Im worried about how the launch will be

[Twdft]

There will be about 12 players per shard, you'll barely even see another dude.

Real question is if the login servers can keep up.

[Baconeggcheese]

Sharding could handle it sure, like in SWTOR iirc each zone is restricted to 100 players so the game will automatically shard if there's ever more than 100. Never had any of the issues WoW did there cause of that. Clever placement of sharding at choke points especially early on could potentially solve it.

Really though it only matters for that immediate rush of players, and frankly I don't think it matters enough to be worth the time. I've just gone to sleep every single xpac launch when it becomes unplayable or shit if I'm just tired cause pulling an all nighter and then going to bed vs going to bed at a normal time and then getting up bright and early to play makes no difference.

[Venziir]

I love how you use the last 2 expansions which have been scaled and say "Its the most linear ever" no, its returning to not-scaling, which makes it as linear as every expansion before it.
in wod you did your starting zone, then you did talador, then you did gorgrond, then you did spires, then you did nagrand
cata you did vash or hyjal, but then you did deepholm, then uldum, then twilight highlands
wotlk you did borean or howling, then you did dragon, then zul, then sholzar, then storm, then icecrown
tbc you did hellfire then zangar then terokar, then nagrand then blades, then nether, then shadow
vanilla was the only one that was really "non liner" that was also not level scaled.



So yes, if you compare shadowlands linerairty to 2 prior expansions which had level scaling, then yes its far less... but thats only the last 2 expacs.

Other way around, but yes.

[Aphrel]

I love how you use the last 2 expansions which have been scaled and say "Its the most linear ever" no, its returning to not-scaling, which makes it as linear as every expansion before it.
in wod you did your starting zone, then you did talador, then you did gorgrond, then you did spires, then you did nagrand
cata you did vash or hyjal, but then you did deepholm, then uldum, then twilight highlands
wotlk you did borean or howling, then you did dragon, then zul, then sholzar, then storm, then icecrown
tbc you did hellfire then zangar then terokar, then nagrand then blades, then nether, then shadow
vanilla was the only one that was really "non liner" that was also not level scaled.



So yes, if you compare shadowlands linerairty to 2 prior expansions which had level scaling, then yes its far less... but thats only the last 2 expacs.

Actually, it IS, the most linear questing experience weve ever had in any expansion ever. OP is not overestimating anything.

Tbc had diffrent quests for horde/allys and nonforced zone progression aswell as skippable quests and hubs. (you coudl dungeon spamm all the way to 70 if you wanted etc).

wotlk had the same plus the choice of two starting zones, and the option to dung spamm or jump zones and even Qhubs within zones as you pleased.

cata had the same linearity but at least 2 starting zones and the option of just spamming dungeons for exp to avoid the bottlenecks.

Mop diffrent Quests between horde/ally and nonforced zone progression (i dungeon spammed at lunch until i could start in valley of 4 winds etc).

Wod had 2 starting zones and nonforced quest progressions but was still an absolute disaster..

Legion had ffa zone selection as had bfa..

Tl;dr Shadowlands is worse than any other expansion when it comes to linearity. even the worst previous expansions had the option to dungeon spamm for exp and jump to the next zone. In shadowlands you have to do all zones, and in a set order. Level has never ever been even close to as rigid as shadowlands is throuout wows history.

[Toybox]

Last 'bad' release was 2014 and WoD.

While nowhere near as bad as WoD, BfA's release was pretty horrible on some big servers. I remember half of my guild, who had booked time off work to play through the night with each other on launch, giving up & going to bed because the servers were down for several hours, & after that a few of them had issues getting the necklace WoD launch was shocking, though...

Shadowlands is a scarier launch than even WoD, since at least in WoD the factions were separated. Yes we have sharding now, but is it going to be enough? I hope so, but I'm still expecting launch to be a shitshow on the bigger realms especially.

[Unholyground]

With sharding/layers and all the recent realm connections it will be a non issue this time around, plus they have 2 separate expansion patches this time around, the pre-patch with the undead invasion and another patch the week of launch with the current balancing and what not so hopefully people will be smart and come back early with the invasion to reduce sever stress.

[Aphrel]

In Shadowlands it will be, Everyone into a intro zone experience that is not a scenario - > Everyone to the new city -> Everyone to the same starting zone and the exact same quest path to follow to 60

Can Sharding really carry this?

Were basicaly going back to pre Legion launches which I doesnt recall was any good at all
I have a bad feeling about this

Yeah, ive been worryin about this aswell. Ive reported every single quest in the intro zone on beta with "this place needs more mobs, 2 or 3 players is enough to already create a bottleneck, at launch its gonna be a nightmare".

But after months of beta ive yet not seen any change to the starting zone in the maw. And the kyran Questline doesnt look to be much better, with tons of events where you have to wait for an npc to complete a ritual...

Unless they split up players into an absolutely absurd amount of layers this launch runs the risk of repeating the fiasko that was wod launch :<

[Dracullus]

While nowhere near as bad as WoD, BfA's release was pretty horrible on some big servers. I remember half of my guild, who had booked time off work to play through the night with each other on launch, giving up & going to bed because the servers were down for several hours, & after that a few of them had issues getting the necklace WoD launch was shocking, though...

Shadowlands is a scarier launch than even WoD, since at least in WoD the factions were separated. Yes we have sharding now, but is it going to be enough? I hope so, but I'm still expecting launch to be a shitshow on the bigger realms especially.

I know it sucks for them because launch night feels like Christmas, but few hours problem in the middle of night for few servers doesn't make launch 'horrible'. WoD wasn't bad because first few hours - it was DAYS with really heavy lag.

And yeah, I think sharding is main reason why it's rather problem of the past. We had split between zones in BfA/Legion, but we still have bottlenecks as well (Dalaran, Silithus, Horde/Ally intros etc.). For sure we won't have situation similar to WoD when 100 people fight over 1 tree to mark.

[Toybox]

I know it sucks for them because launch night feels like Christmas, but few hours problem in the middle of night for few servers doesn't make launch 'horrible'. WoD wasn't bad because first few hours - it was DAYS with really heavy lag.

And yeah, I think sharding is main reason why it's rather problem of the past. We had split between zones in BfA/Legion, but we still have bottlenecks as well (Dalaran, Silithus, Horde/Ally intros etc.). For sure we won't have situation similar to WoD when 100 people fight over 1 tree to mark.

True. Most people who logged onto Draenor (EU) after that initial rush had a decent experience, but the launch was anticlimatic for those of us who stayed up. Not the end of the world though - Hardly a Diablo 3 launch situation.

I hope you're right. I'm not all that confident, but we'll see how it goes.

[Derpleton]

Honestly from what I've seen in beta so far it feels like Shadowlands leveling was designed to be a single player experience with the low amount of mob spawns, somewhat annoying respawn rate and huge number of bottlenecks. imo if you've got ~5 people competing for mobs in an area you're going to have a problem on a lot of quests and so I don't really have much faith in the ability of sharding to fix this, the amount of shards that would need to made to remove frustration would be astronomically high.

[dcc626]

There will be about 12 players per shard, you'll barely even see another dude.

Real question is if the login servers can keep up.

thats why i log in an hour before and stay there. they dont turn the servers off to flip the switch, the quest just pops up and off you go.

[Kyphael]

That's why I don't hit the new leveling content until days after the first weekend, preferably like a Monday or Wednesday when people are back to work. It's still busy, yeah, but nowhere near as much as launch week when everyone is off to the races to max level.

[Yriel]

The launch of BfA was strange, i barely saw any players the first few days and had problems finding anyone for the group quests in the zone. I was already wondering if nobody was playing WoW anymore, it really felt like a dead game.
It was probably just the excessive sharding, in a way it was nice since it really felt like exploring a new land on your own.
So i have no doubt they will manage it in SL, too.

[pewpmeiser]

it will be fine

[FelPlague]

Every expansion at least offered you in most cases two different zones you could go to. Shadowlands... doesn't.

WoD: Frostfire / Shadowmoon -> Gorgrond / Talador -> Spires / Nagrand
MoP: Jade Forest -> Valley / Krasarang -> Kunlai / Tonlong -> Dread Wastes
Cataclysm was more like: Vashjr / Hyjal -> Deepholme -> Uldum / Twilight Highlands
WotLK: Tundra / Fjord -> Blight / Grizzly Hills -> Sholazar / Zuldrak -> Icecrown / Stormpeak
TBC: Hellfire (you could even start in Zangarmarsh) -> Terrokar -> Nagrand / Blades -> Netherstorm / Shadowmoon

In most expansions you always had the choice of two zones you could go into. BfA and Legion offered less zones overall but they had scaling, so you had 3 or 4 options all the time available. Shadowlands forces you to go a specific route, doing zone after zone. On top of that, it only has four zones overall (plus the Maw) which brings it to Legion levels of zones minus scaling.

1. you did not choose frostfire or shadowmoon you were forced to go to 1. you could not do only 3 of the zones you needed to do all of them.
2. same with mop, you couldnt get through by doing only 3 zones.
3. uhh what? again you needed to do 4 zones, only the first one you had a choice.
4. again no, here you did have 2 choices twice, but the rest was linear.
5. no you could not start in zangarmarsh

pretty sure you arte going "right now you can do these zones" hate to break it to you, but when these expacs were current, you had to do almost every zone to get to max level.

[Onikaroshi]

I don’t recall WoW ever having a smooth launch, so expect the worst and hope for the best.

Weren't around for the launch of legion then? Smooth as butter on my full realm.

Day 3 we had a bit of a ddos thing (whether it be attack or just too many people wanting to play)

[Nyel]

pretty sure you arte going "right now you can do these zones" hate to break it to you, but when these expacs were current, you had to do almost every zone to get to max level.

It wasn't about what you have to do to reach max level, it was about having a choice. And deciding between zone A and B is a choice, even if you need to do both in the end. In Shadowlands you don't choose, you follow a strictly linear path (for the very first time).

[FelPlague]

True. Most people who logged onto Draenor (EU) after that initial rush had a decent experience, but the launch was anticlimatic for those of us who stayed up. Not the end of the world though - Hardly a Diablo 3 launch situation.

I hope you're right. I'm not all that confident, but we'll see how it goes.

i mean you say that but it was so bad they gave everyone a free week of sub time, because of it, people were crashing, servers were super laggy, people got stuck at the flight point in their garrison with a pile of people.

i got lucky, i had none of those issues, but literally everyone else i knew did, my entire guild was stuck in their garrison for an hour.
i only missed server first max cause i was leveling solo.

- - - Updated - - -

It wasn't about what you have to do to reach max level, it was about having a choice. And deciding between zone A and B is a choice, even if you need to do both in the end. In Shadowlands you don't choose, you follow a strictly linear path (for the very first time).

if you need to do both, it aint really much of a choice now is it?
"Would you rather be shot, or stabbed"
"Stabbed"
"Well im gunna do both to you, just gunna stab you first"

Not much of a choice now is it?

[Cosmic Janitor]

I hope the sharding/phasing will work better than it did with WoD. That is my greatest concern.. that and plot stoppers.. oh and the bad scripting that seems to be influenced by lag.

Edit: Also it is the most linear. Both faction, unscaled, and no alternative starting zones. The sharding will need to work perfectly. I also can't wait for all the people that will reach max level and will be utterly puzzled by the fact that they need to finish the questing experience first before they can participate in any endgame content.

[glowpipe]

I think it will be rather shit. I have played a lot in the beta and even on beta, with only 3-4 other players, i had to wait for ever to get spawns for quests, so many bottlenecks. Now on live it gonna be a lot more players and even harder to progress. This is still a issue in the beta. So it has not been fixed. Even tho ive sent probably 100 reports on quests with too few spawns