After Stress Test 2, we were as concerned as many of you were about the inability to find enough spawns in the starting zones, so we double-checked our spawn logic, and it turns out there was a bug.
In the original 1.12 data, different spawn regions have different thresholds at which automatic respawning is triggered, but the bug was causing it to ignore these population thresholds. This affects the starting zones more than other zones because they have very aggressive thresholds for triggering respawns, to make sure that you can always progress through your first introduction to the game.
As you level up throughout the later zones, the respawn thresholds aren’t as aggressive, and you start having to compete more in higher level zones. We have verified that we’ve correctly reproduced the 1.12 spawn rates and thresholds throughout the game now, and while the respawn rates you see in Northshire aren’t the same as they are in Un’Goro, they will both be accurate to patch 1.12.
Thanks so much for your feedback, and for helping us find and fix this bug!