stabilizing the population on a server to ultimately cut down on the wait time, but again, it's a temporary fix to a problem that could really use a long-term answer.

Aside from the queues, there’s also the issue of server stability. Patch 3.0.8 rolled out this week and, in turn, Wintergrasp and Arenas shut down for a bit. There was some emergency maintenance, followed by some rioting in the streets and looting. Peace was eventually restored, but lag can still be a problem.

In all honestly, I don't think the implementation of the patch went that horribly. I've played other games where downtime meant days, not hours, and Blizzard provided updates throughout the process. It’s obvious they worked as quickly as possible to bring the game back online. There are always going to be glitches like these that must be fixed, but it's the hardware side that's the issue.

I personally feel that Blizzard constantly makes an effort to listen to its players, which is a commendable endeavor considering the size of its fanbase. The devs read every thread on the official forums, as demonstrated by Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street and his massive post count, and ask gamers for their input. But sometimes I feel more emphasis is put on deciphering the exact mathematical equations regarding Death Knight abilities than the issues that actually affect logging on and playing the game.

We can all argue until we're blue in the face about game balance, nerfs and whether the end-game has gotten too easy. Those are all things that evolve over time in any MMORPG. It's just the nature of the beast. In fact, the possibility for change is actually one of this genre’s best features. But, if waiting in a virtual line cuts into your play time, or the lag makes you character freeze for chunks of time before performing every attack you selected at once, that’s generally in the hands of the developers, not the gamers.

So if you're fed up with your queue, I suppose you could start signing on in advance, switch servers or just not play at that time. All are viable options. But it's your hobby, and you should be able to play when you wish. Emergency maintenance rarely happens and you can plan around regular maintenance, but queues are consistent if you picked a popular server.

 

Darryl "Togikagi" Gangloff
Editor
Allakhazam.com

Comments

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Lag...
# Jan 27 2009 at 8:34 AM Rating: Default
ya, i loved when WG and arena were down....i actually had NO LAG. seriously, blizzard needs to stop copying Warhammer's RvR-lake idea; it's not working for them, too much lag. i get ~90ms in old-azeroth, ~97ms in Outland, and....~213ms in northrend. when WG was down it actually dropped to the mid-100s.

WG was a good idea, but there was a reason why the WSG, AB, EoTS, SotA, and AV where instanced....TO MUCH SERVER DEMAND.



fyi:

-tidbit of info...WoW uses about double the RAM in northrend than it does in old-azeroth/outland; so, if you're having trouble look into buying atleast a 1gig of extra RAM if you system can support it
A victim of its own popularity...
# Jan 27 2009 at 6:37 AM Rating: Excellent
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808 posts
Tamat wrote:

“Thousands” sounds a bit low to me. Overcrowding is only a problem in popular areas; some days it's hard to wade through the mass of avatars in Dalaran, but step foot in a vanilla zone and you may not see another toon for hours.


I think you missed one of the major factors influencing the recent population troubles: the Achievements system and her redheaded stepbrother the Violet Proto-Drake. I play on a medium/medium-low population server and yet there were ~20 Alliance in Felwood at midnight server time last night and I know I saw oodles of Horde as well. Felwood was a perpetually dead vanilla zone during BC, and indeed, at least a couple of these toons WERE proper level for the zone but most weren't, now that there's map to explore and Elders to visit and furbolgs to kill and ooh! Loremaster of Kalimdor is now within reach, just a couple more quests to go... Take a quick look at the Guild tab and wow, those who aren't in a raid tonight are running Zul'Farrak and RKF/RFD on their 80s.

A lot of these guildies are people who would have otherwise logged on, found they weren't chosen for the night's raids, done a few dailies, and then logged. Now they have a new incentive to stay online for hours and hours solo'ing. As a result, our realm is seeing what I believe are its first non-expac queues in realm history. You hear the QQ in trade chat or over Ventrilo and it's just further incentive to leave your toon logged in but AFK while you make dinner or do other tasks around the house. Lifting the population cap will fix the problems, but cheaper solutions would include booting AFKers more quickly during peak usage and extending the World Events' durations so players don't feel like they have to cram all these achievements in at once.
How about free transfers to the realm of YOUR choosing?
# Jan 27 2009 at 5:47 AM Rating: Default
I would really really appreciate it if they would just let us move all of our characters to the realm of OUR choosing (with the exception of full servers, obviously) for FREE. This is utter BS that we should have to pay 25 dollars PER character for what seems like an automated service. Put in place transfer rules, such as 3 months between being allowed to transfer again to block leapfroggers.

I shouldn't have to pay 200 bucks just to play the game on a server with some friends without having to wait in a 2 hour line.
But I hate my main's server.
# Jan 27 2009 at 5:39 AM Rating: Good
What I hate, is my main's server (Gul'dan) is quite possibly the worst, low populated server that's PvP. Horde is dominant... I think all allies have left! People are leaving, to get into better populated servers, just so they have more opportunities to play as they see fit.

I haven't been back on that server in quite a long time. It hasn't changed, it's the server that time forgot.

I've recently joined a brand new server, Borean Tundra. While PvE, I've enjoyed it fully. Even it is full, and now experiencing queue times at peak hours. Most of that population will GTFO after the AQ gates open. A lot are there for that fact alone, to grab the title and mount, then transfer off.

I ponder staying, as I hooked up with great people in a guild. I enjoy communicating in the server forums with the rest of the players, and I feel for the first time, a real sense of community, even after the short time the server has been active. (little over a week)

What's in the future is anyone's guess, and is often decided months later. Will it become the next locked server, with the horrid queue times? Or another crappy low pop server that you can't find a decent group of players to run all the wonderful content Blizzard installed.
...
# Jan 27 2009 at 2:44 AM Rating: Default
Both Blizzard and the players are to blame for this, hands down. Blizz isn't doing enough to lessen the problem, and players go to servers that have a nice name, or where their friends are, or where good guilds/progression is everywhere. With the simplicity of the end game raiding (compared to classoc WoW), it doesn't really matter which server you play on. I recently moved to Europe and decided to start playing on a German server. I looked for a server that had middle-to-low population. I have just as good an experience as I did in a high population server. You can always find decent or better arena partners; it just takes practice and knowing your class, and which class to arena with. You can always raid as long as you find nine other people willing to go with you. If people were to stop creating characters on popular servers this problem would not be eliminated, but it would definitely improve. No matter what people say, the gaming experience is just about the same, no matter what server. There are always other players to raid with. I have played on so many different servers and have had very similar experiences on each. Blizz should close new character creation/paid character transfer to full servers, and maybe even high population. New gamers/alts/rerolls should look at going to low-mid population, or even switch servers with your main. $25 is not much, plus you won't have to complain about queue.
Aye
# Jan 26 2009 at 10:28 PM Rating: Good
Citizen's Arrest!
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29,527 posts
Nosferotica wrote:
You would think, that Blizzard would stop allowing transfers to a FULL server. You know ENTIRE GUILDS.
Instead of opening up new servers, and telling the veterans of Mal'Ganis, "Oh, sorry, maybe you should pack your bags and leave?".


I agree with this. Any realm that experiences a semi-regular queue should be closed to transfers, especially guild transfers.
Worst Analogy ever.
# Jan 26 2009 at 8:12 PM Rating: Decent
Worst Analogy ever. Leave it to a fan boy to take an issue that is Blizzards fault and turn it around so the player base is to blame. Please how is it my fault I have to wait in a Que? Why do I have to move from a server that I have been on for years because Blizzard can not manage their servers?

I have friends, guild mates, I love the depth of the AH for crafted items, and my battle group. Why do I have to move?

1. No one is a member to a restaurant or restaurant chain. If I was a paying member to a restaurant, and the expectation was that I got a seat with out waiting because I pay a fee to do so I would except the burden to be on the restaurant to make sure I had a seat, and did not have to wait. I would then get pissed if the restaurant told me I was to blame for waiting, I could just go else where.

The fact is Blizzard has not did not and has not corrected their own mismanagement of this issue. So stop insulting the paying members with your weak Analogy and blaming the players for Blizzards error.
WHAT?
# Jan 26 2009 at 7:54 PM Rating: Default
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4,445 posts
Uhh no this is not the same at all. A restaurant is limited by how big their property is and I am sure it takes alot more work to build another restaurant then it does to add more servers to a game. There is a huge difference between investing money into more servers and expanding a popular restaurant.

If I go to a restaurant and there is a long "Queue" I turn around and go elsewhere. I don't think a person should ever have to wait in queue. I have played MMORPG games since 1998 and up until December of last year I NEVER had to wait in line to log into any on-line game. If there is this many subscribers they should open new servers and allow more transfers to them. Mok Nathal was fine until they transfered too many people to our server. Now not only do I have queues on the weekends but I also have a harder time doing quests as there is always somebody of the opposite faction mass killing what I need seems like.

Also you would think if anything good could have come from this it would have been a perfect change to balance the Horde/Alliance ratio on servers. I know on ours Alliance have always outnumbered us except during school hours or late at night. Sure enough though after all the transfers alliance still outnumber us. Also our Battlegroup has went down the drain since the server transfer although I suppose that's abit off topic.

I don't buy into the whole "Its ok we can just wait" deal. If it gets to the point where I have to wait every single time I log into the game Im out. When you go to a restaurant you don't pay them a monthly fee to stand in line trying to get in. They don't get money until you receive service.
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Hi
Server transfers don't work
# Jan 26 2009 at 6:58 PM Rating: Decent
Soon before Burning Crusade was released, I transferred from the bulging-at-the-seams Daggerspine server to the newly opened Nazjatar, along with the rest of my guild. We figured that we could avoid the queues and camped mobs in this brave new world. It started out fine at first, but then we quickly found that we needed more people to raid. The problem was, so did every other guild. The recruiting pool was so small that it was very difficult to get new members. Before long, the server started hemorrhaging players to other servers where there were plentiful high ranking guilds, and things looked bleak. I eventually transferred with several friends to Dark Iron.

Now, Dark Iron has a queue that ranges from 300 to 450 every night. I expect server transfers to open eventually. But when they do, I doubt few will take them. Who wants to go to a server with a terrible recruitment pool, and where progression will stagnate? Only the naive and the hopeful, and their hopes will be dashed against the rocks should they choose to transfer. Server transfers are not a long term solution.
sargeras
# Jan 26 2009 at 5:43 PM Rating: Decent
on sargeras theres been roughly 500/600 quee whenever and my mage has been stuck in dalaran for about 5 days the loading screen wont load up in the tinny laggy room. it suck i made a DK on another server to play with my friend alredy 70
:-)
# Jan 26 2009 at 5:14 PM Rating: Excellent
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343 posts
A hunter and a priest sitting in SW inn watching the fire after a long day of instance running.
The hunter's bear lying on the floor in front is whining and has been for awhile now.
The priest looks over and asks "Why is he whining?” The hunter snickers and says, "He's lying on a Mithril Spur."
The priest is a bit taken back and asks, "Well then, why doesn't he move?"
"It just doesn't hurt enough", the hunter replies.

Warcraft has changed a lot in it's time. And yes, if you visit IF or SW the first few weeks that WotLK came out you could hear the crickets out. I play on Bolderfist. Have for over a year. When Litch came out I met the almighty queue. The longest wait I've seen is a bit over 2hrs, (or was it 45 min?).
IMO I think Blizz has been really up front about the queue. They have been making new realms and the free transfer is really cool. I think that this could really put a HUGE dent in the queue problem, except there is so much holding the casual player back (yep that's me). A full guild transfer is a cool idea. I like it. I have 10 toons on Bolderfist and play them all. I have single alts on other servers to play with my friends, but even after watching my buddies either stop playing or switch servers (long before WotLK) I keep coming back to Bolderfist. Was a long time member of The Anti Guild, know a few peps in other guilds and know the economy fairly well. It could almost be called home. Now besides the occasional queue that I meet (only 3 times now... and meh... I waited), I think to see a change happen that Blizz should give people more of an incentive to leave home and move away. Yeah, I get that it's the same Stormwind, and the same Sunken Temple with all the same mobs and drops on each server. But we are still human players. Creatures of habit and comfort. Even something dorky would be cool. A free pet, 10g, a title "Vagabond" or something. Something to give us more reason to get off the Spur, or honestly, I'd have to say that the response to Blizz's solution is.... the queue just doesn't hurt enough.
Sorry
# Jan 26 2009 at 5:03 PM Rating: Good
Unfortunately, things in-game aren't that stupidly simple.
For instance, I play on Mal'Ganis (US) and have since the creation of the server. It's a great realm and I know a lot of awesome people on there. The only problem is that there is an hour or more of queue time EVERY single night.

You would think, that Blizzard would stop allowing transfers to a FULL server. You know ENTIRE GUILDS.
Instead of opening up new servers, and telling the veterans of Mal'Ganis, "Oh, sorry, maybe you should pack your bags and leave?".

I mean, it's not like we pay them monthly for our service, or anything.
Gods forbid they ever cut back on the transfers and upgraded their servers.
Sorry
# Jan 27 2009 at 4:52 AM Rating: Decent
I play on Ner'zhul, one of the older original servers. Ner'zhul had huge que's a few years ago and I eventually went and tried one of the brand new no crashing servers with low pop. It was a lot of fun at first, everyone starting at lvl 1 and no server transfers at the time. I stayed with that server for a year. Problem was there wasn't enough people to progress through to Naxx ( original wow) at the time. When BC came out the server never really did get far, and most the good people left for other servers. That server completely died and it totally sucks on it now. I went back to Ner'zhul which sometimes (but not often) has a server que. I am now more than happy to have a que, it means there will be plenty of people on to raid and quest or just to talk in town. A full server is a lot more fun socially than a low pop one. That low pop one I was on at times could have only 1 or 2 people in a capitol city like SW or IF. Server que isn;t too bad, just log in, go make a peanut butter jelly sandwich, and read some forums while waiting, it is a good chance to read up on your class. Wow has gotten way too diluted I believe with the many servers it has now. It sux that most the aussies left Ner'zhul too (it is Cali based one) to play on oceanic servers, they were a lot of fun.
Aman'Thul
# Jan 26 2009 at 4:09 PM Rating: Decent
graspee's got a great point; even on my EU server i've seen a queue once in all my time playing warcraft (8 months i think, and im on a lot), and it's supposedly a high population server!
what queue?
# Jan 26 2009 at 3:31 PM Rating: Decent
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3,896 posts
I am on EU RP realm Moonglade and I have never seen a queue ever. I heard stories in the past about queues but I didn't know for sure that there still was such a thing until I read this article.

Not trying to boast or annoy people who do suffer from full servers- just putting the info out there that there are some servers where you will never see a queue ever.

Guild Transfer's
# Jan 26 2009 at 3:26 PM Rating: Default
I agree with everything there as well. Maybe a good idea for blizzard to help on a massive scale is to offer a free Guild transfer and offer each guild some sort of bonus for moving. Something like Each Guild with 100 people or more who move to x server will get a special tabard from blizzard that adds some sort of party bonus. Just an idea but it would help them alot if say a massive guild changed server as it lowers numbers on one server increases numbers on the other server as well as it keeps friends and guildies together which will promote better growth on a new server cause there will be no big waiting times anymore.
Then when people check the forums they see big guilds on new servers they are more likely to go to that server as there is more chance of logging on and gaming experiance is better.
Just a few thoughts but Blizzard has the final say.
In my eyes Guild Transfer with Bonus's for them is the way of less queue's
#REDACTED, Posted: Jan 26 2009 at 3:07 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) One of the big problems is all the carebears on PVP servers, or all the people who have no idea what roleplaying is on the RP servers, or even worse, those who know in either case but still decide to roll there.
Timely article Tamat
# Jan 26 2009 at 2:57 PM Rating: Default
My friends and I were just talking about this last night as a matter of fact. Our discussion also boiled down to the points made by you at the end of your article that cannot be avoided, and that is; the 'real' solution to this problem is ultimately out of 'our' {the gamer's} hands. It sucks, but there it is...

Good article.
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:D
# Jan 26 2009 at 2:50 PM Rating: Default
your so right..
:)
# Jan 26 2009 at 12:43 PM Rating: Decent
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2,047 posts
Awesome analogy.
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