Greedy Goblin

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Why low population realm?

As always, the Saturday-Sunday extra posts are addressing technical issues about my projects. PuG update: 45 people including Larísa!

This time I answer the question asked many times: why did I place The PuG to a low (actually "medium") population server? The common idea behind this question is that "more players = more options".

The answer is: I'm not the only raid leader on the server! The "more options" people are right that "higher population" means "more good players to find". However it also means more seekers of good people. If there are 2x more people, it's true that there are 2x more useful people. However 2x more raids that want to invite these people! So the useful people/raid is equal! The same is true for guilds. While there are 2x more people worth inviting to my guild, there are also 2x more guilds worth joining, so I won't get more in-server applicants!

So higher population does not increase the practically available PuG and guildy pool!

On the other hand higher population increases lag, queue when Cata starts and "random ganking", when you simply bump into other faction and someone ends up dead.

Also higher population increase anonymity. Some of the terrible behavior is coming not from being crap player but from being crap person: AFK during bossfight, loot tantrum, spamming (including the dreaded anal spam), gogogogog, misdirecting to healer "for lawls" and so on. In a low population server if you piss all 5 guilds, you are out. And the lolkids know that and behave themselves. I haven't seen a single anal spam on trade on Magtheridon!

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

While you're pretty much completely correct with everything you wrote, there are several factors in favor of high population servers that you didn't discuss, at least with regards to raiding. Specifically, the higher turnover rate in raiders and the greater stratification of raiding guilds.

Firstly all good players have a chance to find themselves in a poor guild or in a guild that breaks up for one reason or another, and those players need to find a new guild if they want to continue raiding at a high level. It's easy to dismiss this factor by saying that there's more guilds looking to pick these players, or to just lump them in with the general population of up-and-coming new players, and those are both true to a certain extent. However the fact is that above a certain population threshold these players, which normally act as an occasional trickle of unattached raiders become a very steady stream of quality players that you can get at any time you need. The consistency of the supply is a not inconsiderable advantage and it allows for much easier overall recruitment or the ability to form a new guild at a higher level.

Second is the stratification of raiding guilds. On a lower population server there are generally only a small handful of real raiding guilds per faction and a larger pool of more casual guilds. On higher population servers however there are many more levels, from the very top level guilds competing for world firsts, to the hardcore guilds that can clear all content while it's new, to guilds that clear the hard-modes over months, and on down the rankings. While it's true that all servers have guilds at different levels most low population servers do not have multiple guilds within each general level. It might be hard to see immediately how this is an advantage but it can be a serious help in that you can more easily see where you stand compared to your competition, and in what ways you need to advance as a guild in order to reach the next level. Basically you have more available and direct feedback. On a small server this is almost never the case, as your direct competitors can be very different in approach compared to you and you have very little information on which to base any changes. Consider it as somewhat similar to the posts you made recently about the different feedback from Pve and PvP activity. Having other similar guilds to measure yourself against makes improvement much, much easier even without having more people to recruit.

Not that either of these factors seem likely to affect your decision of a server to play on. Consider this post more academic than practical, I suppose.

Treeston said...

I'd have loved to join you guys, but my druid is Tauren. And I can't get myself to faction change, Tauren are just so much better looking.

Gevlon said...

@Treeston: roll a lvl1

Yaggle said...

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Misdirect the healer for lawls? I prefer the warlock(can't heal himself) and the proper rotation is then: misdirect>chimera shot>aimed shot>arcane shot>steady shot. A M&S hunter would probably mess that up. The 100 gold you are giving levelling players at 19 seems like communist collective, but might it rather be a free market monarchy with a very generous king? It is very kind of you and sort of makes up for not having a guild bank for the levellers to get some bags from.

Quicksilver said...

So first of all you still haven't answered my initial question I was hoping you will. The idea is if you make a 'loose' guild in terms of affiliation to raids, it means that the repartition of raid lockouts among your members will be so different that you will hardly be able to run a raid 2 nights in a row.

Immagine this. Players A and B start a raid together on wednesday. Players C and D start another raid together. Player A stays 1:30h then has to go. Player B plays the whole time. On thursday, only players B and D are online. A and C are missing. But they can get E in their raid. Soon enough your whole guild is separated and on monday you cant raid anymore.

The fix is simple, make people stay together with some (unofficial) attendance/ affiliation rule, but the problem is that would break the purpose of your guild all together.

And that could have been solved by a very large roster.

Second, I know from experience from playing on the Agamaggan server that its not quite free of the anal spammers and bad-mannered guild hoppers. Quite the contrary. I am quite pleased with the amount of PuGs I have discovered on my new realm (Eu-Outland). I have been able to raid, w/o having a guild yet and their pugs aren't the complete fail you'd expect from them

Personally I believe that low pop realms tend to burn out their players much faster because of the low activity.

Drakenrahl said...

I would say the hundred gold would be more of an investment, give them a bit of gold now to get started, then reap the rewards of a more competative and stable AH.

Manuel P said...

So is better not to have any competition? Disagree on this one, if you progress, if people find what the are looking for in your guild, they will stay, no matter where.

Samll criticism: I think that by not using voice comms you are making more damage. If your plan is to make progression, then this will hinder it (and frustrate players). Communication via air waves is more effective, speeds up raids, and the potential for missunderstandings is lower.

I like your projects, but if your goal is the long term survavility of the guild, I think you need a long term strategy (or at least set clearly the parameters, you want this to survive for 1 year, 2 ... 2 expansions?). Which I cannot see at the moment, just the same rules you have used for the ganking project will not be enough.

Anonymous said...

I have to disagree with you here. Raid leaders are rarer than players, so as population increases the amount of able raid leaders does not increase at the same ratio. A case in point - try to make a VoA25 raid from scratch at 1am on a monday night on a low pop server, something I did within 30min this week on my high pop one. High pop/progressed servers also have more alts of decent players available for pugs.

Secondly good raid leaders play a very big part in a successful group. Good players know this and are more likely to arrange to attend pugs led by a proven RL. So even if there is more competition for the best players having a proven RL with good record will put your PuG guild in a good spot. This is simple market forces.

I see no advantage at all in going for a low pop server - many suffer server lag during raids the same as high pop ones - and the opportunities for the guild and also individual players is much less.

Anonymous said...

Okraine S

Welcome to Outland, not sure what side you're playing on but if you get to 264 standard gear you can get into pug 25man hm runs, just be sure to perform well once you do.

Denethal said...

@Manuel:
Rules are guidelines. They are meant to be broken, so they can be adjusted properly as time goes by.

(An by meant to be broken, I mean that there will always be a need for rulebreakers to make a point out of the rules.)

Adaption of the situation as time goes is and should be a natural thing.

But the general ruleset that we have now, is quite valid and works as it should, as long as we remind ourselves about the rules now and then.

We all make mistakes. Failure to remedy them, however, is grounds for dismissal.

Anonymous said...

What was the process for playing on an EU server from a US account? Is it possible to just change the wtf folder and start a character, or do I have to buy the EU version for the activation code? Thanks.

FEtzi said...

you can use your US CLIENT by changing the logon line in the wtf file. You cannot use your US ACCOUNT to log onto EU realms, for that you need an EU account.

Anonymous said...

I am really liking the thinking behind this project. You have complelled me to setup a trial EU account to test for lag. If all goes well, I will be rolling a new alt.

Carl said...

"when you simply bump into other faction and someone ends up dead."

Good to see you're introducing some humour in your writing.

Anonymous said...

Simply wrong, and my i tell you why?

Because if you choose a good pvp server like frostwolf or aegwynn eu with extremly good arena players.

Everybody with skill tranfers to these servers because they want to fight the best, and get better themselves or actually be the best.

On Aegwynn eu we have pugs that do 10man 11/12 hardmodes and down lich kign with achievment.

We have three gold dkp runs which have to sell there last 5 spots because there are much to many people aplying on the forum for it.

We are overcrowded with good pvpers, you only typ who i atrox famely or pirats and you get 50 people that are extremly skilled.
or even better typ deus sanctum sacrificium silentium or modi vivendi and you get 11/12 25er hardmode players that will pug everything else but icc 25er.

We have 3 gold dkps which down 11/12 normal

we have 6 guils selling uldzuar drake and icc 25er hardmode loot.

we have everything , because its a big server.

There can not be as many actual leaders on a real good server as there are good players, because leadership is harder than only knowning how to play.

Anonymous said...

Good lord that happens on your server too? i thougnt mine was just immature.... interspersed with the occasional Chuck noris spam

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous with great server: high population give you more PuGs, so you definitely have more great PuGs. I don't question the existence of 11/12 PuG. I'm just saying that you also have several dozen PuGs dissolving on LDW.

Ranguvar said...

Magtheridon may be free of 'anal' spam right now, but that's not what all low-pop servers are like.

I used to be on one of the smallest servers around, US-Drak'thul, before it was re-rolled, and /2 from there was infamous for such junk. A lot of people on US-Akama and US-Dalvengyr have complained that us transfers brought it all with us :)