This is effectively what making ashenvale it’s own shard would do, yes, but still a mostly cohesive part of the world that would load balance off it’s own needs
I am not sure if sharding and layering tech can truly be intermingled like this though. but if they could. it might actually work.
You have clearly demonstrated you have no clue on how server infrastructure works. Good job!
Thank you for posts like this. I love the insight both as someone who loves technology and as someone who loves WoW. Hope to get into some Ashenvale PVP this weekend.
The Ashenvale event was actually kinda fun after the changes were made a few days ago. On my server the event felt really competitive between Alliance and Horde and strategies were frequently changing.
It still felt like a mandatory grind for gear, but it was sorta fun to participate in. The only issue is that some layers would get intentionally stacked with one faction and then the event wouldn’t be very competitive in that layer. Overall though the event was fine.
That was until about 2 days ago when everything broke. Since then about 95% of the time killing lieutenants wouldn’t decrease the counter so you end up in a situation where the final boss is immune with all 3 lieutenants down. Then everyone just has to sit there for 60 minutes (!!!) for their 200 rep.
This totally killed the event, except people still need to do it for their gear. So now it just feels awful.
And as I mentioned the event worked fine for a bit, and this is only an issue that popped up a couple days ago.
People aren’t complaining that the event happens too often. If that’s what the devs are taking away from this current situation, then SoD is in serious trouble.
The event was fine. It just needs to work again.
This does, unfortunately, end the ashenvale event. No one is going to hang out there anymore trying to kill to get the event started. It will become a ghost town outside of raiders and people questing.
Personally, I’d rather keep it as is than to have 3-4 hr intervals. Wish there was just a way to cap each faction in layers. Yes there would end up being several layers with no horde and only alliance, but that will only catalyze active players to start rolling horde from alliance. So it’s fine.
Thank you for such a detailed post. I love the transparency!
I can’t wait to see how your changes play out and what you have planned next.
Took a page out of the Ol’ Blizzard Handbook with this one. Cover mistakes with more mistakes at the expense of the player base.
Yea I’m pretty much done with SoD if this is how it’s handled. It’s one slip up after another. A sub par event and couple of retail abilities aren’t worth the bugs. Thanks for finally addressing something.
Bladestorm vs mass AoE root / rot needs to be addressed. When the Alliance mounts a counter offensive to protect one of their lieutenants they are engaging an enemy team that is rooted in place and taking DoT damage.
It’s imbalanced and everyone knows it.
I love the Ashenvale world pvp. Usually those huge groups are only roaming around during the event. The rest of the time it’s solo or small groups. You can stop to fight them and you’re about as equally likely to have more enemies show up to help them as you are to have allies show up to help you. It’s pretty fun if you like pvp.
You guys keep saying that, but you’re still here. I’m waiting for you crybabies to leave already. Stop with the empty promises.
Thank you for doing this Aggrend. Especially the immediate reply to the first post pointing out this would cause problems for people. High detail explanations and interaction with constructive player posts goes a long way for almost all of us I would say.
As an on-and-off-again-and-now-returning player to WoW, I want to say that it’s nice to see so much dev interaction with the playerbase here. It feels like a mostly forgotten practice at this point.
Anyway, don’t let all the negativity beat you guys down.
There are a lot of us who understand and fully appreciate the time and effort put in. Lots of people that aren’t bothered by this probably won’t even post, so no reason to burn out on all this negativity.
I never had interest in WoW Classic, but SoD has been super fun. Keep up the good work. Looking forward to future level bands and new raids.
I agree 100%. Keep up the good work this has been an amazing experience.
I completely agree. This experiment has been a blast.
I echo the praise on transparency and overall design so far. I personally thought Ashenvale was a mess to begin with, but I think there is an unavoidable issue with PvPvE in that people will always take the shortest path to a reward, which is usually to ignore each other and race to the finish. However, I still participated and had fun often and have seen consistent improvements in its design, with the current topic as an exception. Reading it makes it sound like a great idea in theory, but it also makes sense why it broke.
Keep up the good work! My favorite part of SoD so far is how excited the dev team on this project is about players having to find new things and giving feedback so that future level bands receive adjustments.
Just a side not, the Hell fire peninsula and Nagrand wpvp area’s was amazing and simple. Consider taking inspiration from those. At least imo I enjoyed doing it. Just make sure the rewards are worth it and people will do it.
I have to ask - it seems like all of this trouble has come from the decision to make the event go off on all layers at the same time to prevent people from farming with layer swaps.
But two things:
The people who did early layer swap farms are already done with the grind
and
Is it really worth degrading the experience for EVERYONE just to prevent layer swap farming? And isn’t there any better way to prevent layer swap farming that DOESN’T require every layer to have battles start simultaneously? It feels like the cure is worse than the disease. Yeah, it’s not cool when the optimal way to grind is layer swapping, but making the event substantially worse for all of the non layer swappers seems like two steps backwards for one step forward.
Honestly these changes are atrocious.
So not only you’re making it flat out impossible for anyone not playing on peak hours to get some rep but you’re also setting a horrible example where people need to rush to max and get the stuff before blizz hard nerfs it and makes it a horrible grind.
I also fail to see how this would stabilize anything, drastically reducing the number of ashenvale events means drastically increasing the number of players coming to these events, before I didn’t mind if I missed several ashenvales, there’s always gonna be a next one soon.
Now?
I either jump in or gonna have to wait hours, maybe even a day, the grand majority of the server is gonna be in ashenvale now and absolutely destroy the servers, if it couldn’t handle fractions how is it gonna handle the entire realm?
Ashenvale was so close to being the content it should’ve been since the start, this is basically going back to step 1 and creating issues out of nowhere.
This entire wall of text can be summarized with “we really didnt have a solution so now instead of actually doing something new, you should go get stomped by premades in WSG because rep farming in ashenvale is dead.”
Aggrend out here farming Ls on any social platform, as a ret paladin enjoyer. How ironic.
Literally just delete this wall of text and make it a simple paragraph of “we tried, and it didn’t work, because Alterac valley is already in the game and it’s better than this.”
Oh noes, they aren’t handing out exalted for free?! BUT I WANT IT! GIMME!!!