Feedback Wanted: Further Adjustments to Layer Behavior in Stranglethorn Vale - February 23, 2024

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
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Greetings,

Today we’ve implemented some adjustments and fixes that should more reliably keep groups together during the Blood Moon event in Stranglethorn Vale and we were hoping to get some feedback around your experience this coming weekend.

Please note that if your layer is completely full, new people joining your group may not be able to move to your layer after being invited to your group. This is expected behavior to prevent performance degradation caused by a layer becoming overfull. You may consider grouping up and moving into Stranglethorn together with your group ahead of the event starting to avoid being unable to play together after the event starts in the event your layer’s Stranglethorn Vale zone fills up.

We appreciate your patience on this and have been working hard to make this a better experience. We plan to make additional incremental adjustments as needed, and your feedback is still very helpful here. When providing feedback, please be as specific as possible about what you observed. If you have an issue, here’s some good information to include:

  • Please describe the behavior or experience in as great a detail as possible.
  • Who was impacted by that behavior?
  • Where were the players who were impacted located?
  • What day and time (server time) did the issue occur?
  • What realm are you on?

The more experiential feedback you provide with a high level of detail, the better will be able to continue to make adjustments to improve the experience. We understand that it may be frustrating in the moment, but simply telling us “there was lag” or “my party can’t stay together” is not going to be as helpful.

Here’s a few examples of a good way to report these issues to us:

  • “I was in a group of 4 in Booty Bay and invited a 5th person to the group at approximately 3:14 PM server time Feb 24th on Crusader Strike. That 5th person was unable to join us on our layer”
  • “I was fighting near the Gurubashi Arena at roughly 6:20 PM server time Feb 26th on Living Flame in a full 5 player group, and I experienced input lag that caused my abilities take 1-2 seconds to fire. There were roughly 50 other players within a few hundred yards of my location”.
  • "I was in a group of 5 players gathered near the Kurzen Camp and 2 members of my party were removed from my layer at 12:25 AM server time Feb 24th on Lone Wolf. "

Thank you,

  • The WoW Classic Dev Team
13 Likes
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  • Couldn’t get 5th man in party. Layer had 5-10 second delay on ability use.
  • Everyone
  • STV Blood Moon Event
  • 12PM PST Server
  • Crusader Strike—US

Additionally, layers should spin up in preparation for STV Blood event, not in reaction to it. Reactionary layers are useless. I would suggest spinning up extra layers 5-15 mins early in anticipation of needing them.

Edit: Posted on wrong char, oops.

3 Likes
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Today’s 6pm Lone Wolf US Blood Moon so the last Blood moon to happen we had all 5 people in the event. This event was plagued by Extreme Lag to where it was practically unfun compared to what it was before. There was almost no chance to really do much of anything even though we still got 500 coins. People were teleporting around a lot, there was spell lag over 1-2 seconds at times. There were so many people on the one layer that it caused way more problems than these fixes more than likely intended. It is also Friday so it was the first Blood Moon after a majority of people get off of work and online.

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Is this why STV was a laggy mess today with no chained spirit healers? Please tell me that’s a bug.

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So the 6 -9 pm events always seem to be the worst as everyone is off work, the lag is unbearable as a rouge, I shadow step hit a ability and they teleport about 2 feet infront of me with broken stealth, I can’t tell when I’m in stealth I can’t tell what breaks my stealth and it’s important as we don’t have cloak so as soon as you get broken and dotted without seeing them it’s a loss and a run back, puts a big strain on earning blood as melee,
Also!! The boss spawning outside the ruins near the beach at the bottom right of the map causes a big problem with bottle necks, lag with so many people trying to get in there, 10 man raids holding the entrances, is there any way you could put in 2 bosses to split the player base in 1 spot. But still able to earn blood at a decent rate. And a dedicated spirit healer near the altars but not on them, it’s always random. -Shadowstrike AU

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  • The lag on the event was unplayable 5-10 seconds between inputs. There were 250 people nearby according to my addon. My full group of 5 was there.
  • Everyone was impacted
  • STV Blood Moon Event
  • 8PM EST
  • Living Flame—US

The worst STV event I have ever had, Worse than being layered with only one other person. Also, the worst lag I’ve ever experienced. It felt like the entire server was on the one layer.

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Who was impacted by that behavior?

  • Everyone on the layer had to deal with extreme lag, it was barely playable up until the event ended. Ressing took a second to go through, when it did, my health bar still showed me as dead. The Lag started as soon as the event did.

Where were the players who were impacted located?

  • Everyone affected dealt with it all across the zone, my party and I were near nessingway’s camp where the boss was (as well as at least 50 other people). Many complaints in General Chat.

What day and time (server time) did the issue occur?

  • 6pm ST, Friday Night (peak time)

What realm are you on?

  • Lone Wolf

Additionally, it seems like both options are just bad until you figure out a 3rd, new option. Either we all have to deal with getting layered 50x over, or we have to deal with a ridiculous amount of lag. I prefer neither.

If the current layer the party is on is full, and they invite a new member, just move the party to a new layer? and Keep everyone in the party on that new layer, I’d rather deal with that than either of the above options.

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Hello~
Feb 22~ 5PM STV - Crusader strike.
Part of our 5 man group was the same layer. We zoned into Duskwood, we saw everyone. We enter STV and our group gets zoned 3 different ways. We kept trying to zone out, zone in. Relog. Nothing worked. Eventually i tried another group. Same thing different layers. When we did get the same layer mid combat we were getting phased from eachother. It was impossible for us to get to the same layer and keep it that way.

Feb 23~ STV 2pm ~
we got to the same layer but now the lag was unbearable around the world boss and unplayable.

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  • Party of 4. Invited a 5th. 4 people were layered and 5th person could not join our layer. Waited 5+ minutes and kicked and reinvited still didn’t work
  • 5th party member
  • Northern STV Graveyard by the hemet camp
  • 9pm Sever
  • Living flame
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We are on lonewolf, at 10:59pm (eastern) in a full group from my guild. Lag is unberable, we are located near ZG, our group keeps getting shifted around different layers, 3 different layers from what we can tell and the lag is very bad (1-3 seconds to see instant attacks). It has been insane this today :frowning: it was great before this fix… please revert ASAP

3 Likes
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8:OOPM pst Lone Wolf. STV EVENT. Three man group, formed in Duskwood.
Walked into STV in TANDEM, each of us got put on a different layer.
Game unplayable, 15 second lag.

Small layers made the event perfect. Massive layers take everything bad about the event and amplify it.

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I’m a firm believer in “if it’s not broken don’t fix it” - From last week up until this change this event was perfect. I was getting excited to log in every 3 hours to pvp with my friends, but the event has gone from unfun to completely unplayable.

No matter what we try we cannot get on the same layer as a group, we spend a lot of time trying different methods (swapping lead, zoning in together, etc.) we will gain a player and lose a player, all 5 of us cannot get on the same layer. Along with this the lag makes the game unplayable, abilities are delayed, it is impossible to use abilities and the game completely lags and then plays catch up.

On a separate note I feel like there was a change to how the Chained Healers work - they were plentiful and when you released you got to the closest one making re-grouping with your buddies easy - now it’s a trek and a half for any semblance of reforming after death.

Please roll back the changes :slight_smile:
Lonewolf US
Events at 6pm and 9pm server time effected the most

3 Likes
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zoned in from duskwood about 1-2 min after event bega; we had summoned 2 of our group out of booty bay in stv into duskwood to regroup and zoned into an empty layer. we found the loa and ran into a total of 3 other people; ended up having to farm each other for any blood; this occurred at the 11 eastern event on Chaos Bolt today

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I don’t understand what you mean by good examples??? “We were by the Kurzen camp” its not one area that’s the problem, its the entire zone!!!

If I invite someone to my group, we should be on the same layer END OF STORY!!!

I shouldn’t need to wait in Duskwood, Westfall, or STV 30 minutes before the event just to ensure we are on the same layer!

We formed a group at 8:30 server, met in Booty Bay just to ensure we would be on the same layer. Event started and the lag was literally unplayable. I cast a seal or a blessing and quite literally waited over 3 seconds for it to happen. I actually watched a Rogue get frost nova’d, the debuff actually said -8 seconds before he just disappeared from my view, only to be on the other side of a hill at least 50 yards away. This all happened on Lone Wolf NA

Also on Lone Wolf NA during the 6pm server event, we formed a group 10 minutes before it started, only to have 2 on one layer, 2 on another, and the last on a 3rd layer.

Regards,
A very annoyed player

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Have run STV three times today (Crusader Strike-NA), and not once have we managed to have more than 2 group members on the same layer. On top of that, the lag has gotten become significantly worse, to the point of being totally unplayable during the 9 ST event.

Whatever you did needs to be undone ASAP; it’s completely awful.

Edit: The event was basically perfect like, a week ago. Just revert whatever changes you’ve made since then

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  • Ability Lag, 3-4 sec
  • Everyone on layer
  • STV Arena Area
  • 2/23/2024 9pm → 9:30pm ST, blood event
  • Crusader Strike-US
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Lag was so horrendous that everyone was moving as if they were vanishing out of a dragon ball attack.

Everyone in STV.

Literally everywhere in STV.

9:00 PM - 9:30 PM ST

Lone Wolf

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Lag, just so much Lag. rubber banding, ability lag, everything.
STV, near arena, near ZG, near kurzen camp.
2/23/2024 9-9:30 ST
Wild Growth.

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Lone wolf US
I did STV BM at noon, 3pm, and 9pm. The lag has gotten so much worse over the past couple of days. All characters are stuttering. Nobody got layered but the lag was much much worse.

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Please describe the behavior or experience in as great a detail as possible.
#1: Lag: Extreme lag on top of the turn in, as well as near the boss. Nonstop teleporting and delay in receiving damage, or doing damage.

#2 Layering: Our group formed, but constantly got layered onto different layers. When they left our group, we became able to see them, and they became merged onto our layer. But immediately upon inviting them, they vaporized to another layer. I literally got more coins for killing pve mobs that event, because the lag demoralized people to the point where they just stood, afk, let us kill them, and wouldn’t bother rezzing. I harvested like 60 elder stranglethorn monkey’s blood, it was a monkey massacre.

#3 Terrible Ghost Spawns: Chained ghosts that were aplenty previously have become nonexistent. Instead, the constantly moving ghosts make it much more difficult to group, and have also severely dropped in quantity.

You’re spending half the event dead, trying to see if there’s a better ghost spot to res, risking losing coins because the ghost is miles away from either turn in or boss, or sucking it up and ressing at half health and mana, because trying to make it to turn in solo from a far spawn point guarantees death and losing more coins.

As an indirect impact of this change, you’re making metalocking significantly worse to play if you’re taking the half health, half mana res. You already res with half the health, and barely any mana. You choose to metamorph, and now you’re instantly oom. Cast Demon Armor, and you literally have no mana left. You can’t dps, you can’t cast diddly, but you’re going to die anyway if you try the option of ‘ressing with full health and waddling over to the aoefest’ going on as you get closer to the turn in.

Prior to having multiple ghosts, fixed locations, you could group consistently, utilize the silence buff to your advantage to regroup for a good position, and join battle. Now, it’s somewhat similar to how it was before the silence restored health, since nobody can afford to take the super long walkback just to guarantee full health.

Who was impacted by that behavior?
Everyone in my groups. Multiple groups, multiple days, several players each time regardless of us showing up very early to be in the zone.

Where were the players who were impacted located?
We were located in STV, Ziatajai, Gurabashi Arena, Nessingwary, and generally anywhere in STV. The lack of ghosts is universal, and so was the layering. These issues repeated themselves over and over since the change implemented a couple days ago when the quantity of ghosts was nerfed, and the layering changes implemented. Honestly, even having less people on a pvp layer was slightly better than losing each other in the group. Even lag would be tolerable to an extent. But the ghost issue is really, really, really bad.

What day and time (server time) did the issue occur?
2/21, 2/22, 2/23, I did several events in the mornings, evenings, and afternoons, but the afternoons were noticeably worse for layering and lag. The ghost griefing occured regardless of time. Genuinely, what was the reasoning for removing spawn points? Prior to the “QOL Changes” that just ruined it, it was so much easier to group, coordinate, and not get absolutely farmed without a chance of getting coins lol.

It honestly starts to feel like every recent change or addition to STV hasn’t had much forethought about the immediate consequence, and just makes it more difficult, unwieldy, and less fun with every new implementation that doesn’t appear to have a serious reason for changing it to begin with.

What realm are you on?
Crusader Strike.