WoW Classic Has A Major Streamer Problem

The presence of streamers on World of Warcraft Classic has people divided into two groups: fans who crowd servers, and people who try to avoid them.

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As we near the release of World of Warcraft Classic, players have turned their attention to choosing a server, a decision that can have a huge impact on your game. The ideal is to find one with a good faction balance, friendly community, reasonably large population and little to no queues. Back when Classic was the current version of the game, this was more important than ever.

The original version of WoW had no cross-realm auction houses or zones and you were often required to find random groups to complete certain quests. Low population realms could mean a struggle to manage your quest log or to find items you needed from the auction house. High population realms could spell queues, ganking, spawn camping and struggling to complete tasks with a low re-spawn time on mobs or items. Now on top of these issues, WoW Classic has a new problem to consider: streamers.

Why Are Streamers A Problem?

The beauty of MMORPGs has always been the ability to interact and play alongside hundreds if not thousands of other players, with no major restrictions on what you can do and where you can go. As long as you aren’t being abusive or acting illegally then the world (of Azeroth) is your oyster.

WoW is a large scale game in which freedom is now both it’s greatest blessing and its biggest curse.

Day to day the choice of where to call home is greatly appreciated, but where a streamer chooses to settle can have a huge impact on the surrounding community.

What’s The Impact Of Streamers?

There are several ways in which streamers can impact a server and which ones apply will depend on the streamer and their community.

The first issue is with entitled streamers themselves who feel they deserve all the best things, just because of who they are. An example of this is when Sodapoppin “won” the Warglaive of Azzinoth. From the video, you can see that after he loses a roll for the glaive to a stranger he screams and shouts and stomps his feet until the raid master gives him the loot.

While, thankfully, many streamers aren’t this selfish, we can’t say the same for their communities. Many fans will likely be excited at the chance to play alongside their favorite content creators and this alone can cause some server issues.

The first is an unbalance in factions, or overpopulation of a server, as fans rush to create characters on a streamer’s home realm.

The second issue is server instability which may occur when that streamer is live. Many people who stream will also acquire a crowd of fans who will follow them around, “helping” them out and “playing” alongside them. This crowd can cause server lag and could also make certain areas unusable for other players, especially if a streamer’s crowd of fans actively block others from accessing the area.

Because servers are open to anyone, Blizzard cannot stop fans creating characters on a streamers realm. They also cannot stop people walking around in crowds, due to the fact that although it has an impact on others, there’s nothing inherently wrong with it.

It’s for these reasons and many more that a campaign has begun to inform players where streamers will be located, so they can make the choice to avoid them.

Avoidstreamers.com

Reddit user littlesunfish has set up a website, avoidstreamers.com, to help players make an informed choice about which realm they call home. In a post on Reddit, he points people to his website and encourages them to submit any information they have about where popular streamers are settling down.

This has led to a list of servers being produced with Faerlina appearing to be the streamer’s server of choice at the moment. The website also contains a video which outlines in greater detail the potential impact of streamers on your game experience.

While this seems like a great idea, the irony with this campaign is that a lack of streamers on the Herod server has caused overpopulation issues, as players flock to avoid them.

The Solution

It appears that there is no real solution, or at least not an easy one. One option may be to join an RP server, which will have stricter rules and requires players to remain in character. This will at least minimize some of the impact, as fans will not be allowed to interfere unrestricted. The other option would be for Blizzard to open servers which specifically ban streamers.

Personally, I think the second option would be a smart move for Blizzard. Some people won’t mind playing alongside streamers but many more will. The overpopulation of Herod, a server which is noticeably absent from the avoid streamers list, tells us that.

For the moment we just need to hope that for those of us who have to sign up to a server with a streamer on it that the impact is not as great as many fear.

World Of Warcraft Classic will be released on August 27 and will be free for all current subscribers.

Link Source : https://www.thegamer.com/world-of-warcraft-classic-streamer-problem/