I've been wondering about the number of realms they plan on releasing and I've had a thought.

Theoretically couldn't Blizzard have just ONE realm per region?

Imagine a tray with an empty glass. The tray is a single server in WoW Classic. The empty glass is a layer. When you log into the game on launch day, you’ll be with a flood other players: the water that we’re going to pour into the glass. Once the glass is full, we add another empty glass and start filling it up with water, or players, too. Each new glass is a new layer that consists of two to three thousand players — which means any single server could handle tens of thousands of players at the same time but without all of them being crowded into the same place in-game.

This is how Blizzard has explained Layering to us so couldn't you just replace the bold word with realm? One realm, one economy and one ever lasting population.

Layering is a way of handling the load on servers to allow thousands of players at a time so why couldn't they all link to a centralised realm? I know they are removing it after x amount of months but do they need to?

Of course there are negatives, it would pretty much be the same as xrealm/shared realms is right now on retail and you may never run into the same player twice if there are 3m people on the EU realm but it's just an idea my mind is thinking about

THAT SAID - what do you think will happen? 20-30 realms to home the player base @ 100k+ ea(NOT CONCURRENT) with layering to handle the concurrent?

First off, they won't do one because there's PvP, PvE, and RP realms with a possibility for RP-PvP realms. So that already puts it at at least 4 realms.

Secondly, server communities are important. As everyone knows, no one likes a dead server. However, with large servers, (for example Illidan, Sargeras, etc.) it's much harder to nurture a close-knit community as there are a massive amount of players. Not impossible, but as you've already mentioned, the odds of coming across a person a second, third, fourth time is much rarer.

I also don't want to be on the same realm as a popular streamer, as twitch culture will have a massive effect on a server's community.

My guess is there will be around 15 realms.

Yeh I'm thinking for North America there will be like... 20+ Realms.
For oceanic I'm hoping for a couple of PvP realms, then a PvE and RP realm at minimum. Hoping for more like 8 realms total.

This is just gut feeling, I guess the stress tests will largely be used for determining expected playerbase/hype for launch population.

The number of realms will be as small as possible. for germany i think there will be max 10 Realms. If they need more they can see how much layering happend in the first months and scale up but i never seen a company having to many server and release.

Looking at the different languages that are spoken in the world and the ones that Blizzard support already, I'd say we can expect up to 20-30 realms per region.

I predict that Blizzard will try and release with as few realms as possible. I'm talking like literally maybe 2 PvP, 2 PvE, and 1 RP-PvE for a smaller region like OC. Maybe a bit more for America. Possible that they don't split it via timezones as well. I think they want to release with very few realms.

I'm also putting my money on the table here and saying that Blizz will underestimate the amount of interest and players that will come to Classic. But they've got to be VERY careful about creating new realms. Remember that layering only lasts until phase 2 - if they make a bunch of new realms like the numbers posted here by others already, they're risking thinning everyone out too much.

They should keep the number of realms to an aaaabsolute minimum.

The problem with the "as few realms as possible" approach is that they put a clear deadline on layering. So what happens if 3 months in some servers still have 8k players at peak times?

Will they add server queues?
I wonder if they have the balls to do that and weather the shitstorm.

Will they offer free transfers?
Not many people take these.

Will they split the realm?
Only if merging wasnt enough pain in the ass and they want the no lube experience.

Will they extend layering?
That would never turn into a huge drama, would it?

Will they prolong phase 1?
Very weird solution and not actually solving the problem.


I am really curious what their plan is.

IronBrutzler wrote: ↑

6 years ago

The number of realms will be as small as possible. for germany i think there will be max 10 Realms. If they need more they can see how much layering happend in the first months and scale up but i never seen a company having to many server and release.

I hope there is no Germany server at all LOL.
EU Servers, not Country Based.

aeh wrote: ↑

6 years ago

IronBrutzler wrote: ↑

6 years ago

The number of realms will be as small as possible. for germany i think there will be max 10 Realms. If they need more they can see how much layering happend in the first months and scale up but i never seen a company having to many server and release.

I hope there is no Germany server at all LOL.
EU Servers, not Country Based.

I hope there are, most of the german players can not speak english well enough or are to lazy. I have no problem with English only servers but the German players would not like it.

If no country based realm is released (and I completely agree on this) it will be funnier: that's because people still tend to group themselves and you will end with realms that, un-officially, are still country based. I find it way more interesting than having Blizzard directly suggesting you where you have to play based on your country.
For example, I'm Italiana (and in Italy many people are really not great in english writing) and, since pre-Cata there was no italian client hence no italians server, unofficially Hakkar-EU and Crushridge-EU were the servers where italians grouped.
When Cata came out two italian servers where opened by Blizzard (Pozzo dell'eternita' and another one) and it was sad to see the mass exodus from Hakkar. I remember logging in the week after the opening of those two servers and seeing <50 horde players online on peak time.
Let the community handle this, we are grown up enough :-)

IronBrutzler wrote: ↑

6 years ago

aeh wrote: ↑

6 years ago

IronBrutzler wrote: ↑

6 years ago

The number of realms will be as small as possible. for germany i think there will be max 10 Realms. If they need more they can see how much layering happend in the first months and scale up but i never seen a company having to many server and release.

I hope there is no Germany server at all LOL.
EU Servers, not Country Based.

I hope there are, most of the german players can not speak english well enough or are to lazy. I have no problem with English only servers but the German players would not like it.

Im a german player and I would dislike a full german server. My guild and I are going to an English Server.

I wouldn't dare to go to a German server that will die out after a few months because the German community is broken. On an international server where English is spoken, you always have people from every nation.

Samaraner wrote: ↑

6 years ago

The problem with the "as few realms as possible" approach is that they put a clear deadline on layering. So what happens if 3 months in some servers still have 8k players at peak times?

Layering is there to fix the problem of having 8k people in the starting areas - server can surely handle 8k players, but their decision to add it has more to do with gameplay rather than technical limitations as it was implied from the interview iirc. Having 8k players out in the world is not that big of a deal if people are dispersed. I've played on private servers with 8-10k people online after 1-2 months of launch and it was fine, but 8-10k people in the starting areas at launch was almost unplayable.

I am not sure why one would be opposed to localized servers if the playerbase is there. You are screwing over people because... why exactly?
Personally I will most likely play on an english realm. But I dont see the reasoning behind denying other people that choice.

As for german servers, I have no doubt the playerbase is there. Just look at the classic reddit, like half the screenshots there are from german players.

@Nymis

If starting areas is their only concern, I fail to see why they include whole continents in layering while starting areas will still be a fuckfest, having 3k players split over 4 zones. I feel like layering is supposed to combat tourism as well as declunking starting areas.
Or in other words: If they are fine with 8k people on one realm why introduce layering to begin with?

But you are certainly right that it is an option.

aeh wrote: ↑

6 years ago

Im a german player and I would dislike a full german server. My guild and I are going to an English Server.

I wouldn't dare to go to a German server that will die out after a few months because the German community is broken. On an international server where English is spoken, you always have people from every nation.

I can totally understand this but having some local server would help to find Guilds that also do RL things and voicechat will be more chill.

I'm expecting 20-30 realms, but we will see :)

It will be a difficult exercise to find the right balance between "too many" realms and "too few realms".
Imagine progressing a character only to find out a few months later that you have a low populated server where no one stays.

I also think A LOT of people will start playing Classic (curious/nostalgia) but not everyone will keep playing Classic.
The safe bet is starting on a realm where the big guilds are planning to go I guess.

I think less is more. They should have a relatively good figure of player interest based on their own analytics. I think a large part of the reason that they are allowing us to reserve names is to help accurately assess the interest and drop the appropriate amount of servers to start. I'm not a fan of layering as an option and would prefer dynamic respawns to a layered realm, but given the fact we are using layering, I assume they will start really small and slowly ramp up servers. Layering will be giving Blizzard a lot of lenience.

I was hoping we'd get an identical list to vanilla launch for the sole reason of myself joining Mannoroth under the same aliases, and with any luck, running into old friends doing the same. I imagine other people are planning something similar.

If it really comes down to 5-10 servers and Mannoroth isn't one of them that's all up in smoke.

@Lendryn They already said that realms will get brand new names. Otherwise it would be a mess.

I believe there will be only a few realms. People hoping for 30+ are in my opinion overestimating. I'd say there will be a maximum of 15 realms for both US and EU-eng. However I'd love to be wrong - I prefer realms with 'normal' rather than 'high' population.

Lendryn wrote: ↑

6 years ago

I was hoping we'd get an identical list to vanilla launch for the sole reason of myself joining Mannoroth under the same aliases, and with any luck, running into old friends doing the same. I imagine other people are planning something similar.

If it really comes down to 5-10 servers and Mannoroth isn't one of them that's all up in smoke.

Not a guarantee of finding people from back then, but have you checked out https://www.vanillafriends.com/ ?