tl;dr
Spawn times (and possibly Vyra/TLPD spawn ratio) are far worse than they were in 2011, and it decreases the likelihood of finding a TLPD by as much as 4 times as it was in 2011. Combined with higher pop realms, this is causing extensive overcrowding at the spawn points.
After layer removal (or reduction from 2 to 1) on Windseeker, this has gotten measurably worse (at server and layer levels).
Summary
I’ve been camping the TLPD for almost 3 months (as I did back in 2011). Missed it by ~5 minutes last night after I miscalculated the time and logged off early. Broke my heart to miss it by 5 minutes after killing Vyragosa 24 times.
In any case, one thing I do in my spare time is crunch numbers. I still have a lot of data from 2011 when I killed the TLPD 7 times in the same period of time, so I started looking at the differences, and it appears that the spawn timers and the chance of TLPD spawning are significantly longer and significantly less now than they were in 2011.
Using approximatively 100 kills from 2011 and 80 kills now, these are the numbers I was seeing BEFORE and AFTER layers were removed. The layers are on their own timers, so this actually worked out to be slightly higher spawn rates - PER SERVER - than in 2011 (as it should be since there were probably more people on the server than there were back then).
This worked when we had layers, but we don’t have layers any longer on Windseeker.
| 2011 | 2 Layers | 1 Layer | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ratio Vyragosa:TLPD | 1:6 | 1:16 | 1:9* |
| Avg Spawn Time | 9:52 | 14:49* | 19:24 |
Note 1: I think the sample size is too small for the ratio calculation, but definitely big enough to isolate average spawn time disparities. I think the ratio is worse than 2011, but mathematically, it’s difficult to be certain since the TLPD is quite rate over 3 months, but Vyra is not.
Note 2: All of the spawn times were calculated on the same layer. It’s clear the layers are isolated by cooldown, but not as clear as the timers - which may be shared.
(ie. Vyra can spawn on one layer, and spawn 20 minutes later on another layer).
As you can see, if you consider 14:49 happens for each layer, the spawn times are similar to 2011 (~7:20). I understand the reasoning, but I think it was a bad choice. Since there are essentially twice as many people, it really should be closer to 10 hours on each layer to be consistent with 2011.
But, that’s not the problem I’m worried about.
Now the problem:
When the layers were removed from Windseeker, the spawn times got measureably worse.
The average over the last 30 kills, is now 19 hours and 24 minutes between spawns.
That is TWICE as bad as it was in 2011. If the ratio is worse now too, then the TLPD is nearly 4 times more difficult to capture now than it was back then.
The shortest cooldown I’ve encountered since the layers were removed was just under 10 hours, but it’s normally closer to 18 to 22 hours.
This is a small sample size (80 spawns total this year and about 100 spawns back in 2011), but I believe it’s a big enough sample to be statistically significant.
What I think happened:
I suspect that spawn times were adjusted to accommodate layers, but they were never readjusted after the layers were removed, and it’s causing an incredible amount of overcrowding.
Also, I think there is also some mechanism that causes spawn times to increase when rares are pruned too quickly Northrend. I don’t really understand the mechanism, nor can I pretend to know this is even an accurate observation.
Yes, I know. It’s a rare spawn. However, I’ve personally killed Vyragosa 24 times, and I haven’t yet seen a living TLPD. I can’t express how disheartening this is.
There is clearly something wrong. I don’t believe this is an anomaly. I’ve camped TLPD almost 6 months in total (3 months now and 3 months in 2011). Not to mention other rare spawns. That’s long enough to flush out most anomalies related to spawn times (although the ratio is still very questionable).
Note: Spawn times were gathered by several people with near 100% coverage of all spawn points 24/7. We miss some, but not many.