Feedback - Stress Test

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
985

Classic Realm 15 (PvP)
A lot of players in Teldrassil and all I can say is Hunter’s good luck on your pet taming quest lol. All in all though, it was great! The social aspect is more present, which is what I’ve been craving for. I can’t stress this enough when I say, yeah there was an overabundance of people, but I saw more people in that one zone alone, than I did in any zone in BFA. It’s great seeing people from my own realm again.
I got disconnected once or twice, but overall it ran really smooth. Heck, I went into Warsong Gulch and had fun there too. :slight_smile:

986

I very much enjoyed my time playing the stress test. Because of its temporary nature, I decided to play a faction and class I normally don’t play. I rolled a human warrior, whereas normally, in the past and on private classic servers(gasp!), I’ve played horde caster classes, like warlock or mage. It was fun seeing a different side of the game.

When I played the last two stress tests, I noticed very occasional, infrequent bugs. For instance, I noticed during the second May stress test certain gatherable herbs floating in mid-air in Tirisfal Glades. But I’m happy to say, in the hours I played the most recent stress test, I didn’t see a single bug! Maybe it’s Alliance bias? :wink:

The zones also seemed much less crowded due to layering, so the technology is likely working as intended. It made the gameplay experience feel much smoother than the previous tests. That said, I think I’m somewhat in the no changes crowd, and I think I would be very disappointing to see layering included in the game for very long. A swift phase out on release would be most preferable, as I feel while it might help reduce server burden, it can lead to economy damaging exploits where players ‘layer hop’ from layer to layer bypassing resource cool down times designed to limit the amount of resources in circulation. This could potentially create damaging inflation or other problems that are beyond my understanding. It would also have an effect on the social aspect of the game, which is, in my opinion, the biggest draw of classic. But this isn’t a rant about layering.

Speaking of the social aspect, I’m happy to say I quested for a bit with a priest and we became battletag friends, which in the end, is what Classic Wow is all about. The game forces social interactions by keeping players in the world and having them interact in dynamic ways, through quest content and dungeons.

Overall, I had an excellent experience! Thank you so much, Blizzard, for the opportunity to play and for listening to the community on this. See you in Azeroth!

P.S. I played the first 15 minutes of launch before my server shutdown temporarily and then a couple of hours the next day. I also played the last few hours the server was up on Friday. I can’t remember the server I was on. In the end they all merged into one anyway. There was a programmer who didn’t seem to happy about this at the entrance to Stormwind.

987

Couldn’t start until 630 or 7pm PST on Wed June 19th. Played on Server #12, PVE. Created dwarf toon and Coldridge was pretty crowded though not as bad as human starting zone on previous stress test in May. Once past Coldridge, the crowd thinned and leveling was quicker though there were still a good amount of folks in the area around Kharanos. Moving beyond level 8 toward the end of Dun Morogh and into Loch Modan, the crowd thinned out considerably. In fact, I was surprised at how much fewer people were around after say level 8 on. Made it up to about 11.4 as far as my leveling but that’s because I took time to also level skinning and herbing as well. Really solid experience overall, very few bugs detected. Thank you for restoring a facsimile of the original game. Players have been social and positive and fun to team up with!

988

Server 15

Was it too crowded, even for a launch day experience?

No, it was as crowded as you would expect on launch day. It was very hard to compete for mobs but this encouraged grouping and socializing. At one point I got switched between layers and it felt like a ghost town. It was very annoying to know my server was full but I couldn’t see many people. This is not like the classic experience I remember.

Did it feel too empty or too crowded after you moved to the second zone?

I explored lots of zones. It felt perfectly crowded, game launches are suppose to be crowded it shows interest and stimulates socialization. The problem will inevitably fix itself. I traveled through many zones and I realized layering can only be justified in the starting area (1-5). Layering in the main city is weird and made it feel like there are multiple dimensions.

Thank you for reading.

989

Started and played off and on for the entire 48 hours on Server 15. Logged in within minutes of the servers going live, and stayed on until that evening (about 5 hours or so).

Coldridge Valley was very very populated early on. It was hilarious seeing folks fighting over the wolves for 3c and a pair of gloves. I skipped it and moved on to kill quests. Mobs were still hard to get a hold of, but being able to group for it made it faster for everyone.

I made it out of Coldridge and into the larger part of the zone before the lower pop servers were taken off. I chuckled at the sudden influx of people that caused endless “WTB Tough Wolf Meat” to appear in zone chat. Dun Morogh never seemed overly crowded. There were a few quests (like collecting Thick Bear Fur) that took quite a while to make happen, but it wasn’t too bad if you didn’t get hung up on getting it done before moving on to another part of the zone.

I got to the Loch in the evening. It was not overly populated and the quests there were fairly easy to complete, even without grouping. This is likely because many of the Dwarf players wanted to move on to Westfall for their second zone and had delusions of ever killing enough quest mobs to unlock the main Deadmines quest.

I visited Westfall on day 2 of the test. More players were done with the starting zones and converging on Westfall. It was a mess. Made it into a group of 5 to do the kill quests for Deadmines, but I never saw a living Goretusk. The quests Westfall Stew and Goretusk Liver Pie were all but impossible. It took a very long time to get Gnoll Paws as well.

Overall, it was a mixed bag. I feel like a lot of the overpopulation problems were due to the natural inclination for people to converge on Westfall so they could try a classic dungeon. There were quests that were infuriating to try to complete, and I loved it. This is vanilla. This is what we want. My only negative experience came from the layering system. I was in Dun Morogh when I was suddenly pulled into a layer in which all of the mobs around me were alive (after working very hard to clear said area). It totally messes with immersion.

990

Started on realm 2 Undead, got to lvl 4 then it went down to two pvp servers as you know.

I did need to group up for a few quests as it was quite populated but that was part of the fun.

after inital few hours i moved on to server 12 also undead didnt seem too populated, did not need to group much. Moving on to Silverpine Forest seemed empty and wasnt as enjoyable with less people around.

2nd day of testing, Realm 12 Troll, only got to level 5 before real life took over and the starting area seemed fine, not over populated but just the right amount to still struggle to tag everything you need first try. this was around the time of 3.00am - 8.am pdt.

I played from the uk so that might have been why it was slightly less populated at those times.

991

1.I will point out that some severs where incredibly packed and impossible to quest at all, and some were good enough to do the starting zone, i played with my brother as warrior priest and was a ton of fun, it was like the good old days we played wow when we enjoyed it.
2. some severs during late night or early morning would be empty,

2 more things that i want to point out
A: From what i experienced and saw from people who played on private servers, there seemed to be less glancing blows,miss,etc
B: it also seemed easier to kill things as i was able to pull a bit more then expected.

conclusion, PLEASE and i say PLEASE bring more people into the beta servers.

992

Server 3 PvP:
Layer size was too small, realm was dead at all times even when chat was really active and you could see many people in /who. I ran to barrens as Alliance and saw literally 2 horde in ~20 minutes.

I was one of the first 15s on the server and I saw maybe 5 people my entire time leveling in Westfall, there weren’t many people in Westfall when I was there regardless but it still was a little weird.

I leveled another character on server 15 and I think the layer size was better, I actually saw a few people out in the world on server 15, but I suppose it could just be a coincidence.

Layer swapping needs to be fixed, at one point I killed the same rare in westfall twice in a 5 minute period by just getting invited to another group, and I imagine the problem will be infinitely worse when people are actually trying to abuse it for things that “actually” matter.

Layering in the way that it was implemented on Server 3 will kill the best part of Vanilla, the way the entire world feels alive with players doing things in every corner of Azeroth. Not that it needs to be packed, but I shouldn’t see one person an hour.

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993

invisible mob killed me, possibly due to layering or bad quest. 5 hours after launch, I dropped an earthbind totem to prepare for fight against a minor manifestation of fire (before drinking my fire sapta, so there was no way to see the mob). The invisible minor manifestation then pulled aggro on me and then killed me. while I could not drink my fire sapta. It felt like there was two mobs on me as I had no ability to heal through it. I then resurrected and drunk the fire sapta and was able to complete quest as intended. Just a small bug.

994

I was playing on server 3. The areas became less crowded as I moved through each leveling zone but when they were even remotely crowded it was an average amount and the mob killing/gathering quests were at least doable. Also, at times hours after the stress test launch, it seemed empty especially today “Friday” until I arrived in Stormwind for the end of the stress test celebration.

  • During the first 3 hours of the stress test I saw more issues with quest givers/NPC than I did with mobs/players. I assume this was the time where the developers were purposely stressing the servers.

  • I ran Deadmines with my guild and was able to get VC down to 10%. The dungeon and the mobs seemed perfect and we had no issues with connection or tuning.

  • The last and major thing that I want to discuss is Wand/Auto-Attack weaving. During the time at which my auto attack or wand animation would shoot/hit, I qued up my auto attack or shoot ability up immediately following the animation start. This forced my auto attack/wand to cast twice really fast before it actually switched to auto attack/shoot. I can see two animations happening before the GCD finally catches up to switch to what ability I want to use but I could never confirm if I was actually forcing two auto attacks/wand attacks opposed from the one attack.

Thanks for another awesome stress test!

995

Layering is WAY TOO EASY to abuse and is 100% broken.

996

Classic 12 played about 12 hours total, most on Friday. Leveled a Human Warrior to 12 through Elwynn Forest and a little into Westfall.

Honestly the world felt a bit empty most of the time after the initial crowds around Northshire chapel Wednesday night.

Overall, the biggest impression I had about the population level was that how it was in the final minutes after the collapse to a single layer is how it should have been the whole time, and how I hope it is at launch.

I still saw people around when I was out and got random groups wherever I went including for several Hogger kills. But it didn’t feel like a game that was overrun with folks dying to play it until those final moments, and then it was just right.

997

Realm 12. Already made a post for the initial 3-4 hours so this is for the next 44 hours or so. I logged on at different time of day (3AM, 8AM, Noon, 3PM, 7PM) and there was always people everywhere I looked in Tirisfal Glades. Not enough to prevent doing any quest but I did group with others several times to make things better. No issue with layering and found one minor bug (mob under terrain) which I reported. Only when I moved to Silverpine Forest did I see long stretches without anybody. All in all, Realm 12 was a pleasure.

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998

Was it too crowded, even for a launch day experience?

Normal Realm 2 (or 12? Don’t remember, but it was a Normal Realm XD ) - 19th, 20th and 21st of June, 2019.

It was a little crowded in the Valley of Trials and Night Elf area, but that’s to be expected. New players pouring in every minute kinda has that effect, lol X3

Had a great time teaming up with others to complete quests! :grin: It was almost a “must” due to slow re-spawn timer for creatures.

Did it feel too empty or too crowded after you moved to the second zone?

It did feel empty but, again, that’s to be expected. Everyone’s struggling to level up in the newbie zones, so it takes a while to get to new zones. I’m sure if this Stress Test had gone on for a week longer, the other areas would be more populated, hehe. ^ _ ^

Super great experience! Gonna miss the old models, movesets, talent-tree, spells and combat for my Troll Priest. Also gonna miss the wonderful people who made this experience a joy, by being helpful and funny, when going back to BFA.

But also appreciate some things in BFA, such as: Never having to worry about running out of mana, having the Barber-shop and the low-level Quest Tracker, haha XD Just to mention a few :yum:

Thanks for the opportunity, Blizzard! ^ _ ^

999

I worked, so didn’t participate in the full test. I got to about level 6. It was very hard to tag mobs on the horde at first, in durotar it was jam packed. Mulgore was crowded, but is more spacious - slightly easier but still pretty tough at first. Things either smoothed out along the way quickly, or players went down. Not sure.

1000

For sure don’t go with Server 3’s layering. I saw the most people I ever saw on the server once merging started… and that was still only like 10 players at a time.

Layering is fine, but that was way overtuned. Said it before and I’ll say it again, that felt like rolling an alt on retail with sharding.

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1001

My experience was fun but just wish you didn’t have the stress test on those days, most people work on those days and so my friends weren’t able to lvl with me. Next stress test can you extend it to a week and the cap to 25 so we can discover new bugs? The only noticeable bugs were obviously the rubber banding when the streamers were playing.

1002

If we are going to have layers give users some control of what layer they are in.

For Example when Asmondgold was streaming some people wanted to be part of that and some did not. Chat filled up with “invite to asmond layer” let the users themselves switch their layer so they can choose if they want to be part of that experience or not. What we got was a lot of people who wanted in or out with no ability to select for themselves.
Second example. A couple points in the starting areas it was way too crowded and their was not real good alternatives. would have been nice to try switching layers a few times to see if one of the other layers was less crowded in my specific area.
Third example. I’m in an area that is too hard and want to group but for whatever reason my layer is empty. Be nice to try switching to other layers with more people.

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1003

I was playing on PvP realm 3. I gave some feedback here right after the three hour stress test Wednesday, and my experience yesterday. Here is my experience today.

Same as yesterday, my layer truly felt dead. I really didn’t see many people at all, which honestly doesn’t make it feel very much like an mmorpg, and definitely not a launch day experience or even what I would expect three days after launch. If the population was what I experienced, I would be very concerned.

Again I was on my troll hunter in Durotar, very, very low population with seeing very few people. A few hours before the stress test was over some people in world chat started organizing an event they were hoping to get many people together for to end the test. They asked everyone to meet outside Orgrimmar. Of course I didn’t see anyone because I was in the wrong layer and asked for an invite. We decided to head to SW from Orgrimmar hoping to have some world PvP.

We all made our way to SW and only saw two to three alliance outside Goldshire. The area was just empty. It honestly wasn’t fun at all. We all stood outside SW for some time hoping some lone alliance player would see us and form their own counter raid. Who knows, maybe they did, but were on a different layer. It was honestly a frustrating and disheartening experience. The realm says high pop, but yet was dead.

People started going out on their own looking for any alliance. I decided to go to the human starter area because I thought for sure there would be some people there. But nope, I couldn’t find one single player. The area was just completely empty. This is not how it should be on a high pop PvP server.

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1004

You guys have to solve the Layering issues…

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