Maintenance goes long to fix "balancing issues," realm splits imminent?
by Mike Schramm 
Jan 22nd 2007 at 11:53PM
Eyonix posted a short note earlier this evening that tomorrow's maintenance is going a little long-- realms will be offline tomrrow morning at 3AM PST and hopefully back online at 11:00AM PST. The reason for the delay is "a small patch" that's supposed to fix bugs and, here's the important part, "balancing issues."Now, I'd assume Blizzard would give us more notice than that if there were going to officially split realms. But that "balancing issues" phrase worries me a little bit-- we know that they're ready to take steps (mandatory, if necessary) to make sure overpopulated realms balance their population appropriately.
Adding fuel to the speculatory fire, you'll also note that the realm transfers are only available until... tomorrow morning at 3 AM (right when the maintenance is starting). Could players log on tomorrow with their alts on completely different realms? I guess we'll know by 11 tomorrow morning.
Update: This is just speculation, don't freak out. Sol-El helpfully points out in the comments that Blizzard has previously promised two weeks notice (in-game, too, not just on the message boards) on any mandatory realm splits. Still doesn't explain what "balancing issues" are fixed, but I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
Update2: Clearly, I was out on a limb by myself last night. The updates have hit, and everyone but me seemed to realize that Blizzard meant class balancing issues, not population balancing issues. Wishful thinking on my part, I guess-- with the way lag and spawn camping are on overpopulated realms, I was almost hoping my characters would appear on a less populated server this morning.
Filed under: Realm News, Patches, Blizzard
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Sol-El Jan 23rd 2007 12:59AM
If they do split realms, it won't at all be catastrophic, nor immediate. According to the Blizzard poster on the forums (from Tseric, I believe), all players will be preseted with a choice for a period of 2-three weeks, so that they may coordinate which realm to split to with their friends. This choice will present itself in-game upon login. If you make no choice in the several week period, you could wind up with characters split across the realms. But you do have say in the matter...
HDouglas Jan 23rd 2007 12:55AM
If you remember they asked for volunteers to transfer. My guess is that the people that put their hand up are probably getting transfered immediatley to help the problem.
I would suspect that given the population problems and the queue's some players are facing getting into the game that there would've been quite a few people raising their hand saying "i'd love to not queue please".
Dave Jan 23rd 2007 8:15AM
The balancing issues could be the slight tweaks to things like priests' SW:Pain?
cyborg23 Jan 23rd 2007 2:35AM
are you kidding me? have you ever heard of what balancing means in this game?
Kip_42 Jan 23rd 2007 3:17AM
This realm split probably wouldn't affect the normal and pvp realms as badly as an RP realm. Being on all 3 types, I've noticed that while you do have your guild alliances, friendships and such on normal and pvp, it's nowhere near as serious as what an RP server has. A realm split on a RP server would be terrible, whether or not "you have plenty of time to choose". What if your guild and half of your friends head to one server, and your rp group and other half of friends head to the other? It sucks.
And since I'm pretty sure I'll get at least one "RP carebear" comment, I'll leave with just this thought: WoW isn't just about corpse camping and killing lowbies, or about stroking your epeen whenever you get your new epix. Some people actually play the game to immerse themselves in lore. You know, the kind of people that can, and do, read these things called 'books' and use 'imagination'. Hence the term 'roleplay' or 'RP'.
Dan Jan 23rd 2007 4:09AM
It might be that they're referring to network load balancing - if they have more than one server per realm, or clusters of servers, they would distribute network traffic across them to reduce the load on any single server. It's hard to find much info on exactly how Blizzard spec their servers/data centres, though. Incidentally, my server, (EU/Aszune), used to have long (>200) queues six months or so, but I haven't seen any for ages, even at peak times. Lagged to buggery in Hellfire though =)
Tapo Jan 23rd 2007 4:13AM
Er, this just means they're implementing 2.0.6, which fixed a few small bugs and well...um...*class* balancing issues. It's been on the PTRs for a while, and only makes sense that they make it live.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=69997048&sid=1
Tekkub Jan 23rd 2007 5:27AM
"My guess is that the people that put their hand up are probably getting transfered immediately to help the problem."
Transfers happen shortly after the request is placed, they don't have to wait for maintenance. I put n my request and was quoted "24 hours" wait, but my toons were moved the next morning.
Honestly I don't understand why people proclaim the end of the world with the realm splits. Yes, it's a bad thing, but the people complaining are in most cases the same ones that complain about queues and realm stability. Simple fact of the matter is there's a finite limit to the number of players a server can handle, at some point the only option is to remove people from the server... and attempts to do this voluntarily obviously aren't working, or they would have never implemented splits in the first place.
Jason Jan 23rd 2007 5:37PM
Mike, do you have nothing better to do than spread FUD? It seems that every post of yours insinuates that blizzard seeks to do everything in their power to screw the community. Generally, if something is being patched and they won't tell you what it is, or at best they give 'balancing' as the reason for the patch, then it's a fix for an exploit. This has been the case for a long time, and is something that Drysc, Eyonix, Tseric and others have stated on the forums. No, they're not going to tell you what the exploit was.
As to the realm transfers ending today, great. That probably means they're going to run those too. It's something I'd expect to require extra time, so those who took advantage of them will find themselves on their destination realm.
So, seriously. Start checking your facts and quit spreading all this FUD.
Jack Jan 23rd 2007 7:33AM
They'll inplement the "option" for players with this patch and then with next weeks maintenance (or two weeks from now), it'll go live.
Razhlok Jan 23rd 2007 7:18AM
Hey speculate widly some more why don't you? When they do a split they will give every player a choice between two servers. They aren't going to just take it willy nilly and split it during maintenace.
"Balancing issues" in reguards to server maintenance probably refers to the different servers on a realm cluster. If you have been on a troubled server you'll notice that when a lot of players are in Outland the World Server in Outland will crash and you can't login. But, you can still do instances and venture into parts of Azeroth just fine. But, usually what happens when Outland goes down players start making a break for the closest instance so they can keep playing. When that happens you start to see the instances crashing. I'm sure Blizzard is just addressing this issue.
crsh Jan 23rd 2007 7:25AM
HDouglas : "If you remember they asked for volunteers to transfer. My guess is that the people that put their hand up are probably getting transfered immediatley to help the problem."
On the other hand, low/med-pop realms have been on the receiving end and it created instability problems. The realm I play (Kael'thas) was fine up to ~a week prior to the expansion, then was opened as a free transfer destination, and now we get a lot of lag and world server crashes.
I can only imagine what heavy-pop servers are like (an awful lot worse? heh), but the free transfer to low-pop servers was a lazy half-baked solution.
Glitterous Jan 23rd 2007 8:58AM
I think the complaints aren't about the realm splits themselves, they're more about the implementation (and are jumping the gun a bit, as they're currently based on speculation, not fact). For people who have friends both inside and outside their guilds, it's worrisome that they'll log in one day to find themselves transported to wherever their GM chose and the rest of their friends to the other server, not to mention a far spread of alts to both, depending on how they've been transfered.
It would be nice to hear from Blizzard exactly what will if happen if a realm split does occur. The forum post they provided did explain some basics, but I think the panic would die down if Blizzard calmly explained that you and your friends will have plenty of time to put together a plan so that you're not separated. As it is, my boyfriend and I, both on Lothar, have been holding hands ever since the idea of realm splits was announced. Always be sure to have your buddy!
Druid dude Jan 23rd 2007 12:25PM
Balancing issues are the in the patch notes... Hunter nerf etcetera... How in the world could someone take that statement to mean mandatory realm splitting?
I have been reading this website daily for quite a while. This is the first time I am criticizing the writers. This article is irresponsible and just plain stupid. I hope this isn't a trend.