I'm one of the most forgiving customers there is,

[Guest]

I think it deserves a different terms then.


Honor is rather subjective. Legit was always about not exploiting and hacking.

[lemekim]

Well, there were plenty of warnings that WoW wasn't stable from the beta testers (especially myself), but you're right that at this point, the onl thing that will get Blizzard's attention is to stop paying.  From a business perspective, Blizzard only needs to keep you happy enough to continue paying - and no more.

They didn't believe us Bolty =(

On the other hand I hear that almost all people who are on the "bad" servers got invited into the test servers (and I think now everyone can join them anyway). Testing new changes when your server is down could help your frustration, and hopefully when the new patch comes it will fix up the bad servers somewhat.

[MongoJerry]

That being said, I can't recommend enough that players who have resisted starting out on Terenas give it a shot. The Horde is a whole 'nother perspective on the same game.

Don't forget that you can also give Tichondrius a shot. You can both experience Horde and at the same time experience another perspective of the game -- PvP play. You'll get a free guild tabbard and one gold to start you out with if you join in. I encourage everyone to come join us. There are only about five active players in the Lurking Loungers there, and we could use more people to fill the ranks and make the guild chat more of a party zone. :-) Don't worry, the Amazon Basin has a big presence there, so you can tap into that resource if you want people to group with. However, it'd be even better if more Lurkers joined in the fun, so that we could start grouping up together on a PvP server.

[Tal]

I think it deserves a different terms then.
Honor is rather subjective. Legit was always about not exploiting and hacking.
[right][snapback]70961[/snapback][/right]

Ghostiger - for someone who decrys posts that take threads off topic you certainly do love to derail them and participating in keeping them off topic. True my choice in words was not ideal this morning. I'd like to think that the majority of the Lurker Lounge population was able to pick up on my intentions despite this wording faux pas. I also find it incongruous that my choice in words is being nitpicked by someone who frequently can't be bothered to spell check his posts or look for typos.

To quote yourself: "Get over yourself."

[Kevin]

Unfortunately, to use that parachute in its current form, you have to strip yourself naked, leave all your assets in a trust and agree to become a newborn baby in a foreign land.

OK, so it's an option, but the cost is pretty high, maybe too high for some people. Especially when the airplane really shouldn't have broken, and may still be fixable before it hits bedrock, or the airplane analogy gets pushed too far. :)
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I have to agree with this. I did suggest Terenas, but I also realize that it may not be an option. Tal mentioned that he didn't want to move over there last night and I get that. I'm not nearly as close to my goals as he is with Sharanna but it gets annoying. Some of the servers are bad and I'm not sure that it is all because of overpopulation. I'm also not sure it is something Blizzard has easy control on. But just saying "Oh move to another server" isn't a good answer for everyone. The switch over cost are high. Not only in the costs that Bun-Bun has mentioned, but in relationships and networks. Your network might not move with you. So even if you get up to 60 you will have to renetwork and go. Terenas probably won't see a level 60 char in the guild for at least another month yet and that may very well be someone power leveling an alt. Sure the Stormrage guild doesn't have a huge 60 pop, but a lot of the Lurkers who are up there have known non Lurkers to play with as well. It isn't simple like Bun-Bun said.

As mentioned the only vote that counts is money. But it counts about as much as your vote in an election. Sure if you don't vote it matters, but if 200 million others still are or have a different opinion you aren't heard all that well.

[Icebird]

WoW seems to be almost two different games depending on what server you're on. I've been lucky in that our guild established itself on one of the "stable" servers. I've noticed the latency creeping up over the last few days, but I've had very problems with disconnects, or being unable to log in.

I would probably just switch servers to one which seemed more stable, but I know there are people who don't want abandon all the work they've put into their existing characters.

Let's hope the long awaited "character migration" option arrives sooner rather than later.

Chris

[Guest]

Actually its a different issue.

I feel some people like to misapply definitions to to give their own opinions/preferences more weight. This is especially easy to do with jargon type tefinitions such as "legit".

Using it implys that people who dont have your aritrary ideas on honor are also cheats. You specifically made a point about not saying anything that might be concieved as insulting, so I think you ought to do the same.



Also when I told you to get over yourself that was because you were taking completely game related insults and relating them to real life bigotry.

[Tal]

Actually its a different issue.
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In your mind I'm sure it is.

I feel some people like to misapply definitions to to give their own opinions/preferences more weight. This is especially easy to do with jargon type tefinitions such as "legit".

Using it implys that people who dont have your aritrary ideas on honor are also cheats. [right][snapback]70981[/snapback][/right]

Oh my how completely arbitrary of you. YOU feel some people like to misapply definitions to to give their own opinions/preferences more weight. So naturally you make the leap of logic that this must be what I have done here. This would be why I have repeatedly said that you read what you want to read into my posts.

But lets examine what it is I said that set you off this time:

I make no illusions that the Lounge will always be a small legit guild - being on the same server as the Basin helps us have a larger pool of like minded players to group with.

Taken purely on face value - using your own definition - we will be a small guild who does not use hacks or exploits. And the Amazon Basin shares these ideals. Though I am certain that a large majority of the guilds in WoW do not use exploits or hacks I also cannot say for certainty that they do not use exploits or hacks either. The only two guilds I feel comfortable making such a statement about is the Lurkers and the Basin guilds.

It was you who inserted the baggage of implying that anyone else who doesn't play according to the guidelines that the Lurkers on Stormrage that they are cheaters or hackers. Not ME.

You specifically made a point about not saying anything that might be concieved as insulting, so I think you ought to do the same.
[right][snapback]70981[/snapback][/right]

I fail to see where I insulted you in my post.

Also when I told you to get over yourself that was because you were taking completely game related insults and relating them to real life bigotry.
[right][snapback]70981[/snapback][/right]

I'm not going to explain again my feelings in that thread. Suffice to say that its getting old quick having to wonder "Ooooh if I use 'X' word in my post how is Ghostiger going to take it out of context?".

[Bolty]

Ghost, Tal, take it to PMs or email please?

-Bolty

[Kevin]

Don't forget that you can also give Tichondrius a shot.  You can both experience Horde and at the same time experience another perspective of the game -- PvP play.  You'll get a free guild tabbard and one gold to start you out with if you join in.  I encourage everyone to come join us.  There are only about five active players in the Lurking Loungers there, and we could use more people to fill the ranks and make the guild chat more of a party zone. :-)  Don't worry, the Amazon Basin has a big presence there, so you can tap into that resource if you want people to group with.  However, it'd be even better if more Lurkers joined in the fun, so that we could start grouping up together on a PvP server.
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I agree with this too. I'm not very active over there, but I'm more active than most other lurkers. Though I sometimes wonder if my style of attack anything in my territory regardless of it's level (I'm only 17 with my biggest char there) is the best idea. Sure it was fun almost taking down the L26 paladin who was heading towards Sepulcher and it was fun getting slaughtered by the L42 hunter, but still I wonder if attacking any alliance in horde territory, not contested but horde, is the best idea. :)

[Bolty]

They gave you a parachute (i.e. move to a server with a lower pop) and you're still convinced your only two options are to jump out unaided or ride the plane all the way into the ground.[right][snapback]70947[/snapback][/right]

Problem is, I'd be perfectly happy to jump to a new server, but I know few others would. I suppose it's easier for me to leave my level 60 behind than others because of my personality (I prefer the journey more than the destination), and because, well, I'm used to losing chars. I lost over 10 chars when the beta ended and had to start from scratch.

But the Basin and most of the Loungers wouldn't want to leave behind what they've built up (nothing wrong with that at all), and I don't want to play alone somewhere. That bites - and it's what poor MongoJerry's had to put up with for months now playing on a server with almost no guildies. Being a Priest has probably made it much easier for him, but still - it's no substitute for Lurkers to gang with.

MY personal wish from the start was that Blizzard would have a permanent test server (or two) to play on, but I didn't get it.

-Bolty

[Cryptic]

The high-population servers are not going to get better.

The reasons for this are twofold. One, no one wants to stop playing. I know many, many people who complain about server stability. At a conservative estimate, I'd say I have about 100 in-game contacts who are threatening to cancel.

But no one cancels. Everyone's an addict. "Get better, or I swear I'll cancel ..." No one does.

Multiply that by the number of players on the server.

The second reason: Very few people want to move. I know maybe 10 people out of said 100 who would be happy to jump ship. Everyone else has this mentality: "But then I'd lose my friends! I don't want to leave. They should make everyone who's not my friend and who joined after me leave instead." It's not voiced that way, but that's the definite undercurrent of meaning.

Multiply that by number of players as well.

The only possible change is going to come from Blizzard - better servers, better code. I'm not holding my breath for either.

[LochnarITB]

And, that makes me sad.

I love this game.....

What to do?
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Catlyn, I've got a document on my desktop where I have been trying to describe what I have been feeling. (Sabra, Nin and Arethor can attest to my rants when I get going. Sorry folks. :blush: ) Those three snippets sum it up very well. I may still write up my ramblings, if only because I would like to see if others are seeing it the same way I am. Being odd man out is nothing new for me, but many of us seem headed the same direction even if for different reasons.

[LochnarITB]

Rather than start a new topic, I'll insert my ramblings here and see if it strikes a chord with anyone else. I was going to title it:

Was my love just a crush and is it fading?

She was beautiful and fun when I first met her. We would party with friends and have a much better time than I had ever expected. Now that I've been with her day in and day out, much of the time one on one, I'm seeing through the cosmetics and the promises and finding that what I thought was love was just a crush. She insists that I go to raves (or did she say raids?) with strangers who just don't understand my way of having fun or be able to make me understand their way. She seems to be doing very little to improve herself to keep my interest but still wants me to keep paying for her attention every month. Her name is WoW.

I'm not sure where this will go or how much of a rant it will be but I'm just going to have at it. I would like to know if anyone else is seeing and feeling the same things as me.

Hardware Requirements
WoW seems to have delivered here. I play on a 2 year old laptop with a GeForce 4 32meg graphics card. I added 512meg of memory to bring it up to 1gig which mostly ended the hard drive grinding when changing areas. I still marvel at how beautiful some of the areas are. They also said that people would be able to play on any connection. I am not sure about that, as I can't live without a high speed connection, but rumors say it is playable on dial-up.

This is certainly a reason for me to stay.

Bugs and NYI
Short of bugs that cause program meltdown, they are not enough to push me away. I expect there to be bugs in something this complex. If there is enough info, provided by Blizzard or other players, the bugs can be worked around or avoided. If they involve the way a spell or talent functions, the player can account for it in their play. NYI is also to be expected. In fact, I would hope there is much NYI so that subscribers have new experiences to look forward to. However they could have been more careful with it. It is very annoying to find that the next step in a quest chain or the reward for faction gain is NYI. That annoyance could be avoided if they made sure they had the whole thing in place before any part is included.

This is not enough to push me away and, in a twisted way, actually serves to hold me because of the promise of things to come. Small, regular content additions could do the same thing without the annoyance.

Character Equipment
I recently did something that I never thought I would do. I turned off guild chat (but it is back on now). The chat had turned to what equipment was "uber", how terrible it was that certain items had been nerfed and how each class would be working toward a specific item sets. Being used to all the items and modifiers in Diablo 1&2, I expected there to be a wide range of "best" equipment. In the Diablos, the modifiers each came with a range. Even if you had an ob/zob in Diablo, you could still hunt for the elusive perfect ob/zod. In Wow, a given modifier on an item has set attributes. They go one further and have blues and purples. WoW wants to push players into farming for specific items and seems to be trying to force cookie cutter equipment setups. I want to believe that a player's skill is going to be more important than the equipment they wear. True, their talents and spell choices define the characters. Without polymorph and effective AoE, mages would not be welcome in groups/raids. I can see it getting to the point where people forming groups or raids will inspect a player's equipment and take or reject them based on it. I really wish they didn't have the ability to inspect in the game. I only see it being used out of mistrust, be it for judging a player setup or verifying need versus greed looting. I certainly don't see players going on skill alone such as a naked mage in Diablo.

This also would not push me away. I would hope that I had enough people who want to play with me even if my equipment isn't t3h ub3r.

Solo/Casual Play
Before getting into the game, I often saw it said that it would appeal to the casual gamer as much as the hard core player. I don't see it as being for the casual gamer at all. If you are soloing, it is not convenient to go AFK or logout in the middle of a quest. You are very likely to come back to a dead character or one that spawns in close proximity to a baddie. Maybe they will add an engineering recipe that makes an Outhouse-o-Matic which could allow any player that was out of combat to pop up a portable shelter until they can come back from AFK. :) If you are with a party, you can't just abandon them for either AFK or end of session either.

I think, overall, it is actually not friendly to the solo player due to it starting out being very soloable. You can go a long way with just about any character class without having to group, if you avoid certain quests. However, as the character grows (once they have you sufficiently addicted to the game), the ability to solo quests diminishes. You see more and more elite quests. There are a couple problems with "elite". First is that label. It would have been better to label them party quests. Even though the term refers to you generally having to deal with elite baddies, it reads more like the player needing to be elite to accomplish it. Then there is the fact that quests "go gray" if they aren't done within a certain character level range and become almost pointless to do unless they chain into something else you want to do. They could have easily avoided this. If they assigned quest level appropriate experience and rewards and made leveling proportionately harder per level, players could choose to delay doing quests until they could do them solo or with just one or two added players. Many of them can be done with pairs, and even a few solo, while still green, but even just getting one other player you really want to play with that needs the same quest can be difficult.

Once you get to level cap, there is almost nothing (other than tedious rep grinding) that can be done solo. You are forced into instances and need to party or raid to get through them. Even if I do find a quest that can be done solo, it eventually chains into one of the instances. Some of this could have been avoided too. The folks at Blizzard seem to think instances have to be massive. Perhaps it is just to impress themselves with what they have created or, more likely, they count on people being impressed without realizing the implications it has for some players. In order to make their design work worthwhile, they have to set up up many quests that push you into them. If they had designed many smaller instances that were each required by just a couple quests, they would have been more attainable by the casual or solo player. They could still have their Molten Core and Onyxia raid instances while having more content to keep all gamers happy.

I thought this was what would be what ended it for me but, lately, the next issue is really what is bringing me to the breaking point.

Server Stability
As is being said by many others, this is what has the greatest potential to push me away. The server problems make no sense to me. There are attempts by some of the community to shift the blame to Blizzard's ASP. That just doesn't "feel" right to me. I see this more as a bad use of the beta test period. It seems to me that they had far too many people testing the majority of the content, assuming this would stress the servers. The best way to have done it, IMHO, would have been to have the content very limited, with a large number of players. This would have forced high concentrations such as we see in Ironforge or during large raids. They should have tested the server software in this way until it was rock solid. Once they determined what population could be supported without incident, they then should have cut that number in half to allow for unforeseen problems and used that to set server caps. The server software is just that. It is not streaming the video or sound to us. It is passing packets of information indicating who is doing what where. It should be able to pass the information back and forth reliably. Once it was capable of passing more than enough info, only then should they have worried about all the fun stuff we see on our end such as artwork and sounds and game play.


I don't know if anyone else is even seeing any of these as issues. I don't know how the problems would be solved. Even so, I will probably stay with her until something better comes along. Being alone with her is not nearly as fun as it once was, and is getting to be "been there, done that", but I am very addicted and would surely suffer withdrawal if I left. Maybe we will find some good parties where we can still have fun and keep this relationship going. We might even have to try some kinky stuff like experimenting with playing horde.

[Bolty]

I don't know if anyone else is even seeing any of these as issues.  I don't know how the problems would be solved.[right][snapback]71024[/snapback][/right]

Sure, I saw these as the basic issues of the game at the end of beta. They're still the same issues - some standard things that aren't properly implemented in the game yet. Dig through my "warning, this game isn't ready" posts in November and you'll find juicy tidbits like "the game's going to seem perfect to new players until they hit their mid-40's and start seeing the holes." Now that you've been 60 for a while, you've gotten a good look at those holes. :) Your feeling of "nothing good to do at 60" is because Battlegrounds isn't implemented (and, for PvP server players, no honor system is implemented) at release. So your only outlet at this level is to run the same four instances over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...

I don't necessarily agree about your casual gamer note - it's completely possible to get to 60 by soloing 100% of the time. Only hardcore players are willing to do the "let's run Scholomance 20 times to get X set item" play, and Blizzard needed to program something like that in for them - hence the set items that require all those runs. The casual gamer isn't going to bother with those. What will the casual gamer do at 60? I'm not sure - I'll have to ask one. Some Lurkers here might *think* they're casual gamers, but let's face it: if you read and post here, you're not a casual gamer. The true definition of a casual gamer is someone who plays a few hours a week tops and never touches one of these gaming sites. Some of us here are just less hardcore than others. No truly "casual" gamer has had the time to hit 60 yet.

As for your skill-alone comments, and naked magedom - give it some time. Usually hijinks like that don't start until everyone's got their feet wet. While it's arguably very difficult to tank anything without armor, I wouldn't be surprised to hear of a 5-player group naked-running instances for the challenge, mostly because everyone thinks it's impossible and we know that's like waving a red flag in front of the Variant Scum crowd. :)

I know you're already playing alts, and I recommend you keep doing so while waiting for the rest of your guildies to get level 60 chars. Once we have enough, it'll be easy to find a party made only of Lurkers to run some of the more challenging content, not as zerg-fest raids, but as a challenge for a goal - especially when new content comes out (high-end instances). What you're experiencing is the penalty that comes with being one of the first to cap their char in a guild - not too many people to play with yet.

For those who have been 60 for a while on Stormrage, you might have noticed that there's a "new crop" of almost-capped chars coming. I suggest you welcome us into your clique and show us around. I've yet to EVER run Scholomance, LBRS, UBRS, and Scarlet Stratholme - and I'd sure like to do it right, with a Lurker gang.

Oh, and do try some Horde, Lochnar. If you never play Horde, you're basically never seeing a good 35% of the game's quests (figuring roughly 35% Horde-only, 40% Alliance-only, and 25% neutral).

-Bolty

[Guest]

I found the game to be extremely solo friendly, levels 1-59. I didnt only solo, but I mostly soloed. I always found groups for instances because I enjoyed doing them occassionally. I liked that, because its the first MMORP where I could actually get something done when I only had an hour or so to play - which is often.

So while Im not casual compared to a normal person, I am pretty casual compared to normal EQ players and the like.

Of course lvl 60 brings back the cruel reality of needing a group to experience any more of the content. Its not a surprise, evenone knows the game become 1 dimensional at 60, but its definetly a negative.

[Kevin]

I'm with you on hardware. While I desperately want to go from my 512MB of RAM to 1GB. I can play the game quite well with my current rig.

I'm with you on Bugs and NYI. Nothing really game breaking (though it's close when a quest NPC doesn't work, VC escort comes to mind). Things could have been done better, most of it is just frustration factors. NYI is going to get more and more frustrating if they can't get the servers working. I think some of the server issues have delay content as well.

Character equipment is a bit different for me. I've stated several times that the crafting system is a disappointment to me. While it is nice that it doesn't become a game in itself to craft that is also bad because I really wouldn't mind doing it full time if it meant having a real impact on the world. World impact is very minimal in this game. It is nice that for majority of the game though you can survive just dandy with stuff you find lying around on carcasses and from quest rewards. Crafting can help supliment it but you don't need it. You don't need any enchants or armor kits or any of that. The twinking at early levels doesn't completely change game balance. It makes it easier, but it is nothing like the difference between twink and no twink in D2 for some classes. But this very same system does start leading you down the paths you are mentioning. There isn't a wide variety and the higher you get, the more optimal becomes "go farm this". Of course you can survive very well into the 40's without optimal. I haven't seen end game, can't comment beyond that.

Solo and casual really depends on your baseline. Compared to D2 or D1 this game isn't even remotely close to solo/casual play. Compared to other MMO's this game is hugely casual and solo friendly. Not all content is, but since you can get level capped and skip that content that is pretty friendly. The game is an MMO it has to have content designed for groups. The elite quests provide that. I know Treesh is much more frustrated with the Instances and the elites than I am. I just figure that when I die a lot to them in 2 or 3 person groups that I should be because the stuff is designed for 5 man groups of the same level as the mobs. I'm also not as frustrated by having to leave an are and quest elsewhere as she is, despite wanting to be more efficient and not just travel around all over the place. But overall I do think they delivered on their promise to be solo and casual friendly.

Server stabilty is the big issue and there were warning signs all through beta, not just raids and such. I've talked with Ruvanal and been told that crashes coming out of instances were common place and other stabilty nightmares. The open that I got to do for the whole time (thanks to a lurker providing me with a key for the part that was only open to current beta testers) had major major problems with the item database issues that we still see. I've only really beta'd other MMO's but from what I've read WoW's servers are very bad for an MMO that is surviing. Others have been worse, but they didn't really reach critical mass, they were already obviously dead 4 months in.

Another annoyance I have is that Kalimdor feels a lot less finished than the Eastern Kingdoms. Horde or Alliance content on that side. The quests don't feel as well planned many of them don't seem to have the same humor and tone. It isn't just the difference in the worlds geography either. They just feel more rushed. It just feels like another part of the geme wasn't done on release but Blizzard fell to the market pressures.

Ah well, my finacial situation will drive me away before anything in the game right now. I'm fortunate to have altitis and server hoping isn't a real problem for me, so the big issues I can avoid. They are just more frustrations.

[savaughn]

I recently did something that I never thought I would do.  I turned off guild chat (but it is back on now).  The chat had turned to what equipment was "uber", how terrible it was that certain items had been nerfed and how each class would be working toward a specific item sets.  Being used to all the items and modifiers in Diablo 1&2, I expected there to be a wide range of "best" equipment.  In the Diablos, the modifiers each came with a range.  Even if you had an ob/zob in Diablo, you could still hunt for the elusive perfect ob/zod.
[right][snapback]71024[/snapback][/right]

We haven't even seen the higher level of equipment yet. You're speculating on "final builds" when everything that's currently in the game is going to be dwarfed by two additional rarity levels. I hardly think that what may or may not be the "best" set up in the game right now is in any way indicitive of what Blizz is pushing for end game equipment. We haven't seen any of the end game equipment, with the possible exception of the Officer sets in the battlegrounds preview.

I certainly don't see players going on skill alone such as a naked mage in Diablo.
[right][snapback]71024[/snapback][/right]

Apples and oranges. If WoW had so little content that 3-4 months after you had gotten it you were doing Stupid Gaming Tricks™ to keep yourself interested in the game, I would be sad. In that timeline, you're completely done with the game at month 6. I played Doom for two and a half years before I got around to seeing how far I could get in the game just punching things. Irene the Infirm was what... 3 years after the D2 release?

My experience? The absolute opposite. WoW is AMAZINGLY rich in content. All of the classes play completely differently! Playing through the game as a Night Elf is a whole different thing than playing through as a Human/Dwarf/Gnome. Horde vs. Alliance is a night and day difference with rich content waiting all over the place.

I haven't gotten through all of the PREPARED content yet. It's going to be months or years before I have to start trying to play with player set limitations to keep the game interesting. And it looks like Blizz is going to have substantial content additions every six months! With that in play I may never actually get through all the prepared content. (not for lack of trying!)

Solo/Casual Play
Before getting into the game, I often saw it said that it would appeal to the casual gamer as much as the hard core player.  I don't see it as being for the casual gamer at all.  If you are soloing, it is not convenient to go AFK or logout in the middle of a quest.
[right][snapback]71024[/snapback][/right]

OK, this really gets me. This game is brilliant for casual and/or solo play. If you need to, you can generally log out in a safe location within 20 seconds of needing to. You can always hearth. By comparison, most games lock you in for 20 minutes at a time. What's more, they go out of their way to identify long content as instances and elite quests, etc. You're right though. If you want a game you can stand up and walk away from at any second without having any inconvenience, this isn't it.

I don't think I've ever played that game. I don't want to play that game. I think few people would. But then, that's not material for the casual gamer, is it? Even casual gamers want a game more interesting than one they can walk away from at any time.

Once you get to level cap, there is almost nothing (other than tedious rep grinding) that can be done solo.  You are forced into instances and need to party or raid to get through them.
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Allow me to suggest that if you ever get to the level cap, you aren't a casual gamer. In fact, if you got to the level cap already, you are, in point of fact, a hard core gamer who's put in a staggering number of hours in the game. For these people, yes, Blizz expects you to group to continue exploring the level appropriate content.

Server Stability
As is being said by many others, this is what has the greatest potential to push me away.  The server problems make no sense to me.  There are attempts by some of the community to shift the blame to Blizzard's ASP.  That just doesn't "feel" right to me.  I see this more as a bad use of the beta test period.  It seems to me that they had far too many people testing the majority of the content, assuming this would stress the servers.  The best way to have done it, IMHO, would have been to have the content very limited, with a large number of players.  This would have forced high concentrations such as we see in Ironforge or during large raids.  They should have tested the server software in this way until it was rock solid.  Once they determined what population could be supported without incident, they then should have cut that number in half to allow for unforeseen problems and used that to set server caps.  The server software is just that.  It is not streaming the video or sound to us.  It is passing packets of information indicating who is doing what where.  It should be able to pass the information back and forth reliably.  Once it was capable of passing more than enough info, only then should they have worried about all the fun stuff we see on our end such as artwork and sounds and game play.
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Maybe it's the fact that I work in a similar kind of environment, but some of the assumptions in here kind of get my back up. Sorry if it comes across as a result, but think about what you're saying here. "used that to set server caps"? How? Player queues? They did that, you hate them. Limiting how many people can be on what servers? Would you really like it if half the lurkers got onto Stormrage and they cut it off so no one else could join the server? Oh, here's an idea... they could estimate how many copies of the game they'll sell, and scale the front end and back end servers appropriately. Oh wait, they did. And they sold many many times the estimated number of copies of the game and on top of that all the players want to play on the same servers, meaning that half the servers are starved for people and the other half are just crushed with players.

The business logic in WoW is not trivial. The database access is unbelievably complex. The game sold out every copy Blizz had printed for the first nine months of the games release by Christmas. Blizz did something that no other gaming company would do - they actually refused to sell more copies until they had put more servers out there so the game would still play really well. And then when they started selling copies again, no one used the new servers and everyone continued to crush onto the same high pop boxes.

The fact of the matter is that I'm amazed the game is as playable as it is. These servers are sustaining hundreds of thousands of players with enough database persistence that "rollback" is generally only a couple of seconds. That's impressive. Sure, once a week I'll have lag or login issues with a given server. That's why I play on a couple different ones.

[Mavfin]

Good points, savaughn. I peeked in here before I selected servers and I *intentionally* avoided the high-pop servers.

You who talk about queues and server stability need to come to Dalaran, or Malygos, or Uldum, where it's quiet, and you can solo or group all night with an occasional (very occasional) lag or latency problem, and then figure out whether to cancel or not.

I'm having a great time out here in the Styx, myself. There's enough people to group with, but you're not tripping over them.

[mjdoom]

For those who have been 60 for a while on Stormrage, you might have noticed that there's a "new crop" of almost-capped chars coming.  I suggest you welcome us into your clique and show us around.  I've yet to EVER run Scholomance, LBRS, UBRS, and Scarlet Stratholme - and I'd sure like to do it right, with a Lurker gang.

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This is super awesome and I can't wait for the new 60s to join us. I know for certain that SwordofDoom feels the same way. I haven't run a raid with Flyndar in about a month because I've been waiting for more Lurkers to catch up and run the instances the way they were meant to be done and with groups that actually care about strategy over zerging. I'd love to do things like bring two priests on a 5 man group into Strat and shackle everything, or be able to more consistently put 5-man groups together to do Strat/Scholo. With a bit of work we can be raiding UBRS with 10 Lurkers the way it was meant to be.

I can't speak for all of the other 60s but I know that I can't wait for Hykim, Mentat, Sharanna, and anyone else close to hit cap and welcome them into the fold. Maybe Nini won't even have to tank all the time anymore with Mentat around :) Flyndar can actually start running instances for fun and challenge again and maybe a bit more often than we can get our standard 5 or 6 together. With larger Lurker groups I can be convinced to come off my altitis a bit and show Flyndar some more fun times. Feel free to look me up...

- mjdoom