just as the topic of the thread. do you think there will be new servers released for Wotlk? opinions.

Nope. Their focus is to bring people BACK not bring NEW people.

New servers would just create more ghost towns in low pop servers.

Trust me, I remember the days when blizz released new servers once a month or less...and I rerolled every time a new server came out. Those days are long gone. The only time you'll see server movement is server merges.

In Europe there wil be new servers - the 4 ones they  deactivated with the new Russian servers.

Russians were playing mostly on Warsong Gulch and 3 other ones. They now migrated free to Russian spoken servers.

InEU : 4 English servers are going to re-open on WotLK launch. In just about a month they already had to re-open 6 new Russian servers. And even these 10 Russians are  full most of the day.

I followed the whole operation as I had a few charaters on Warsong Gulch and it made me feel good to see just how "easy" the servers are maintained and characters transferred. Expand in the near future or even merging of server populations in the distant future is a breeze.

Last winter Wow had its biggest boom ever: 7.4 million characters played daily (lvl 10-70) for US/EU and there wasn't even an expansion. Servers were full for half the EU server park with about 10% locked btw. WotLK will have the same effect as TBC, so the managing of the servers is top priority.

As old players will come back and new players are still pouring in (basic Wow  never left the top 5 of PC games during the whole year). At years end it will have sold more copies than any other game again for the 5th consecutive time. Only to be outsold by WotLK.

So with the so called Wow killers out of the way and brought back to normal "unhyped" proportions, 2008/2009 winter will be a blast for Wow players.

Originally posted by bodypass

In Europe there wil be new servers - the 4 ones they  deactivated with the new Russian servers.

Russians were playing mostly on Warsong Gulch and 3 other ones. They now migrated free to Russian spoken servers.

On EU English servers 4 are going to re-open on WotLK launch. In just about a month they already had to reopen 6 new Russian servers. And even these 10 Russians are  full most of the day.

I followed the whole operation as I had a few charaters on Warsong Gulch and it made me feel good to see just how "easy" the servers are maintained and characters transferred. Expand in the near future or even merging of server populations in the distant future is a breeze.

 

 

do you know anything about the north american realms?

Originally posted by -exo

 

do you know anything about the north american realms?

No as I live in EU I don't follow the news there. But Xfire shows more US activity than EU playing minutes (as has always been the case I think). Last winter it was 2.5 US and 2.0 EU.

Since they added Spanish servers for the SA market, perhaps they used the same techniques there ?

Originally posted by bodypass

Originally posted by -exo

 

do you know anything about the north american realms?

 

No as I live in EU I don't follow the news there. But Xfire shows more US activity than EU playing minutes (as has always been the case I think). Last winter it was 2.5 US and 2.0 EU.

Since they added Spanish servers for the SA market, perhaps they used the same techniques there ?

heh im not sure to be honest. I guess ill have to keep looking then *shrugs* all i know is if they are, maybe it might give me a good whack to start playing again. as for they have already confused me with how to get a death knight. so many different things have been said " obtain level 55 and the class will be unlocked for you" i think was the last thing i read. i dont think its true but then again im not sure so *shrugs*

I hope they don't overdo it with new realms.   Outland and the additions to Azeroth increased the playable area by like 25% and Northrend will increase it even further.   This basically means the world can hold more players, spreading everyone out and reducing the need for new realms.

Since the expansion will cater only to high level characters, there will be far fewer people re-rolling than TBC (which had two new races and starting areas, and opened paladins/shamans to each faction).

This is one of the forgotten problems Everquest had, with regular expansions, the player populations thinned out and they left server merges really late, hurting them quite badly because a lively server is so much more fun to play (for people like me anyway).

Originally posted by Recant

I hope they don't overdo it with new realms.   Outland and the additions to Azeroth increased the playable area by like 25% and Northrend will increase it even further.   This basically means the world can hold more players, spreading everyone out and reducing the need for new realms.

Since the expansion will cater only to high level characters, there will be far fewer people re-rolling than TBC (which had two new races and starting areas, and opened paladins/shamans to each faction).

This is one of the forgotten problems Everquest had, with regular expansions, the player populations thinned out and they left server merges really late, hurting them quite badly because a lively server is so much more fun to play (for people like me anyway).

I agree.

Publishers should try to put more people onto servers instead of starting up low capped servers with too thin spread out populations.

WAR is strangled by its own limits of too small capped servers, the result is that on  medium servers the game doesn't have enough players to do all PQ and RvR. And I do think that they capped their WAR servers to avoid the lag of older written codes of DAoC (just an opinion but a valid one I think).

WotLK will be played on 4 continents now. Of course raising the cap on servers is a risk to higher server lag. Problems to be solved there.

 They actually increased the caps when BC was released so that this wouldn't be a problem. I haven't seen anything like it for LK though so will have to see.

Either way they are rather good at realm management and can add/remove/transfer realm populations with ease. Mind you, they got a lot of experience from the first few months of WoW so no wonder they are good at it.

Originally posted by BrendonB

Nope. Their focus is to bring people BACK not bring NEW people.

New servers would just create more ghost towns in low pop servers.

Trust me, I remember the days when blizz released new servers once a month or less...and I rerolled every time a new server came out. Those days are long gone. The only time you'll see server movement is server merges.

A NEW server would bring me BACK.

a new server could be fun :) lol

Originally posted by Raztor

 They actually increased the caps when BC was released so that this wouldn't be a problem. I haven't seen anything like it for LK though so will have to see.

 

Either way they are rather good at realm management and can add/remove/transfer realm populations with ease. Mind you, they got a lot of experience from the first few months of WoW so no wonder they are good at it.

They did some "server upgrades in preperation for wrath" last week, not sure if they inc. the server cap though. But i dont think they need more servers, there are already around 450 western servers for god sake =D

In the login screen of English EU Wow servers, they mentioned the fact that they would re-use the "old" English spoken Russian servers for the launch of WotLK.

That's 4 of them. The characters on these servers are copied to other realms of the owners choice. And those who don't transfer are kept in the database for later transfer (if needed).

Managing service on servers is a breeze.

forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html

It's not out of the question, though we'd like to see better population balances amongst the realms we already have, and will continue doing what we can to address that in as timely a manner as possible.