Population Modes

Two maps fill up in completely different ways, and they want opposite answers.

A town wants to hold as many people as possible. Nobody minds if the trader three streets away isn't drawn on their screen, so the server can quietly stop telling each player about the far half of the crowd and the square holds far more people before it strains.

A contested map wants the opposite. Hiding a player there is the bug — an enemy you were never told about is the one who kills you. The only honest answer is to limit how many can be inside and make the rest wait their turn.

Population mode is where you say which kind of map this is. Every map starts on Normal, which behaves exactly as maps always have, so nothing changes until you choose otherwise.

Where to Author It

Zones → open a map → Properties → Gameplay Rules → Population mode

How To Set It Up

1. Open Zones and open the map you want to change. 2. Open its Properties (the map name in the tree, or the properties button on the toolbar) and pick the Gameplay Rules section. 3. Choose a Population mode: - Normal — leave it here for almost every map. - Social hub — your capital, market square, or starting town. - Combat zone — a contested field, a siege map, an open-world PvP region. 4. If you picked Social hub, set the Crowd threshold — how many players may be on the map before distant ones start being hidden from each other. Leave it empty for the default of 25. 5. If you picked Combat zone, set the Player limit — the most players allowed inside at once. Leave it empty for the default of 100. 6. Save the map, then Publish. Population mode is read when the server loads its maps, so roll the game server for the change to take effect on a live world.

The Fields

What Each Mode Actually Does

Social hub. Once the map passes your threshold, each player stops being told about the players furthest from them, and the ones still in view a long way off update a little less often. Nobody is blocked from entering and nobody is teleported anywhere — the crowd is all still there, it is just drawn more thinly the busier the map gets. Push it far enough and a player sees roughly the twenty nearest people instead of everyone, which is what lets a square hold hundreds.

Combat zone. The map counts how many players are inside. While it is under the limit, entering works exactly as normal. Once it is full, the next player to walk through a portal or fast-travel in is held at the border with a queue position instead, and let in the moment somebody leaves. Nobody inside is ever hidden.

The queue's order. Anyone whose party is already inside goes first — a queue that splits a party across the border defeats the point of having one. Everyone else is strictly first-come, first-served.

Gotchas

• Normal is not a compromise, it is "off". A Normal map behaves precisely as every map did before this existed. If you are not sure, leave it.
• Only the player's own travel is queued. Walking through a portal and fast travel respect a Combat zone's limit. Being rescued to the starter map, leaving a dungeon, an event's Transfer Player command and an admin teleport always go through — otherwise a full destination would strand someone with no way out.
• Instances are never queued. A dungeon or arena copy is already limited by its own instance settings; the map's limit applies to the shared world only.
• Leaving frees a slot immediately — including a disconnect or a timeout. There is nothing to clean up and no way for a slot to be left held by a player who is gone.
• A social hub never queues anyone, and a combat zone never hides anyone. The two modes are deliberately not combinable.
• Changing a map back to Normal releases its queue. Everyone waiting is let straight in rather than stranded.
• Numbers outside the allowed range are clamped, not rejected: a crowd threshold sits between 5 and 500, a player limit between 1 and 1000.
• Publish and roll. The mode is read when the server loads maps, so a live world needs a server roll before it applies.
• Feature flag. The whole feature is gated behind Population Modes in Feature Flags. With it off, every map behaves as Normal regardless of what you authored — your settings are kept, so turning it back on restores them.