An Honest Opinion on Server Instability

I am not irate, or angry or anything like that. I understand completely the amount of work it takes to put this thing together and to run it, and I really have very much appreciated that those doing it here have the foresight to commit their labor and not demand payment for it--because of the atmosphere that it might create or the problems (legal or otherwise) that might arise. It is a telling decision, that they care primarily about the quality of the server and little else. So when I say these things I do mean them. However, I am concerned.
I do not want an immediate answer, either. As in I'm not demanding that a solution be created within the next 12 hours, or saying that my personal opinion is a community mandate to the development team. I do believe though that communication is important, and silence will only serve to damage stability and player relations over time.
Here are some problems that exist:
1. The occasional crash/mass disconnect. While not unplayable, particularly to the point of making me want to quit, it is very annoying. Everyone has their own story about, you know "oh I was just going to loot this black lotus" or "my guild was going to run ZG last night, January 26/27." Mine was that I was going to go to Sunken Temple with my friend Patrick. We only get to play together, typically, late in the day on EST. For the server to crash at this time really tanks my night with him and in general, since we both make time in our schedules to play this game together. This happening once or twice is whatever, pretty small in the big scheme of things. But our friendship is one of the biggest reasons that I play, and I hate to look to the future and feel uncertain about our time here.
The second thing about this is that I recently just brought a bunch of friends and co-workers to the server, made a guild for us to hang out in, totally based on the strength of the server thus far and the development teams stellar scripting. At the time of my invitation to them and my return after a nine month hiatus from Nostalrius, the server literally did appear to be in even better shape than when I started playing it!
When I say that it is annoying to me, but not to the point of quitting that is true. But I cannot vouch for the 10+ other people whom I sold on it and it would be greatly disappointing to me personally if my friends left because of disconnect issues or a feeling of instability in play. They really seem to enjoy the server, some of them never having played Warcraft before, which, you know, to me is really cool.
2. "Retrieving Character List." I look at these words more often lately. Sometimes it takes up to ten minutes to log-in--or in the case of one of my friends it took so long that he just didn't play that night. This is a problem, but not because there is a delay in logging in, but because when this happens you have no idea what's happening, for how long, and if you are wasting your time waiting.
Adding in a que for logging in would be helpful. A message on the Nostalrius Twitter acknowledging an issue would also be helpful.
Last night, when the servers crashed, I had no idea if it was for a minute or not and searched entirely in vain for a dev team response on all their media. One was sent out from the twitter after I went to bed though, so almost an hour of waiting. I would have rather said, "oh well, I guess its going to take at least a few hours for them to bring the server back up, I guess I'll just go to bed and maybe play tomorrow," and slept an hour earlier.
Here are some problems that do not exist:
1. The Chinese are ruining the server. No. I notice Chinese players, yes, and I notice their link boxes in chat sometimes and there are a few of them--but to say that they're rampantly causing mass disconnects and destroying everything is absurd. They want to play vanilla World of Warcraft for free, cool, I say. Maybe because the average person in China might want something entertaining, continually, for free, over the internet, or whatever, they chose to play here. Good for them. If they speak rudimentary English, that is fine. They have a right to play as might as any European or American.
I honestly don't care if they are only able to communicate with their own subgroup. I understand the rule for the server is that it is an English speaking server, and that speaking in a different language publicly is a banable offense, so I understand if there were bans based entirely on that reason. But, again, even rudimentary English is enough for me.
Anyone who comes onto these forums and starts blaming their population growth, calling it an "invasion", is wrong. When frustrated, you blame another, smaller minority that is not as able to defend itself for a problem that is just as related to them as it is to you: there are a lot of people on the server. You are also one of them.
2. The massive population causes lag and makes the game unplayable. I am on right now at 11500+ players (a record?). There is up to a one-second delay in combat and lag when speaking with quest NPCs. This is not unplayable. This is below par, yes. It is not perfect, and not in keeping with what I see as the design goals of the Nostalrius development team, but an unplayable game it is not. I can quest, I can fly around, I can go to the AH, I can do a dungeon with capable players.
The population may be a cause for the crashes, though. But I am in America and my connection to the server is pretty decent for the number of people that are on it currently. My assumption would be that any European player would have at worst the same connection that I do.
So,
I would like to know what the GMs or the development team is thinking about at this point. I want to run raids at 60 with my friends, this is my ultimate goal: Is this possible and do I need to do something on my end to make that happen?
Back when I played on a server with a great community and fantastic scripting, there was a huge problem. Blizzard shut the server down (allegedly) and there were constant DDoS attacks from an unknown source. A fundraising project was made. I donated sixty dollars. If the Nostalrius team needs donations to fund another server because the population is growing rapidly, I will gladly donate to it, recurring or one-time. Others will too. The problem there was that the population never came back after the server shut down, and there were still connection issues even after people raised money. We had no idea what was going on, so many, including myself, left.
I would be willing to transfer my character to a different server, with my guild, if there were such a process that could be done. The only thing I think that I could not do is abandon my character after all this time, when he's so close to 60. Others might though, if something like that could be done.
If there are others that feel similarly to myself, I ask that you post here. I would like it if people would show their concern and also their willingness to help. A GM or dev response would be fantastic, even if it is a piecemeal, "we're working on it."
I do not want an immediate answer, either. As in I'm not demanding that a solution be created within the next 12 hours, or saying that my personal opinion is a community mandate to the development team. I do believe though that communication is important, and silence will only serve to damage stability and player relations over time.
Here are some problems that exist:
1. The occasional crash/mass disconnect. While not unplayable, particularly to the point of making me want to quit, it is very annoying. Everyone has their own story about, you know "oh I was just going to loot this black lotus" or "my guild was going to run ZG last night, January 26/27." Mine was that I was going to go to Sunken Temple with my friend Patrick. We only get to play together, typically, late in the day on EST. For the server to crash at this time really tanks my night with him and in general, since we both make time in our schedules to play this game together. This happening once or twice is whatever, pretty small in the big scheme of things. But our friendship is one of the biggest reasons that I play, and I hate to look to the future and feel uncertain about our time here.
The second thing about this is that I recently just brought a bunch of friends and co-workers to the server, made a guild for us to hang out in, totally based on the strength of the server thus far and the development teams stellar scripting. At the time of my invitation to them and my return after a nine month hiatus from Nostalrius, the server literally did appear to be in even better shape than when I started playing it!
When I say that it is annoying to me, but not to the point of quitting that is true. But I cannot vouch for the 10+ other people whom I sold on it and it would be greatly disappointing to me personally if my friends left because of disconnect issues or a feeling of instability in play. They really seem to enjoy the server, some of them never having played Warcraft before, which, you know, to me is really cool.
2. "Retrieving Character List." I look at these words more often lately. Sometimes it takes up to ten minutes to log-in--or in the case of one of my friends it took so long that he just didn't play that night. This is a problem, but not because there is a delay in logging in, but because when this happens you have no idea what's happening, for how long, and if you are wasting your time waiting.
Adding in a que for logging in would be helpful. A message on the Nostalrius Twitter acknowledging an issue would also be helpful.
Last night, when the servers crashed, I had no idea if it was for a minute or not and searched entirely in vain for a dev team response on all their media. One was sent out from the twitter after I went to bed though, so almost an hour of waiting. I would have rather said, "oh well, I guess its going to take at least a few hours for them to bring the server back up, I guess I'll just go to bed and maybe play tomorrow," and slept an hour earlier.
Here are some problems that do not exist:
1. The Chinese are ruining the server. No. I notice Chinese players, yes, and I notice their link boxes in chat sometimes and there are a few of them--but to say that they're rampantly causing mass disconnects and destroying everything is absurd. They want to play vanilla World of Warcraft for free, cool, I say. Maybe because the average person in China might want something entertaining, continually, for free, over the internet, or whatever, they chose to play here. Good for them. If they speak rudimentary English, that is fine. They have a right to play as might as any European or American.
I honestly don't care if they are only able to communicate with their own subgroup. I understand the rule for the server is that it is an English speaking server, and that speaking in a different language publicly is a banable offense, so I understand if there were bans based entirely on that reason. But, again, even rudimentary English is enough for me.
Anyone who comes onto these forums and starts blaming their population growth, calling it an "invasion", is wrong. When frustrated, you blame another, smaller minority that is not as able to defend itself for a problem that is just as related to them as it is to you: there are a lot of people on the server. You are also one of them.
2. The massive population causes lag and makes the game unplayable. I am on right now at 11500+ players (a record?). There is up to a one-second delay in combat and lag when speaking with quest NPCs. This is not unplayable. This is below par, yes. It is not perfect, and not in keeping with what I see as the design goals of the Nostalrius development team, but an unplayable game it is not. I can quest, I can fly around, I can go to the AH, I can do a dungeon with capable players.
The population may be a cause for the crashes, though. But I am in America and my connection to the server is pretty decent for the number of people that are on it currently. My assumption would be that any European player would have at worst the same connection that I do.
So,
I would like to know what the GMs or the development team is thinking about at this point. I want to run raids at 60 with my friends, this is my ultimate goal: Is this possible and do I need to do something on my end to make that happen?
Back when I played on a server with a great community and fantastic scripting, there was a huge problem. Blizzard shut the server down (allegedly) and there were constant DDoS attacks from an unknown source. A fundraising project was made. I donated sixty dollars. If the Nostalrius team needs donations to fund another server because the population is growing rapidly, I will gladly donate to it, recurring or one-time. Others will too. The problem there was that the population never came back after the server shut down, and there were still connection issues even after people raised money. We had no idea what was going on, so many, including myself, left.
I would be willing to transfer my character to a different server, with my guild, if there were such a process that could be done. The only thing I think that I could not do is abandon my character after all this time, when he's so close to 60. Others might though, if something like that could be done.
If there are others that feel similarly to myself, I ask that you post here. I would like it if people would show their concern and also their willingness to help. A GM or dev response would be fantastic, even if it is a piecemeal, "we're working on it."