01-18-2005, 10:28 PM
It seems to me that I would hold off before jumping ship. Based on blizzard posts (and I'll admit just some well-founded guesses), my summary of the recent events follows. I'm on one of the more affected servers. If anyone can add to this or refute parts please do so.
1. Certain high population servers had nagging repeated lag issues, especially with the loot, mail, and auction systems. I found these problems minor annoyances, but since they scaled with population I'm sure Blizzard was quite worried about them.
2. In an attempt to resolve this, Blizzard (on thursday Jan 13) took some (I believe 16) and did some major maintenance. This major maintenance was to bring into play parallel hardware for these realms (see Blizzard post).
3. As with many hardware upgrades (and there would need to be software at least turned on to support the parallel hardware), there have been some problems on the realms which suffered this process. On Doomhammer at least, there have been major instability issues. We spent about 20 minutes where 4/5 of our party in Razorfen Kraul lagged out, then everything caught up and we had a fine run on Friday night, for example. Saturday night there was a period of about 2 hours where nothing could be done on our server at all. I started an alt on Bloodscalp during this time (as did many others judging by how crowded things were in the Tirisfal Glades).
4. As a stopgap, Blizzard lowered the population cap on these servers to try and keep them more stable. Most reports don't seem to indicate that the queues helped a great deal, but it sure called a lot of attention to the problems. For most people this was the first time the queues had been seen and massive outrage resulted.
5. Now as a result of player demand, they will be implementing some kind of server migration.
6. They are still working on getting the issues worked out for the realms that are now running additional hardware.
While I don't disagree in principle with a server move (now I wish I'd started on Stormrage after all), I am not going to jump the gun seeing as we have only had a few days of real trouble. Who knows, maybe once they work out their issues the higher pop servers (with the increased hardware) might be better than others? Plus there will be a mass exodus from them, reducing their populations anyway.
I'll probably stick tight--I doubt they'll let me move to an even higher server (stormrage) and that seems to be the only real reason I have to move.
1. Certain high population servers had nagging repeated lag issues, especially with the loot, mail, and auction systems. I found these problems minor annoyances, but since they scaled with population I'm sure Blizzard was quite worried about them.
2. In an attempt to resolve this, Blizzard (on thursday Jan 13) took some (I believe 16) and did some major maintenance. This major maintenance was to bring into play parallel hardware for these realms (see Blizzard post).
3. As with many hardware upgrades (and there would need to be software at least turned on to support the parallel hardware), there have been some problems on the realms which suffered this process. On Doomhammer at least, there have been major instability issues. We spent about 20 minutes where 4/5 of our party in Razorfen Kraul lagged out, then everything caught up and we had a fine run on Friday night, for example. Saturday night there was a period of about 2 hours where nothing could be done on our server at all. I started an alt on Bloodscalp during this time (as did many others judging by how crowded things were in the Tirisfal Glades).
4. As a stopgap, Blizzard lowered the population cap on these servers to try and keep them more stable. Most reports don't seem to indicate that the queues helped a great deal, but it sure called a lot of attention to the problems. For most people this was the first time the queues had been seen and massive outrage resulted.
5. Now as a result of player demand, they will be implementing some kind of server migration.
6. They are still working on getting the issues worked out for the realms that are now running additional hardware.
While I don't disagree in principle with a server move (now I wish I'd started on Stormrage after all), I am not going to jump the gun seeing as we have only had a few days of real trouble. Who knows, maybe once they work out their issues the higher pop servers (with the increased hardware) might be better than others? Plus there will be a mass exodus from them, reducing their populations anyway.
I'll probably stick tight--I doubt they'll let me move to an even higher server (stormrage) and that seems to be the only real reason I have to move.