Update on the Battle for Ashenvale and Layers - 12/14/2023

[Shalanoth-sargeras]

If Blizzard insists the event should be this rare, we need permanent PvP “magnet” objectives in between events. Something that draws both Horde and Alliance towards the same handful of areas in Ashenvale so that PvP can more reliably be found between events. Maybe that could help offset the longer grind required, even, by concentrating players and generating more HKs.

[Biggarry-area-52]

cool
not to bad well see how it goes

[Badrog-chaos-bolt]

No and then!

Did you even read my posts? Reading comprehension is your friend.

Just because it’s happening in the world, doesn’t make it a good representation of the essence of what people (at least myself anyways) enjoy about world pvp.

You can’t just slap AV in the middle of a zone and expect that to be functional game design. It didn’t work for Wintergrasp, that event was trash. It didn’t work for Ashran, that event was trash. It isn’t a good concept. Heck, AV in it’s current state is trash, cause it’s not even about PvP it’s about racing to the end and grinding honor/rep.
Nobody does it cause it’s fun. People do it to get their level 60 purple weap and the mount.

You know what was really fun world PvP? Ashenvale without any events. Stranglethorn is super fun. Un Goro… Tanaris… pretty much all of the heavy traffic contested zones are freaking awesome.

Heck – The Timeless Isles was a better world PvP experience than any of these ‘events’ cause you could kill your own faction. The gurubashi arena is a better world PvP event.

World PvP isn’t about joining a raid and sweeping the land like some kind of mongolian horde to rid the world of the other faction. All that does is make them not want to play anymore. The game servers can’t even handle all the inputs. It’s literally a laggy train wreck when too many people are fighting. You can’t even tell what is going on. There isn’t even any real pvp going on. It’s just a swathe of ranged attacks hoping to catch someone out of position so they die until someone at the 7th grade dance party works up the balls to be the first wave of casualties and the raids clash – which again… is so laggy that there is like a 10 second delay from when you push a button and then teleport somewhere else cause you’ve been fist of the north star’d for 9 seconds and you’re already dead.

It’s not fun, even when you’re winning it isn’t fun. The only time those raids are actually enjoyable is when there is some kind of personal beef involved, that can’t be established simply by starting some event. These things start small and then grow into big guild wars – and then they’re kinda cool cause there are some stakes involved – reputations on the line.

Big world pvp raids are the kinda thing that look neat on a stream or in a commercial but they actively suck to fight in… and incentivizing people to do it in a game that a.) can’t handle it and b.) isn’t balanced for it makes absolutely no sense imo. Especially at the cost of ruining one of the better world pvp zones that would normally be tons of fun but isn’t because of the event.

[Pathological-mankrik]

This is one of the worst events in WoW’s history…

[Dezertpower-sargeras]

The fact you can’t do it, is worse than all the bugs combined.

[Zuglee-illidan]

The solution in my opinion is leave the old layer system and just force layer anybody not in a raid or group to a more empty layer. There was always tons of people AFK in town and that could easily help the layer not crash and support more people, as well as people questing or pve’ing not worried about the event.

[Shockterpepr-living-flame]

It’s alliance. I can’t even make alliance on any of the PvP servers. On my server there was only one layer that was winning on Horde every time. And we lost last night lol

[Kazghani-wyrmrest-accord]

@Shockterpepr-living-flame

It’s alliance.

Trust me, I know as a horde player in SoD. I’m 100% sure this video was made because Aggrend confused his foot for a sandwich on Twitter when he said Horde was just bad at organizing. That’s why they put in total PvP kills in Ashenvale, but no win ratios or actual attendance numbers. I also don’t think they realized that a larger Alliance population would result in more Alliance deaths in PvP just because there are a LOT more Alliance players. I mean if you have a bowl of trail mix, people are going to eat more peanuts than M&Ms.

[Veryuglydude-mankrik]

@Aggrend-1483

Greetings,

Sometimes in game development you find yourselves in situations where things don’t go according to the design or plan you have in mind. In the past when we’ve hit such situations, we’ve done our best to remain transparent and take some time to explain what our intent was, what went awry, and what our next steps are. We’d very much like to carry that forward with Season of Discovery, where it’s especially important to be open and honest. Season of Discovery is, by its nature, highly experimental and we were bound to hit some snags along the way but we think it’s a best practice to simply explain what happened and learn from it.

So, we are going to really dig in deep into what has been happening with the Battle for Ashenvale, but word of warning, this is going to be an extremely long, extremely dense post. I’ll be taking time to explain all of the major systems at play so if you aren’t in for the technical details, you may want to skip to the end for info on what exactly we are doing now.

The Intent

The intent of the Battle for Ashenvale was fairly simple; use a fairly compelling carrot on a stick (Warsong Gulch reputation and a mount) to get people into Ashenvale so they could fight. In that respect, it was a success. As Ashenvale is a hotly contested zone that houses several quest hubs as well as our “end-game” raid for the level 25 level band, some conflict was assured here, but we really wanted Ashenvale to be a non-stop hotbed for PvP. The event itself has a decidedly PvE slant, which is fine, but in the lead up to and aftermath of each battle, there is essentially non-stop PvP at all times throughout the zone and we couldn’t be more pleased by how that aspect of this has played out.

How The Battle for Ashenvale works under the hood

Looking at the Battle itself though, it might help to prime the rest of this post with a look at how it functions under the hood.

• The Battle for Ashenvale cycle starts with a lead-up phase.
• During this lead-up, there is a counter that runs behind the scenes and adds up how many PvP and PvE kills occur in the zone.
• When the counter reaches a certain number, the battle begins.
• This is represented on-screen with a percentage counter UI element in the top-middle of your HUD.
• This element is replaced with an objective tracker showing the progress of the battle when it starts.
• Once the battle begins 3 Lieutenants spawn for each faction at various points on the map; Keepers of the Grove for the Alliance, and Blademasters for the Horde, as well as a general for each faction. For Horde this is a Farseer, for Alliance this is a Priestess of the Moon, and they are both invulnerable and do massive damage until all of their lieutenants are killed.
  The objectives are simply to kill the opposing lieutenants and then kill the enemy general. Once this is done, the battle ends and you return to the lead-up phase and the cycle repeats.

What Went Wrong

On a realm with a single layer, there are very few points of failure with this system. We had a few minor issues in the very early days of Season of Discovery with the base functionality of this system and for the most part those were quickly resolved. The issues we are seeing now are the result of a conflict between multiple different systems that are meant to load balance server populations as well as unintended interactions between some fixes we made earlier this week with the battle.

To help organize let’s break these issues down into the main symptoms and then we’ll dive into the root causes:

1. Being removed from your current layer mid-battle.
2. Progress Counter Resetting back to 0 or low numbers during the lead-up phase.
3. Battles becoming stalled and the objective tracker stops responding.

Being removed from your current layer mid-battle

Layering is a system that we’ve had in place since the launch of WoW Classic in 2019 to allow many times more players onto a single realm than would otherwise be permissible without severe performance degradation. Layering essentially creates fully featured copies of the entirety of Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. The number of layers on a realm depends on the peak number of players logged in recently. Historically, when realms start up during weekly maintenance we start with a nominal number of layers—generally only a few. As we move closer to peak play times in your region however, additional layers would spin up dynamically as more and more people log in and existing layers fill.

The layer manager is a system that controls layers, spins them up as needed, and decides which layer players logging in will be assigned to. The layer manager will try not to move you to a new layer unless certain thresholds are crossed. In normal times outside of major events and launch windows, this almost never happens.

When the world begins to fill on an individual layer and that layer begins reaching a critical mass however, the system may at times try to load balance the population on that individual layer to an existing layer or a brand new layer if all others are full, which at times means moving people onto a relatively empty layer. The layer manager system does have some safeguards to prevent you from too many jarring layering incidents, such as preferring NOT to move people that are in a group with each other, or that are in combat. Ideally, what will happen when a group is formed is that a re-evaluation will happen when people leave and join, and the layer manager will attempt to get everyone onto the same layer and keep them there until they all log out.

The snag we run into with the Battle of Ashenvale however, is that often times a great many people are joining groups, often times using external tools like discord to coordinate. When a player leader organizes several full raids to all congregate on one layer, that layer may hit a threshold and start trying to not add more people to that layer. For a time it will continue to allow more people to join to not break up groups, but there is a point when it reaches its absolute maximum and on the next evaluation the manager will forcibly move people off of the layer to balance the load and prevent a crash or other severe performance drops. This means that even players that were grouped and would normally be protected from being moved because they are grouped may also be moved as an emergency measure. This has been one cause for players unceremoniously being booted to a different layer; the layer simply got too full and stopped caring whether you were grouped or in combat or not.

Going back to what I said a moment ago about layers spinning up as we move into peak time, one key detail is that in the past, layers would never spin down or “retire” unless we restarted the realms completely. This means that at peak times, there may be 5, 6, 7 or even 10 (or more) layers going at once on the largest realms. At off-peak times however there would still be that same high number of layers and several days after weekly restarts, there would be so many layers going that late at night or early morning the world would feel very empty. This means even if several thousand people—what would normally be a “large” realm in earlier versions of WoW—are logged in at 8:00 AM but there are 10 layers going from the previous day’s peak, each layer only has several hundred people (when it could handle several thousand) and it could feel pretty lonely.
For Season of Discovery, we decided to try something new and allow layers to automatically retire when populations dropped to “collapse” the number of total layers and make the world feel more active and lively at all hours of the day and night. We hoped to avoid those “dead” periods where the realm felt more empty than it actually was.

The unfortunate side effect of this is that every time we would retire a layer, it would suddenly cause players to change layers as the layer manager re-balanced and redistributed folks. We’ve never engaged this system before because we knew this would feel jarring, and in a game mode like Hardcore for example, being unexpectedly moved to a new layer when yours is retired could be deadly! But, like many other aspects of Season of Discovery, this was a risk we consciously took to see if we could improve the experience for those that prefer to play at off-peak times.

As you’ve likely deduced buy now, both of these extremes; too many and too few people attempting to play could cause players to suddenly be moved. This included people in groups, people trying to join groups, as well as people actively engaged in battle in Ashenvale.

As of yesterday, we have already made a change that should cause the layer manager to try harder to prevent players from layering if they are a) in a group, and b) in combat. This is not to say it will never happen. When a layer reaches a certain level, we have to split people up or it will crash. That is unfortunate but currently it’s unavoidable.

The next change we are about to make starting tomorrow is to stop retiring layers when the population dips down during offpeak. This means that you won’t be suddenly moved because your layer is being retired, but it also does mean that if you are playing very late at night or early in the morning, the world may feel sparsely populated.

Progress resetting during the ramp-up period

The next major issue involves the ramp-up period percentage counter suddenly dropping from a high percentage to a low one. The cause for this is simple; the progress tracker represents an aggregate of progress across every participating layer. This means that when you finish a battle and start making progress and other layers also finish their battles (or new layers spin up), they all join the “pool” of layers contributing to the total percentage progress.

So, if your battle ends and your layer managed to get back to to 20% towards the next battle, and then another layer entered the ramp-up phase, they would start at 0% which would drop the total progress across all layers down several percentage points as the “pool” and thus the total required number of kills just got larger. This was technically intended behavior, but it was very confusing. You’d be questing, pvping, or gathering in Ashenvale when you’d see the counter go from 70 or 80 percent suddenly down to 20 or 30 percent as other layers had their battles wrap up and they jumped into the pool.

The original intent of this was to make it so that all battles started at the same time across every layer on a realm. This was to try and prevent players from hopping layer to layer to attempt to do the event multiple times back-to-back and place additional load on the layer manager. While that was somewhat successful, the trade off was just too much confusion as the most diligent layers who finished their battle early would see their progress drop potentially multiple times during the following ramp-up phase.

To help with this, we made an adjustment yesterday to never allow the aggregated progress % to drop. New layers who joined the pool of layers that were in the ramp-up phase would just have their total progress updated to match whatever current % progress value is displayed. In a vacuum this change makes sense and seems like it would help prevent that confusion, but this is really the change that led to the most pronounced issues.

Battles becoming stalled and objective trackers not responding.

The change mentioned above created a situation where multiple layers could finish their battle, enter ramp-up again and start making progress very rapidly towards their next battle. However if one or more layers did not finish their battle before the other layers in the ramp-up period finished said ramp up period, it would cause any in-progress battles on that realm that were lagging behind to completely break. This is because the system that controls when a new battle starts would see that the ramp-up was finished and send the signal to all layers to start a new battle, including those with a battle already in progress.

In addition to breaking any in-progress battle this would likely also cause some layers on your realm to enter a veritable death-loop of never being able to finish a battle before a new one started, breaking their current battle all over again. This was even further exacerbated when a layer automatically retired itself, because then the total number of kills needed would go down and the progress needed for the next battle would suddenly jump up and make it even more likely that a new battle would start when some layers already had one going.

There’s one last detail to mention before discussing what the path forward is; and that is how additional layers impact the total progress towards the next battle. Using very fake numbers, lets say that if you have a single layer, you need 1000 creature or player kills to trigger a battle. The way we had it set up was that if a second layer spun up, you’d need 25% more kills, so it would go to 1250 needed total between both layers. A third layer would bring the total needed across all layers to 1562 (1250*1.25), a fourth made that number go to 1925, and so on. When we originally designed the system, we initially made each layer require more kills per layer on a 1:1 basis, so using the numbers above as an example, with 5 layers you’d need 5000 kills (5 layers x 1000 kills needed per layer). We decided not to do this later in development because we had been operating under the assumption that layers never really spun down outside of planned restarts, thus increasing the kill requirement on a 1:1 basis would cause battles to take an extremely long time to trigger during off-peak times because there were many layers and relatively few players around to make progress during the ramp-up period.

All of these many words brings us to the crux of it; the system was not really designed with the idea that a) we’d ever be retiring layers other than during restarts and b) that we would get to a point where a battle could still be going on a layer when the next battle began. This is also an example of a system that could have really benefitted from a proper PTR stress test and we are going to keep that in mind for the future.

TLDR and the path forward

The next set of changes we have on deck are:

• With a hotfix tomorrow we will no longer be dynamically retiring layers. This means that late at night or early in the morning there will be more layers than are needed and the world may feel more empty.
• With a hotfix tonight we are increasing the number of kills that are needed for each layer that exists to move the overall realm percentage up.

Within an hour or so from the time this is posted, most layers should have “healed” themselves, but we will be watching it closely.

Both of the changes together do also mean that battles will spin up FAR slower during offpeak times and noticeably slower during peak times. The trade-off is that it’s now far less likely that one layer will lag far enough behind to break if the percentage counter fills up before their battle completes. We believe it should now be a few hours between battles, at least, even during peak. We need this buffer to prevent these stall-outs from happening.

This solution is not perfect though and we may consider a further redesign of this system down the line, but that’s likely too large of a change for a hotfix right now. The priority now is to stabilize things with this most recent set of changes.

Thanks so much if you read this entire post. I understand if you have questions about this as this is a lot to grok. Suffice it to say that the ultimate issue here is that we had a collision of a few different game design and server engineering systems that were both meant to enhance the player experience, but ultimately ended up damaging said experience when they clashed. We took a chance by not having a PTR. Some things in Season of Discovery were a success due to the lack of a PTR, but this was likely less successful.

Lastly, thank you so much for playing Season of Discovery with us. This season has been a true labor of love for the WoW Classic Team and while its certainly been interesting to support, we can’t wait to take the lessons we’ve learned forward to make future phases even more awesome!

Normally I’d be able to get one done, maybe two, while putzing around before work. Logged in and zoned in to see the progress bar at 2% and 1%. Just missed it and got nothing.

Came back after work and the progress is only a little over half for both sides… and from what I’ve seen that means any fight is several hours out.

Logged out for a bit and went back in about 30 minutes later and now the progress bar is at 26% and 22%…

People will be lucky if the event spawn and their online time aligns once every few days.

[Vyvyan-arugal]

@Badrog-chaos-bolt

You know what was really fun world PvP? Ashenvale without any events. Stranglethorn is super fun. Un Goro… Tanaris… pretty much all of the heavy traffic contested zones are freaking awesome.

@Badrog-chaos-bolt

World PvP isn’t about joining a raid and sweeping the land like some kind of mongolian horde to rid the world of the other faction.

This guy/gal gets it. Glad I’m not the only one.

Nothing that they have developed is “for” PvP, it is for grinding rep/honour. And it is failing even at that now after the fixes. It’s just such a shame because the potential is so great and it’s being squandered time and time again.

[Alltrails-wild-growth]

@Aggrend-1483

Both of the changes together do also mean that battles will spin up FAR slower during offpeak times and noticeably slower during peak times

But why? this kind of closes the door for people that didn’t get the rep yet, or are leveling an alt, etc. I saw only 1 battle tonight. it was not anymore epic than what I used to see.

[Grumman-lone-wolf]

Another thing I’ve noticed is I get no waylaid supplies from mobs in Ashenvale. Maybe buff the amount they drop in Ashenvale to entice us to stay in the zone and maybe that will trigger spontaneous pvp

[Shockterpepr-living-flame]

Yeah, eventless PvP is great, but imagine if every hour an event spawned that was just tickets. Maybe some rares spawn and drop some extra rep or zonewide buffs if killed, but the event lasts and hour and it’s just a war. No stupid points to try to zerg down fast, no stupid flags to capture. Just straight up 100v100 back and forth war.

[Hyrin-chaos-bolt]

Greetings, fellow adventurers of Azeroth,

As a long-time player and software engineer myself, I’ve crafted a technical proposal (draft) specifically aimed at tackling the main issue at hand:

Being (re)moved from your current layer in times that cause player grief.

My proposal, while technical, is designed with clarity and practicality in mind, focusing directly on enhancing our gameplay by addressing this key challenge. I’m eager to share these ideas and hear your input, as we work together to make our adventures in Azeroth even more seamless and enjoyable.

So with introductions out of the way… I present to you my proposal:

Feature Overview

Feature Name:

• Dynamic Layer Management ‘inActivity’ Flag

Type:

• Boolean Flag (True/False)

Purpose:

• To identify players actively engaged in significant in-game activities (e.g., Ashenvale battle, world PvP, gathering) to prevent disruption during layer transitions.
• To aid in managing overall server layer utilization and to efficiently handle layer deallocation processes.

---

Implementation Details

Flag Integration:

• Integrate the ‘inActivity’ flag into the character data model in the backend database.
• The flag is set to ‘True’ when a character engages in specific activities.

Layer Manager Interaction:

• Modify the layer manager system to recognize the ‘inActivity’ status of characters.
• Prioritize the transition of players with the flag set to ‘False’ during layer retirement phases and high-utilization scenarios.

Group Handling:

• Assess the ‘inActivity’ status of all members in a player group.
• Allow layer transition only if all group members have the flag set to ‘False’ and are out of combat.

Layer Utilization Management:

• Implement clear utilization thresholds to guide the layer manager in starting the process of player movement.
• Utilize the flag to assess player engagement levels across various server layers.

Layer Deallocation and Spinning Down Strategy:

• Initiate layer deallocation when utilization drops below a defined threshold.
• Gradually move players to more populated layers.
• Define specific thresholds for when the layer manager should begin moving players.

Critical Utilization Handling:

• Initiate a server-wide notification process when a layer reaches critical utilization.
• Implement an automated apology message system for forced moves due to critical utilization.
• Begin transitioning players from critically utilized layers to less populated layers.

---

Technical Constraints and Considerations

• Database Impact: Ensure minimal impact on database performance with the addition of the ‘inActivity’ flag.
• Legacy Code Compatibility: Changes must align with existing code structures.
• Performance Optimization: Monitor to avoid significant overhead or degradation, especially during peak loads.
• Communication Overhead: Use server messages sparingly to avoid player disruption.
• Performance Monitoring: Closely watch layer utilization and performance.
• User Experience: Balance technical efficiency with a focus on maintaining player immersion and continuity.

---

The implementation of the ‘inActivity’ flag, combined with strategic layer management and utilization thresholds, represents a holistic approach to improving server performance and enhancing the player experience in World of Warcraft Classic. This approach is designed to be adaptive and responsive, ensuring compatibility with the game’s legacy architecture and the diverse needs of its community.

It’s important to note that this proposal is a high-level rough draft, intended as a starting point for a more refined solution. My goal is to address the most significant pain points with the current layering system. This draft lays the groundwork for a solution that I believe would greatly enhance how we interact with Azeroth’s many layers, making our gaming experiences smoother and more immersive, all the time. I look forward to collaborating with the community and the development team to refine these ideas further.

TLDR: The proposal introduces the ‘inActivity’ flag, a Boolean indicator, to identify players engaged in key activities and manage layer transitions and server utilization more effectively. This flag will help prevent players from being moved from their current layer at inconvenient times, enhancing overall gameplay experience. The plan involves integrating this flag into the game’s backend, adjusting layer management according to player activity, and handling layer deallocation efficiently. The proposal is in draft form and aims to address significant issues with the current layering system, seeking community and developer input for further refinement.

PS: I did not address or mention that systems and areas across the game would need to be analyzed and identified if it is considered an activity and would require some logic updates to populate the new flag on the character data model. Also, the combat flag could be deprecated and the ‘inActivity’ flag could be utilized when entering and leaving combat instead. Lots of ways to refine this proposal.

[Hyrin-chaos-bolt]

Let’s build on that idea a bit. Picture this: a PvP event map where objectives for each faction emerge based on the current contribution system, like they do today, but the objectives that spawn are random. When both factions hit that sweet 100% on the contribution counter, that’s when the magic happens – objectives start popping up from a pre-set list. It could play out as a random base spawn for each faction, coupled with main bosses that stay put (or pats), adding a strategic layer to the mix. Although, it could be no objectives, and one faction just needs to defend their main town in the map until either A) timer runs out B) so many enemy faction members have been killed. The key here is randomness to create unique battle experiences.

To really spice things up and encourage those epic, large-scale battles, let’s introduce a reward system where 1 Honor Kill (HK) equals 1 reputation point. This direct link between combat action and rewards could really fuel the intensity of attack and defense scenarios, pushing players to dive headfirst into the fray.

It’s all about bringing that high-stakes, strategic excitement to each confrontation, making sure players are fully engaged and every battle feels significant. The PvE element helps direct the flow of confrontation, creating the opportunity for unique experiences from battle to battle.

[Sw-faerlina]

How about no

[Moosë-benediction]

Went out to desolace again today… up until the last day or two it was pretty hard to layer hop around out there. Today I ran into another farmer and was immediately able to just hop to an empty layer.

Surely having this many layers up at all times wont cause the price of materials to crash through the floor, disincentivizing farming for everyone except botters, and leaving going to gdkps as a carry as the best option to make quickly make gold.

[Tintern-lone-wolf]

It’s like you see blood in the water and you can’t help yourselves lol. You guys 100% don’t deserve this level of communication

[Pingoh-aerie-peak]

Ashenvale went from constant pvp all day and good rep during a boring “pvp” (pve) event every hour to completely empty and 1-2 events during an entire day. I would take the broken event popping every hour or two over whatever this world pvp killing “fix” is. Please revert these changes for the love of god.

[Golkar-crusader-strike]

I agree with this, I was having a lot of fun. There was an evolving strategy war taking place on crusader strike between horde and alliance. The high frequency of battles kept people in the zone all the time too, now it’s dead.