What is a queue?

#0 - Nov. 17, 2008, 7:23 p.m.

Hello,

I have an honest question. What is a queue? By this, I mean, of course, what is the limiting factor which causes queues? If you see a queue of 1,000 people, does this mean that 1,000 people need to log off before I can log on? Or does it not have to do with a carrying capacity on the server but the rate at which people can be added to it?

What exactly are the limits of servers?

Are they the same from server to server?

Are these all virtual servers on a big cluster running VMWare?

I guess it's just rather surprising to me that although the expansion has been stable, we're seeing these hour-long queues so often, and I was hoping that Blizzard could shed some light on the real technical details behind the problems.

Claudiog

#1 - Nov. 17, 2008, 7:30 p.m.

Hi Buttercups,

A lot of that information we do not provide to the public. What I can answer is that a queue is in place to keep the stability of the server. By limiting the number of players on the realms the stability is increased. If we allowed a million people to play on one server there would be obvious issues. =P

Queues vary from server to server. Some newer servers simply don't have high populations, whereas other servers have been around since Day 1. This population discrepancy can result in a queue (or lack thereof) and is why we have opened Free Character Moves on many of the affected realms.

Server populations sizes vary from server to sever. Not all of our realms run the exact same hardware (obviously).

Here are relevant links to our General forums for character moves:

https://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12661070739&sid=1
https://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12661341572&sid=1