So I had Sodapoppin's Stream on in the background and they were talking about Classic and there was a fairly controversial topic that was brought up. Streamer benefits.
As you can expect a lot of streamers are going to be trying Classic on release, it's all the hype and with that comes a flood of players from their followings. As far as I know Soda already has a large guild planned for Horde on an NA server of choosing (pending realm name releases) which will also include other streamers, notably Shroud, Timthetatman, Soda himself and potentially Lirik+Shortyy. If you didn't know all of these streamers are considered extremely popular each being able to pull 40k+ numbers on particular games and whilst these numbers will split amongst them but they are all in the same guild, same faction, same realm.
Getting to the point -- If they net 150k concurrent viewers together and 10% of those are the "I wanna play with/against my favourite streamer!" type then that's more than what we'd expect a realm to hold at any one time, bringing up the issue of a server being overpopulated and having large queue times. Soda responded to this topic saying that Blizzard will need to either add a priority system to streamers or lock the realm they choose after x amount of time.
Should streamers receive special treatment? Blizzard has locked overpopulated servers in the past so I see that as a possibility but queue priority? I think that's a little bit too much.
Should streamers just have to deal with their decision to all play together? Should they get priority? Should they be able to lock out players wanting to just play with their friend that unfortunately landed on this streamers realm? We live in a time where streaming has a huge impact on a game and its players, good and bad.
What are your thoughts? Personally I see Blizzard doing what they've always done and wait until things go bad rather than being proactive, they are likely to end up locking the realm and opening transfers until the one realm is more balanced albeit unbalancing other realms in the process.
Just an interesting topic for the forums to get dug into while we wait for Classic.
I don't like it, but they bring crazy exposure to Blizzard - so I wouldn't rule some sort of benefits being granted, or some form of 'sponsored' players. Looking after these key streamers and making sure they are happy playing there, will bring them in millions of dollars - which as a business is crazy to turn down.
While I don't really like the idea of giving them "special treatment", thinking about it more, I feel like it shouldn't necessarily impact me as a player. There aren't that many streamers are there? I don't really know how Blizzard would determine whether someone should get priority though.
Also, I'm 100% going to try to avoid any servers with large streamers. I don't know how I am going to do that, since I don't watch any of them, but I'm going to do my best. If I can manage to do that, then giving them priority in queues would mean even less of an impact to me.
But ultimately, I don't think Blizzard will do such a thing. Like I said earlier, how would they determine whether someone is worthy of getting priority? Where would they draw the line?
I watch streamers from time to time, usually when new content is live or they have access to closed projects like alpha or beta. But I don't really care about them, and for sure I don't give a dime about their "benefits". If their "work" doesn't interfere with my needs or quality of what I do in game I just don't care.
I might just be a cranky old coot, but I've been saying for years that the rise of streamers and esports is detrimental to games as a whole. Looks like that's coming to fruition in the least likely place.
There's a 0% chance that streamers get special treatment. If you want to put 3-5 popular streamers in one guild on one realm, that's fine... but be prepared for the consequences of that decision. Good luck with that 2-4 hour queue every day!
Also, I'm 100% going to try to avoid any servers with large streamers. I don't know how I am going to do that, since I don't watch any of them, but I'm going to do my best. If I can manage to do that, then giving them priority in queues would mean even less of an impact to me.
But ultimately, I don't think Blizzard will do such a thing. Like I said earlier, how would they determine whether someone is worthy of getting priority? Where would they draw the line?
I'm with you on this one. I'll be avoiding servers with popular streamers to the best of my ability. I know several classic wow streamers/youtubers are recruiting for classic guilds so I assume they will announce their realm names before launch and will be easy to dodge. I'm more worried about some big name jumping onto my server after I've made my character :o
When I think about streamers and queue times my mind goes straight to sharding. It would be so subjective and a lot of work for blizz to grant streamers queue priority. How will they classify someone as a "streamer"? They will have to evaluate content creators on a case by case basis and will create a 2 tiered system that will upset a lot of people. Its kind of lose lose situation for blizzard. If they don't want long queue times they could go with sharding above a certain cap to mitigate load. Alternatively, they could go with playtime quotas like the demo. During peak you get X hours of playtime that refreshes after Y hours. That way streamers can schedule their stream so their viewers aren't sitting watching the queue timer and blizz has a system that is "fair".
Just some thoughts, I think its definitely an unsolved problem though.
Blizzard already made a comment about how they were going to try to keep the amount of servers at launch to a minimum to maintain population post drop off so I’d expect really big (private server esque’) populations on streamer servers.
I think Blizz has to do something. One thing could be that they Make extra servers for the Streamers and match them with another Streamer Server of the opposite Faction (So PvP and BGs open) but they would still have queue.
Another option would be that they make a Streamer Only Server (or more) so just the Streamer and the guild could join.
There are other options and i hope that Blizzard is doing something because if they dont a lot of server will not be playable.
Soda responded to this topic saying that Blizzard will need to either add a priority system to streamers or lock the realm they choose after x amount of time.
I think they're stupidly hilarious on this. Let's follow Soda's train of thought for a moment here:
> live streams a game that can't possibly hold more than 10k players to > 100k people
> makes the game literary unplayable to the point that almost EVERYONE who's not a streamer fanboy DOESN'T want to play on any server with any major streamer
> wants a priority in queue so he doesn't have to suffer the consequences of his actions
I get that this god-complexed son of a bitch thinks Blizzard's game could benefit from the exposure, but that's like bringing in 1 million Chinese tourists to a small village in France and then demanding that you be served first everywhere you go because that would really benefit the tourism. Sure, if you have a double digit IQ and you're looking at it from just your own narrow-minded perspective that might be true, but you are really doing more harm than good.
Maybe - and I mean, call me crazy here, what would I know - Classic WoW is not the kind of gave you'd want to stream to an audience of over 100k players. If you're going to ruin the game for everyone else, you must suffer the consequences of your actions.
I am fairly certain Blizz wont do anything about this. They are minimizing every kind of management/support needed as it is.
I might just be a cranky old coot, but I've been saying for years that the rise of streamers and esports is detrimental to games as a whole. Looks like that's coming to fruition in the least likely place.
You are right, your age wouldn't make your opinion any less valuable on this topic. I have the same opinion and I'm probably a lot younger than you.
Streaming was a mistake and things like this are part of the reason why.
No, they shouldn't get priority over people that they deem "less important" on a video game. It's honestly sad that this isn't a cut and dry opinion by the majority, but then again the majority actually watches streamers and donates so they can get their name said on stream. The streamers that do this need to deal with the repercussions of stacking on a server. Maybe this will make more people aware of how cancerous streaming actually is and the personalities it enables.
suffer the consequences of your actions.
This is my train of thought on streaming as a whole. Life always has its pros and cons and as a streamer that comes in various new things such as players being friendly and giving you gold, or players being unfriendly and ganking your corpse.
It's only the cons they'll complain about though.
Soda also brought up a method of him getting to level 10 as players will grief him during his leveling experience and that was to have/pay a few players to roll L1 hunters and mob-tag all the way to level 10 at least so at least he's thinking of ways to deal with these issues himself. I just don't think he should be relying on Blizzard to make decisions that will affect 10k+ players on that realm just because a bunch of streamers decide they like the name Karazhan or something.
But again it's a business and businesses have practices to deal with this sort of thing, unfortunately like I said before their practice is to lock servers, offer free migration and let the who thing deal with itself.
I'm getting so tired of people saying things like this. I watch Soda, Timthethatman and others often, but thinking that they are superior to regular gamers is absurd. We are all paying the same amount to play the game at which we should all have the same privileges.
Big streamers are going to play together, their realms will be overpopulated. Thats a fact.
But why should only the streamers get extra privileges to avoid the queue rather than someone else? All they have to do is get on early, start queueing and then start their stream. Its their own problem that they have to figure out. If Blizzard would grant them special privileges i'd be pissed.
Like i said, its their problem, they need to figure it out themselves. No freaking special treatment....
While its not completely unheard of, to cater to 'community MVPs' and the like , because I just remembered this athene speedleveler always got eyed by blizzard and if there was any technical issue his realm it would be fixed very fast, I doubt that exposure of some '100k streamers' is something blizzard needs to cater to.
And following a streamer doesn't have to mean you are that biggest fan creep who want's to share everything with your idol. So I don't think their realms will be that overpopulated, and they have that much impact to force blizzards hand on that issue. And even if there are strange things happening, it propably won't hit EU server soon, so my realm is save :lol: