We need to stop sweeping this issue under the rug and address it head on.
After a large amount of research, it seems the community has either purposely ignored, or been completely unaware of a fundamental problem we have in Classic.
The servers themselves.
Blizzard hasn’t put the money, the time, and/or the resources into making Phase 2 world PVP a reality. The servers running the game simply cannot handle the prospect of large scale world PVP combat that we we’re expecting, and that will inevitably come.
Shout out to Ebbn for posting the only video I’ve seen from a reasonably well known content creator, that perfectly shows how bad this problem is, and talks about it objectively. In it, he rightfully calls this a “wake up call” for Blizzard. This level of delay is unacceptable, unplayable, and once the novelty has passed, isn’t fun.
In this video, Ebbn describes delays of 30,0000 milliseconds
You can tell in his voice how dejected he is about what should’ve been an epic event
Here we see further, crippling lag, with no combat whatsoever, during what should be a pretty standard sight when layering is gone
At this level of operation, the servers should’ve simply been brought down completely.
Well, you might be saying, that’s a lot of people in one area, surely you have to expect some lag. Sure, maybe some. But a vanilla project called Light’s Hope proved that even a group of volunteer developers, supported only by donations could make a lagless server a reality.
Northdale’s launch had no layers ever, accelerated stress from dynamic spawning, and over 11,000 players simultaneously in the starting zones at one time without so much as a hiccup. Gameplay was buttery smooth, no crashes, and there wasn’t even the slightest hint of lag anywhere to be seen.
Blizzard invited this team to their headquarters before launching Classic, so I’m sure they took every opportunity to learn from them how to replicate such an impressive feat on an (actual) 15 year old client.
and finally, to those saying “yeah, but that’s not actual large scale World PVP.”
Well, here is Monkeynews of APES, Classic’s current world #1 guild, showing you what that looks like on the exact same server when there’s no delay:
Probably one of the best vanilla clips ever made, and also shows a head drop right after for comparison
There still exists an almost uncountable number of unaddressed bugs that alone would be enough to delay phase 2. Most have DIRECT negative effect on Classic PVP combat and include engineering items, movement and mount speeds being incorrect and spell batching. Hunters, Rogues, and Druids in particular have flaws so bad, they have almost broken the viability of these classes completely in PVP.
I will link a master thread that is being kept at the moment by the community, because Blizzard refuses to keep one themselves
These issues can all be debated over and argued against, but at the end of the day nobody can argue against the massive differences you just saw between Classic and the vanilla experience we deserve.