Our next WoW Classic stress test is getting underway tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. PDT. Here’s some additional information to help you make the most of it.
Desktop App Update
Earlier today, we updated the Blizzard Battle.net Desktop App on the World of Warcraft game screen. It’s now easier to select the version of the game you want to play. Now, when you look in the Live section of the Version dropdown, you should now see an additional option for World of Warcraft Classic . If you have multiple accounts for your selected version, you’ll see a second dropdown with your accounts listed to choose among.
In order to participate promptly in the stress test tomorrow, please make sure you install the game in advance by selecting World of Warcraft Classic from your Live accounts list.
Realm Differences
During tomorrow’s stress test, we plan to experiment with different settings that control the population of players. We plan for it to be a blind test, so we don’t intend to publicize which realms have which settings (or when).
We’d love to hear your feedback on your experience from level 1-15 on whichever realm you choose to test. Was it too crowded, even for a launch day experience? Did it feel too empty or too crowded after you moved to the second zone? We’ll have a dedicated feedback thread for you here in this forum tomorrow, once the stress test has begun. Please give us details about your experience when you submit feedback to that thread, especially which realm you tested.
Does this mean that you will be removing the server type info so that we do not know which servers we are playing on and if they’re PvP or RP etc., beforehand?
At launch when there are 10,000 players on one server in the starter zones, they will have maybe 50 different layers of 200 players each, then as people spread to the next zones, they will increase the layer cap to say 1,000 each and the layer count will drop from say 50 to 10. So, when he says let them know if zones feel too crowded/dead, I think they will be playing around with automated layer creation/merging when players are not clustered in one zone. One zone cannot handle thousands of players, but a continent can.
No, he means that they will use different layer cap counts and vary it based on players spreading to other zones and gradually increase it. They are looking to see what the good balance is for the initial launch’s layer cap. For example, Server 1 could be 100 per layer, Server 2 could be 200 per layer, Server 3 could be 300 per layer, etc. and maybe they might have a server with no cap or a server with layering turned off.
I know but many people noticed that the servers were assigned as PvE, PvP or RP, albeit in the offline list, and now they’re saying it will be ‘blind’ as to settings, so I’m asking the question. As Brokewind raises, it might be their intention to see how popular the server type is (and thus should perhaps include RPPvP) as well as testing the other stuff, for example it might tell them that PvP realms are twice as popular, or not, but the ‘blind’ comment confused me. So they can get some idea of what server type will be most popular at launch.
![:blush:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/blush.png?v=6" ":blush:")