That Druid

Feral is by far the best spec for leveling. For the sake of saving money the most of your gear comes in form of quest rewards and you don't have an opportunity to gather both feral/leveling/wpvp gear (int, agi, str, sta, armor) and healing gear (int, spi) at the same time - you choose feral gear. Usually for the same reason you don't respec untill lvl50-60 (depending on personal preferences, sometimes don't respec even at 60) and you spend talent points wisely. And learning resto abilities costs extra gold as well. There is also a problem with combining leveling and healing because of choices you need to make during talent points distribution. For example, at lvl 40 you don't have enough talent points to find a good compromise - going too deep in healing tree will hurt your leveling speed and vice versa. Healing as feral is still possible but kinda bad and inefficient imo. Most of the time you lack important talents and don't even have Nature's Swiftness for critical situations, because feral talents have a higher priority. You still can combine leveling and tanking since the gear and talent difference is not that big.

First of all whole "Open Beta" idea was very controversial for me. Devs decided to release a server (Elysium) based on some new core, that hadn't been tested before(?), instead of Valkyrie's core. And then players should have tested that new core during few weeks before official server start. There were not so many testers and those, including me, who were testing random things - they still reported a plenty of serious bugs (e.g. completely broken stealth mechanics) that should have been eliminated before the launch. Of course devs didn't have enough time to deal with them, and they didn't even nearly fix as many problems as there were reported (not some missing gossips, but really game-breaking bugs). After that they launched the official fresh server, that couldn't handle 1+k population during the first day, still with many discovered and "ignored" bugs, and many more not discovered yet. Server was really unprepared and many players called it a rushed start. Since there was no real chance to test basic gameplay before, players found new bugs during leveling and devs fixed the worst of them (or at least the bugs they could fix). So during the first few weeks of official Elysium you could pretty often experience random restarts to apply different hot-fixes. I believe there were at least two major changes with geodata with following different pathfinding problems after that. There was a problem with migrating on a new hardware, that was solved only one month(?) later. It took some time to implement automatic rank update system - before that devs did it manually at saturday night, right during the online peaks and wsg/ab weekends (lol I remember the whine). If you look at 14.10.2016 patch note you will see that things that should have been fixed during the beta were marked as "Work In Progress" and it's only then when they fixed Faerie Fire bug that I personally reported two months before this patch note. They had to fix more important things instead, like Windsor escort quest. Also administration changed it's politics regarding some questions at least few times. As an example: There were many more things. My personal opinion is that it's still a good administration. Believe me or not I've seen some really bad server management on other private servers and even though sometimes things here don't go smoothly I still have a feeling that these guys are trying to provide at least somewhat good service with as little trouble for players as possible. With all this Nost hype stakes are even higher, and now they can use experience of Nost devs to avoid mistakes in the future. I hope they won't be so "reckless" now. They were much better at any other activity, like responsibility and caring. And compared with first three weeks, administration looked much more solid during the last three weeks. Sorry for my english

PvP+Elysium; PvE; Fresh PvP Actually I can't imagine a better solution that apparently would please the most of the players. I had two 60s on Nost PvP and just reached 60 with another character on Ely maybe a month ago. Still looking forward to start on a new server if there will be one. Just remember that launch day on Nost PVP with 3(?)k people in game and crowded started areas, that competition and fun. New friends, a lot of players to collaborate with, opportunity to visit and enjoy unpopular low lvl instances like Blackfathom Depths you'd skip otherwise. And that reaction you get when you tag every single quest mob with moonfire right in front of low tier classes (warriors, rogues, priests, warlocks, paladins, mages, shamans and hunters) mmmm just priceless. I believe what administration is planning right now is the best way to handle the situation. Not sure only if all three (or two) servers should go live at the same time.

It depends on what you expect from a private server. If we are talking about Elysium it has plenty of pros: Fairly good open minded administration, ready to admit some flaws and work toward a solution. If you are banned for something - chances are you deserve this ban, not because some 16yrs old moderator felt power Many updates - you do see the work being done on a weekly basis, just check patch notes Decently scripted server in general. And you also can find many little things working here that are broken anywhere else Pretty nice (?) international community. Ofc sometimes you meet toxic players, but I had good experience in chinese, german and russian parties so far. Old players from Valkyrie are loyal to project and play mostly for fun and community Server is fresh, you won't have that many problems if you start playing right now No cash shop and no P2W system. Though there was some information about possible transfer between factions and decorative pets purchase - I don't really know, but even in this case it's not bad. Low latency and no random disconnects, stable server as it is now (not tested with 2++k players and sometimes players discover new ways to crash the server) Cons: Low population which sometimes makes it difficult to find a party, especially during leveling. Not so many people of your level range in your zone - sometimes zero. Even though there are many things that are broken elsewhere, there are also some important things that are broken here but working anywhere else Alliance is thrice as active as Horde on bgs and it's almost impossible to raise your rank because of low population. Join Horde if you are going to pvp, it will be difficult though There were some serious mistakes in server management during the first two months after it's release so we can expect more (?). Many players just left and won't try this server again. Server is progressive in terms of available quests and instances, but at the same time it uses 1.12 database with the latest versions of items that don't make sense. For example you can expect players wearing Don Rodrigo's Band with Alterac Valley release which doesn't really fit with other available items and is overpowered. Correct me if I'm wrong on this one. There are some occasional wow errors (like when there are too many players on the ship between Menethil and Theramore) and screen freezes (mostly during combat and pvp) which is probably a server-side problem. Some players don't experience these at all Server is unique and in my opinion has by far the biggest potential, compared with any other existing vanilla server atm. If you don't like something you have an opportunity to influence the server progress. Still has a long way to go and appropriate decisions to make. I'm afraid if you played right now you would have a bad impression about the server since population and few important bugs continue to be the main problem and are annoying. But if Elysium succeeds in building playerbase and fixing at least important issues with current mindset it will become a strong enemy even for some upcoming projects that everyone is waiting for. And at this pace it can happen soon. I don't play here until that time You might wanna find a social/leveling guild and just try it out for yourself, many players are happy with what they have right now (by "many" I mean like 500 or so lol). Whether it's going to grow or get even lower depends on developers and further project's politics, can't predict. Source: I've been playing here since PTR, now waiting for changes

The problem is not in lack of ads or legion release, the problem is that you can't even make the very basic things right and smooth so far. Pathfinding doesn't work correctly and some mobs reset for different reasons so it's impossible to solo them. Pretty often I can see desync in different forms between an npc on client and server sides, which is especially noticeable for druids and rogues when they see their target facing wrong direction. And these are just the part of the simplest pve mechanics, not pvp or some advancing raiding technology. And there are many more examples. But when I read any update log I see things like Fix something important ffs. Who needs some unpopular lvl25 quests or minor tweaks while overall gameplay is frustrating. I could understand project's politics right after release when you were busy with server stability and approx one month ago when you fixed important quest chains for raid attunement and some abused bugs. But it's been more than two months already and players still deal with the same top priority problems that should have been fixed during the open beta. Meanwhile instead of doing what should be done you are busy with DM and some adjustments. it's a private server, I don't pay money and nobody owes anything. But what I'm trying to say - people leave because of bad server management. It's not about size of the team or whether the project is rushed or not. You just seem to have a wrong approach right now

Well, not only from the poll but also from experience I think it's safe to say that we can expect more PvP forces on Horde side. By looking at Valkyrie's General PvP-standing we can see 164k alliance characters and 151k horde characters which makes 52/48 (Alliance/Horde) ratio. If population of Valkyrie is going to be a big part of Elysium population I believe it can lead to more balanced PvP with a lesser bg waiting time for Horde and more decent PvP-ers for Alliance. Anyway, nobody know for sure before the launch. Joining Alliance

Interesting solution, with it's pros and cons. I've never seen such an approach before and wonder how it turns out with a lot of people fighting for ranks during the first few months.

Popular vanilla servers show that many people tend to join premades and dodge other premades of the opposite faction in order to recieve more honor. That happens because of how time consuming it is to fight a decent enemy. You will recieve much more honor during the same period of time by fighting a weaker team and on rare occasions simply by letting the stronger enemy win - not sure what kind of honor it is. This is how it worked on Nostalrius: - Premade (9ppl for example) joins group queue for both AB and WSG - Invite for battleground #1 pops up and one or few "scouts" from premade enter this battleground - In case the scouts see other scouts or good premade they can decide to wait for battleground #2 invite to pop up and check if it's safe there - If they left battleground #1 there is always one member of premade near battlemasters to make the scouts queued for batlleground #1 again - Thus scouts can jump between battleground untill they find a weak enemy team, then the rest of premade can join And there were some variations and exceptions in this scheme. As the result we could see overpowered comps on both sides with gear and communication (1,35-1,5kk++ honor per week) farming random undergeared people of opposite faction (0,15-0,4kk honor per week). And it was a god blessing for a "weak" team to find and fight the similar opponents. What do you think about this? I don't know how it's working on Valkyrie if you even consider this to be a problem. I'm especially interested in opinion of game masters, developers and server administration :^)

I was there and in my opinion Black Lotus raised in price not because of "chinese mafia" but because of how overpopulated and unprepared the server was. Initially BL cost was 10-15g per flower. Eventually, with the progression towards new recipes and difficult raid content more and more guilds started stacking BL in their banks to craft flasks for raids later, more and more players reached level cap. BL cost became 40-45g per flower. There was a relief when herbs were added on Alterac valley but it was not enough, 7k+ players had to be satisfied with standard spawn timers of BL. And I swear I havn't seen even a single "chinese" BL camper - trust me I've seen many campers. That's how it worked - you want some world pvp with 60s you go visit herb and ore nodes with hundreds of campers around. I believe what he said was that there were two groups with communication on both sides and if for example Alliance chinese group loses Devilsaur tag to other Alliance players then Horde chinese group comes to kill other Alliance players and let Alliance chinese group to tag this Devilsaur. Anyway, again, there was a great competition on both sides and just like BL was farmed only few players ahead of the leveling curve did know when to wait for a next Devilsaur. Later, whith 13-15k people online, things became even worse. People started whining about lag and lack of resources, they started looking for the guilty. At this point I witnessed the birth of the hatred towards chinese population even though they were way below the curve compared to other players. But it was the server, that was unprepared and couldn't handle such a big population. I was a member of one of the most demanding top pve guilds and I really felt that situation on server. You tell me "chinese mafia" but I believe that we were that mafia, mostly english speaking community. I disagree with all op assumptions. And yes, you can't ban a whole country judging by a single representative.

As long as you don't name your character Elysiüm and send c.o.d. letters to everyone I'm not concerned

I'm sceptical about any allegations people make whether you should play here or not and the PTR state since the server is not launched. And even then if I see few problems I don't mind ignoring them some time - we are the pirates anyway. I'm all about the journey and what really matters is the potential of a project imo. But those are some very loud statements you made Now I'm waiting for this future and I hope some serious steps will be made to reach this future soon

You can cast through trees and some game objects. At the same time I didn't notice any problems with walls (didn't test properly) Both are pretty decent. Pathing is almost flawless - mobs run around any fences and trees (fences and trees I've seen so far) and you can kill them without touching you, the only problem they don't see the most of dynamic walls atm i.e. doors in strat and scholo. Pfffffff

I'm afraid it's against the rules of this forum to post links to other, even dead, similar projects - that's how it usually is. Check for your private messages. Basicly what Anomander Rake said. I'm no good at jurisprudence but I can expect scenarios when Blizzard with their financial possibilities can go much further than just making a warning. Apparently they can demand not only to shut down the server but also to pay damages and block all pirated content and at this point it will be way harder to continue any activity. Risk correlates with attention Elysium gets. It took a great deal of attention before local lawyer has been hired to sue one french provider. Some work should be done before this project recieves that much of attention :^)

I think that the best opportunity for Elysium is showing radical changes over short periods of time and maybe giving some non-blizzlike features (even though I don't like it). The later is doubtful, for sure, but keep in mind that it is decided to use 1.12 database, so if the server is not that authentic already and it can't really compete with better servers in quality of progression, maybe it will be more reasonable to play around it's non-blizzlike part somehow. Also there is not much time left before the release of another, you already know it's name, project. Unless that another new project dies before release like another famous old tbc project does :^) Whatever, it's a nice idea just to give players the reason to stay here.

The secret here is to play druid and steal every single mob with moonfire