Sharding VS Dynamic respawns

Assuming its not a tech issue ie… like sharding may alleviate sever stress…?

Why not have dynamic respawns for the starting zones instead of sharding?

From personal experience (okay yes elysium is hot dog crap and their staff are a bunch o’ douche bags buut) that fresh server that just opened a month ago was fun with dynamic spawns. Thousands of people were in the starting zones but we could all move on at a comfy pace and for the first few days there were tons of people and everything pretty much respawned instantly. You could do your quests in a fair environment with a little extra challenge… it was like a huuuge crazy war. I felt way more immersed in the quests 1-10 I felt like we were the first wave really taking over mulgore after the tauren joined up with the horde 10/10 amazing launch experience. Then everyone left cuz elysium sucks (item shops)… k but thousands of players showed up and had lots of fun with dynamic spawns. Aoe groups were not meta, the spawns were only buffed for like 3 days and in the first two zones.

All this does is give more people the opportunity to level fast. Everyone is still limited by their personal skill and the downtime of their class. We can just all play the game aaaand together because the world isn’t sharded

TLDR: MORE MOBS! NOT LESS PLAYERS!

1 Like

Responses I’m expecting:

  • Danger created by mobs respawning on top of you.
  • Dynamic spawns will ruin the economy.

My arguments:

  • Blizzard can adjust the dynamic spawns to be lower than what was experienced on private servers
  • High generation of items in level 1-10 zones is not going to trash the economy
2 Likes
  1. Its apparently far harder to do dynamic respawns just in certain places. And we don’t need those sorts of mechanics in higher zones.
  2. Blizzard only ever did dynamic respawns once, and it was dialled right down for the TBC launch. They considered it a bad plan and made Wrath have 2 different start zones.
  3. In Classic, you have to eat/drink after every mob. If you have dynamic respawns, you’re going to get attacked by the respawn of the mob you killed before you finish your drink/food.
  4. If you go into a cave with Dynamic Respawns, you have to both fight your way in, AND your way out because its all back before you can get out again.
  5. There are going to be far more than 15k people trying to get on to each and every Classic server. Far, far more if the “lean server” comments are to be believed. Try seeing anything in the valley of trials with 4000 players.
  6. Private Servers aren’t WoW.
1 Like

That would defeat the dynamic respawns and leave us back where we started with not enough mobs.

Then why are you against high population shards? Note, I think the economy argument is a joke, because this only will exist for the first week or so.

  1. I said if its not a tech issue this is more about the spirit of the adventure.
    buuut Its 2019 lets make it happen…

  2. YES TBC LAUNCH that was the best thing ever.
    Its 2019 lets make it happen…

  3. Where the dynamic spawns were present there are enough players to help you if stuff goes wrong ( buffs, heals, someones else takes the mob while you rest) I had a very smooth, fun experience… its 2019 lets make it happen

  4. My group cleared the cave… we got extra xp and greens… You kinda need to socialize and adapt in vanilla… so… It 2019 lets make it happen

  5. LOL its basically a nintendo 64 game… buy a real gaming computer … its 2019 lets make this happen.

  6. That’s right up there with “you think you do but you don’t” - The private server community is MORE in touch with the spirit of the game
    We are basically saving you guys from another BFA… but “private servers arn’t wow xD”

3 Likes

Given the attitudes presented by people purporting to be Private Server experts, and the fact that almost every one of those attitudes has been smacked down by Blizzard’s choices… I think not.

Dynamic respawns present a far worse launch experience than high population sharding.

They are making classic and BFA is failing. I would say the Private(now classic community) IS at the heart of wow now…

that sounds interesting who, what attitudes and which of blizzards choices =D?

It’s okay to just say “I think dynamic spawns are geh” but do you have a reason why the experience will be worse or?

If its a better experience I’ll concede. All I’m saying is I’ve tried retail sharding and private server dynamic spawns and one was waay more fun so we should hash it out. = D

Edit: people whined about loot trading and they changed that to only raids

2 Likes

I’m still a fan of just letting the world consume itself at launch. I think of all the wonderfully horrible things I can do… please… open launch, no sharding, no spawn changes, just chaos. Thank you!

I did actually list them in my initial post. Not liking the response doesn’t invalidate it.

1 Like

I think they should lets us do a balls to the wall stress test beta and then host a community discussion to address if sharding is really the best course of action… : p

No changes. “Warts and all.”

3 Likes

I liked your response… you brought up some good points like;
we don’t need dynamic spawns in high level zones

but this is kind of an open forum for debating wow and no hard feels but I think you’re wrong about a lot of stuff…

for example I think if you ask most people they will say the TBC launch was more epic and in the spirit of “what WoW is” than other xpac launch. It’s exactly the kind of thing that should be thought about when recreating classic wow.

In wotlk blizzard had this logic about dynamic respawns but honestly I think they had the most terrible ideas in wrath so shouldn’t we be going in the opposite direction? Maybe not using game design logic from wrath about how the game should be played to influence classic which is the antithesis to those ideas…

Blizzard has done dynamic respawns in the past. I recall them at the quest hubs for some of the pre-expansion quests in years past.

Sometimes, Blizzard made the respawns instant. And back then respawns aggro’d and attacked the instant they spawned. It’s not like Retail where respawns stay inactive unless attacked for 15 seconds or so.

The instant respawns were rather comical and a bit frustrating. You’d kill a mob and the second it died, it would respawn at full health and attack. Kill the second and the process would repeat. There wasn’t even time to loot the bodies for quest items.

It also heavily favored classes with fast instant casts like druids, hunters and mages. Classes without fast casts were pretty much unable to tag anything and had to hope they could find a group.

I leveled a warrior on a FRESH dynamic spawn server it was fun just play smart.

Auto attack one mob two or three times to extend the leash. Run away to safe spot to eat/drink. If you have 1 mob aggroed kill it, rest, and repeat. If you agrroed more stuff that few extra feet of aggro leash will let you keep your main mob while running and resetting combat on the others( buut its highly likely someone will help you if you don’t tag)

Dynamic respawns at 60 for a tbc launch would favor instant cast classes like you say but in vanilla at level 1 no one has any spells and everyone pretty much is forced to melee. If anything it’ll help warriors and paladins a tiiiiiny bit… which no one will notice or care about… because it will only mean more tanks for rfc, wc and vc day one

I’d much rather dynamic spawns than sharding, just turn the spawn rate up a little.

yes because private servers are notorious for their accuracy…

oh wait.

3 Likes

Factually speaking there is evidence to suggest that private servers are actually overtuned (due to a ton of extra armor that was guessed) and raids on nost, kronos and elysium are actually much harder than what vanilla was.

blizzard has said 1.13 will not be 100% “accurate” to what vanilla was because they have to guess and arbitrarily decide lots of things based on what looks/feels good to play. Private servers are what inspired classic… so a discussion about what worked well on private servers is entirely relevant.

Again, the private server community (more specifically the vanilla 1x blizz like nostaltrius mofos who gave birth to what classic is) is MORE in touch with the spirit of the game.

There are three camps of people
1 Private server classic fanboys: Maybe we have been playing a game 90% true to vanilla but its been 10 years

2 People who remember vanilla: even if your memory is of the 100% perfect thing its still old memory

3: trolls and catakids: their opinions are worthless

By this logic… the people who have been playing classic blizzlike pservers (the private server community) technically are the most engaged with “the spirit of the game”

Does this make everyone who says they played on a Pserver an expert? no?
Am I am expert on vanilla? F no. Buuuut the ideas that come from private server players are waaaaaaaaay more valuable than people who offer nothing except “pfft private servers, they have bugs… thats not true wow” I’m not saying blizzard should run classic on a f#%ing mangos core with broken pathing… I’m trying to run an organized discussion about the pros and cons of sharding and dynamic spawns.

I would love to try and include you but you’re offering nothing to the discussion : \ do you have an opinion other than “private servers have flaws”?

3 Likes

You seem to think dynamic spawns are either “on” or they’re “off”, it doesn’t work that way.

  1. Are you saying “high population shards” as in shards that contain a high population in each, or that sharding takes effect during high population?

  2. Did I say I’m against shards? I don’t recall.

The concept of dialling down respawns so that people aren’t being attacked while drinking, would preclude the usefulness of the dynamic respawns in the first place.

Shards with a minimum of 200 players, maximum 500. Splitting at 400, reforming when the total of two shards drops below 300.

So where was it discussed how many players would exist inside of each shard? That’s my first question. I can’t yet form an opinion on a sharding situation if this is the first time I’m hearing of its specific details.