Realm 3
First session: Wednesday 10pm EST.
Login and creation went fine. Created a Human. The starting zone was pretty crowded and there was some competition for mobs, but it wasn’t too aggravating. You could group up to get it done faster, or play solo and run around longer, as it should be IMHO.
Moved into Elwynn and things calmed down a little. Competition at the mines for gnolls was a little heated, so I just went elsewhere for a while. All in all it was fun.
Second session: Thursday 8:40pm EST until involuntarily disconnected at 11:03pm EST. Logged in just fine. Still in Elwynn Forest. Population seemed thinner than the night before. Still plenty of people around to group with, but not enough to have to compete for anything. Good fun.
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Realm 15 felt pretty rough questing, I started about 2 hours after the servers came up. Had to skip the Bramblevine area quests and just move away from the crowds to try and grind.
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I levelled on ClassicRealm 3 (pvp), Valley of Trials was extremely populated after you closed the other servers (i believe there was 12 or so), by the time I got out of valley of trials (level 5~) and started doing Tirigarde Keep quests and moving on to Gnomish Tools etc, it was COMPLETELY empty. Like literally, nobody doing the same quests as me, I found THREE (3) people on Zalazane Island (below Senjin) doing teh same quest to group with. It was a stark contrast to the previous area in which I was struggling to simply find a boar. Felt like all the level 7-8’s at that point were on different layers or something. My experience.
tl;dr felt EXTREMELY empty after valley of trials ( like im levelling on retail or something)
copy pasted from a diff thread
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I was on realm 3 - no idea if this oddity was on the other realms. When grouped up, if I spoke in group (in /party ) in addition to the words showing up in the chat box in blue, which I expected, they also showed up above my head in blue. Similar to when you use /say and it’s white. Very odd.
I started the stress test out on PVP realm 15 at 5pm est time on Wednesday evening. It took 3.5 hours to get out of the Njght Elf starting zone because it was so congested. There were so many people that my group of 3 felt a bit frustrated. I only experienced a few small lag spikes but other than lack of mobs to kill it went slow but smooth.
Thursday at 9 am est time I logged in and rolled a human mage. It took less than an hour to get through the zone. Still lots of people in the area but it felt like a good solid amount. I didn’t run into any bugs and the server ran smooth. I moved on to Goldshire and became bottlenecked in Jasperlode Mine. I would have continued on the server but i wanted to check out a lower pop server and compare my experience.
After my experience in the mines I moved to PVE realm 2. I rolled a NE hunter and spent less than an hour in the starting zone. Then next 8 hours leveling and enjoying the people and game. There was little congestion but enough people for the world to feel alive. I grouped up for several quests and had a great time getting to know the zone. I ran into no bugs and no issues.
Overall I enjoyed both realms. They felt alive. Realm 15 was a bit more time consuming because of the high population which did lead to a bit of frustration. While realm 2 felt more relaxed and enjoyable.
Unrelated to the actual stress test in-game experience, but a launcher issue:
When I have World of Warcraft: Classic as the game selected from the dropdown, I cannot see my remaining game time or the status of my game time. I have to switch to World of Warcraft to see remaining game time.
As most people seem to be describing Realm 3 had this weird population drop off phenomenon, where the initial 1-5 was moderately populated (I started 3 hours post launch and was very much playable in the Dwarf starting zone), then there was a progressive dropoff in players, such that the later areas from like level 7 onwards were very sparsely populated. It felt deserted, worse even than levelling an alt in an established Low pop server back in Vanilla.
I think part of the problem may be that if we’re trying to do intense layering in the very initial starting zone, there NEEDs to be some sort of compensation afterwards as those players will become spread out in a far greater geographical area.
The fact is that the 1-5 overpopulation thing will most likely exist a few hours into the launch only, and will improve surprisingly fast, by itself, as the playerbase dissipates. I think more importantly the layering adjustments must focus on the experience in OTHER areas, so that we feel it is sufficiently bustling in keeping with a launch experience.
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I leveled a human on relm 15. There seemed like there was 500+ people in the starting zone maybe even up to 1000. Took 3 hours to get out of the starting zone which is way too slow. Then the immediate areas in the Elwynn forest were busy but not as much as starting zone. Except for the mines. They were almost as bad as the starting zone. If possible the starting zone should be limited to about 100-150 people max per layer at least from what it felt like. Then when you get out to Elwynn it should be 200-400 people. Then in Westfall felt perfect to me. I had almost no issues with leveling. But Westfall was on day 2 thou. Again this is from my stand point of how many players i ran into. I don’t know how busy it was in comparison to day one. Other than that server stability was excellent. No crashes or major lag outs even in the starting zone with what felt like 500+ people. Other than that i had no issus other than i want to keep playing. So much in fact i spent an hour and a half leveling my black smithing up to unlock a weapon recipe when i know in a day or so its going to be gone. That’s how much i enjoyed it. Gear felt like it meant something and the servers being so solid even with that many people on allowed talking and grouping with other to get those desperate tags on mob so we could complete quests. Thanks for the invite blizz id love to be in the next stress test which i hope is testing layering in lvling areas between 15 and 30 maybe? Or maybe higher eh? Anyway now i am almost chocked up from the anticipation of the actual release. Like the kind of anticipation that made me take some saved vacation days and use them to get a full 7 days off in a row to play… That kind of anticipation. So if you move the release data i need 2 week so i can move my vacation!
Night Elf and Forsaken starting areas are pretty much empty, with the odd small few. No competition for any mobs or anything. Just an FYI to other players
Human, Server 3, 2019-06-20T02:00:00Z → 2019-06-20T07:00:00Z
Northshire Abbey was crowded but manageable. Quests were fairly easy to complete especially compared to my experience on the previous stress test. A couple of quests after northshire abbey were difficult due to number of people (collect gold dust+candles from kobolds in the mines of elwynn forest) but they were the exception rather than the rule.
Upon entering westfall there were very few players around, could be layering or could just be the time. I certainly saw them, but it was very rare that we were doing the same quest let alone competing.
I’d have preferred more people on my layer if this is meant to be representative of launch day. If this is closer to the population a few weeks or months in then that’s fine.
Only the small starting zone was too much crowded at launch.
You can double the speed of respawn in these small area OR use sharding (ONLY 1-2 DAY).
All the other zone are fine! and should never have faster respawn rate or sharding even at launch.
I played on “server 12” for a couple of hours (around 9-11pm PST on the 19th).
It felt like a faithful recreation of launch day (i.e. overcrowded to the point of absurdity, waiting 10 minutes to kill 1 mob while furiously tab targeting in the vain hope of tagging one before the 20 nearby players annihilated it).
I should note that it’s pretty immersion breaking to have every NPC you visit surrounded by a platoon of players, in addition to the frustration of the 10:1 player:mob ratio.
Technically I made it to Bloodhoof village, but didn’t get to play there, since I had blown the 2 hours I had available on the first ~5 quests in the starting area.
Beginning zone didn’t feel too crowded, maybe even a little under populated. Once out of “Northshire” things thinned out a lot until you got to the bottle neck quests in mines. After that, while i’d see folks running around and group up, there was almost no competition between groups. It was actually difficult to find a group for elite quests like Hogger or Vagash. SW and IF felt deserted but that could just be a symptom of the stress test server and people focusing on leveling.
I did start getting jittery feedback in Loch Modan for an hour or 2 in the 8pm to 10pm PDT on 6/20. Changing graphic settings didn’t seem to help. That was the only issue I really felt from a tech side of things
Thanks for letting us play and provide feedback.
Hi, I started off on realm 15 as an Undead at around 3:30 after launch of stress test. Extremely crowded to every end of the map and i spent most of my time hanging out because i couldn’t get a tag. This did not bother me much though, but i didn’t get a lot done. it was very interesting to see.
Later i played on realm 15 at around 11 o clock at night in the undead zone, It was crowded again but no were near as crowded as it was and I was able to get some tags with the help of a friend.
My friend and I logged over to realm 3 to make human paladins after 12 o clock and it was a complete ghost town. We made it to level 6 almost immanently as we only ran into one or two people the entire time. This was not really ideal in our eyes for a social experience.
Today I spent most of the day playing on realm 15 from 11 AM, To 11 PM in Duratar, it was Very crowded but i felt like it was about right. I was forced to find creative ways to take on enemy’s in areas that others were not in. Leveling was a bit of a journey but i met a few people on the way and made it work. I felt like Today’s Duratar experience was very fun and memorable.
Thank you, Today was a lot of Fun! I cant wait for classic wow.
My first disappointment was in the server selection. It was advertised that there would be ten servers for testing; 5 pvp, 4 pve and 1 RP. When I logged in, there were only 4 servers; 2 pvp and 2 pve.
The population was insane. I started playing in March or April 2005, and I’ve “never” seen 30 players trying to tag the same 6 mobs before, but as it was a test, it was to be expected. Honestly, I don’t see this as a big problem two months after the Classic servers go live.
After 40 minutes and still not getting enough strider meat and feathers to complete my first quest, I just gave up trying to level and went back to explore the old world Bloodhoof Village, Thunder Bluff, Orgrimmar. The old Orgrimmar especially, it made me SO happy to see it again. I’d forgotton how creepy the old goblins looked with those sadistic, toothy smiles.
I for one, was VERY pleased with being able to go back. I can’t wait for Classic to open up full time.
1:45 Realm 12
Old Icebeard isnt patting correctly. Appears bugged. Walks in circles inside his cave and only pats to the East, not west then east as he should. Seem to be missing alot of wildlife, Around 2pm, for about half an hour it was nearly impossible to find a spawn.
Double spawns in the Frostmane cave. Nobody bothers with this quest as its always broken, so I guess its not a deal breaker. Got to the spot where it should have given me the explore credit and that wasnt working. Oh well, good xp grind I guess. Dropped quest.
Ice Claw Bears and Snow Leapords are spawning in waves now. But still so long apart that their bodies completely despawn for a good 10 minutes before they all appear - or just layer hop. Cant decide.
Do you change layers when you die? Becuase I died next to Westfall’s GY around 3:15PM and when I grabbed my body, all the mobs that killed me were dead. I didnt do that…
ITs 6:55PM and there are no animals in Loch Modan. Lots of players and not enough Spiders, Bears and Boars.
9:50PM
Cleared to a chest, no one around. Standing on it while I cleared a mob. It just up and DISSAPEARS.
Made it to 15 =)
Realm 3. 2:30 PM PDT. It was crowded, but it did not feel like I couldn’t get things done. I was able to complete quests still.
Sidenote:
Please add damage done and healing done charts to battlegrounds. Thanks. ![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
Realm 3 First Day (Yesterday)
Troll Priest 7 am - 11 am UTC:
- Less players than expected
- No competition for mobs & items
- Disconnected twice
Tauren Druid 11 am - 12:30 pm UTC:
- Alone in the entire spawn area (levels 1-5)
- Difficult to do Break Sharptusk! due to respawns, had to do double pulls, use all mana, heal, eat & drink after each pull, might have been impossible for hunters
Compared to the earlier two stress tests it was nicer, but at the same time I did not get to group with any more than 2 other players at a time. Earlier stress test promotes full groups of 5 to do quests efficiently.
I can see some benefits to have sharding over layering in the spawn area only, once you get out to the greater zone you’re kind of missing a lot of players.
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Got to Silverpine on my Undead Rogue and leveled to 13 before calling it a night. Was a good experience all around. There was some competition here and there, but it felt less crowded and just more lively, like it was a living world.
Going to Undercity to keep up with Professions and do the Undercity Rogue Quest however, the place was VERY dead. That said I never did get to Orgrimmar, which I imagine had a lot of people in it or something.
Though with level cap being 15, maybe none of the cities would have anyone actually in them.
Uhm, I do not quite remember when it was… I want to say it was about 30 minutes after the 3 hour focus testing period ended and I picked Test Realm #3
Didn’t feel too crowded in the starting zone, though it was weird in the starting zone… When I logged in I saw a TON of new characters spawning in with me. Not people running around, a ton of new characters who after getting in then started questing. I had assumed that, like in the first stress test, that the boars would be super camped. I mean, there were a TON of other players that spawned in with me.
What I found though was that once I left the quest hub of Valley of Trials I found the area far emptier than expected. Like, there were a good number of players, but the math just seemed so off for how many players spawned into the quest hub with me.
Perhaps I am just crazy but for how many people spawned into the hub with me the boars, literally the first quest, should have been far more crowded than what it was.
However, the crowding for the Valley of Trials while questing felt PERFECT even with it making no sense to me.
Honestly, after Valley of Trials even Durotar felt pretty empty at times and barrens even emptier! While I saw a few people running around towns/hubs I saw fewer players actually out and questing. It felt very barren when out doing my quests though I did encounter a few players along the way. More than what I do on Retail but still not too many past the starting hub.
Starting Hub density while questing felt good, active, didn’t feel OVER Camped, felt good. Past that it just felt empty.
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