World of WarCraft Stress Test

[Jait]

You don't think you keep all that hardware mothballed do ya?


Adding servers for the stress test is more likely an indication of an early release than a boon to the people who forked over 15 bucks to play.

But either way, it's a far better alternative to watching 100k people struggle to play on a single server. Less fun though....

[FoghornDeadhorn]

Originally posted by Clowns
If any veterans come to this game they will most likely have a similar opinion as well.

If only there were some veterans around to give us opinions instead of all us B.net noobs pumping sunshine all day

[Wysha]

Originally posted by Clowns
After about a good 5 hours playing a Undead Warlock my impession is...it's average at best. It seems like a DAoC knockoff. I'm not seeing anything special about this game versus whats already out there. If any veterans come to this game they will most likely have a similar opinion as well.

There is a TON of competition for the same quest mobs cause they spawn in static spots. There is a lot of training mobs onto others. Sounds like EQ1 with DAoC gameplay mechanics to me. In fact, it reminds more of DAoC than any other game out now.

This is supposed to Kill of EQ2??? Lol...I don't think so Chillen.

As for WoW...Eh, I'll pass for NoW.

Man did you even get to level one? My guess is you started as an Undead, by far the busiest spawn. You also probably sat and waited for mobs to spawn instead of running around and got ganked. There were about 150 newbies in the newbie area and I did all the quests and got plenty of kills no problem, just dont be a lasy bastard. As for the rest of your post, please pass the pipe.

[Applejacks]

But either way, it's a far better alternative to watching 100k people struggle to play on a single server. Less fun though....

Obviously, you aren't playing the stress test. There are 10 servers and less than 100k people TOTAL not per server. Most people have 0 lag issues. Go off to a corner and cry.

Dumbass.

[FoghornDeadhorn]

Originally posted by The Bog
As a rogue, I take it as my personal duty to take them down. I'd rather lose some DPS on the main mob than take assrape because I didn't keep an eye on the goddamn dark irons.

Story time!


I haven't logged in since Monday, too busy with work to even take the idea seriously, and 2-3 hour chunk that I would have stolen from much-needed sleep didn't sound satisfactory. When I was playing on Saturday though I pulled an all-nighter, and in the morning got invited out of the blue to a Razorfen group. Well, this group kicked a fuckton of ass (though half of us were a little high for the instance we also played well for the most part), but the Rogue had to go to church with his girlfriend or some shit so we had to call it quits early on RFK -- but not before doing the escort quest.

When all was said and done I asked the group who wanted to go on to Gnomeregan (which was more our level) and the Priest, who kicked ass, was up for it. I had to go AFK for a few so I let her do the forming for a bit, we picked up a Rogue and a Mage, but couldn't find a Shaman or Druid like I had wanted for the fifth. Actually, we did find a Shaman who might have gone, 35 Tauren, but his name was Bullballs. We passed. Instead we took Tangles , a Mage.

There were transportation problems. When I got on the ship to Booty Bay from Ratchet (there is a teleporter in Booty Bay into the outer part of Gnomeregan), after I zoned out on the boat I suddenly was 'under the world' and then landed in the Graveyard in Tarren Mill -- alive. Yeah, uh, same continent as BB but not what I was looking for. So I fly back to UC and get on the Zepplin to Org so I can fly to Crossroads so I can run to Ratchet so I can Boat to BB.

Well, I fall off the Zep to Org on zoning out. Into the Stonetalon graveyard, alive again. Right continent as Orgrimmar but not exactly where I was going. Well, I fly to Crossroads and run to Ratchet, and get on the boat. I'm not the only one in the party to have this problem, by the way, the Rogue did as well. I fell through the world again, if you were wondering, ended up in Tarren Mill again. A flight or two and successful Zepplin trip later I am back at Ratchet, and our Priest is getting ready to log in with her 55 Warlock to summon my ass. This time I crash out on the boat and log back in to find it has already turned around and is the Ratchet bay. I think I stayed on the boat and landed in Tarren Mill again before she summoned me, maybe not, it was like 11:30 AM Sunday at this point and I don't remember.

Anyway, so there is a quest (a "Talk to this guy then talk to this other guy" quest) to get the transponder from the dude who operates the teleport pad in BB. Tangles has said she has it, when asked specifically by our Priest (Orea). We all zone in (1-2-3-4...) -- OK well almost all of us, turns out Tangles didn't have the transponder after all, we will have to wait for her to go to Orgrimmar, pick up the quest, and come back to get it. So we start wasting time in Gnome*.

*Note: If you are used to going to Gnomeregan as an Alliance player I must note that the elite Gnomes are not happy to see Horde characters, you should probably be aware of this before jumping down into the clean room as may be your custom.



Eventually she (Tangles) ends up in teleporting in, I asked her if she wanted to train in or have us come get her. She chose to die right next to the teleporter, I'm not sure exactly how this happened but the comment "Elites are a lot harder to kill than normal mobs" may well be our only clue forever.

So after a bit of "Watch out for the fucking alarms," "Let me finish pulling before you aggro shit please," "Do you have sheep?" "Watch the fuck out for the alarms, remember this," "Yes, that's what happens when the alarms go off three times, so remember to watch out for them," "OK, you have sheep right? So when we get three, and two of them are humanoids, each of you should be sheeping one. Yes. DO IT BITCH." We got to the midboss.

Post-midboss shot...

When I was done chewing ass in a 'no shit you're a noob BUT...' kind of way, Orea said I handled it better than she would have. Wish you were there Bog, wish you were there.

In any case, if you were feeling like it, dear reader, please do not harass this noob about this incident, however if she ever ninjaloots something in your group know that she does not have the benefit of the noob excuse, you only get that once. Once.

That is not the point of the story, though. With Tangles good and demoralized, we pressed on. Everyone did really well, in fact this is the smoothest Gnome run I think I have ever had, and none of us was above 33. Even Tangles did well. We had the benefit of me being the only person who knew the instance, so everyone was listening to what I told them, with fine results, and little if any adds.

We got down to Thermaplugg, and as I suspected his little 'special feature' was back up and running. Problem is, I have never encountered Plugg with the encounter working properly...so we wipe because we used a bad strategy. I ask everyone if they want to go at it again now that we can get in the back door and we are game. It is about 2:00 PM at this point, delereum is kicking in for me but I press on, beer in hand, shield in mind.

We rock shit down to the point where you enter the last hall to Plugg. I pull a chicken and a dorf. Dorf gets sheeped. Dorf gets sheeped again and the chicken dies. All of a sudden I see "MINE!" and two of our party members drop dead. The Rogue and the Priest still live, as do I. Then suddenly another mine goes off. I die. Then another. The Rogue and Priest die.

Looking at the battlespam we had three mines go off on us for 450 each. I don't know where they came from, mines don't drop that fast and I thought the dorf was sheeped. That was it of course. I have yet to go back.

Bottom line: don't let this happen to you.

[Cybsled]

Where do you get the quest in ogrimar? I've always wanted to visit Gnome-land ;p

[Zignor]

There is a TON of competition for the same quest mobs cause they spawn in static spots.

Uhh, what?

Do you sit your ass in one spot once you happen to come across a mob that you're looking for? In every non-Elite quest I've done where I'm told to kill such-and-such, the mobs have never been in one small spot where I have to wait for a respawn. You can almost always walk around and find several other camps of what you're looking for. Even in the situations where your targets tend to congregate in a single area, there's usually 40+ in and around it. And if you happen to have 20 n00bs walking around and slaughtering most of them for some bizzare reason, respawn in WoW is fast enough that it shouldn't be more than a very slight inconvenience.

There is a lot of training mobs onto others.

I'm level 32, and the total number of times I've actually taken aggro by mobs being trained near me: 1. 99% of the time the mobs ignore you and either keep after the person doing the training, or they run straight back home after they tire of the pursuit.

[The Bog]

Wish you were there Bog, wish you were there.

You tell the group, 'Garakon, you are a moronic, incompetant retard,'

Thems were the days.

As for WoW...Eh, I'll pass for NoW.

Letterman WATCH OUT!

[Kreugen]

Er, you have a group in gnomeregan on stress server, or are you just throwing that story in this thread?

[The Bog]

Originally posted by Kreugen
Er, you have a group in gnomeregan on stress server, or are you just throwing that story in this thread?

Just a story. He's on beta IIRC.

[FoghornDeadhorn]

Originally posted by Kreugen
Er, you have a group in gnomeregan on stress server, or are you just throwing that story in this thread?

Hahaha fuck no I am not nearly that good at leveling sir. I just kinda threw that in there when reminded by the talk of mines.

[Doh]

I made a ne hunter, and I think I did all the quests in starting area before leaving, by then my toon was lvl 14, and so was the pet.

Problems I noticed:

-several quest bosses are indeed static and camped to hell, only way to get em is to have faster trigger finger than others, because there is always some small party of fucktards who are killing said boss over and over for reasons only known to them.
These should be instanced.

-wow supposedly has such a great quest system, but in fact I found those quests to be boring and nothing special. Items they yeld are often useless as well. It is not so bad, but does not live up to the hype that I have been exposed to.

- it crashed twice while I was playing, once I ended up with corrupted sound and had to reboot. Zone I was in crashed once and it took like 5 or 10 minutes for it to come back up. It crashed once while I was quitting from game.

-did not find a way to resize the chat font, or customize the position and size of various windows. Does not every mmo have that in this day and age?

- looting is a pain, unless I just don't know about way to autoloot, or at least a button to loot all items on a corpse, instead of clickign them all one by one to loot them.

Other than that it is not bad, graphics are an impressive accomplishment considering everything is so low in polygons. Seems stable enough besides the few crashes. It is definitely playable, I am just not sure if I will get it come retail, because while it reminds me of several games: such as earth and beyond, eq1, lienage2, it does not seem to offer anything new. Well, i suppose the ghost thng after death is new, but i dont like it much. Having experienced it, I would rather lose exp on death and have no ghost. Of course i seldom take the optional exp loss, therefore I make death almost meaningless and i feel death should have more meaning than a fast run back to the body.

Final grade: C+
I just do not find many things to really like or hate about the game.

[The Bog]

- it crashed twice while I was playing, once I ended up with corrupted sound and had to reboot. Zone I was in crashed once and it took like 5 or 10 minutes for it to come back up. It crashed once while I was quitting from game.

Well shit.
And there I was thinking it was in beta, and you were on the stress test server.

[Jooka]

First Impressions:


gameworld is beautifull, very well done. models are suck ass. models being suck ass helps make the game run very very smooth so its good and bad. Servers for a stress test are very smooth, but populations havent been to high in my mind.(or at least what I expected) In between 1200-2000, whats the average on the normal beta servers?


Ive gotten about 5 different toons to level 10 or so and my mage is up to 14 now, I find it gets pretty boring honestly. feel to lead by the hand by the developers. quest quest quest, land runs dry, deliver to here for new set of quest quest quest in new land repeat. Does this ever end? Or does this keep up till you've maped every land? Its well done but doesnt hide the fact the devs are holding my hand every step of the way. I play there route or I suffer penalties XP wise. So it feels very static overall.
Maybe this gives way after awhile but since I wanted to test various toons I found it to get pretty stale.


Doubt I get to much higher than maybe 20 by the end of the test but first impression is mostly is it worth the attempt to see the better content.(instances and such) Which I will come release but overall its not anything to write home about yet. gameplay wise.

[Grayson Carlyle]

Originally posted by Doh
[b]-several quest bosses are indeed static and camped to hell, only way to get em is to have faster trigger finger than others, because there is always some small party of fucktards who are killing said boss over and over for reasons only known to them.
These should be instanced.

Apparently, if you move outward quicker, there's less competition.

-wow supposedly has such a great quest system, but in fact I found those quests to be boring and nothing special. Items they yeld are often useless as well. It is not so bad, but does not live up to the hype that I have been exposed to.

What some people have said is that 1-25 is very polished. Maybe everyone is expected to go through the crap noob quests to get to the more interesting things. I've heard of quite a few really cool quests, and although it's disapointing to hear that the early stuff isn't the coolest, that is neither surprising, nor will it stop me from buying the game.

-did not find a way to resize the chat font, or customize the position and size of various windows. Does not every mmo have that in this day and age?

- looting is a pain, unless I just don't know about way to autoloot, or at least a button to loot all items on a corpse, instead of clickign them all one by one to loot them.

Cosmos is your friend! Though, a lot of the stuff that Cosmos implements should automatically be in the game.