Solution to the realm issues/lag
I will start this topic by saying anyone who thinks they can keep increasing the cap is literally out if their mind. There are limitations to what you can do with hardware and we're seeing what happens when you reach the far spectrum of the limitations.
To those of you who say Warmane cannot afford to get better hardware, you again are out of your mind. Warmane is the most profitable Private Server out there.
Now onto the main topic.
It has become clear to me as I've watched queue numbers rise and fall that there's a pattern to them. At max, there seems to be 12-12.5k people playing on or attempting to access lord at peak time. Maintaining the current cap has shown to be problematic as it's also brought in lag and instability. From what I've read the staff plans to continue raising the cap until they can accommodate all 12.5k players (and many more) at one time. This has gotten many people, including myself, nervous about the current state of the server.
While Warmane is very ambitious in their Lordaeron project, they must come to terms with the limitations of their hardware and server. While it may be fun to have 12k players on at once, it isn't fun to have significant delay. Now, I believe Warmane knows this, there's no way they could be ignorant to the lag and delay issues that have been plaguing the server since it's grown in popularity. As such they've tried to minimize as much delay as they can while raising the cap. However I believe there's a better solution.
The way I see it, Warmane has three options.
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Option 1.
Merge or announce free transfers to either Rag/Deathwing following the closure of one of the two realms. Merging can be an issue but with the current population sizes of each server they'd fair much better if they were combined.
Reduce the Cap to Lordaeron to 7k and open a sister realm with the same cap. Free transfers will be an issue for this. I'm torn on if they should be offered. Not something I can really give much opinion on. Allow the expansion to jump right to Wrath.
How will this help?:
Merging of the realms will help cut down on server costs along. They will populate the other servers making them an option for new players rather than seeing three low population realms and one behemoth of a server.
Reducing the cap would help with server stablity and help reduce the lag.
Opening the sister server will help get rid of population being amassed onto one server. This may be a bad thing at first but given time it will show that the reduced strain on a sole server will have reduced if not resolved a large amount of stability issues.
Possibly making the sister server a PVE server would help as well. Though that's up for discussion of course.
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Option 2.
Reduce the cap to 8k and implement a short afk timer. After an hour of being afk, you are kicked from the server (not sent to character screen)
Merge or announce free transfers to either Rag/Deathwing following the closure of one of the two realms. Merging can be an issue but with the current population sizes of each server they'd fair much better if they were combined.
How will this help?:
Reducing the AFK timer will help in culling the afk players from holding slots in the server. It's become a very prevalent issue. The queue will get larger but people won't be able to AFK as easily.
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Option 3.
Continue with the current plans of increasing the cap but implement a incredibly short afk timer. After 30 minutes of being afk you are sent to your character screen. After 10 minutes of being afk in your character screen you are kicked.
Merge or announce free transfers to either Rag/Deathwing following the closure of one of the two realms. Merging can be an issue but with the current population sizes of each server they'd fair much better if they were combined.
How will this help?:
With a larger cap a queues will be less of a issue meaning that more players will be able to afk without worry of being put back into the queue. Frequent kicks will keep the server afloat and rid itself of idle players.
