Blizzard opened up name reservations for WoW Classic with more than two weeks to go until launch - one has to wonder what exactly prompted that decision, though I could certainly think of a number of reasons: whether it's trying to coax extra subscription time out of people they suspect may not actually stick around for that long or wanting to gauge somewhat in advance just how much interest there is in order to better prepare for the launch day crowds. There is certainly evidence that the latter has been a concern, considering that they've already gone and added additional servers more than once.
Speaking of launch day crowds, we also got an official server list and it's... quite short. It's understandable that they want to avoid starting with too many servers and then having some of them become ghost towns, but six servers for the entirety of English-speaking Europe just doesn't sound like very much to me. (EDIT: Since I originally wrote this, two more have been added.) Even if their layering tech works and effectively allows these to become "mega-servers" without causing performance problems, one still has to wonder how much of that old-school community feeling you'll get to enjoy with 50,000 other players on your server... but I'm not complaining (yet) - we'll see how it goes.
I had another chat with my friends from back in the day and we ended up having this whole circular conversation about which server to roll on. I had assumed that it was going to be either PvE or RP-PvE since that's what we played on back in the day, but suddenly they told me that they wanted to go PvP instead. This I staunchly refused, based on my experiences on Kronos, but they had almost convinced me to try and give RP-PvP a go (in hopes of encountering less random griefing there), when it turned out that someone's girlfriend apparently really hates RP and we ended up circling back round to regular PvE anyway.
So it looks like I'll be playing a Tauren shaman on Pyrewood Village, though I haven't created my character yet as I refuse to "waste" paid subscription time purely for the privilege of reserving a name early. The only thing that makes me a bit sad is that I'd completely forgotten that Blizzard enforces a strict separation between US and EU accounts and servers, so I won't get to play with any of the American bloggers who've been sharing in the early excitement. Oh well. We can still exchange stories on our blogs - that's what we do, after all.
Anyway, with only a week left to go I expect that I won't have anything else to add until launch, so I'll see you on the other side!
20/08/2019
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I'll be playing on Pyrewood too, but my guild is heavy Alliance-biased, so unfortunately I'll be playing a blue human with pointy ears. Well, at least I'll be able to /wave to your shaman, if I suddenly meet you in the wilds.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that sucks Blizzard won't let players cross over regions. It would be fun to fun across each other on a server.
ReplyDeleteOne of the interesting theories about the popularity of the PvP servers is how the change on Retail to Warmode/Non-Warmode on all servers (killing the PvE and PvP distinction, though RP servers still get special consideration) really affected world PvP. The idea is lots of people that want open world PvP are signing up in droves for Classic. We'll see how it all works out over time. In the past, given the choice, most of the playerbase goes for PvE-style servers, from Ultima Online and later. It would be interesting if Retail mostly becomes PvE focused and Classic is bigger on PvP.
I'm sure that's definitely a factor too, but I also suspect that people vastly overrate how much fun it is to be on a PvP server in the long run. (And yes, I'm doing my own "I think you do, but you don't" here, lol.) It's just been my experience in modern WoW and SWTOR that PvP servers get much hype at launch but then die off more quickly than other server types (for whatever reasons), or become so unbalanced as to become completely unplayable for the under-represented faction.
Delete> so I won't get to play with any of the American bloggers who've been sharing in the early excitement.
ReplyDeleteWait, what? All my other RSS feeds from back then are dead. There are other bloggers that will play Classic?
I think they handled the server shituation in the worst possible way. The people really invested will all gather on the first announced servers. That's the crowd that started their subscription 2 weeks early just to login at midnight to get their name.
All the other servers will probably not reach enough momentum because they will lack the invested core. Casuals will only return if they meet their friends when they log in. And for that to happen, at least on of them must be online a lot.
Take a look at what happened to Retail. Is there a non-launch server that didn't die out?
I will wait it out in queue on Everlook. Still better then sitting on a dead realm one or two month down the line.
Eh, at this point the server numbers are still so small and I personally expect Classic to be sufficiently successful that I don't think there'll be any really "dead" realms. :) That might just be my optimism speaking though, and we'll see how things will go on launch day.
DeleteOf the people in the "General MMO/Gaming Blogs I Like" category of my blog roll over at my SWTOR blog at least eight have talked about wanting to play Classic, though there are probably more. I'm sure not all of them will stick around, but then that's always the way with new game launches.
Maybe not dead but the realms will have a very different mix of players. This could have been handled much better.
DeleteWe had the tangential discussion with original WoW guildmates - half want to play Horde and we're adamant we want to play Alliance. It'll be on a RP-PVE EU realm so at least that's an easy choice.
ReplyDeleteNot that Classic interests me or my husband at all, we'll play just because the live game isn't keeping me interested. I expect my time there will be short though, there are so many old restrictions I'm not looking forward to, like the lack of class choice (no Shamans :"( ) and the more limited class viability. Once the EQ2 expansion lands I'll be out of Norrath again for sure.