playing as human late into day one of stress test was crowded but reasonably crowded. Later in day two of stress test I played a night elf and it felt less crowded than as playing as a human. Also in Darkshores it felt surprisingly empty or just very little people.
I would say that majority of players want to play as human and a few are wanting to play night elves. I was on Server 15.
I will also like to add that I played on a private server before, Northdale from Lightshope. Now when Northdale launched it was ridiculously crowded causing players to leave the starting zone to group as five to kill high lvl monsters for a decent shot at progression/experience. Northdale peaked at 12k around day 4 from launch. If I want to compare my experience from Northdale to Classic WoW Stress Test, I would say that the stress test did a very good job on not overcrowding the starting zone. But honestly, I hope the need for layering only stays for starting areas and only for phase one of the content plan for WoW Classic.
Server 15
Gnome - Used tram to Stormwind no issue at level 5 from starting zone.
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Massively over-crowded. Literally took 4-5 hours to finish the quests in the starting zone.
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Even running through the second area after to reach Ironforge, every mob on the way was dead. Though I -seen- less people it did not really feel as though there wasn’t as many. Making it to Elwynn I saw much the same, every mob dead and lot’s camping the mob hubs for quests fighting for tags. One guy I joined party with told me he had been trying to finish the first mine quest in Goldshire for over an hour. Reaching Westfall at level 10 (I spent a good amount of time grinding mobs, the quests were about not doable with the amount of people) it seemed a lot better. Still genocide as far as the eye can see but it wasn’t taking me 2 hours to kill 15 X mob.
The only lag I had experienced was loot. Would usually take a few seconds to recognize the click and put in inventory.
To begin, I would like to thank you for allowing us who didn’t get into the beta to experience vanilla again prior to release.
My test notes:
Day one of release ( after my realm got smoked for being underpopulated ) I was pushed to Realm 3. The number of players in the undead starting zone was immense, easily 400+. Quests were basically impossible to complete, and required you to stand in one spot tab targetting and spamming auto attack. With a 5 man group of experienced players, it took my group almost 2 hours to get out of the starting zone. During this time I received no lag at any point with my spells and movement UNTIL I looted a corpse or turned in a quest. Doing either of these froze you for about 2 - 3 minutes.
After leaving the starting zone, layers were divided thinner and quest objectives were still highly contested, but not so bad that you couldn’t finish them within 10 minutes or so. My experience during this portion ( socially and questing ) was arguably the best feeling of layer ratio. I continued to level here until 10 for my voidwalker and then headed to the barrens and went to sleep.
Day 2 of Stress Test:
The next day around 4pm EST I began solo questing in the barrens to get a different experience from when i was questing with my friends the day before. During this phase the layer was clearly VERY thin, I saw another player MAYBE once every 40 minutes. I used the “/ who” function to check the population of the barrens overall and there were many more people than what I saw on my layer. Occasionally I would run across a player in need of help and would assist them, or vice versa i died on a difficult quest and I ran with a very nice group all over the barrens completing red quests. After this point the layering didn’t seem to change, and most areas were ghost towns.
Notes for entire test:
Myself and a few friends ( plus others I asked ) received a bug at random where our mouse DPI would spike to 100% regardless of our ingame or out of game settings. THIS was extremely frustrating, and even the cause of a few deaths in PvP. This happened seemingly random, so I cannot determine the cause. I use a Razer Naga if that helps at all.
I could hear other people from different layers when they used anvils or caught fish.
There were no other really useful or bad things discovered.
Even though everyone was speed leveling, social interactions still happened and warmed my heart to see that vanilla still brings that out in people. I’m glad I could have been a part of this and I hope come launch day all this feedback helps you make a smooth ride for everyone, and that once the mass is over layering is REMOVED to avoid end game economy crashes due to exploitation. Plus, it wouldn’t feel very vanilla to me if there weren’t 100 people circling the Orgrimmar bank roof ![:stuck_out_tongue:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/stuck_out_tongue.png?v=6" ":stuck_out_tongue:")
See you all in August!
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Starting in the dwarf starting area, tons of people around. Close to 100 people fighting over 2-3 mobs. It took a little bit to get use to but I was able to get the quests done after a few hours. I would say half the amount of people would be good in the starting area.
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I moved into the second zone and it was empty. Close to no one was around. I moved onto the third zone and I seem to be the only person left. I hit level 12 and I did end up seeing 1 other person but seemed like the layer in this zone made it feel close to empty.
Overall experience was great. The game play seems very close to perfect and enjoyed my 48 hours working on my priest.
Thank you Blizzard.
Gump
Played on server 3.
Day one after all the other servers got removed. I felt it was an expected level of busy. Yes some waiting but hey it’s an mmo launch you should expect some wait. In goldshire (more specifically fargodeep mine) couldn’t find a mob up, worse than starter zones but to be expected for launch and I would deem it acceptable.
The next 2 days I don’t know if their wasn’t as many people on or what? But it was basically empty traveling out and about. Maybe it was the zones I was in or what but definitely didn’t see nearly as many people.
Realm: Classic 3
I found the initial zone to be very crowded, but within reason. Beyond the first zone I encountered a few players and never had any issue tagging mobs or completing quests. This could in part be due to the fact that I was slightly ahead of the curve and continued late into the night. But I had the most fun on the second day, leveling from 10 to 15.
On the second day I started the quest to collect plainstrider beaks from the crossroads. I remembered that this quest line was very long and ended with a very high level mob. So I looked the quest up and discovered that you can complete the entire chain at level 10, that is you could accept each quest in the chain. I saw a fellow adventurer, on the Zhevra Hooves step of the quest, and we teamed up and proceeded to complete the entire quest line, ending with Isha Awak, a level 27 threshodon south of Ratchet. We had some help from a priest we saw along the way who I offered 1g in exchange for assistance. We had an absolute blast and I added that dude to my friends list for future adventures!!
Also a raptor in the barrens cast a 20 minute disease on me that reduced my spirit by 4. THIS IS WHAT CLASSIC IS ABOUT!!!
Started on server 5 as Orc as the stress test servers came live. Which at first was very crowded, however all quests were possible to complete. After the realm shut down I went to server 3 and had some minor issues completing quests. On server 15 (2hrs after stress test launch) I made a Dwarf, which i found the 1st quest in that zone to collect wolf meat a huge bottleneck in comparison to the Orc starting quests.
The second zone in Durotar felt much less crowded, I believe the layering worked very well, however it did feel fairly underpopulated in comparison to my expectations to a WoW launch.
Unfortunately i felt the leveling experience in Dun Morogh’s second zone was also bottle necked once again by slaying/looting quests. Mobs are much more spread out in comparison.
Overall I feel like the layering will have a tremendous positive impact on the leveling experience, at least for the first couple of weeks while the rush is getting a bit more spread out.
I was there on the same server with you. About 30 to 35 of us started a raid group for “The March of the Elves”. 30 to 35 Night Elves who were unhappy with the respawn rates so we decided to stay on for the sake of the stress test and marched across to Darnasses, took two boats, trekked across Wetlands and over to Ironforge where we picked up a dwarf and a couple of Gnomes. LOL
From there we boarded the tram, marched across Stormwind, through Elwin forest and on to Westfall. It kept us busy for a couple of hours and was the best part about being involved with the stress test.
The interaction and sense of community is one of the biggest reasons Vanilla was so amazing. I am not a fan of layering/sharding. I want to see crowds. I want to see other players questing. I want to talk to other players and interact with other players.
The spawn rates were terrible but I think this was probably a side effect of layering/sharding.
Again I ask, were the class trainers missing from Goldshire or was this intended. Why was there a pet trainer in elfville? I forget the name of the zone, it’s the 2nd zone where the vendors and quest givers are located.
Lastly, over-tuning. Players should not be level 10 in only 2 hours, that’s retail tuning, not Vanilla.
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I was late to the party due to that abomination known as work so I ended up playing on server 3 after it had been reduced to 2 servers. I played both evenings from about 4 - 9 pm AEST and the last hour or so before the shutdown.
Rather than leveling my character I concentrated on experiencing all 3 starting areas on the same 2 toons with obviously a lot of running involved and checked out the capitals and a few towns.
I found the server to be mostly underpopulated, never had to wait for a quest mob even once and generally felt the layering left the server devoid of players. The game experience itself was supremely enjoyable and blizzard owns my soul now so that’s all good but there were times when I’d run for 10 mins and not see a single player, the only time the questing area felt alive was in Mulgore when you collapsed the layering at the end and people started appearing.
I have not been a part of the beta so this is my only experience with classic. I felt a very strong sense of community, especially in the cities with trade chat and at the end when 50 traumatised Tauren took shelter in Bloodhoof village from a marauding Onyxian whelp - I felt so proud when my lvl 7 orc warrior did his 1 damage to it !
I still remember playing in vanilla and classic feels superior in terms of not being as buggy, not being as laggy etc, I am just concerned the layering will spoil the launch … it’s a launch, it’s supposed to be crowded ![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
One thing that really stood out for me was that there were all these people advertising in trade chat for groups but the cities looked empty …
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Started up on the RP server, and had some glorius time before that server came to a sudden death by the act of Omar…
So as the servers got changed and merged, i yoined one of the pvp servers and at first everything ran very well… but after a hour or so i expereinced some rather hefty lag spikes, up to 5-10 seconds in length… so decided to quit for the night since it was very late my Euro times…
When i woke up and got back online, i had no problems at all, and a very enjoyable experience… hope to see you all again soon
On joining a group in a different shard you get warned and then on accepting you get ported to the closest graveyard (like unstuck) have to be out of combat to accept.
NOT exploitable for farming or escaping combat that way.
I was server 3 got killed a few times while joking groups and having mobs i just killed in my layer respawn on me in the new one… layering sucks.
I played immediately on launch… I started in Realm 3 PVP and it was crowded at first… I started in Deathknell as an undead mage… I skipped the rattlecage quest because spawn timers were very slow and there was alot of people standing there waiting… but once i got to Brill in the second zone… I felt like I was the only person there and moved onto Silverpine Forest again… totally alone so I went to the crossroads… Saw 2 people…maybe I leveled faster than others? Im not sure. but I felt like i had Kalimdor to myself on a HIGH Pop Realm after Deathknell.
Classic Realm 3
Troll warrior
Started about 1-2 hours after servers went up, had no clue if oce/us based server but ping was sitting around normal for oce (200-300). Starter zone was perfect, not to many folk and not to over crowded, mob spawns where a little slow other wise. Durotar was again balanced, not to many not to crowded. Some areas again had slower spawn rates (seems global?), no lag, no wait times for quest mobs, enough things to kill/grind. Orgimmar was amazing! That feeling of just seeing a crowded city with people bustling away, groups forming and general antics! No lag in org/uc as well. Barrens was semi dead, i assume that is because not many people got that point? Can’t say much else for it.
All in all i think classical realm 3 was where we would want it to be, i was able to do 1-10 in 3 hours which is a decent hour off my previous best, i will say that warriors seem overpowered. I don’t remember rage gain being this crazy (i’d rather this not be fixed tho! :p)
Can’t wait for the next one!
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I initially started on the RP server and there were no problems. Once it swapped over to only 2 servers there was definitely more competition for mob spawns in Teldrassil, but it wasn’t too bad. Cooperating with other players for kill quests solved most of the issues.
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By the time I moved to the next zone, there was no problem finding things to kill, and it actually felt a bit empty, but I may have been behind the initial rush for a bit since I took an hour break a little while after moving to the new server.
One thing I will say is that the respawn timer for Lord Melenas who you need to kill for the Twisted Hatred quest seemed to be unnecessarily long.
Overall, everything felt very smooth with the exception of a couple moments of loot lag here and there.
OH! I remember what I wanted to say to the Devs. I notice retail areas lag quite a bit whenever something with classic happens. Looting can take as much as 60 seconds. I’m sure you are aware of it but mentioning it just in case.
compread to privet sever? so your saying u played on privet server not god to admit
Enjoyed mostly, thanks for chance to play. Initially leveled to 3 before you shut down server and I had to start again. All good, managed to reach level 10 in the times I was on. I played Morphis Human Mage on server 15. I am more interested in story than leveling! Human starting zone too difficult with 1.5 sec tag time so made way over to Tedrassil to start there (passed a lot of Night Elves going the other way). Quested in Tedrassil for rest of game accept when I had to go back for Mage training (assume boat will be working on launch). My main reason for all of above is Night Elf Mounts. Thanks heaps for chance to test and relearn my stuff before I go back in time when you have to work for what you want and work with others. Cheers and see you in Azeroth(Classic).
On another note, I personally would rather have to Que than use layers.
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Too crowded for the 1-5 zones. turned people hostile. took 3x as long as it really should.
5-10 was better and off-hours it was perfect
10-15 too few people around even when I saw 50+ level 15’s in westfall.
drop the layering after level 5.
(server 15 btw)
Was on Server 4 from launch till it shut down, there were a decent amount of people but no trouble getting quest mobs. After shut down moved to Server 15, it was freaking slammed, I ground what mobs I could find in Deathknell till lvl 3 then ran to brill and grouped up to farm mobs. 2nd Day was waaaaay better still plenty people but no problems getting quests done. Honestly, overall as a early vanilla player the whole Day 1 launch experience is what I would expect, so as annoying as it was not getting mobs it was still very fun and I cant wait for August.
What are they going to do, ban them for saying they played on a private server so they will be forced to play on a private server? Seems counter productive if you ask me.
BFA is dead to me, classic might bring me back but if layering is going to be what I just experienced in the recent stress test, I will not be paying money for that. I’ll just write off the game as dead to me.
If I had a choice between convenience of layering and being stuck on a lonely empty shard of Orgrimmar or have 30fps and hundreds of players on screen in Orgrimmar, fighting tooth and nail for quest mobs in Valley of Trials… I will choose the latter every darn time. Layering the whole continent is garbage, utter garbage, it completely removes the “massive” from MMORPG.