Server Expansion (community discussion)

[Henhouse]

So I logged into today at 10am EST which is 4 hours behind the peak hour (2PM for me) and I noticed there was already over 300 players online, on a Thursday. Now, I've been noticing lately the population seems to be growing a bit more -- but this is expected when we've been on the front page of XtremeTop100 this month and good publicity. So this can probably be an on/off thing but for now I know that it's been getting high peak times. (the day of me writing this the server was peaked at 372 players)

Now this has been a discussion going on for a long time, past year actually. When we moved to OregonCore in June of 2010 I made it clear that we were going to need to offer room for expansion due to the fact our mall can only allot so many players in it. Well sadly we seem to have still not done that and now we're somehow squeezing 300+ players in a mall. Luckily it's separated by 2 islands which make it a little easier on the server, but given a lot of players on private servers are usually dominated by players from 2nd, 3rd world countries that are usually poorer and have probably not high-end computers I can only image the FPS these players are probably getting when moving around in the mall. All of Iran probably is playing on a solid 1 fps. :/

So, one of the main reasons we never get anywhere with this idea is I'm very adimante in not wanting to move the mall. I designed the in-game events like Hallow's End, Winter's Veil, etc and stuff around it -- I designed all the vendors that generate the on/off time periods for battlegrounds, Hyjal, etc. It's all been designed for that specific area. So I'm not a fan of moving it to the city where vendors are lined up, in a row down the lane of a street in a city where 5 people crowd over them. We'll look like any other typical server.

I'm wanting to know any ideas the community might have on smart ways to spread people out more -- mainly still keep the original mall as an original spawn-in location or have multiple ones. I really would like to find some good method to go about making a change. I'm not up for any drastic change like completely moving the mall because people that have been playing here for a while, or don't speak English will get extremely lost and confused -- heck I probably will. I'm used to the 3-year old locations pretty well now.


So what are your thoughts? I strongly feel the cramping we are doing in such small space is a possible reason for the inability to continue growing.


tl;dr edition:
read it, or don't post.

[ZatYo]

I doubt thats keeping the server from growing at all, what happened with the shatrath mall idea? Also most of the ppl are in the battleground/arena place.. not in the actual mall. So you can just pick a second place to add arena and battleground masters? Like Winterspring down in... that place, lol its cool.

[Firstaidkit]

Making a mall in Shattrath sounds like a nice idea or at least in Outlands so we can use flying mounts too.

[jjniol]

Well i thought about it for a long time and thought, how many people actually are in the mall shopping? most the time people are just sitting there. so i started thinking of solutions and thought hey ya know useually horde dueling area is packed... but alliance duling area isnt, so what if you made a dueling area for both factions? now hear me out if there was a spot where horde AND alliance could go and not worry about getting killed but still get in pvp expierience more people might hang out there. :) Gurubashi would be a good place for this and im pretty sure most people wouldent oppose the idea, alot of time horde and alliance have too run too some way out of the way spot to fight one on one and then there is nowhere to reset their cooldowns. Just a thought.

[Peekaboo]

Shattrath sounds nice, but also counter-productive when it comes to keeping FPS low, this place kills your framerate with many people around.
But regardless where it is, I think the problem will get fixed when players just start at their standard racial spawn instead of directly in the mall, so they have to use the teleporter to get there.
Maybe the PvP area should be removed aswell, so people just use the mall to socialze with the other faction, as any capital city can hold the rotating battlemasters aswell.
Not sure if that's the reason why the server population hardly grows further though. Professions are quite limited for instance (collecting stuff isn't necessary, and everyone just has alchemy and engineering, as enchanting and jewelcrafting are useless anyway), and some other gameplay options are missing, like open pvp. You sadly can't even harass in duel zones, as people from the opposite faction just can look you up per /who.
Would be fun to see some raids on Orgrimmar or Stormwind/Ironforge going though. Cities just need to be used somehow, currently they are pretty useless, but that's a different story i guess.

[Erlim]

Seperate alliance and horde?

[ZatYo]

I dont like the idea with separating hordes and allies, I like how it is now.. every1 is in the same place.I just stay on the pvp isle and every1 is basically there... how to explain it.. if some1 I need or some1 i'd like to chat with is online he'll definetly be there.But since the place is too small now, my idea is just to make a second 1, like a copy of this 1 in area as big as this 1 and ppl will split.

[Brotherhood]

Haven't played in the 70 realm but trust me "if something works just let stay it like it is now".
Maybe people who joins and see how much people is in the mall the first thing they think is "hey! this server seems populated! level 70 wow is not dead yet! lets play here!" so moving to other places may have negative effects.

An alternative mall in each main faction cities for those who want better fps which can be accesed from the main mall may be enought, remember that maybe people appearing there and seen how crowded is the main mall (in case it is) may be the thing which is causing them a good impression too. So that's my idea, an optional one for those who manually want to go there for better fps/lag whatever.

[Elisio]

Haven't played in the 70 realm but trust me "if something works just let stay it like it is now".
Maybe people who joins and see how much people is in the mall the first thing they think is "hey! this server seems populated! level 70 wow is not dead yet! lets play here!" so moving to other places may have negative effects.

An alternative mall in each main faction cities for those who want better fps which can be accesed from the main mall may be enought, remember that maybe people appearing there and seen how crowded is the main mall (in case it is) may be the thing which is causing them a good impression too. So that's my idea, an optional one for those who manually want to go there for better fps/lag whatever.

Best suggestion so far..

[Hardlight]

GROUP MALLS?
use the storm spire in netherlands (theres a city, just remove the npc's there)
use Halla in nargrand
Troll city near ferlas and like ashenvale..i think

NEW PVP ZONE?
Silithus? (<< this one not many servers use)