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The Daily Grind: Are single-server MMOs uncomfortably big?
If I had my way and technology were easy, every MMO would be a single-server experience akin to EVE Online's or Champions Online's. You might never come in contact with the majority of players or ever encounter a scenario when hundreds of players gathered together, but the unified economy would be a trader's paradise, and it'd be a boon for developers, too, being easier to balance and avoiding the late-game server-merge nightmares that most MMOs eventually suffer. Best of all, you'd never have to find out your new co-worker plays your favorite game too... on another server. But there is a considerable contingent of MMO players who still balk at the idea of an MMO melting pot and tools intended to bridge servers like LFG systems or World of Warcraft's connected realms and battlegroups. Sharded server structures create tight communities, the argument goes. People don't want to deal with folks from around the world who don't speak their language, and they don't want to fade into the background of a massive server with what they perceive as no personality and no community ties or loyalty. Do you agree with that sentiment -- are single-server MMOs just uncomfortably big? Do you prefer a classic, sharded experience? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Russian servers to join EU battlegrounds and arenas
Blizzard EU Community Manager Takralus posted today about a change to the Battleground grouping in the EU in patch 5.4.2. Takralus The winds of change are blowing across World of Warcraft's European Arenas and Battlegrounds. As the next step in what we started with Patch 5.4 and its changes to region-wide matchmaking, Russian and European players will soon be able to face off against each other. Every player queuing for a Battleground or Arena will still join a team with players from realms with the same language designation – German with German, English with English, and so on. However, this change means that now a Russian-speaking team might be pitted against a team from anywhere in Europe. Russian players will still be able to join a cross-realm group with their RealID friends from European realms, and queue with them for Battleground and Arena matches. And finally, so you'll know who cut you down just as you were capping that flag – players using non-Russian clients are now able to see character names in Cyrillic. source This is great news for EU and Russian servers, it will result in reduction in queue times, and a larger pool of players to draw from. But for both sides, there's quite the language barrier.
Blizzard announces phase 2 of region-wide battlegroup matching
In an effort to connect more players through the dungeon finder tool and battlegrounds matchmaking, Blizzard is slowly rolling out a region-wide battlegroup matching system. This enormous undertaking will eventually link all of the North American realms to one another, allowing for faster queues, a more diversified opponent pool and much more. Since this is a huge step for Blizzard, both in terms of hardware and software, it will take some time. Thankfully, this is all rolling out slowly. Hit the jump for the official announcement.
The Queue: Now or later
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. It's been awhile since I've done listening music for The Queue. It's a lot of fun to do, but we do it so often here on WoW.com that it's starting to get a little stale. I've started to miss doing it though, so here you go. Today's listening music is some fantastic Rhett and Link, who you probably have never heard on the radio. Which is a shame. YimmyZ asked... "Is there any lore related to Emblems/badges? Something like the people need so many badges to draw magic from to imbue items or some such?"
Battlegroup outages tonight [Updated]
We are getting multiple tips that some realms are down. Blizzard says that the Whirlwind and Emberstorm battlegroups are down and that they are currently investigating the matter. We'll keep you posted should anything change. In the meantime, enter to win some real life and in-game loot. Or log on to Zangarmarsh and join the WoW.com guild so you can party with us on Wednesday night. If you are unsure what battlegroup you are in, please consult this listing. Battlegroup listings are after the break. Update 1:16am: Zarhym says the problems were due to a complete power failure. The power is back on and they are trying to bring the realms up now. The party is still raging on Zangarmarsh. Update 11:37pm: They have discovered the source of the battlegroup issues, but still no estimate for when they will be back up. We're having an impromptu party on Zangarmarsh if you would like to join us. Update 11:12pm: I was just able to login. No word yet on the down battlegroups. Update 10:56pm: An official response: they are working on it. Update 10:49pm: Many, including me, are having connection issues. There is a huge forum post on the issue, but no blue response yet.
Retaliation battlegroup down again
For the second Tuesday in a row around the same time (9:00-9:30 pm EST-ish), the US Retaliation battlegroup has crashed. Blizzard has confirmed that it's performing urgent maintenance on the hardware of the affected realms, and they'll provide an update at 11:00 PM EST/8:00 PM PST. Hmmm. Makes you wonder if whatever caused last week's crash was accidentally rolled back during server maintenance earlier today.The following are the affected realms: Area 52, Auchindoun, Azuremyst, Blade's Edge, Blood Furnace, Coilfang, Dawnbringer, Exodar, Fizzcrank, Galakrond, Ghostlands, Grizzly Hills, Shattered Halls, Terokkar, The Scryers, The Underbog, Velen, and Zangarmarsh. My guild's on Retaliation and has consequently found itself without something to raid for the second Tuesday running. Last week their solution was to take off to Mug'thol and do a level 1 Hogger raid, complete with designated tanks and healers, damage meters, and -- to top things off -- a bonafide ninja looter of the Malachite drop. Our server might be down, but our hallowed traditions remain.
Blizzard EU introduces cross-language battlegroups
Now you can yell at people for not fighting at the flag in all kinds of different languages: Blizzard's EU staff have announced that they're breaking out the first cross-language battlegroups. Actually, that's not quite true -- players who speak different languages will only be playing as opponents (so the Horde you're fighting may speak a different language, but your allies will still understand you). But it is good news for some EU players who've been suffering long queue times. The English language battlegroup Nightfall will be combining with the Spanish language Crueldad (to form Cruelty/Crueldad), and the French battlegroup Némésis will be battling Germans in Hinterhalt to make up Embuscade/Hinterhalt.Arena ladders on all of the realms will be combining as well (but of course even there, opponents will still be from different languages, so you'll never have to worry about crossing translation lines). The change is in effect right now -- have any of you been playing on Cruelty or Embuscade and seen faster queues yet?
European extended and weekly maintenance: 27th May 2009
Good morning Europe. May is almost over and summer seems to be officially here -- at least in the UK. This week we have something different. For most of us, it's the usual bout of maintenance but some lucky souls are getting extended downtime for a very special reason.Basically the Big Giant Heads at Blizzard have decided to merge a couple of Battlegroups. What's so special about that, I hear you cry? Well, it's special because the groups concerned are all in different languages. Yes, this will be the first time French, German, Spanish and English will come together to make multilingual Battlegroups. Lovely EU Blue Wryxian has created a quick FAQ to explain what the heck is going on, though I confess to still being a little confused.This means most of us will have normal maintenance between 5:00am and 7:00am CEST while folks in Nightfall, Crueldad, Nemesis and Hinterhalt (realm-wise, that's Aionsus, Anachronos, Bronze Dragonflight, Burning Steppes, Darkmoon Faire, Darkspear, Kor'gall and Lightbringer) will have extended maintenance between 3:00am and 11:00am CEST.Anyway, my usual motto of 'keep calm and carry on' applies. In the meantime, Daniel Whitcomb has once again provided a feature packed post to keep you entertained. If you finish reading that with time to spare and just happen to be a druid, well you might just want to stare at those lovely updated forms some more. I know I will be.
The Queue: I love London
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.One of our questions today comes from a reader who's moving to London for a couple of months, and I just wanted to take a moment to say that I've always wanted to go there. Consider yourself very, very lucky! London has all kinds of great things I've always wanted to see, like Big Ben, Stonehenge, the Eiffel Tower, the Parthenon, and Papah?naumoku?kea. One day, hopefully, I'll get to go myself!Let's get started, hm?SithVicious asked a pair of questions..."Will Blizzard ever allow cross server chat?"
EU battlegroups experiencing language problems after mergers
Tipster Nimm writes in to let us know that several EU battlegroups have been having serious issues after mergers that occurred post-patch 3.02. The mergers have seen a number of battlegroups acquiring servers with other language-dominant populations, which has resulted in a number of French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian-dominant servers (among others) all in the same battlegroups. While this is probably necessary to a certain degree to guarantee equal Alliance/Horde populations for quick queue times, it's become something of a communication nightmare in battleground matches, particularly those with lots of players using Cyrillic characters. As the player Thoughtless from the Karazhan realm asks, "Can you imagine how hard it is to organise any sort of teamplay in AB with player ???????? from <????????> guild cha(t)ting "?????? ??? ??????? ??????? ?????" in BG chat?" Nimm also notes that differentiating between ??????? enemy players is a nightmare.We knew that Blizzard was closing four EU realms (Stonemaul, Molten Core, Shadowmoon, and Warsong) and transferring remaining players to other realms in response to Russian player migration to Russian realms opened late summer 2008, and the problem's partially the result of that (which has already resulted in the inevitable "In Soviet Russia, battlegroups merge you" joke). A few amused people are rising to the occasion by translating such phrases as inc 5 schmiede (inc 5 blacksmith in German) or proposing a revival of Esperanto, but the Russian language pack would be the only possible solution for the ???? problem. There's been mention made that this is only a temporary fix on Blizzard's part to faction imbalances on battlegroups, but if you're on an EU realm that's seen a recent battlegroup merge, just be aware that Babelfish might be a useful tool in the near future.
No new WoW Battlegrounds until WotLK
PvP in World of Warcraft isn't perfect, but it is a lot of fun. Unfortunately, there are only four Battlegrounds (and the Arena) to choose from at present, so it can get a bit, well ... old after a while. That's why we've been itching for a new one. We've been promised one in the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion, but that's so far away! Will there be another Battleground somewhere in the middle to keep us interested until the WotLK launch?Blizzard rep Nethaera said "no" in a post on the official forums yesterday. Our friends at WoW Insider have previously cited Blizzard's concern over stretching the Battlegroups too thin (thereby increasing queue times) as a reason for the hold-up. This time, though, Nethaera just said the devs at Blizzard are too busy working on patch 2.3 (which includes improvements to the Alterac Valley Battleground) and the expansion, which "includes a new battleground and of course the outdoor pvp zone, Lake Wintergrasp." So how are they going to solve the queue time problem when WotLK ships? Hmm.Well, get comfy, fellow PvP fanatics; it's going to be a long wait before we get something totally new to play with.[Via WoW Insider]
Breakfast Topic: Favorite Battleground
With all the recent news and speculation about coming PvP changes - both in patch 1.12 and the expansion - it seems only fitting to have a breakfast topic discussing everyone's favorite source of honor - battlegrounds! So which of the available battlegrounds is your favorite place to slaughter the opposing faction? Of late, I rarely venture outside of Alterac Valley - which, with the rate at which AB and WSG groups loose on my realm, seems to be the best source of honor. I remember, vaguely, a time in which I used to enjoy Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin matches, but this must have been long ago - all of my recent experience with them have been nothing but quick and harsh losses - with the players of my own faction spending the entire match yelling back and forth and disagreeing about what best to do. (Trust me, such battleground runs are not entertaining.)
EU Cross-Realm Battlegroups Announced
Battlegroups - groups of realms that will share players in the cross-realm battleground system that will be coming in patch 1.12 - have been announced for the EU servers. English language battlegroups are listed here, German here, and French here. Some of the English battlegroups look especially odd, with both very large and very small groupings - battlegroup 1 contains 18 realms and battlegroup 9 contains only 2. However, since these assignments reflect hardware settings (server clusters), there's probably not a lot of room to tweak the individual battlegroup configurations.
Patch 1.12: Cross-Realm Battlegrounds System
It's old news that we'll be seeing cross-realm battlegrounds in the next patch, however, Blizzard has recently let us in on additional information regarding how the system works. After 1.12, when you enter a battleground queue, you won't be entering a queue with players from every realm - simply from a select few. Each realm is part of a "battlegroup" consisting of five to twenty realms, and you will only compete with other players within your realm's battlegroup. There's already speculation on which battlegroup will contain the toughest competition, so place your bets now...![Thanks, obo]
