Cue the queue! Day 3 of WAR.

Day 3 has come and almost gone.  Graev and I got up to level 14(me) and 15(him) and have made a few observations.  Scenarios for queues are still a PITA.  We spent 5 hours queued up for a few scenarios and almost logged when we finally got Stonetroll Crossing to come up.  To me, that’s unacceptable.  I’m fairly outspoken for my dislike of cross-server queues but unless this gets better I may end up reneging on that.  What happened?  In closed beta and open beta the queues were abundant.  Now they’re almost non-existant.   I’ll continue to persevere.

I’m loving the Shaman class and Graev’s Squig Herder is coming into his own.  We’ve been doing PQ’s and quests most of the time because of the lack of RvR.  It really boils down to, and keeps coming back to, the lack of RvR.  Even on a open-rvr server I’m just not seeing any RvR aside from the random skirmish here and there.  I’m really confused and frustrated.  Our server has High-Full Destruction and Medium Order.  We (several of our guild,Graev and I) have been watching the server list and of the open-rvr servers we’re not doing bad with population.  Skull Throne and Dark Crag have enormous populations – but we don’t want to play on those servers because of the enormous queues to get online and the type of players that seem to have flocked there.  We feel the community isn’t for us there… but is that what it takes to have RvR?

While I absolutely love Open-RvR I’m feeling like I am actually missing out on RvR by not playing on Core.  Totally ironic and unfair really that I would have to play on a server ruleset that I don’t like to get RvR when the server ruleset I do like is technically supposed to be able to provide for me.

This lamenting is all probably irrelevant and for not given that the game isn’t even released to non-preorders until the 18th.  Wolfenburg has the population and the community… we just need a solution to the scenario queues taking 5 hours and the complete lack of RvR at all.

  • The reason that there were smaller wait times during the beta, is that more people were playing. The Standard Edition population just entered today, and we can’t expect them to be level 10-15 already, not on a Tuesday anyway.

    Give it time, people will get back up there.

  • I’ve had more Scenarios pop today than before, but that’s not saying much. Still, it was the most fun I’ve had since Headstart began.

    Here’s hoping Thursday (or next week, most likely) will be better!

  • On Monolith, we’ve had no troubles queue’ing, not so far at least. Literally it’s just a minute our two wait, you can almost jump right back in after finishing a scenario. Basically did it for hours all afternoon.

    But that’s for 1-10, so yeah as Autheron says above, the regular population will take a bit to level up, probably longer than the CE folks too.

  • yup, Open serverts aren’t nearly as busy as core are. I play on Skull throne and there is so much action it’s crazy. I have a 23 Sorc there and am having a blast. though now that I am out of tier 2 I am sure I won’t get any scenarios.

  • Wait you rolled on an open RvR server and expected a high population?! Bwah!

    We’ve seen several guilds that were advocating an open rvr ruleset switch to core as soon as the server lists were released. People don’t like the open rvr rules, sorry 😛

    On server queues: We don’t have much trouble on Averheim, but as soon as you queue as a group your chances of getting in drop dramatically, which is unfortunate because everyone wants to go in as a co-ordinated group!

    As people have said you’re 14-15 not many people are actually at that level. Our guild is one of the highest levels on Averheim but our highest leveled player is 19 (sicko!) most of our CE players are happy to have the chance to level slowly after going breakneck in beta for testing. This is very much a game where speeding ahead on levels doesn’t benefit you at all, and people are taking advantage of that by taking in all the game has to offer.

    It’ll get better, but yeah definately the best launch i’ve ever come accross. Hats off to Mythic.!

  • We ended up rolling Order on Praag at the last minute for a fresh server and to play the under-dog faction and the ques are instant, pvp is hot and the order community is great so far.

    Must say, Order is shaping up to be the Horde of wow. Interesting turn of events.

    Oh ya, and my guild is dominating in PvP. Like every member is sitting at renoun cap almost all the time as we level.

  • I joined a core server yesterday and the population was super low on destruction side. We couldn’t get enough people to even do public quests. I was in Q the entire time and was able to get in scenario 2 times. I know it will get better tomorrow when the flood gates open.

  • Order is the new Horde.

    Also I don’t see why you expected Order players to be jumping into open rvr on a high pop destruction server? It gives them no advantage at all, let alone a semi-fair fight.

  • Keen & Graev – a few blogs back i seem to remember you would offer a CORE vs OPEN piece.
    We are soon to choose and would greatly appreciate any insights you may have.
    We are 5 old farts in the UK and we initially thought of OPEN but because of the chicken change we are now leaning toward CORE – prefer destruction.

  • No surprise here. You’re 1) on the more popular side and 2) ahead of the level curve.

    If you want to see a lot of RvR, just wait until general release, roll order, and don’t level so fast.

  • Well, last night, T1 RvR in general was picking up a lot in EvC lands at least, both in world RvR and scenarios.

  • […] “While I absolutely love Open-RvR I?m feeling like I am actually missing out on RvR by not playing on Core.  Totally ironic and unfair really that I would have to play on a server ruleset that I don?t like to get RvR when the server ruleset I do like is technically supposed to be able to provide for me.”   Read more… […]

  • I’m on a Core server and the RvR is well organized and always going on. I think players who enjoy the strategy, planning, don’t care about ganking etc. are more Core players, plus the game was designed for Core. I have yet to have a wait for a scenario. May main issue is the choppness I get in RvR. Going to replace my 7950gtoc with the ati 4850 and see if it helps.

    Oh and I agree with no cross-server queues. If they do that I may have to say so long…I hate it. Would rather wait in Q.

  • Go to the Empire vs Chaos territory and queue up for their scenarios…that’s where most of the players seem to go.

  • Your Day 1-2 analysis acknowledged the problem, but in the space of a day you seem to have lost the perspective. Let’s consider the two situations:

    Open Beta:

    User count: All beta testers, CE preorders, and SE preorders.
    Servers: Not sure of the exact count, but… 10? 12?

    Now (SE Headstart):

    User count: CE preorders, SE preorders, and MAYBE beta testers?
    Servers: 50

    So, you have the same number of users (at best), with five times as many servers, and you wonder why the population is low? And like it or not, you’re on one of the less popular rulesets.

    Wait until tomorrow. That should even up the pop for all the servers, and you’ll spike. And then wait until next week, when all those new players are sick of getting ganked by L25 head starters, and they’ll leave again.

  • I’m playing Order on a german core RP-Server. RvR works great.
    No qeues at login, appr. 5mins waiting time to enter a scenario and instant fun in TIER 1-RvR zones.

    As written by some others Graev/Keen – you are ahead the level curve and playing the overcrowded faction. And many players will join soon.
    Take your time, play an alt or slow your leveling speed. In a week or two things will be just fine. But in general learn to live with waiting times for entering the game or a scenario. At least as long as you play Destruction.

  • Keen, I’m on your server and play Order. I think a lot of people are leveling their characters so they don’t get smashed when trying to RvR. That and the fact that the game just launched means you need to be more patient and let things settle. Destro ALWAYS controls the RvR areas in Tier 1 and my friends and I aren’t going to attempt to take them back until we’re at a level where we won’t get 1 or 2 shot. Plus, there is so much the game has to offer, we’re taking our time while things still have the “new game smell”.

  • Move to a core server quick.

    What you’re seeing is players rushing to get to max level. Don’t ask me why on WAR because of the tiers, but the symptoms are all there. Mythic went too hard core on open. Yea yea, people will complain it’s too soft but the fact is those complainers make up a very small minority of players.

    It’s funny, PvP servers prove again and again that the audience isn’t big enough but developers continue to make the same mistakes.

  • Nah, not doom. And Lazgurk I haven’t lost sight – I’m just slightly worried. It’s what I do. I worry when I’m about to invest time and effort into mmorpgs. The way I play these games is “all in” every hand. If the server choice, which shouldn’t be THAT big of a deal, turns out to be trash then I’ve wasted some time and effort.

    This meta-game of choosing servers is possibly what I hate most about mmorpg launches.

    @RoRik: You guys should RvR more! We could have some friendly battles.

    @Tolakram: See, I agree and disagree with you. RvR servers ARE generaly less popular… but in a way ALL the servers are RvR servers; they just have different rulesets. With all the worrying people have done over this ruleset, I have not been ganked even once. Go figure.

  • I have to think when us non-head start folks get in, queues will be a non issue. I hope so anyways.

  • I hope so too. What bothers me most is that we have the same population as other servers and we’re not getting queues on Wolfenburg yet some servers ARE getting queues. That’s what I don’t get.

  • The reason I feel that you are seeing less action as far as RvR goes and population in general is because of the huge gank factor they threw in when they made changes to the way chickens work between Tiers.

  • If it is an Open RVR server – you cant expect for RVR to come to you – you may have to go out and find it. I cant see how you would not run into Order on your server if you actually go to the areas where Order people quest…if you dont do that, for whatever reason, maybe the Order people have the same reasons not to go to your quest areas. Skirmishes should be there for the taking – you just have to be active if you want to skirmish.

    I don’t even notice the time on the queues – I just sign up and do my thing…sometimes it takes a long time (I am on perhaps the only server where Order outnumbers us…) and sometimes it goes quicker…

    I like the idea that your queues (on perhaps the most imbalanced realm) are so bad – it is an evening out mechanism. They should state average scenario queues on server selection to give people an idea where to roll characters – it might become a real incentive to populate low population servers.

  • Well, I can’t speak for the open-rvr servers, but on Red Eye Mountain Order side, we formed a group around 6pm EDT yesterday, stayed in the same group (basically) for around 6 hours, and we had to ask the group leader to stop Queueing us every so often so we’d have time to train new skills and replace armor. We’d finish one scenario, load back into wherever we were, and we’d have maybe 60 seconds to run around before the popup came back up.

    What a night.

  • @Tio that reminds me of last night as well 🙂 My WP just tore into Destro players and I’m only lvl 8! I can’t wait to get even higher.

    My only issue is I lag in RvR some…very,very annoying.

    As far as Keen’s issue it’s not DOOM 🙂 but it’s strange that you have a full house but no RvR…prolly to high lvl and outpaced everyone else *shrugs*

  • I’m only level 14. *shrug* I do not feel as though I have outpaced anyone.

    @Tio: Are you Destruction or order? It looks like Russel is Order. Perhaps Order get all the queues.

  • I can understand your concern – I honestly do think you’ve chosen a server ruleset which is going to run people off over time, and you’re going to have problems.

    There are currently lots of artifacts of the head start that shouldn’t be a problem once full launch hits. Monday evening, on Ostermark/Dark Elves, we couldn’t do the first PQ. There was NOBODY there. Everyone levelling characters had pushed past it already, and the two of us trying a new alt simply had nobody else to help with. Some artifacts might continue – scenario queues worry me, especially how realm population imbalance might affect them.

    But nothing has really changed in the last 2-3 days – the exact same situation you were fine with Sunday, you’re nervous about today. My point was just that you should wait until at least Friday, and preferably the end of the weekend, to really start worrying 🙂

  • Jumping into Early Start yesterday morning, I remember the utter pandemonium of getting out there and literally fighting for every scrap–whether it be the level 1/2 mobs or the goofy quest objectives. That’s not really an experience I’d like to repeat again. So, I think that, like many others, I am all too keenly aware of the beast that will be crashing through the gates in less than 12 hours from now and we’re all just running for ze hillz!

    I’m going to give it until next week to see how it has stabilized. I’m at 12 after one day and I think a lot of folks coming in tomorrow morning (ugh, wonder what the server queues will look like then) will smoke me in terms of progression in no time. I’m just happy to stay a bit ahead of the middle of that bell curve and avoid getting swallowed up in the zerg.

    PvE does seem to level faster than RvR, and finding and assembling war bands takes time and effort and perhaps that explains the variance between the amount of folks that press the Scenario button and the few that go to find the action in the “real WAR-world”.

  • Others have said it already, but I’m going to reiterate.

    1. T2 is still underpopulated compared to T1
    2. Destruction has longer queues than Order
    3. Open RvR is less popular than Core. Even PvP guilds are rolling on Core. Furthermore, people on Open servers presumably want to RvR in the adventure zones, not scenarios, so are likely to q less.

    You’ve set yourself up for the perfect storm of bad queue times. Playing on core servers, both Order and Destruction, in T1, even late at night, I’ve never had to wait more than 5 minutes for a scenario to pop.

  • Having played through UO->EQ->WoW->AoC->WoW(again), I always picked open pvp servers where available. I’ve noticed what I believe to be a common mindset…

    People on open pvp servers really don’t like open pvp…at least not until they level up to the cap and can go kill people who can’t really fight back. Take WoW as the most recent example. I’m on Tich – an open pvp server. In my 4 years of playing, I very rarely see two even-level 60’s or 70’s square off in a fair fight. Rather, one usually stalks another and attacks when their victim is engaged in a fight with a mob and wounded. It’s general nature to choose fights you can win – strokes the ego. That’s probably why you aren’t seeing much open-world rvr in your open pvp server. For every minute you spend fighting in open world rvr, you could be running quests and PQ’s to level faster. If you aren’t near the front of the leveling wave, you’ll get brutally smashed when those who are come back and kill you.

    Also, people on open pvp servers generally dislike instanced pvp – thinking they’re too good to participate in managed pvp since unpredictable, open pvp is so much more elite.

    So in reality, while you picked an open pvp server to experience more pvp, you’ve really selected a population mindset that tends to avoid pvp…at least until they max out their level and can pick on lower level people.

    So is open pvp the new carebear? Heh…nice tag line for a blog post if you ask me. =D

    MM

  • Even just looking at our guild, only 20 out of 80 (25%) of the listed characters are level 12 or higher and have to fight in T2 scenarios. I suspect the server population to be much the same. This will slowly go up though out the week.

    There is a lot of “fear” regarding the Open RvR servers. The current Chicken rule just seems hack-ish. I hope that over the next month or so they can spend some time tweak them a bit. Right now I am worried about the death of lower tier open RvR after we have quite a few T4s running around.

    The problem is that you will not be able to participate in a T2 Keep raid if you under level 25 after the population grows. This means “new” players have a long road ahead of them before taking part in Open RvR.

  • Pretty much been said, but:

    1. The few people I know on Open servers are speed-leveling and getting well into T3 so they don’t get griefed and can grief others.

    2. Most people are in T1 still, people in T2 on our server are complaining about queues as well.

    3. Open server pop balance is bad, you can tell it just by looking at server boards. For reference, our core server was Full/Full last night with only a 50-person difference in queue length. Medium vs. Full is not good balance. I had insta-queues last night in T1 EVC as a solo Destruction player, maybe 2 minutes in a guild group.

  • Last night (Sept. 16th) I played for 3-4 hours on Wolfenburg. The scenario queue popped 6 times. That is the most I have experienced since the collectors pre-launch. I had a friend queuing us up for the Chaos scenario. That popped 3 times and the greenskin scenario also popped 3 times.

    Hopefully, with the true launch coming tomorrow, the queues will get even faster. All-in-all, it looks like the server population is growing and will not be a problem after launch.

    I also joined the Happy Fun Guyz guild because of your blog. I’m looking forward to having fun with everyone in game.

  • @Tio: My guild is starting on Red Eye Mountain as well. Decent server and very low Scenario queue times (well at least for the Order side which is what my friends want to play).

    @Lazgurk: “Everyone leveling characters had pushed past it already, and the two of us trying a new alt simply had nobody else to help with.” That’s what I’m worried about. I mean you can at least do Phase I easily and making 100 INF per easy mob drop. Not as fun of course as a full group PQ progressing through all phases but you can still get your gear rewards nevertheless.

    @Graktak: “T2 is still underpopulated compared to T1” Most definitely. Why? Because I think a lot of people are still trying to get coordinated. Some haven’t played the beta while others have. Those that haven’t will probably be fooling around a week with different classes/sides to see what they want to go with. That’s what all my friends are doing right now. Just testing classes. So I don’t think we’ll seriously get going as a group until the end of next week.

    @Keen: Argorius is right. You have to go out and find it. Head over to the Order PQ areas and start making trouble. Those are like African watering holes with prey gathering for the kill. Eventually you’ll (hopefully) get higher level Order players coming to assist and you’ll get some serious action going on. I mean that you haven’t even been ganked once is unbelievable, as our Chapter 2 PQ was ganked on Wolfen at least three times in a row in a span of 5 minutes (with no higher level realm mates in sight to assist, so we were all killed almost instantly without a fight). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not upset about being ganked. I’m upset that on an Open RVR server, I’m not seeing more realm coordination and support. I mean I specifically assumed there would be more realm coordination when an enemy player was spotted, since on Core RVR servers most people’s attitude is “Not my problem”.

    BTW I just realized one big problem in terms of being able to “react” to ganking situations. In WoW, there were flight points between areas and you could easily fly to support your realm wherever a ganking attack was taking place. In WAR, no such luck. I mean if you’re in a T2 area and you hear of a big Order attack in your T1 Chapter 2 zone, that means running back to your flight master, flying back to T1, and then running all the way to the T1 Chapter 2 PQ area. By then, the mob of Order players may be gone. Not fun for either side I think, especially when players WANT more engagement between each other, particularly at similar levels.

  • I hope things work out for you guys, I think a lot of people are still on the fence about Open RvR (I know I am).

    I dunno, I’m not even sure what class I’m going to be playing yet. At this point, I think I’ll just try out a few classes up to level 10 or so on a few different servers, and wait to see how the pop spreads out as release comes and goes. I feel no need to be at the front of the leveling curve, and this’ll give me a chance to watch the server forums and see what kind of community develops, and what happens with queue times.

    I’ve been mostly playing on Badlands Order side, and get something like 10 minute scenario queues with constant large-scale objective RVR in Tier 1. The PQs are still overcrowded, and there is no lack of people in the 5-8 range. I think a lot of people are restarting with different characters or just goofing around and learning the game still, so tier 2 is probably just sort of empty right now as has been mentioned.

    It’s odd to think that all these PQs were probably designed for one party, and how irritating they are to blitz through with a full warband worth of people… with that in mind, I’m happy to wait for the pop to spread out a bit before really getting stuck in to leveling my main, whatever it will be…

  • The reason your scenario time is so long is because you’re on an under populated Open RvR server. Just this morning I had Stonetroll Crossing pop like 5 times in a row. My guy is 21 so I went on an alt and Nordenwatch pops almost the instant I’m out of one.

    No problem with Scenario’s popping on Core servers my friend.

  • Population issues will start to balance out once the whole public has access to the game. Give it time–the game’s only been live for four days! We’re talking population issues when most of the population can’t even play yet.

    I can only speak for Tier 1 since I just hit Tier 2 last night, but open RvR has been happening a lot on Dark Crag. Tier 1 is likely where most of the population is right now as people are trying out different classes and learning how the game works. Scenario queues started getting better last night, almost instant in some cases, so maybe Mythic’s population balancing through queuing is taking effect.

    I noticed that the population in scenarios suddenly changed to nearly all low-ranked Chaos DPS players once the SE preorders got their access last night, with barely any tanks. It was painful.

  • Keen.. its that server pop issue on scenarios.. Last night when i logged out Dest was full with a Que and order was Med… so that means lets say 500 people are queued for a scenario on dest and only 200 queued on order.. 300 ppl on will be always waiting on destruction in priority (fifo) but only getting serviced maybe 10-15 players at a time… it will feel like an eternity.. however on order’s side i am sure they were almost getting insta scenario pops…

    For a test i created a char on order on a server that was showing low order/high dest.. queud for a scenario.. didnt wait more than 2 mins each time….

  • Low population = low RvR pop. There is no way around it really. You could hurry them but then you will get severely imbalanced groups with like 29 destruction vs 12 order. The only other way I can see to adjust for lower pop servers is to let fewer people in to each scenario.
    My major issue is I’m on one of the full servers and the lag is horrible and I sat in a 58 minute queue just to get in to the game last night. I really hope that is fixed before launch.
    You are in tier 2, thats kind of no man’s land right now, even on a full server. People either raced through as fast ast possible and are no sitting in tier 3 with nothing to do or a lot of them are still in tier 1 trying out classes.

  • I wasn’t planning on purchasing this game after beta testing since guild invites, but after reading alot of whats going on right now, it actually makes me want to roll up Order for fast Queues and a challenge to take keeps.

    Now I have to rethink what I’d play since originally I was going to play on the Destro side. So Warrior priests are good and balanced you say? 😛

  • Personally I like my zealot. I’m not a fan of the mechanics on a warrior priest. Actually for a healer on order side I think an archmage is pretty cool.
    My server has more destro than order and I don’t really experience the scenario problems, but then again I’m still t1 for now. Level 10. I’m not power gaming though and I’m hoping when I do hit t2 more people will be in it. From personal experience, I would strongly suggest leveling outside of scenarios for a while once you hit t2 though. Being level 12 in a t2 scenario is pretty fail.

  • @DestrutionGirl: “My major issue is I’m on one of the full servers and the lag is horrible and I sat in a 58 minute queue just to get in to the game last night. I really hope that is fixed before launch.”

    Not trying to be ugly about it, but what makes you think this will change either before or after launch?

    Most of the overpopulated servers right now are that way because a lot of big guilds charged them when the CE head start opened, and refuse to move even though the servers are getting crushed. That’s only going to get worse with each step, as the SE preorders arrived, and tomorrow the non-preorders will for those same guilds. The longer you go, the less people will want to give up their progress to reroll on a different server.

    It’s possible that there’s still a good amount of open cap room on the full servers, but I think that if they’re making announcements about the full servers it probably means there’s nothing left for them to do.

    My personal guess is that if the servers are still slammed by the end of the weekend, it’ll be a long time before they get better.

  • I’ve enjoyed the Warrior Priest quite a lot so far – it’s a pretty hard class to play, though. Lots of multitasking and positioning is a challenge.

    I’ve always felt quite competent, however. Been getting top 3-4 at healing even at level 5 and 6. I hear they don’t scale as well as other classes, and have issues at higher levels, however.

    It’s always a gamble, isn’t it?

  • QUick questions
    1.-how much HDD space does this game take
    2.-how does the mastery(?) system work do you get all 25 points at once or 1 per lvl after lvl 15 or what?
    3.-i had another but i forgot

  • @Lazgurk
    I am in quite a large guild. I’m fairly certain that unless destruction is all but empty on the server we would move to it will fill up and still have a queue issue. Moving is a bandage for the problem, its not fixing anything. The amount of stress my guild is putting on the server is nothing compared to the mass of people that will be coming to the game tomorrow. Server stress should not be an issue with a companies like EA and Mythic at the healm. All the hype put in to the thing and unless its not straightened out soon its seriously not going to live up to it. Don’t get me wrong, I love the game, the server lags suck a lot though.

  • Frankly, I was kind of expecting Mythic would stick to just one kind of server, the game seems geared well to the Core rulesets and the rest isn’t needed IMHO. If there’s a game for this kind of consistency, this is it.

  • @DestructionGirl: I can sympathize with hating the lag, but even if your guild manages to ruin one of the servers, that hardly has anything to do with whether or not the game has satisfied expectations (or, as you put it, lived up to the hype).

    I believe the expectations you’re creating are fictional. The numbers Mythic is putting into servers isn’t at all unrealistic or somehow inferior for the industry standard – it’s at least several thousand per side. The max number of players per server was not, so far as I ever saw, part of the hype.

    Is it possible for a very large group of players to overwhelm a server? Yes. Does it suck for you when you do that? Undoubtedly, but I’m more sympathetic to the other players unfortunate enough to pick your server. Does that in any way speak to Mythic’s ability to deliver a stable, playable game, regardless of the hype? Not at all.

    In the end, unless player count per server was part of the hype, I don’t see how you can say it hasn’t met expectations based on that. You may have created unrealistic, unfounted expectations, but that’s another issue entirely.