There is a difference between a slow and steady pace and standing around spamming an attack so you can be the first to tag a mob for 30 minutes for each of the 5 or so kill quests in the starting area. Teaming up made it suck less, but no one could type because they were busy trying to tab mobs so there was no community to build there. That kind of experience wasn’t what I had back in 2005 when I first started playing.
That wouldn’t be whining since it’s a reasonable criticism.
I agree, there definitely is a difference in that. The initial massive wave of people, most of which are going to try to quest, are besides grouping mostly going to look out for themselves so they can get on with questing. I think what’s important to keep in mind though, is that the gameplay will be much smoother than it was able to be back then. There is a 15 year difference of tech advancements here, and Blizzard stated they can handle a LOT of players nowadays.
Even the new version of sharding, layering, is not without consequences. You’ll still have an entire server population (~3k) per layer from the start, so there will still be hefty competition. There’ll still be queues.
And then there are the consequences of it as it unfolds it’s weaknesses throughout the first weeks or months, many of which will feel very familiar with what we see with sharding/CRZ today.
It will alter the way you see and experience interaction in the world, the community, the economy, PvP…very important parts of classic. And there is also a potential server split by P2 if classic is very successfull, as it looks to be, and isn’t able to collapse the layers down into one healthy server population. What then?
Nothing is without consequences. I know which approach i’d prefer.
Actually it was since we now know that dynamic spawn code was in vanilla but not used.
When I first played Vanilla back in 2005 I didn’t have to wait on mobs spawns in the first zone for 2-3 minutes for each mob or 90 minutes for the first three kill quests. Crowding was not an issue with starting zones back in Vanilla and no one I grouped with said anything because they were too busy trying to tag mobs so they could move on to the next quest.
There are going to be some things inevitably different simply due to the massive crowd that’s gonna crash in on Classic Day 1 compared to back then in Vanilla, where as you described, there were no crowding issues.
The amount of hype building for it is definitely going to make for a crowded experience, something you are not going to be able to avoid, regardless of the new sharding/layering tech. It will still put you in a layer worth 3k people from the start. Either way, things will get busy in those areas, no matter what.
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There’s no way you waiting 1.5 hours to get your first kill quest done.
The server kept crashing every 1/2 hour with rollbacks ![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
I didn’t say 90 minutes for the first kill quest I said:
Purjery…that was a joke. Notice I posted that the server was crashing every 30 minutes back then ?
There’s no way of knowing how long the crowding will last either it could be a few days or it could gradually build for months.
Some people believe server community is far more important than any stability issues, and would rather be disconnected from time to time or have the server just go down entirely, than see sharding implemented heavily.
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Noticed I said:
I was talking about the stress test recently where it took me 90 boring minutes to finish the first three kill quests. I wasn’t talking about it taking that long back in Vanilla I was saying how less crowded it was back then.
Oh…sorry then…I must have missed context somewhere.
Some people didn’t experience the stress test which was worse than being able to kill mobs at a reasonable pace and then getting disconnected. It would have been faster getting disconnected. There was no community during the stress test since everyone was trying to tag mobs even in the two groups I was in no one responded to anything I said: “how many more do you have left” went unanswered and no one said “i’m done, but I’ll stay to help you get yours” or “thanks for the group”. When people got their number of kills they went to turn in the quest without asking how many kills everyone else had left and offering to keep helping. There was no community due to the crowding.
It’s all good, brother!
A stress test is absolutely 0% like a simulation of an actual server community, I don’t understand how any of that is relevant lol
This was literally trying to overcrowd, for a stresstest…
Look I get that too much server instability is a bad thing, that it can get in the way of having a server community, as described here. But it seems Blizzard’s terminology when it comes to stability is to prevent it at all costs, and I’m trying to say it’s not that black and white. Sharding is so bad to a lot of people, occasional disconnects aren’t as big as a problem for them as Blizzard thinks it is.
Blizzard finding that sweet spot, using absolutely minimal sharding, will be tough, I don’t envy them. I’m not saying Bliz should put in so much sharding that’s it’s 100% stable, I’m also not saying they should ignore sharding completely to the point it’s unplayable.
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Amen!
Because the real challenge to stay engaged in WoW will be at level 60. Anyone remembers “raid or die”? THIS IS IT. Of course there were BG’s and plenty of people will be engaged in that, but once you hit level 60 back then that was truly the end of the line. PvP would either be the saving grace or damning disgrace.
I can’t agree more. Waiting minutes for respawns only to have them tagged by other players really sucked. Forming groups too busy to be social only made it suck slightly less.
What makes you think the servers won’t be that crowded? I don’t know if servers can be overcrowded without going well out of classic spec any more.
How is Sharding bad? Disconnects aren’t the problem. One hundred players fighting over the same 12 mobs spawns is the problem. It took me 90 minutes to get past the first three kill quests and it was tedious. When I joined groups no one wanted to chat because they were too busy trying to tag mobs and move on to the next quest.
Can you explain how a stress test isn’t a good use of time? I ask because if Blizz/Activision/EA/Bethesda need a developer, it sounds like you should work for each company since you know how the infrastructure works.
Again, in what way will having sharding/layering get in the way of a community? If 3,000 people zone into Westfall AT THE SAME TIME but you only see 1,000 per layer, how is that a diminish on the community? Why do you NEED to see all 3k people to make your questing better?
As long as the sharding goes away after a couple of weeks, everything will work out. Now, if after a couple of months it’s still in and the population hasn’t grown (or even diminished) then the player base should (and probably would) whine. Until then, I will gladly take sharding for the Classic launch. If that reduces the amount of time I have to wait for quest mobs to respawn all the better.