Today was my first stress test and let’s just say I really saw layering in action.
Essentially, by regularly using /who, I saw that there were at least 50 players, at each level, from 1-10 in my zone. I started in Dun Morogh and whilst the initial starting area (1-5) was mild-moderately populated, from thereon it became very underpopulated.
I think what may have happened is that I initially started on a relatively populated layer but as ppl logged off, it just simply remained underpopulated.
I played on numerous launches of new servers during Vanilla, as well as at the launch of TBC, WotLK and Cata.
I felt that such underpopulation, on any layer, is not desirable - I remember that even those servers from a decade ago could handle a lot more visible players. Yes, there may be occasional bottlenecks, but hey, I feel that’s all part of the “fun”; plus the playerbase actually spreads out in terms of levels pretty fast and from memory those bottlenecks were mainly a thing of Days 1 & 2.
Please Blizzard, go gentle with the layering and make it trigger when things really are getting overpopulated. I was walking around an empty Thrallmar, emptier than when I levelled alts on well-established servers, even though /who showed potentially tonnes of players I couldve seen running around and interacted with.
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You should have tried rolling an orc or troll. Nothing moderate about the population there.
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copy and paste this into the official feedback thread: Feedback - Stress Test
Be sure and follow the instructions as close as you can.
Rolled undead and there was nothing underpopulated about it. Took me over an hour to kill enough mobs to complete the first quest. Saw more people in game than I did during the BFA launch.
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I rolled a human and a gnome. Both areas were substantially crowded.
Swifty couldn’t level in his zone… took him like 2 hours to hit lv5. lol
Completely disagree.
I think it felt about right once you left the starting zone, Still grouped up for quests when it got alittle congested and saw people running around while I was questing.
I agree! The reason we want to play classic is because we are tired of all the Retail WOW conveniences that make I feel like a 1st person game not a MMORPG. I want to learn players names friend or foe. And develop a fun community. To be able to Gain a Reputation on a Server, good or bad rep…
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I think it depended on the realm. On first day when we were all forced to play on either Realm 3 or 15 pvp it was hella crowded. I have played on the other stress test but this time it was way worse with crowd killing mobs just as the spawned. Everyone knew the location of the spawn so they camped it out. BUT after we were allowed to return to our realm of choice, mine was realm 12 pve, it actually was pretty quiet. Even at the end there were only about 10 of us dancing on top of the bank roof in Org. I did see some phasing=layering, but on this realm I really didn’t think it was needed due to the low population on the second day.
With layers it’s quite possible that 2 people on the same server have different experiences because of layering.
One may be in a populated layer while the other is in a dead layer.
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Each server is testing different settings. Tell them this in the feedback page and tell them which server you were on so they can use it to figure out which setting are getting what reaction. That way when it goes live you can have a better experience.
But make sure to share which server you were on because they will have zero clue which setting was causing you this experience otherwise.