TL;DR On busy servers, lack of layering is a major problem in the 15-35 level zones. Hundreds of people are fighting over spawns. It’s basically impossible to finish a quest because mobs are tagged the instant they spawn. The 40%xp buff doesn’t matter if you can’t finish a quest.
While I understand that some servers didn’t get as populated as some, shutting down the layers on busy servers made the game almost unplayable in certain zones today. The decision to un-layer on the first weekend after release seems rather short-sighted.
The vast majority of players (who aren’t speed runners) are between the levels of 15-35 right now, meaning the basic starter leveling zones are completely glutted with players. Between the levels of 14-20, there are basically only 3 zones for alliance - Westfall, Darkshore, and Loch Modan. In Westfall, it was basically impossible to quest. There were hundreds of players, mobs being killed the instant they respawned, giant hordes of people waiting for named quest mobs. The same thing was seen in Darkshore and Loch Modan.
Since its also the first weekend after release, a giant influx of brand new players arrived, making the home starting zones almost as packed as Tuesday. People are camping troggs to get tags at level 2 in Dun Morogh. Since other players have leveled through the week they’re all stuffed into the same higher level zones like Redridge, Wetlands, Ashenvale.
At level 23, I was questing in Ashenvale, historically one of the least populated zones ally side, and for every quest there were at least 4-5 other players working on it. Each named mob had a queue of 3-5 people waiting in line to kill him.
Unless you out leveled the mass herds of people by speed running, or play at 2am, it doesn’t really matter that you get 40% more experience, because every quest takes 50% longer to finish!
During the week, when the layers were active, the world never felt empty. There were always people still around. The population wasn’t a problem. The world still felt lived in, and active. When I was questing in Westfall, there would be 3 or 4 people working on each quest, maybe killing murlocs or getting pwned by pillagers, but they were there. Now? People are unequipping their weapon because fists are faster to get the tags against the 15 other people standing next to them.
I’ve played a lot this past week, excited again to play WoW for the first time in months. I don’t expect zones to be empty, but I’m also not going to waste time waiting 20-30 minutes for respawns for quests, or go off in a corner and grind mobs for 2 hours. I came back specifically because of the 40% increase in XP, which made questing not only viable, but fun again. Before today, questing was smooth as butter, and boy, was I enjoying it. Today hit, and I’m #5 in the queue to kill Ruuzel in Ashenvale.
Server: Obsidian Edge - NA - PVE
*edited for grammatical error