I'm concerned about lag during large-scale world PvP

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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There’s a thread on Reddit which links to a bunch of clips that make me wonder if the old world PvP battles will even be possible in Classic.

https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/blcyn0/stress_testing_the_servers/

In this thread there are videos linked where the game is actually literally unplayable with 40 vs 40 combat. There was also a link to a private server doing PvP just fine with equal-ish numbers, but I won’t link it here since Blizzard probably wouldn’t want me to.

You can go to the Reddit thread to see them, but I’ll copy-paste two of 'em below if you don’t wanna go there. Some of the discussion revolves around people thinking Blizzard is skimping on servers due to sharding, but as we all know, we definitely don’t want sharding…at least beyond the starting week/zone.

So here are the videos of lag happening:

40v40 rogues in AV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDXtut0fDmI

Asmongold raid on Orgrimmar (I don’t care if you don’t like him, this is just an example.)
https://youtu.be/rAlTrPySgtQ?t=632

Even if lag is understandable, the degree it’s shown in these clips worries me. If even retail can’t handle it, how will the ‘museum’ servers cope?

I don’t remember lag like this in Legion (last exp I played) but I also never did raids like this; closest I got was a world boss right after hitting 110, and even then the lag only paused me for…3-5~ seconds at a time (IIRC.)

As for vanilla/TBC lag, I’m pretty sure their servers were really old…and even then, I remember them working better, but my memory is hazy.

If a blue or a knowledgeable community member can allay my worries, I’d very much appreciate it.

Thanks.

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Yep. We’re all politely assuming they’re ready for old-fashioned server load when a couple hundred players all start fighting in Thrall’s room.

Either they pony up the cash to make it work, or there’s no Classic for me.
Edit: By pony up the cash, I mean several hundred extra dollars per server.

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We actually just had a thread with a lot of information that touches on this subject by explaining why modern servers are as laggy as they are, and whats different about classic and the strain it will have on servers.

TLDR however is. Don’t worry too much. Old classic will handle large amounts of players in areas better than retail due to a few technical reasons.

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I’m really hoping it’s better due to the size of the world being smaller and things being less complex, but I’m Jon Snow so far as tech stuff goes.

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Spell batching should make it so 40vs40 fights are quite smooth.

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There won’t be much PvP, if at all, once WSG and AB launch.

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I’m the same way when it comes to tech but I’d imagine it’d be less stressful on the servers the same way jumping rope would be less stressful if you take the 100lb weight off.

The 100lb weight in retail being all the extra spell effects,particles,laser light shows etc…

Or lets hope so atleast

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TM v. SS will be the defining factor in testing how robust our servers will be.
Hell the Retail verson of the TM/SS Battleground doesnt run well. AND THATS AN INSTANCED 40v40.

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In Classic it doesn’t even need to be PVP. How about 120+ players all headed to Blackrock Mountain at server prime time to raid.

Definitely something that we all hope works properly.

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  • That’s not Classic.
  • It uses CRZ.
  • It uses sharding.
  • It has far more spell effects.

We’ll see.

Also, note Asmongold’s raid was 200ish people. But that’s only one side. The other side was an entire city and the game started to lag because the Horde were all piling on into Silvermoon City because someone had seen the stream. Who knows how many hundred people were there.

throws line
slowly rolls reel in
bait is gone, hook is empty

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snerk

The spell batching is designed to make the fights more choppy in terms of spells. :smiley:

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He says at a certain point in the video “I made this raid smaller than the last one specifically to avoid this.”

Well that’s what the entire discussion is about.

You saying I eat fish food???

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Oh, I was talking about his first one on Silvermoon where he bought 200 people. The one that wasn’t smaller. The Orgrimmar one is likely the same effect, because while he has 40 people, Orgrimmar is one zone with hundreds of people in it and no need to summon them to Silvermoon.

Retail and Classic will have different profiles on where their pain points are, because of the list of things that Classic won’t have, that I listed. The videos and examples are all from Retail, not Classic.

No, I’m saying your bait is not high enough level for Blue bites.

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I’m of the utmost confidence Blizzard’s servers are more capable than any private server. Especially today.

That being said, in my time with Retail I haven’t seen a large group out in the world in years, so who knows.

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Better computers, better infrastructure, better internet.

I dont know, but it SHOULD be better than it was before.

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I would not worry a lot about that because Modern WoW calculates a lot more data than Classic.

This is a fundamental problem of Modern WoW class design where everything has some sort of AE mechanic, be that by means of a buff, or outgoing damage or a DoT, debuff of some sort or whatever.

As a result the actions performed per character (not the player) is drastically higher per minute than a like type Classic WoW character.

Why is this so? Because in Classic WoW your spells and abilities typically do 1 or maybe 2 things…

Now couple that 1 or maybe 2 things with the fact that you’re also executing abilities at a slower pace due to how resource mechanics work in Classic; this I hope explains why Modern WoW has a lot of problems regarding large scale PVP.

Large scale PVP should actually work better on the Modern server structure than it did in actual Vanilla.

My ONLY area of concern is with how responsive the servers will be regarding execution of abilities. This is something where the modern WoW experience while higher in resolution feels rubbery and less crisp. This is kinda strange problem given that Vanilla had a 400ms batch cycle and Modern WoW has a much tighter multi cycle rate.

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LOL. You sit out vanilla the first time around I see?

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Get a better computer.

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Well, i did plenty of world pvp during the times of Tarren Mill vs Southshore and i rarely ever lagged, i don’t know how, it just worked. I don’t know what changed, if it’s a hardware issue or what but they really need to work on that.

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It wasn’t too bad at the time and I was still on dialup to boot. The game will be running the modern client but it’ll be rendering the same stuff it was rendering in 2005.

Things might get crazy and you’ll lag sometimes, but it shouldn’t be anything you can’t handle.