Having purchased World of Warcraft about three months ago, and only getting into it more in the last month, I am relatively new to the game.
Smolderthorn is the server I play on, however, it was not my server of choice. On one hand I like that I never have to worry about waiting in line to play (a topic about which there exists an inherent dichotomy of opinions) and, on the the other hand, pre-60 instance groups are few and far between even when including groups that don't know how to play (ie rogues that get aggro, tanks that don't).
My question here is, should I stick it out and hope the server becomes more populated? If so, is the rising of the active population to a medium or high pop status inevitable? Also, if it is, how long should I expect it to take?
Forgive me if these questions are vague, stupid, or unanswerable.
Thank you for any response.
Server Population Growth Extrapolation
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Stomatopod
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Sat Dec 24, 2005 10:51 pm
Well, you've run into a common problem in this type of games and one that WoW in particular is prone to. I can't really say anything for sure about how the server will develop but I can speculate a bit based on population history available.
WoW in general is sensitive to low population numbers mainly due to the high focus on instancing as well as the number requirements for end game content. With raids requiring 20-40 people and instanced PvE and PvP in general providing a fairly large number of completely separate queues and waiting lists it's not surprising that it takes 1000+ or even 1500+ players online in your faction for things to appear easily available. Add to this that a certain percentage of players online are money farmers, vault/AH characters, levelling bots or simply players logged on to chat or some such while doing other things and not being available at all for end game raids and you have a recipe for problems.
Smolderthorn is a "new" server, it didn't exist at launch but was released later to accomodate the growing player base, most servers released later quickly get large numbers of players on them and for a time they will essentially be "full". When the first players hit 60 though the population starts to dwindle, there is a number of reasons why this may be happening, I'll list a few.
- Race to 60 is over, players that enjoy being first and most geared out will leave, both the ones that actually "won" and those that couldn't keep up will look for the next new server.
- Servers with existing communities tend to draw people to them, you find out a friend/neighbour/relative/coworker plays and move to that server. Servers with a lot of players get a lot of new players this way.
- PvP servers go into the griefing phase after players start hitting 60, not much to do except camp lowbie areas of the opposing faction 24/7, needless to say this drives a lot of players away. If there is a population imbalance it is aggravated by this.
- Some players on a new server are new to the game and simply quit after a while, can be any number of reasons but a new server will be more affected by this than an old server with an established community.
There are a lot more reasons players leave but regardless of why once the population drops there are even fewer players left to fill those raid slots and BG queues causing a downward spiral.
What Blizzard has chosen to do about this is simply to start more new servers to ensure that players craving new servers get their wish, after a while when the population drops from always full/queued to 60% of capacity or so they allow free transfers from one of the old servers with very high populations and established communities. These transfers are designed in such a way that whole guilds/alliances really can't transfer together so mostly you get players focusing on solo or small group content to transfer these days.
I would expect more free transfers to your server but I don't expect this to solve the problem with access to BG's/raids. I can be wrong however, if there is a strong community on a server it will eventually start filling up on it's own by drawing friends of people already playing there.
The Smolderthorn population graph does not look very encouraging for long term growth:
http://www.warcraftrealms.com/serverhis ... rverid=535
However, most people I speak to expect another influx of players over the holidays with people getting the game as well as game cards as christmas/hanukka/whatever gifts, if these people will choose to keep playing is another question though as most of them will probably be new to MMORPG's.
WoW in general is sensitive to low population numbers mainly due to the high focus on instancing as well as the number requirements for end game content. With raids requiring 20-40 people and instanced PvE and PvP in general providing a fairly large number of completely separate queues and waiting lists it's not surprising that it takes 1000+ or even 1500+ players online in your faction for things to appear easily available. Add to this that a certain percentage of players online are money farmers, vault/AH characters, levelling bots or simply players logged on to chat or some such while doing other things and not being available at all for end game raids and you have a recipe for problems.
Smolderthorn is a "new" server, it didn't exist at launch but was released later to accomodate the growing player base, most servers released later quickly get large numbers of players on them and for a time they will essentially be "full". When the first players hit 60 though the population starts to dwindle, there is a number of reasons why this may be happening, I'll list a few.
- Race to 60 is over, players that enjoy being first and most geared out will leave, both the ones that actually "won" and those that couldn't keep up will look for the next new server.
- Servers with existing communities tend to draw people to them, you find out a friend/neighbour/relative/coworker plays and move to that server. Servers with a lot of players get a lot of new players this way.
- PvP servers go into the griefing phase after players start hitting 60, not much to do except camp lowbie areas of the opposing faction 24/7, needless to say this drives a lot of players away. If there is a population imbalance it is aggravated by this.
- Some players on a new server are new to the game and simply quit after a while, can be any number of reasons but a new server will be more affected by this than an old server with an established community.
There are a lot more reasons players leave but regardless of why once the population drops there are even fewer players left to fill those raid slots and BG queues causing a downward spiral.
What Blizzard has chosen to do about this is simply to start more new servers to ensure that players craving new servers get their wish, after a while when the population drops from always full/queued to 60% of capacity or so they allow free transfers from one of the old servers with very high populations and established communities. These transfers are designed in such a way that whole guilds/alliances really can't transfer together so mostly you get players focusing on solo or small group content to transfer these days.
I would expect more free transfers to your server but I don't expect this to solve the problem with access to BG's/raids. I can be wrong however, if there is a strong community on a server it will eventually start filling up on it's own by drawing friends of people already playing there.
The Smolderthorn population graph does not look very encouraging for long term growth:
http://www.warcraftrealms.com/serverhis ... rverid=535
However, most people I speak to expect another influx of players over the holidays with people getting the game as well as game cards as christmas/hanukka/whatever gifts, if these people will choose to keep playing is another question though as most of them will probably be new to MMORPG's.
I will say, if Smolderthorn is Medium most of the time, as appears to be the case, the population may yet boom. I joined EU-Draenor a few months back, and was happy to see it was Medium, meaning no queues (my previous server often had queues of up to 300) It stayed at Medium for some time, but a few weeks ago went to Full, and queues are beginning to occur at peak times, although thankfully not very large ones.
A server that's still on Low population after some time will be struggling, yes, but Medium has the potential to grow further, I believe, at least based on my own experience!
A server that's still on Low population after some time will be struggling, yes, but Medium has the potential to grow further, I believe, at least based on my own experience!
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Stomatopod
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Sat Dec 24, 2005 10:51 pm
Thank you for your responses and a special thanks to Anth, as I greatly appreciate the time it took to respond in such an informative, expedient manner.
<img src='http://www.warcraftrealms.com/sig/15686774.jpg'>