Starting Bottleneck is almost unplayable :(

[Renthelm-durotan]

at 50, never pass a bathroom
at 60, never trust a fart.

[Heidene-kelthuzad]

And i’ll be there cuing “Rains of Castamere” when they do, as players will go back to the “wait what, SHARDING!?!?!??! INAUTHENTIC AF WHAT THE HELL!! how dare you betray us ?!? #NOCHANGES GUYS !!!” mentality, and laugh at how well Blizzard all this time made people believe or confuse them about how layering is so different to sharding.

Although i want neither sharding nor layering as a feature anywhere near Classic, especially not during the first weeks/months, regardless of the consequences.

Either let Classic be like Vanilla (the game), or don’t. I’ll be there laughing and crying inside, when people find out they waited so long to get to play the game from scratch only to get screwed over by big shar…ahem, i mean, layering and storm the forums. The reaction to that will be interesting for sure, but not fun at all for anyone involved. I hope i’m wrong.

[Valkryii-shadow-council]

Are you a moron? There were more servers during vanilla launch. People spread out. If they logged on one and had a tough time doing starting quests they would re-roll on another server until they found one with low enough population that they could do it. That server became their home.

#nochanges

[Threemini-staghelm]

I look forward to Classic launch day and getting frustrated fighting for mob tags.

This.

There is no way… and I mean NO way, to deal with this issue. There is going to be more people playing than Vanilla settings can handle.

Layering is being used to split up people into "multiverses’ of the same server in order to deal with long login queues and place about 3000 people per layer pairs.

At launch Vanilla had approximately 300,000 players that could potentially log on. That is all the hard copies of the game that were created and sold.

There will be many times that this time around. How many? 3 million? 5 million? We will find out soon enough… but a LOT more than 300,000.

Having participated in a “fresh start private server launch”… It was a blast… yeah it sucked fighting so hard for tags… but it sucked for everyone.

Then you had those people that left the starting areas to party up for higher level mobs… and those that did the exploration leveling technique.

Those that stay online longer will eventually get ahead of those that give up and go to bed. In a day or so tings will naturally spread out.

Launch night is going to suck and there is NOTHING you can do to avoid it except maybe the exploration technique.

[Bellerophonn-dalaran]

I just plan to log in a couple hours after servers open. No rush, no fuss

[Rònswanson-bleeding-hollow]

sounds like a 100% authentic vanilla WoW experience to me

[Swiftshape-boulderfist]

it’s not, never were there 1000 players, or even 500 in a starting zone at any launch.

[Primalmatter-stormrage (Primalmatter)]

If you are going to start playing the moment release hits my advice would be to grab a warr and some brand of healer and just grind mobs till you can hide in deadmines.

[Siç-malganis]

Layering, You think you do, but you dont!

@Siç-malganis

Some key points about layering, you choose if good or bad for the authentic Vanilla experience. :

1. When you come to a new questing zone and you see the opposing faction making life hard, change layers and continue a long your journey.
2. When farming materials and there are none to be found , change layers and continue a long your journey.
3. When hunting chests, rare spawns etc, HOP LAYERS AND CONTINUE a long your journey.
4. When getting camped because you are a noob, HOP LAYERS, and continue a long your journey.
5. When big world events happen, many layers will be dead. Some might not want to participate in this or might not be in the know and are thus forced to be on a dead layer.
6. When general chat or world chat is going on about alliance coming to org to defeat Thrall and you want in on the fun only to find out when you run there it was all a joke because there is NO ONE AROUND. Oh wait ! INVITE ME TO RAID LAYER!!.. again ZERO immersion. I should be able to LEERROOY into the fight and not ask for an invite to a specific layer.
7. I have seen this on a stream. When you are solo questing and you finally get to the named mob that you have been working towards for what seems like for ever, only to see someone else who is there that needs help too. You party up and the mob VANISHES. “layering”
8. A smooth launch with higher than expected server populations due to the real popularity of Vanilla wow. Causing layering to not go away or for there to be super long ques to log on and or forced server transfers.
9. When the known bridge ganker is doing their normal stuff, change layers and avoid him…
10. When your friend is getting ganked but you are already in a group but are near by and decide to help. Only to find out they are in another layer. “immersion”
11. When the new meta is having layer spies to know where your rival opposing faction guild is at so you can avoid the raid fights entering raids… “immersion”
12. Layer hoping to to get world buffs vs just being in town and getting them. Again “immersion” I would assume this can be stomped out by just making any dropped world buffs go through every layer regardless which layer it was dropped on. But probably has not been thought of.
13. Did I say smooth launch? Cuz I mean, smooth launch amiright?
14. What happens when you think you do, but you don’t backfires in your face and you are stuck with servers that have over 10k active daily players? force 5+k ques and wait for people to log off or force whole ream transfers? Because you promised to remove layering and these are your only two options to avoid changing the core code to help that over population, spawns, nodes, etc.

I have made many edits adding to this, I might add more but this seems to be good enough to make a point.

15. Screw it ! When a big event happens and the majority of the server hops to one layer, How does this get fixed? Through logging? What if no one logs for 8 hours? Many are screwed and forced to play on dead layers?

[Swiftshape-boulderfist]

Interesting post.

And yes, OP the bottleneck was quite awful

[Rònswanson-bleeding-hollow]

yeah, my server had 0 people on the first few days of launch because the overcrowding in a few zones killed the whole server

[Jaxx-boulderfist]

Truth or sarcasm?

[Swiftshape-boulderfist]

The bottlenecks were there for stress test 1, and 2. And now the beta 30-40. IT has forced a lot of people into SM rather than compete for quest mobs because everything is packed.

[Swíft-boulderfist]

The bottleneck questing problem is even extending out past starting zones and creating an entirely new meta on the beta, which is forcing people to grind mobs and dungeons. It’s impacting the vanilla feel and experience.

This seems to be getting more grim.

[Prufinnor-wyrmrest-accord]

Don’t be ridiculous. People are grinding dungeons because they are at level cap and have nothing better to do.

[Kreggar-gorefiend]

Perhaps it’s just me but on the stress test, even at the beginning I didn’t have many problems. I had to resort to grinding over questing but I still was one of first level 10s on the server (even Esfand thought I was fast xD)

[Haldargh-wyrmrest-accord (Haldargh)]

They’re grinding dungeons because it’s more efficient and lucrative than leveling but you must have skilled players with good gear.

Some streamers may be grinding dungeons to avoid PvP.

[Prufinnor-wyrmrest-accord]

Holy crap, a streamer took note of you?

[Swiftshape-boulderfist]

But what about the bottleneck? It seems many people have noticed this too. It will drive people away who could have become members of the community.

[Renthelm-durotan]

This beta is bizarre and not the real thing. There will be no bottleneck after day one or two because the population will be spread out. The beta had everyone at 30 for weeks and then they all come out of the shoot again to get to 40. That is not how it will be when it goes live.