Deserted zones and long-lived mobs

[ReVnX]

Old Silithus mobs

[Pakheth]

Considering that there are mob spawners below the world in a few places that acts like timers for simple game mechanics that only exist to spawn two mobs and have them fight to the death until one dies, then these mobs have NEVER been touched by players.
Think about that.

[Segus1992]

Some random quest mob in felwood. Let's be real who would quest in felwood right now

It's definitely not a Classic zone, as they have the longest span of levels you can play them.

Most likely it's some outward zone in Outland or Cataclysm, such as Netherstorm or Twilight Highlands.

[oldgeezer]

Considering that there are mob spawners below the world in a few places that acts like timers for simple game mechanics that only exist to spawn two mobs and have them fight to the death until one dies, then these mobs have NEVER been touched by players.
Think about that.

Well there's a tantalising thought. Which mobs are these?

[jazen]

The mob I see die most infrequently is a Horde healer when I play Ally random bg.

[Pakheth]

Well there's a tantalising thought. Which mobs are these?

If I remember correctly they are a Horde(Orc or Forsaken) and an Alliance(Human or Nelf) NPC that spawned below the world in BG's and when one of them kills the other the BG starts. It was a very primitive timer Blizz created back in the day so no idea if it's still in the game. Game developement is full of these weird hacks to make things work.

[Dundebuns]

I would have thought that mob spawning was dynamic, so if there are no players anywhere near a zone, nothing spawns in there. There must be thousands of mobs per server and having to render them when not being used would be a massive waste of resources. I think there is some credibility to this theory as previously if you entered an area after a server restart you would see bunches of mobs all spawn in the exact same spot and then spread out.

[Ronnosh]

There are some zones that don't have ANY dungeons or raids, but often they are rather popular, like Outland Nagrand and Grizzly Hills.

Grizzly Hills technically has Drak'tharon Keep. While the Keep itself is seated on the border of Grizzly Hills and Zul'Drak, the entrance rests on the Grizzly Hills side.

[Drusin]

Which open world mobs have the most 'uptime' in game?

This guy



You can't kill him so he's been up since Cata launch lol

[det]

Unseen enemies in Raven Hill.
Not everyone knows about them and you need specific abilities to draw them out. Last I checked they were above the average mob level in the zone, too (might have changed), so that accidentally aggroing meant death.

Oh....that is what that was. 15 years in the game and only like 2 months ago when I looked into a tent where the Raven Hill FP is, something with a skull as level jumped me. I could escape though but was like "WTF is this.....?"

[Unholyground]

I wish they would do away with cross realm zones for Pandaria and any zones that have raid bosses that I can literally never kill without needing a fucking timer add-on or some shit to track it, maybe they could put some spawn time variance in to counter it a bit. Farming for the triceratops mounts is also basically impossible unless you get lucky and someone forgets to check the spawn.

In short they should do away with CRZ for sought out content like the Pandaria world bosses and rares but keep CRZ chat enabled so people can still talk and invite for stuff.

[agm114r]

When you spawn into LBRS, and go up the ramp to the right, theres a few mobs there that noone ever kills.

I killed those probably a year ago!

[oldgeezer]

Well there you go. This turned out to be unexpectedly interesting, despite the unpromising opener.

[rhrrngt]

Would be cool if they added something like guildwars where the longer a mob has gone without dying the more bonus exp it gives. Could breath life into less used zones.

[Razion]

Some mobs are unable to be killed at all! They've probably gone the longest without being killed. Other mobs that require items to kill as part of quest chains in neglected zones probably come close... but who could say if some critter always inaccessible behind some walls or down a useless path in a dungeon go longer without dying? Some areas aren't explored fully when you can't just fly around, after all. So there's probably a lot of mobs neglected because you can't spot them from above and decide to kill cuz reasons.

[Soulwind]

I would have thought that mob spawning was dynamic, so if there are no players anywhere near a zone, nothing spawns in there. There must be thousands of mobs per server and having to render them when not being used would be a massive waste of resources. I think there is some credibility to this theory as previously if you entered an area after a server restart you would see bunches of mobs all spawn in the exact same spot and then spread out.

That's the thing, the server doesn't "render" them. Your computer does.

The server just spawns an ID at some coordinates, and changes those coordinates every tick, following its defined path.

When a player comes near, the server tells the game where to place the mob on the world, and its immediate path. The client makes the mob walk along that path, and checks the server every few seconds to see if the mob is roughly in the right place.

Meanwhile, the server just keeps changing those coordinates for that mob. It's all numbers.

[oldgeezer]

Philosophical niceties aside about spawning etc, I reckon the Molten Front mobs have a good shout here. When was the last time any of you went there?

[Huzzaa]

Random trash in front of RFD.

[Cidzor]

Not going to discuss the mechanics of server resets and such here (I have zero game development experience outside of dicking around some with Unity, so I'm not really qualified to participate in that discussion).

I imagine the higher level zones for some of the older expansions (Blade's Edge, Netherstorm, Icecrown, Storm Peaks, etc) don't see a lot of player traffic, aside from maybe some who are just looking to get achievements. When you can move on to Northrend at 68, there's really no point questing in Netherstorm unless you just want to. So I'm sure those zones have mobs that see very little action.