Please consider reducing the spawn times of the level 1-5 mobs in the starting zones. Everything else was great . People were encouraged to group up that was cool to see but it still took forever to tag mobs.
Those were the respawn rates in classic, they aren’t going to inflate that. That’s why they are doing sharding for the first few weeks, that was their compromise.
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I played on PvE Classic Realm 12, from 2.00am to 6.00am server time Thursday (this was in the evening OCE time, so I suspect a large pool of the players were from this time zone).
I found the starting area slightly crowded, to the point where some quests took time to complete, BUT I was perfectly happy with that. I wasn’t in a rush, nor would I be when it goes live. It created reasons to group up and engage with people, which I relished.
Moving on to Elwynn Forest was pretty much the same, though the crowd was a little thinner there.
All quests, including those requiring drops were possible to complete, so speaking for myself, I found it a pleasure, and relished playing again.
Time: 5-6PM EST
Realm: Server 3
With only 2 servers for US, during the stress test times you were unable to kill mobs in any of the race starting zone and most players were stuck at level 1-2 the entire time trying to battle people for mobs. Way too many people.
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I played on PvE Realm 2. I logged in around 10pm EST. It was over crowded. It took 20 minutes just get to level 2. I was running around killing whatever I could find.
I played on realm 15 from 4 PM - 10 PM CST. Started in the human zone and it was too crowded. Nothing alive. Took about 15 minutes to do my first quest. I enjoyed it but it was too crowded. I had to skip ahead quest wise or i would have been standing around waiting for mobs to spawn.
Once i got into Elwynn Forest it got a little better… at first. Once more people moved out there was the same problem. Everything was dead everywhere.
A friend joined and we took the tram to see how the dwarf/gnome starting area was. Dun Mordogh (sp?) was the same as Elwynn. Everything already dead. Went into the starting area and it was crowded but we were actually able to get quests done unlike the other zones.
Played Dwarf starting area on Realm 3 and Undead starting area on Realm 15. The Dwarf starting area, at around 7:30 EST, was unplayable with way too many characters and no chance at progressing through the starting quests in a reasonable time. The Undead starting area, around the same time, was not much better, but I was able to group up to get some slow progress made on questing. It took me roughly 2 hours to get done and on to Brill at level 6. I only encountered one bug and it was a Peacebloom node that was floating 7 feet in the air.
Started at 5pm EDT
Classic Realm 14 (I think) but it was brought down to put more people on the other realms. Moved to Classic Realm 3. (Edit: Troll starting area)
No issues running initially (things ran great), it didn’t feel too overpopulated but grouping was required to complete quests (not a bad thing imo for the starter area). The only stability issues I saw were after the realms were closed and we all funneled into only two).
At that point, there were some problems interacting with npcs (quests, vendoring, looting) - but combat was not impacted. The delay was maybe 20-30 seconds at most for me when it started occurring (ie: click a quest object in a corpse, wait 10 seconds before it moved to pack). Once the servers crashed and restarted the problems resolved.
I believe there were 4 server crashes (everyone lost connection) but we were immediately able to reconnect.
Second area was much more manageable as far as number of players.
Overall it was a good experience.
Later that night (around 9pm) I started a Tauren and there were no issues with the number of players in that area.
I initially logged onto Test Realm 13 (low pop) right at 5PM. I did a /who and there were like 30 gnomes and dwarves on the entire server, so I decided to go try one of the higher pop ones since I kind of anticipated the server shut downs.
I switched to test realm 3, first as a troll, around 5:15 PM. I submitted a “bug report” almost immediately - it was unplayable at that time due to the high population. I think I ran around for about 10 minutes and literally tagged a single boar.
Around 5:45 two of my friends came online and we decided to reroll gnomes and dwarves, hoping it would be a little more empty than Durotar. Initially, it wasn’t and was tremendously overcrowded. The wolf meat quest was incompletable (in a party) initially because there were so many other people trying to get it done, so we went right to the troll cave and started grinding.
From about 6-6:30 PM, there were severe lag spikes, but after each spike it felt like mobs were respawning faster and there were less other people around. I’m not sure how much of that was people dropping out in frustration from overpopulation, but it felt to me like new layers being created.
Felt pretty good. By about 6:30 it felt like you guys had it just right. There were still plenty of other people around but it was actually possible to complete quests - just had to be a little competitive with your first tags.
Didn’t play much after we moved to Kharanos so I can’t really comment on how densely populated it felt. I don’t think we saw very many other players, so if anything I’d say it felt a little “underpopulated” by around 7:00 PM. /who was reporting there were A LOT of people around level 5-6 that I would have expected to be at least passing through Kharanos but I really don’t remember seeing anyone once we got there so I’d say that was a little weird.
Edit: also shouts out to Beazy the night elf, since I assume you must have been a developer - no idea why else someone would have bothered bringing a night elf to the dwarf starting zone during the stress test just to stand in the troll cave and cast wrath for an hour ![:stuck_out_tongue:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/stuck_out_tongue.png?v=6" ":stuck_out_tongue:")
I started on one of the surviving PVP realms (realm 3) so I got a head start before omar snapped. The undead starting zone felt good, mobs were scarce, but not impossible to tag. Once I moved on to Brill about an hour into the test, things felt very empty. Not sure if it’s because I was ahead of the curve or due to the layering test, but I encountered very few players for the rest of the stress test. Ended up at level 9 by the end of it.
So I’m just going to get into it.
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Had a boar disappear on me mid fight as it rushed towards me, and had 2 random players phase in. I assume this is the layering bit but I reported it nontheless because I assume we don’t want mobs dropping mid fight.
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Mobs were hitting awfully weak, I have to admit they did get more the norm outside of the starting zones, but there’s something that puts a bad taste in your mouth when you see a lvl 1 rogue fighting 3-4 lvl 4’s and taking nill for dmg.
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Dynamic spawns, before I played I was fervent that this shouldn’t be a thing, and I still don’t think it should be a thing for 99% of the zones. That being said, I wouldn’t mind Dynamic spawns within the 1-5 zones for atleast the first month of actual release
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Game ran great through, 29ms 10 Graphics (lol) encountered zero lag throughout the night on Server 3, and 15.
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Gear drops seemed a bit off, could just be me but I was getting some nice quality gear/mats throughout the night, felt overloaded in the 1-5 zones and this was with players farming it out. Dunno if the rate needs to be dropped.
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Currency, was on point. Felt like a broke b, 1-7 as I should have.
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Conversations went pretty standard, lots of Primitive Stick, Chuck Norris, general toxicity and people helping eachother out. Would chill out with the “I’m leet” mentality, plenty of folks that never tried Classic are trying it out, we want to expand community not kill it.
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The forbidden fruit tasted as sweet and juicy as I remembered it though, and had I not had to show at work this morning I’d have played it for many hours more.
Overall,
I feel mobs were hitting far to weak, players were taking to little dmg from Mobs, drops were to high in the 1-5 zones regarding gear. Dynamic spawns are needed int the 1-5 zones, outside of that, it was solid.
Remember, you’re wanting to force people to Party up, that’s the whole point of Classic.
Classic Realm 3, Tirisfal, 3pm PST - 9pm Pst
Was it too crowded, even for a launch day experience?
The starting zone had so few mobs compared to the number of players that it was impossible to do anything by yourself. That being said, rather than find a group to cooperate with, many, including myself just ran well beyond the starting quests and just killed mobs out in the wild until level 4-5 to get ahead of the curve.
Players were still standing around waiting for a handful of creature spawns to finish a quest and I was on my way out to the next area. Around 3:30-4:00pm PST there were a number of instances of delayed NPC interaction - Looting, Turning in Quests, Interacting with Class Trainers, Vendoring Gear, that would cause a significant period of latency where spell animations would hang and nothing would be responsive. After about 10-15 seconds everything would catch up. There was a restart or two that happened on the server that seemed to unclog those problems.
TLDR: Too many people in the starting zone.
Did it feel too empty or too crowded after you moved to the second zone?
The next zone felt nearly empty by comparison for the next hour or so. I’d very rarely encounter someone else, and when I did, it was usually just in passing. I saw maybe a dozen people over the course of the hour.
There were too few people in this area either by design or by me pushing ahead. I had expected that there would be a mass of folks catching up with me, but that never happened.
Latency or Server Responsiveness was not an issue in this area around 8-9pm PST
Played on Realm 15, Undead starting area. There must have been 100+ people in the area all trying to complete the same quest. There was literally no mobs alive anywhere in the starting zone and as soon as one would spawn it was instantly tagged. Completely unplayable, had to log out.
On another note had an issue when turning on Vsync the game would crash every time.
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It was awesome! I loved how lively it was and being in an atmosphere that encourages grouping.
The amount of players was actually awesome, contrary to what may be popular opinion. And I don’t mind spawn tagging, it encourages teamwork and grouping.
What I think would have really helped is an increase in spawn rate. I believe Mark Kern may have come up with the idea of dynamic spawn rates, back in the day, where mobs will spawn faster depending on how quickly or often they are killed. This type of system would have made yesterday’s crowds much more manageable when trying to get through the noob questing areas.
I was playing on Realm 15, as an Orc in Durotar. Most quests were manageable with a group, but I abandoned the quests, “Sting of the Scorpid” (scorpid tails) and “A Solvent Spirit” (makura eyes, crawler mucus) because those drops rates aren’t high enough to justify the hours it would’ve taken to tag enough mobs to get them done. Nothing wrong with the drop rates, the bigger issue was the spawn time.
2 Likes
It felt fantastic. Full, a bit over-packed but just gave you the incentive to engage with others and make groups.
I thought it felt about right for an opening zone on a newly opened server.
There was a large group of players that moved throught the zone at about the same pace which made for heavy competition for certain quests. Being either out in front of that cluster or slower didn’t seem to be much of an issue however.
I returned to northshire after a couple of hours and there seemed to be plenty of MoBs alive and available for the starting quests.
Played on Classic Realm #3
Rolled a horde character. Didnt get started until about 6 p.m. Cst because of work. The starting zone was somewhat crowded but I had no problems completing quests in the zone. Had to group up a few time but no big deal. All in all it took me a little under an hour to complete all the quests in the starting zone.
Moving into the second zone it was a little crowded in certain area but again nothing I couldn’t handle. Grouped up for quests in Tirisgarde keep and Echo Ilses and completed them without much issue. I picked up herbalism and the few times I got kicked off I found myself in another layer next to a load of new nodes. Played about 4 hours yesterday and got to lvl 9 which seems about right.
Realm 3
(6pm - 1am MST)
Alliance Night Elf - Teldrassil
Starter Zone:
Slightly crowded. Saw a few players in 2 man groups tagging mobs and five or six solo players running about. There was some competition for the mobs but players seemed to be completing quests without too much difficulty.
Second Zone –
Seemed to be less grouping but about the same amount of players. We were just more evenly spread out across the zone.
Realm 15 from 5 pm cst to 11pm
None of the tests were any worse than a normal launch day. Following the first reset it was comfortable, the second was more barren.
I don’t think layering is even necessary and I hope it is phased out within a week. It is basically just a glorified cross realm system that ruined the game in the first place.
You NEED to be able to meet up with the people you saw in previous zones again or it takes away from the social experience. That is the difference that made vanilla what it was. A social game instead of the candy crush game BFA is.
Realm 2 this morning 6:30 PST. A lot of people in the starter area still and it felt right. Zombie respawns in Deathknell seemed better. Easily done in group. Rattlecages though seemed a bit on the sparse side. unable to complete in two groups. Still the gameplay feels good and healthy amount of people in the area. No lag with bags or quest. Quest acceptance popping fine.