I was on realm 15 (the most crowded realm I could find), at precisely the 2:00p.m. starting as a Human Warlock In Northshire. It was not too crowded. Or to be more precise, I was still able to do the quests even though it took longer than normal and I didn’t feel put-out or anything. The crowds were part of the fun! Figuring out how to tag the mobs, chasing after stuff, looking around. Quite a few people just power-leveled to 5 and left for the main zone ASAP but I stayed and did most of the quests.
Going into the second zone, Elwynn Forest, perhaps an hour later, there were fewer crowds because people had more quests to do and could spread out. Of course the Fargodeep Mine was probably the most crowded. I think I did notice some sharding or phasing in the mine while camped for Goldtooth. But again, the crowds were manageable and it did prompt people to group-up for Goldtooth. The crowds also prompted people to look around for the mobs, I saw players questing fairly far-afield from the more easily accessed areas.
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On the second day in the morning (8:00 a.m. pst on the second day) I started on a dwarf hunter in Dun Morogh. The starting zone was also very crowded, but not as crowded as the much smaller starting zone on the first day.
This zone turned out to be a bit more difficult, particularly for a hunter trying to do the hunter quests because the whole zone was one big killing field. There were a few complaints on the /1 zone channel. I again did most of the quests + the hunter pet quests and I thought it was fine. It forced players to actually look around the map for things and again go further afield than they normally would. I had to go all around the map to get my hunter quests done but I did not consider it to be a problem.
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Once I got into Westfall or Lakeshire, or the main zone near IF, it wasn’t a problem.
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Unrelated to the crowds, I am assuming that Blizzard knows the pet management is all messed up. On my warlock, Aggressive mode seems to work ok, but defensive mode absolutely doesn’t (I’m fairly sure I recall the pet ought to attack when I attack or when I am attacked, not just when I am attacked which is the modern game). Also in passive mode, the pet kept returning to my side when I ordered it to attack something. And, finally, my pets would not stay on the target I told them to attack. They were constantly switching targets in reaction to what I was doing and that absolutely did NOT happen in classic. Also, in classic, the pets had a real aggro table… you could queue mob kill order in reverse and they would stick to it. That might be too hard for Blizzard to recreate but… that’s how it worked. In addition, the pets don’t react to attack commands for 1-2 seconds… in vanilla they reacted to commands immediately.
So the pet controls need a lot of work.
-Matt