if a mob spawns with no one around does it really spawn? or does the server save costs by only spawning what we see
Thats a bit like that old logic question of “are green leaves green in the dark when there is no one there to see”?
So the question would only be answered by the people who do the work.
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From a technical standpoint, the mobs are still there even if nobody is there to kill them.
Green is just our interpretation of it’s attributes. The leaves still have the same chemical makeup in the dark.
But can you be ABSOLUTELY sure of that when you cannot see them to be able to be certain?
I know, its a silly question but then logic twists amuse me.
As for whether zones are permanently populated, MY logic says yes. It would be weirdly strange to have things suddenly appear from an empty zone just because I turn up and then go away again.
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The mob code still runs when there’s nobody around.
Yes, they do.
We kinda know this, because for example, think of the servers after maintenance, when WoW comes up after a Tuesday.
Probably several empty worlds for each realm, full of NPCs, until players start logging in and interacting with them.
If you fly around at epic flying speed, you can see the mobs are already there, they just phase into view, but they are already walking around and stuff, you know, existing.
It’s not like instanced content, which only exists when someone zones into it.
Instances aren’t running when there’s no one inside. That’s dungeons, battlegrounds, raids, scenarios, etc.
Im talking more about my example of green leaves than the game code. But I agree, it isnt going to be turning on and off in such a weird way.
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Green is completely made up. We all just agree that most leaves are green.
Reminds me of how Monster Hunter Rise handles some of the creatures from lagging up the place. They lower the framerate when you’re far away
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This is the kind of stuff I love to think about.
I like to spend time in empty zones. I’ll just do /who [zone name] to make sure nobody’s there, but I never think about what it’s like when nobody is there at all.
Mobs just phase in really, so are they truly present at all times?
Depending on a few things the devs do or don’t do sure. Some devs in other games provide a “Cone” view for first person games. Things spawn in when you view that area, but other wise nope.
Sometimes I’m flying around an area like Fenris Isle and as the murloc villages come into view, a group of murlocs all run full speed from a single central point. Every village has such a circle.
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If no one is around how you know they spawned ? 
about 10 years ago, before realm coalescing, i had an alt doing this quest and dying to invisible crocolisk mobs; but registering as 'Young Crocolisk" in the combat log. it has since been fixed, but i never did the quest with any alt ever again
Sometimes when there is phasing/sharding going on, mobs often appear right in front of me out of the blue, even in remote areas. Dumb.
Happens a lot with the Boars, my Horde toons have to kill, outside Org. Most of the time with those, they vanish. Every single one of them.
It’s unlikely that zones are running when no one is there. The mobs might be in a data structure somewhere but there’s probably not a process running to move them around.
That process probably gets spawned when the first person enters the zone. At that point the data structure might get loaded into virtual memory or it might be sitting in virtual pages that have been swapped out to the page file.
Depends on how they wrote it.
OMG I remember that quest too. Scary stuff with the invisible crocs.