[WoW] I Was a Teenage Alpha Tester

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Originally Posted by Walk

It's "you're" as in "you are" and I don't think they would try to make everyone quit. It's more like something that just happens if they don't plan ahead properly.

Excuse me, I've never seen that mentioned here. It sounds ok but doesn't really solve the problem of overcrowding. If anything it makes it worse - more mobs + more people just means even more lag.

No I mean, with most MMOs your character is locked into 1 server only and you can't play on the other servers with that character. So when you find out you have friends on another server you would have to start your character over to play with them. As for uber guilds, I don't see how they can "farm" more than 1 server at a time, so as long as there are as many servers as "uber guilds" it shouldn't be a problem. If anything, being able to move your characters to another server helps solve this problem because if you have 2 "uber guilds" on a server, one of them can go somewhere else.

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Thanks for the grammar lesson.

grammar is what you use when you don't have the brains for anything else :(

400 people in a wow newbiezone will be fine, the first couple days may suck but oh well.

Whizbang has addressed the overcrowding in other posts

I'm guessing based on what I know of other MMOs, I have no inside knowldege of WoW's server structure. Most MMO "servers" are actually clusters of several seperate computers. I know it's not trivial to copy a file from one computer to another.. oh wait it is trivial, in fact it's probably the most basic function of computers and networks :P But seriously, if you plan ahead for characters to move, it shouldn't present any problems - any technical problems anyway. I know that EQ made the mistake at first of not having the character files very portable and they had to spend a lot of effort to rework the server/database system to allow it.

The "one server" idea is neat, but it wouldn't work even if we had the network and processing power to do it. You can't just throw 20,000 people into one small area, you wouldn't even be able to see with all those people, not to mention it would probably cause most people's PCs to melt down or blow up....

You would also need a nearly infinite amount of content (zones) for all those people so they are not all in the same place. That would require far too much development time, to build and populate all those zones (and test! omg..) so they do the trick of creating 1 zone and multiplying it to N number of servers. I don't have a problem with that, as long as they have enough servers for everyone.

Just a quick question. Can the melee classes dual weild? I haven't noticed any screenshots of them doing so or heard anything about how dual weild stacks up with two-handed weapons yet.

You don't seem to understand what I was getting at....

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Ideally, we'd be able to all be on one server with enough content and bandwidth from that one server to allow everyone to be fully functional.

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That with enough content thing covers the idea of having thousands of people crowded into one zone. You see, there'd be tons of different newbie zones. This theoretical game would be even more real-world persistant than any other incarnation before it. Furthermore, I was giving an example of an ideal situation. I'm pretty sure that my ideal can also stretch to cover computer power to process that much shit happening at once.

Each of those "clusters" that you described is essentially just one computer in multiple boxes unless the only thing connecting them together is something as flimsy as a network connection. Can't modern supercomputers pretty much be described as just a bunch of regular computers connected at the hip?

Oops, ok I see that now, I was just thinking aloud. Like I said, the "enough content" part is the hard part - you've got to have world builders to build it all. I suppose you could generate some random landscape, in fact I played an MMO game called "Terra" that did exactly that, their world was essentially as large as the entire surface area of the Earth! The problem was, it was all empty and devoid of life. I think Warcraft is going for more of a "hand crafted" feel with their world :) Anyway this is an interesting discussion (moreso than the grammer one...) but I don't want to derail the thread any more. Suffice to say I hope WoW plans ahead for the ba-zillions of players it will have! :)

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Originally Posted by Orome

Anyone know if there will be opportunities for Europeans to get access to the general Beta or will it only be for language specific versions?

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War3 beta wasn't restricted to just the languages they eventually localized it to, as I recall. Since everyone in Scandanavia speaks better English than we do in America, it should be no problem. ;)

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Originally Posted by Walk

My question is how large are the servers and how many are there planned to be. This all sounds so great that my only fear is it will be too crowded! No matter how good a game is, overcrowding can kill it right off..

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If you're in beta at some point, you will get crowded, since they are consciously stuffing everyone onto the same server until they can see "hmmm, that's too many damn people" and then open another one.

But throughout alpha, when we raised concerns about crowding, we were told they wanted a server load that was about what we had then, extrapolated up from how little of the races was open at that point (and fewer people on each than 2 x current beta population, therefore). So doing rough math, it looks like the plan at that point (things subject to change, etc. etc.) you can guess there'd be about 3k people on each server, or about what most EQ servers are.

And yeah, the content is much denser, and once you get out of the first little part of your newbie zone, people spread out pretty fast.

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Originally Posted by Lornick65

Just a quick question. Can the melee classes dual weild? I haven't noticed any screenshots of them doing so or heard anything about how dual weild stacks up with two-handed weapons yet.

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Rogues, hunters and warriors all can learn dual wield at some point.

Two handed weapons are apparently going to be getting a little love as well.

Hi. Just registered for these forums thanks to this topic. Two questions:

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Originally Posted by Whizbang Dustyboots

Rogues, hunters and warriors all can learn dual wield at some point.

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Does this mean that hunters are now available to play in beta? Previously you stated that hunters and druids could not be played yet. If they are available now, could you provide more information about them?

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/svanaf...ealchemist.jpghttp://mywebpage.netscape.com/svanaf...ha/unlearn.jpg http://mywebpage.netscape.com/svanaf...herworking.jpg
My second question involves skills. Based on these three images in this thread (on pages 10 and 13), and what I rad in the first post, I am confused. From what I see, every level up you get talent points and skill points. Talent points are used to increase stats and gain "feats" (using D&D terminology- essentially one time only abilities that grant you bonuses, such as increased speed or bonuses to skills) while skill points allow you to incrase ranks in trade skills, such as from Apprentice to Journeyman to Expert. From the screenshots, it seems to require one skill point for Apprentice, 3 for Journeyman and 5 more for Expert. Additionally, each skill level requires a rank in that skill to be a certain level; these seem to be in the hundreds (125 and 225 for Apprentice to Journeyman and Journeyman to Expert based on the screenshots). These can't be skill points then, or people would be able to level all skills quite easily. Are these then based on how many items you create, or how often the skill is used? And about skill points: how often are they gained? My current best guess is one every two levels, which would give you 30 by the time you hit maximum at level 60; this would also allow you to max out 3 trade skills and get Apprentice rank in three more, which fits with your comments that no one person can gain more than a few trade skills at maximum. Are my guesses correct? If not, how does this system work? Also, how many talent points are gained every level, and are they used for feats like I thought, or is that different, like Diablo 2 abilities?

Edited screenshots to feature third shot found in this thread.

3k per server? So by my calculations, they will need about 100 servers! :) Seriously, what does Bnet get on a slow night? Double that, and multiply by all the former UO and EQ players that are coming out of the woodwork! ;)

Ok, maybe 20 servers..

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Originally Posted by Tesseract

Does this mean that hunters are now available to play in beta? Previously you stated that hunters and druids could not be played yet. If they are available now, could you provide more information about them?

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Hunters will be available two pushes from now. But you can find images of them dual-wielding released by Blizzard, and there's a few hunter NPCs in the game now who dual wield.

OK, about the skill point/talent point thing:

Every level, you gain 1 skill point. (Human special ability was to be gaining one extra one every five levels, but like all racial abilities, it's currently disabled.)

Skill points can be spent on tradeskills, non-standard weapon skills (like daggers for mages, staffs for warlocks or swords for paladins) or for learning to ride another race's mount.

Now, when you buy a tradeskill (variable costs depending on the tradeskill and level of the tradeskill), all you're really doing is raising your potential skill cap. You start off with 0 for your cap, naturally, and at apprentice, you can raise it to 75, journeyman to 150 and expert to 225. You still need to practice your skill to get it up that high, though -- my human paladin is making runed copper belts until such time as his skill gets to 100 and he can learn the next recipes I want.

And yes, talents (which use a different point system entirely) are mostly combat related things, like raising stats, raising defensive skills, learning how to use weapons in specialized ways, or picking up better ways of killing certain types of opponents.

I just thought of something else, but I'm not sure it'll be answerable. From reading it seems people can stack debuffs and dots on creeps, and each person is limited by what they can stack from their abilities, but that some of the same abilities from different people will stack (I think that last part is right). Is there a limit to how much you can put onto a single creep? Like in EQ there was a limit at 15, but it got raised to 30. (I only ask because I was reading something about a Paladin being able to stack Holy Strike debuffs up to 6 times on a single creep and that plus some dots and stuff could add up really quickly on big things)

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Originally Posted by Walk

Also, are they going to make the standard MMO mistake of having each character locked to a specific server or will we be allowed to play with our friends on different servers?

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I actually think it would be a pretty bad idea to allow you to move servers at will, and I bet a lot of MMORPG veterans would agree with me. Servers form communities of their own. Even at 3k people or so that is getting to be a pretty large community. If you allow people to move at will, or if you have servers that hold an order of magnitude more people, you destroy that community. And community is what keeps these games going.

If you're worried about playing on the same server as your friends, coordinate with them from the start. I doubt this will be like FFXI where you are assigned a server and have to "earn" a pass onto another server... that was the most boneheaded decision I think I've ever seen in MMOGs

That does seem to be the conventional wisdom. If anyone can defy that, it's Blizzard. But regardless, I hope there is at least some method of transferring servers, whether it's for a fee, and/or you can only do it once per month or so... I will surely try to coordinate with my friends before the game goes live, but I also might make *new* friends that play, a year-2-3-whatever from now. (I know, making new friends is probably a foreign concept to a few of the posters here :P)

Thanks for the info Whizbang! Your post raises a few more questions though. You said that hunters are coming in two pushes. About how often do pushes come?
Also, how many talent points do you get per level? I'm guessing that stat raises are one talent point per one stat point; how much do abilities cost?

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Originally Posted by Skif k'Sheyna

I just thought of something else, but I'm not sure it'll be answerable. From reading it seems people can stack debuffs and dots on creeps, and each person is limited by what they can stack from their abilities, but that some of the same abilities from different people will stack (I think that last part is right). Is there a limit to how much you can put onto a single creep? Like in EQ there was a limit at 15, but it got raised to 30. (I only ask because I was reading something about a Paladin being able to stack Holy Strike debuffs up to 6 times on a single creep and that plus some dots and stuff could add up really quickly on big things)

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Right now, only one of each type of DoT -- from anyone -- can be on one target at a time, due to the way effects work in WoW. As you might imagine, priests and warlocks are pushing for this to be looked at and revised.

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Originally Posted by Tesseract

Thanks for the info Whizbang! Your post raises a few more questions though. You said that hunters are coming in two pushes. About how often do pushes come?

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The original theory was once every 10 days. That lasted all of one push (human). In practice, they're four to six weeks.

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Also, how many talent points do you get per level? I'm guessing that stat raises are one talent point per one stat point; how much do abilities cost?

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From level 2-9, they cost 10 points each, and you get 10 talent points per level.

From 10-19, they cost 15 points each, and you get 15 points per level.

And so on, with points raising 5 points per 10 levels.

Thus you can go back and buy up a bunch of lower level stuff for cheap, or buy just one thing at a high level. It's a good system in practice.

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Originally Posted by Walk

It's "you're" as in "you are"

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Oh, goodie goodie, the grammar police have arrived.

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Originally Posted by Whizbang Dustyboots

Right now, only one of each type of DoT -- from anyone -- can be on one target at a time, due to the way effects work in WoW. As you might imagine, priests and warlocks are pushing for this to be looked at and revised.

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That's an issue, hope that high on the list for fixing.