9.0 General Discussion

[therumblings]

We owe you a debt of gratitude.

My debt is already paid by the joy and laughter of the citizens of the mmo-c expansion speculation threads. Once every two years I rise from the grave and herald the leaks to my people.

vanishes into the night

[gunner_recall]

My debt is already paid by the joy and laughter of the citizens of the mmo-c expansion speculation threads. Once every two years I rise from the grave and herald the leaks to my people.

vanishes into the night

Not the woons we deserve, but the woons we need

A silent rumbling, a watchful shitposter.

A gifdwarf

Theme music intensifies

[Blayze]

My debt is already paid by the joy and laughter of the citizens of the mmo-c expansion speculation threads. Once every two years I rise from the grave and herald the leaks to my people.

vanishes into the night

So we'll quote him.

[damonskye]

They've certainly done it before. MoP had 4 weeks of pre-patch but the event only lasted a week (Theramore gets the Boom). In fact, I think most, if not all, previous pre-patches have some "just new systems" time before the actual event(s) started.

Oh, I'm sure you're totally right on that. I'm just saying that that might not be the case here. The fact that they're doing two parallel tracks of patching (prepatch for classes/squish, and patch for SL content) simply leads me to think that they're pushing this as late as possible... so I really do think October 6 it will drop with week one of the pre content; October 13 is week two of the pre content; and October 20 will likely push out any last minute class changes/bug fixes, so that October 26's launch is only about Shadowlands stuff.

(That said, I'm very, very nervous about the fact that they're sending everyone through the Maw to start the SL storyline. I remember the first night of WoD was almost unplayable, with the vast tracks of flying mounts stuck in the air while failing to zone into the garrisons. I know they've adopted better tech since then, but still...)

[gunner_recall]

Oh, I'm sure you're totally right on that. I'm just saying that that might not be the case here. The fact that they're doing two parallel tracks of patching (prepatch for classes/squish, and patch for SL content) simply leads me to think that they're pushing this as late as possible... so I really do think October 6 it will drop with week one of the pre content; October 13 is week two of the pre content; and October 20 will likely push out any last minute class changes/bug fixes, so that October 26's launch is only about Shadowlands stuff.

(That said, I'm very, very nervous about the fact that they're sending everyone through the Maw to start the SL storyline. I remember the first night of WoD was almost unplayable, with the vast tracks of flying mounts stuck in the air while failing to zone into the garrisons. I know they've adopted better tech since then, but still...)

I remember Tanaan on opening day.

But was phasing as heavily during the intro of WoD as it is currently? I think until Legion they didn't lean on it as heavily.

Or sharding, I guess.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

I remember Tanaan on opening day.

But was phasing as heavily during the intro of WoD as it is currently? I think until Legion they didn't lean on it as heavily.

Or sharding, I guess.

WoD release basically is what made sharding a thing. Because everyone was filed into two sub-zones and it broke everything.

[Gorsameth]

Also if I remember right the issue during early WoD was garrisons being broken, not the world zones.

[damonskye]

Also if I remember right the issue during early WoD was garrisons being broken, not the world zones.

That is correct, but unfortunately you really couldn't progress the story in early WoD *without* the garrisons, so it really did have a massive impact and that first day was pretty much junk. Funny junk, being stuck in flight with 500 other characters right outside the garrison, but still.

[gunner_recall]

WoD release basically is what made sharding a thing. Because everyone was filed into two sub-zones and it broke everything.

Yeah, like I forgot about sharding until I looked into it a little more.

But still, it wasn't that huge of a deal before Legion, right? I'm not sure how it is on Beta right now but I'm sure it's not gonna be every single player in the Maw together.

Also if I remember right the issue during WoD was garrisons.

FTFY

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Yeah Garrisons affected it or at least I think if I remember. I just know there was some clog for a lot of people.

[huth]

Also if I remember right the issue during early WoD was garrisons being broken, not the world zones.

They worked correctly. The problem was that each garrison was a seperate instance for that player, so the instance servers were completely overloaded and people couldn't get in. If you did get in, they worked just fine. Same reason all those "hidden" scenarios didn't trigger most of the time in early WoD, you just didn't get a slot on the instance servers.

So the real issue was Blizzard for some reason deciding it was a good idea to create a lot of 1 person scenarios, having you required to go through them to progress, but not set up the instance servers to actually support enough instances for pretty much the entire playerbase.

[Cosmic Janitor]

So the real issue was Blizzard for some reason deciding it was a good idea to create a lot of 1 person scenarios, having you required to go through them to progress, but not set up the instance servers to actually support enough instances for pretty much the entire playerbase.

To be fair, back then we still had sub counts and from the graph you can see that never before did an expansion launch create a spike that pretty much ment almost doubling the playerbase in the span of a few weeks. I'm fairly sure they never expected that much of a resurgence in player activity. On my original ghost realm none of this was a problem either. The issue were the large servers where all people congregated over the course of Cataclysm and MoP. This ment that especially there alot of dormant accounts suddenly got activated again and created overproportional load on the system. While my main could barely log in and if he managed after hours everything was broken, my alts on my old ghost realm had no issues what-so-ever.

Since then they seem to have done alot in the background and shift pretty much everything to virtual instances on their servers to be able to better allocate resources.

[Xorzor]

Potentially terrifying thought: what if the Nathrezim have planted spies in all cosmic domains? Lothraxion, for all we know, is playing the Army of the Light for fools. Denathrius, in the Shadowlands, could be doing the same.

[Sondrelk]

Potentially terrifying thought: what if the Nathrezim have planted spies in all cosmic domains? Lothraxion, for all we know, is playing the Army of the Light for fools. Denathrius, in the Shadowlands, could be doing the same.

They probably have, we just don't know it yet.
The only ones we have not seen infiltrated yet are the Arcane and Life realms. The Void while we have not technically seen any infiltrators the book did mention that they had infiltrated, possibly posing as spies for the Void into the Fel. The Arcane I imagine will come as a consequence of the Burning Legion falling apart and Sargeras being imprisoned in the Seat of the Pantheon.

I am honestly really excited to see where they go with it.

[Blayze]

They probably have, we just don't know it yet.
The only ones we have not seen infiltrated yet are the Arcane and Life realms. The Void while we have not technically seen any infiltrators the book did mention that they had infiltrated, possibly posing as spies for the Void into the Fel. The Arcane I imagine will come as a consequence of the Burning Legion falling apart and Sargeras being imprisoned in the Seat of the Pantheon.

I am honestly really excited to see where they go with it.

Elune is a dreadlord!

[huth]

To be fair, back then we still had sub counts and from the graph you can see that never before did an expansion launch create a spike that pretty much ment almost doubling the playerbase in the span of a few weeks. I'm fairly sure they never expected that much of a resurgence in player activity. On my original ghost realm none of this was a problem either. The issue were the large servers where all people congregated over the course of Cataclysm and MoP. This ment that especially there alot of dormant accounts suddenly got activated again and created overproportional load on the system. While my main could barely log in and if he managed after hours everything was broken, my alts on my old ghost realm had no issues what-so-ever.

Since then they seem to have done alot in the background and shift pretty much everything to virtual instances on their servers to be able to better allocate resources.

It was still a fairly dumb design decision to introduce such a major bottleneck.

[Cosmic Janitor]

It was still a fairly dumb design decision to introduce such a major bottleneck.

That's just game development. They usually don't design around a large factor of savety. Under normal circumstances it probably was within their expectations and would have worked well enough. I can't remember WoD's beta right now, but apparently issues never came to light in that regard, though maybe stress testing there was lacking. Either way, it's hardly the wost miscalculation they've had and these kind of things happen in tech.

As far as dumb descisions go we will see how their linear approach in SL will work out, because questing seems to be more like a chain of bottlenecks. I hope they have tuned their service that manages virtual instances properly, because nothing is more immersion breaking than queuing for a mob kill..

[GR8GODZILLAGOD]

They probably have, we just don't know it yet.
The only ones we have not seen infiltrated yet are the Arcane and Life realms. The Void while we have not technically seen any infiltrators the book did mention that they had infiltrated, possibly posing as spies for the Void into the Fel. The Arcane I imagine will come as a consequence of the Burning Legion falling apart and Sargeras being imprisoned in the Seat of the Pantheon.

I am honestly really excited to see where they go with it.

The nethrezim is genuinely the most exciting story reveal WoW has given in a long time. It really opened up a lot of possibilities and while it definitely is a retcon (no way this wasn’t planned for the nethrezim from the beginning) it’s one that still fits.

[Blayze]

The nethrezim is genuinely the most exciting story reveal WoW has given in a long time. It really opened up a lot of possibilities and while it definitely is a retcon (no way this wasn’t planned for the nethrezim from the beginning) it’s one that still fits.

Plus it opens up the door to them betraying their 'real' master.

[Sondrelk]

Plus it opens up the door to them betraying their 'real' master.

I am still waiting for the reveal of some council of nathrezim at the very top that gives orders to the rest like Lothraxion and Denathrius.

Though I wonder about them betraying the fforces of Death though, I am just not sure where they would go afterwards.