To anyone who still think current pop & resulting lag is ok

[Gemt]

Try logging on to "the other" vanilla server for a moment, do a few starting quests and feel the difference.

I did, and my mind was blown at how ridiculous the current situation really is. It's as if I had forgotten just how big of a difference it is between playing without any lag, with propper draw distance (of mobs/npcs/players) and all the other bullshit that is Nostalrius atm.

I don't ever want to reroll on another server, and I probably wont unless this gets even worse, but atm there are no signs of improvement. And that is not with lack of trying from the Nost devs. It's clear they are trying to improve the player experience, but it is so blatantly obvious that they are going about it the wrong way. I know I'm not the only one saying that, because it's become a daily discussion within our guild, between friends, in world chat and most importantly on the forums.

Ever since Nostalrius was launched, player population has been both a blessing and an ever increasing issue. The first few weeks and months we had issues with some lag, but mostly server crashes. They fixed it and the population kept growing. When the server started lagging during peak times due to too many players, the devs improved the server further and the lag decreased for a while. Once the server once again had outgrown the code improvements, the server was moved to new hardware, but as we all know, the population kept growing. More improvements has been applied, but the population keeps chasing and catching up with the improvements.

The last half year or so however, the improvements has been more compromises than improvements. Draw distance has been reduced and loading times of NPCs have been increased. During peak hours atm, you may have to wait up to a minute for an NPC in any major city to load, and when it's as worst you have to relog just for the bank, the flight master, the auctioneers or any other NPC to load. This is so stupid I have no words for it, and these are just the issues you face when trying to do your normal city activities.

If you want to go farm something when there are around 12k people online you need to try and ignore the fact that mobs load as you run on top of them, looting can take several seconds and trading between characters has been broken for weeks. You can forget to effectively "swingtimer-kite" a mob due to the way they behave when the server is lagging and the general ability lag is horrible. PvP is just no fun when you have to play around the lag. The ways you would normally react to avoid spells, interrupt, slow, root or in general use your abilities does not work and it becomes a different game, one which I don't enjoy at all.

Almost in anger I remember back when people were complaining about not having a PvE server and a large amount of people kep on saying "it will never happen" or "we don't want that, it will divide the community and destroy the server". By now I think anyone who have some sense of reality have realized that there are more than enough people to sustain two server communities, but also that without some realistic alternative to rerolling from lvl 1 there will never be enough people leaving Nostalrius PvP to keep the population at a steady, acceptably low number.

As more and more people start playing, even more will hear about Nostalrius by word of mouth, and since many new players start because they know someone on the server already, the vast majority will start on the PvP server. While we have not actually seen an exponential growth of players, the growth has still been staggering (2000 new players the last ~2 weeks https://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=32610). My guess is the only thing preventing the population from actually skyrocketing is the lag, which means every time the devs reduce the lag, the population will pretty much instantly grow enough to remove any sign of those improvements.

There is simply no way that the devs will ever be able to keep the lag in check. We are simply doomed to play on a laggy server until the admins realize that the current situation is not OK. The scary thing is that that may never happen, because if nothing is done, the current population will probably still be stable as new players simply replace those who quit.

I am unable to see anything but two solutions to this problem. Not allowing more accounts to be created, or opening a second server (and possibly more in the future). Locking account creation is a horrible thing to do, and may solve nothing as there are tens of thousands of unused acounts already that could be traded and sold. It could however solve this issue once and for all by forcing new players who wish to try the vanilla private server experience to move to other projects. That may then sufficiently increase the population on those other projects such that even if account creation was opened up again on Nost, new players were more likely to choose one of the other projects. Atm I see no reason for a new player to start on Nost rather than Kronos besides the lack of population, and with the amount of new people starting on Nost every week, the Kronos population could be solved in a few weeks if people started there instead of here.

However, the only actual solution I'm left with is opening one or more PvP servers with free character transfers. This is requested more and more frequently on these forums, but there seems to be no official acknowledgement of the need for such action. Is it just pride and stupidity among the admins that prevent them from seeing the issue as it is now? Do they never actually play on the server themselves to see just how horrible it is? With more than 12k players online every day it may be hard to imagine that there is a problem if you never actually play yourself. Unless we want to get an ever increasing replacement of active players on the realm, where old people quit and new people start, this has to be solved properly.

Yes, servers cost loads of money to run, and yes, maybe the devs even are considering to spend the donation money on more servers, but without an official announcement of such plans I realize there may be lack of funds to run another server (if money even is the issue). I'm confident that enough money to solve any such issue could be acquired in a matter of weeks if some actual plans to solve the population issue by opening more servers. I will be the first to donate in such an event, but there is no way I'm donating until some actual plans are put out in the open, because currently I am loosing faith in the server each day.

I have completely avoided writing anything about potential issues with splitting the population in two. I know there are plenty who still think that it's a bad idea and will "kill world pvp" or whatever some people are capable of imagining. I on the other hand am pretty sure that if there were currently two PvP servers, where a one-way free character transfer was possible, each of them would have more than enough players to make two far better servers than the one PvP server currently is. I don't even want to start talking about how far from "blizzlike" things like world bosses currently are, and I hope I never have to experience Silithus with the current population. Sure, it would be amazing fun -- for 1 hour. It will be nothing but a clusterfuck and in no way be representant of how Silithus was in retail on an average high pop server.

There is no way to defend the current server, while still wanting a "blizzlike" experience. In my eyes this server is currently closer to a "fun-server" than a "blizzlike", quality server. Silithus will be a clusterfuck. Those who want to enjoy the game for what it was and not lag around, waiting for NPCs to spawn should probably prepare for dissapointment. If you still think the lag is ok, and the server is playable, maybe you are lucky and never play while the server peaks, or you have just forgotten what a lag-free server, with proper draw distance and loading NPCs feels like. It actually amaze me that this many new players can even stand it when they are not already invested with hundreds or thousands of hours played here already.

End rant.

[vathdaar]

read part of it, but agree.

2 pvp servers, free transfer, cross realm bg. pop splitted evenly and much more healthier community in every aspect.

[Momoh]

Silly to rationalise biggest priv server pop when the quality is so poor. Not quite sure when it will sink in for the devs to realise this.

A lot of players are close to forgetting what its actually like to play on a smooth server since they've been conditioned so much here.

[Rikkisix]

The server is only this bad on peak hours and weekends, saddly alot of people come on during these hours so that's all they will see. Log on when only around 7-8k people are on the server runs great 12k it's insane, i'm getting 500-8k MS in Bg's when i normally am around 50 or 30 But Being in U.S could affect this, They could always lock que at about 9k players i don't know if they're up for a second pvp server yet.

[Furilol]

I totally agree.

But imo they should open a new server, free transfer and as Vathdaar said with cross realm BGs.

I also think they should lock the current PVP-server to force people to the new realm. Something along the lines of only letting people with characters on the pvpserver make new ones, if possible.

You have a level 60 on the current server but want to play with your friends who dont already play?
You have to transfer over the the new server.

You're a new player?
You have to play on the new server.

Another solution could be capping the PVP-server but... yay, hours of qeueing to get in on weekends.

[LetsBeFrank]

I've already rerolled on the PVE server. I'm leaving 4 level 60s behind and moving. Why? Because playing on the PVP server with 12k players online is just retarded.

Oh, and if they were able to split the PVP server into two, and have half the population each, they would then be running the two biggest private servers ever created.

[Pottu]

Greetings,

please use the existing thread for this discussion:
viewtopic.php?f=76&t=32431

The GM team.