SpottedCow

6.5k, it was upped yesterday. Also, because the PvE server is being run on the old Elysium server, which is not meant to handle a Nost level load.

Yeah, with a 6.5k cap on the PvE and queue times that long, I wouldn't mind seeing the pop split. 2-4k is plenty. But in any case, I wouldn't advocate for opening more servers anyway; this isn't a permanent thing. I'm pretty sure that PvE got all of the fresh server players who wanted something to do while they waited; those players are going to want to avoid getting ganked by 60's and that makes PvE the place to be. Some of em might stick, but once the freshie opens up, the PvE server should be back down to a nice, manageable number. After getting D/C'd from queue 3 times, I'm just going to wait another 5 or 6 hours until all of NA is logged off and then get some time in with the Aussies.

That's happened to me 3 times now, except I never actually got logged in. I'd get down to under 1k in the queue and then get the "disconnected from server" notice and have to start all over again from 5-6k. I mean, I can't really девушка легкого поведения, I wasn't expecting the PvE server to be available before late January, so it's not like this is any worse than what I was expecting 2 weeks ago. And I did get on without a queue after I got off of work last night (about 3:30am CST), but there was an issue with mob spawns (mostly that they weren't spawning at all) and so the entire server was wiped of things to kill. So I just bullshitted with guildies for an hour and went to bed. To the people wondering why the fresh server wasn't added right away, this is why. Because the team is not stupid and they know that there are going to be fires, minor and major, to put out with any launch. It was brave of them to do 2 servers at once and I appreciate all the work they're putting in to get things fixed. I put in a ticket yesterday morning and had a response from Pottu within 30 seconds. The team is working their asses off and that's all we can really ask for.

Jesus christ. While ensuring balanced populations between the 3 realms is part of the impetus behind the release schedule, the main thing is simply staff limitations. While I'm not sad that they moved up the PvE launch, I am surprised by it. Say they put up all 3 servers at the same time. And then they realize that there's some flaw that completely ваууs gameplay. They've got GMs handling tickets from 3 different servers, they've got to fix code on 3 different servers. They've got at least 2 servers where people are going to be bitching about gear they think they should have or auctions that they vaguely remember being up. The staff requirements are front-loaded to the launch. Once they can be sure that they've got a stable realm (or in this case, realms), then they can reallocate resources and move to the next launch. But they're not going to give optimistic estimates of the release schedule because the player base will take any estimate as a hard and fast promise and cry like little girls if it doesn't happen. So take your "1 month" as a conservative estimate and then assume that the fresh realm will probably happen as soon as everyone gets back from visiting their families for Christmas. Also, on the fresh vs. old thing, yeah, the Nost name is why this project is so hyped. I played on Elysium, and it was ok, but the reason you have a fresh server to be excited about is because of the return of the old databases. So stop acting like the Nost players are just entitled jerks. You have a new server because there are so many of us. Otherwise, you'd be stuck with K2 and Feenix or jumping to every shitty new server that opens (and then jumping ship again a month later for the next 'latest and greatest' when you realize how shitty it is).

Yes, but whether or not we have those hardware and software limitations, the game was balanced around those caps, which is why Nost had to introduce several un-Blizzlike workarounds when they lifted that cap, like dynamic respawns and clustering. Personally, I found the dynamic respawns and the phasing (especially in Un'Goro and Badlands) to be a huge detriment to gameplay. You can't say "all the things Blizzlike!!! Except for this one thing where I like it better when it's not Blizzlike!!!" The arguments against a raise in the cap seem specious at best. Of course, I can't see why it's needed; the guild I was running with on the PvE server had 2 raid groups plus associated alts and we managed just fine with what was available. But still, I can't see what it hurts.

You also said that Nost was missing a bunch of Blood of Heroes spawn points, which it was not; the extra spawn points were added later on. When I was blood hunting, I had to find a much older version of the map; the spawn points listed in the most recent map before they were removed were wrong. But the easiest maps to find are those meant for people grinding out "the Insane" achievement, i.e. they were made during WotLK. That means I'm not buying anything you say without serious backup. The 3 hour source that Dvergur linked is far more compelling, although as Shayss points out, that source was late in vanilla and Nost follows the patches for everything except talents, meaning numerous things change over the course of roll out. So it's possible that the timer was shortened during vanilla at some point (wouldn't be the first thing they nerfed late in vanilla). But I'll buy 3 hours as the correct timer unless someone has some better evidence. Which means I would be fine with a reduction to like an hour or an hour and a half to account for massive pop on the Nost PvP server. There's a difference between "here's evidence that this is wrong" and "this is just too tough for poor lil ol me..."

Happy to see fresh faces on the PvE server! Really hoping they just go back to right before the announcement. I never got an Ony head in retail vanilla and I'm so stoked about my Ony Blood Talisman that I may pee a little if I still have it when I log in... As for me, I won't be able to log in until the 18th, so I'll miss all the opening celebrations, but I'm going to follow my raid group to the new guild and if we don't have enough people to raid right away, I'm going to start hammering the recruitment. More MC raids = more chances for me to see Bindings. And of course, going to put some time in farming DM on my mage, because tanks are incredibly expensive to maintain.

Meh. We're used to real hate. Being treated as second-class is an improvement for us. I played on a PvP server during retail vanilla, but of course, there was maybe 1/10th the people that the Nost PvP server had (Spinebreaker was a med pop), so "WPvP" really was mostly a bunch of people around the same levels and questing in the same areas fighting back and forth. Most of the max level characters were busy doing better things with their time than ganking lowbies, and most of the people leveling weren't actually all that interested in more than minimal PvP, so you wouldn't end up getting ganked more than 2-3 times a day, even in StV. One of the things that Nost is never going to be able to bring back is retail vanilla style PvP. You just don't have people looking for casual BGs or WPvP anymore. It's either trolls that want to gank lowbies for hours on end or people running premades grinding for R14. And the premades discourage anyone who would be interested in casual BGs because casually getting the snot stomped out of you every time you queue (or waiting 3 hours for a 3v3 that closes in the first 5 minutes) is an excellent way to discourage anyone not looking for R11+ gear. So yeah, the rest of the community can look down on us, but I wouldn't leave the PvE server for anything. BGs are dead to me no matter what server I'm on and I'd rather be able to level alts in peace than occasionally vent my spleen on people half my level just trying to grind their way through StV.

There have been several nods to the fact that the ridiculously large pop caps have made the server unwieldy (especially the PvP server, as the PvE was nowhere near as overpopulated). Dynamic spawns being one of them. Personally, I'd rather see the 3k pop caps that actual vanilla had, but I recognize that I'm in the minority there, which is why you won't find me starting a thread asking for them to make significant structural changes to accommodate me. But while many aspects of the game are harder on Nost because of population issues, many aspects are easier as well. We've got a ton of accumulated theorycrafting, far more accurate information on spawn timers and loot tables and a greater general awareness of useful things like macros and addons. So a perfect "Blizzlike" experience is impossible. However, while the game is, overall, much easier than it was 15 years ago, I see no reason to further nerf the spawn timers on the hunter quest. Especially since the Elysium staff has rules against griefing, which Blizzard did not (I remember my roommate having a hell of a time with his Benediction quest because people would ride through and screw it up and I know that another friend of mine put together a cross-faction team to gank the фекал out of other fishermen during the Sunday event so that he could take first). @Guybrush: Yeah, I guess you don't. Plenty of other people have found the time, so it's obviously not impossible, it's just more than you're willing to commit. On the PvE server, Deja Vu got the vast majority of the Kazzak kills, because they were willing to sit there and play grief wars back and forth for 12+ hours until everyone gave up and just let them have it. We didn't want it bad enough to invest that kind of time. It's not a quest for a basic class skill. I'd be 100% sympathetic if it was. It's not even an attunement quest that you HAVE to do in order to get to a given raid, where I might still feel some sort of sympathy. It's a quest for a max-level epic weapon. They don't hand out Benedictions and Quel'Serrars like candy either. I mean, the Leaf is tied for the easiest drop to get out of MC, if the back end is a little harder than other epic pieces of loot, oh well.

I'm just going to reiterate what has been said several times in this thread. It's a quest for an epic weapon. It should be time consuming and it should require dedication. The fact that Suzie Sandy Slit can't do it because "life" is not a good enough reason to bring the timers down further. I've got my Breastplate of the Chromatic Flight on my warrior, I'm well aware that long respawn timers can push a quest out to days or weeks. You know what? I was not required to do the quest for the Breastplate. I chose to do it. If you choose to do the Leaf quest, that's your choice. But stop crying like a retail kiddie, because the rest of us don't want to hear it. This is the version of the game that WE choose to play because we LIKE that it's awkward, time consuming and difficult. We don't want a streamlined solo-player game. STOP TRYING TO RUIN OUR EXPERIENCE BECAUSE YOU FAIL AT WOW! I quit retail 3 weeks into WotLK because crybabies like you convinced Blizzard to dumb down the game. I went from the greatest raid ever in Sunwell to retard mode Naxx, because casuals wanted to девушка легкого поведения about not being able to experience a tiny percentage of the content in the game. Go back to retail - we don't want you here, Suzie. There are 10 billion other things you can do in the game that are not the bow quest, so if the bow quest hurts your sensitive little feelings, go do one of those things. Do you not yet understand? The journey was the destination. Can you not feel the battle scars? The pain you underwent? Having survived the ordeal, you are a more powerful being. Much more powerful. This breastplate is merely a reflection of your own innate abilities. - quest completion text from Breastplate of the Chromatic Flight.

So Shield Slam and Revenge cannot proc Crusader?

The weapon skill formula is: Miss %: (mob defense - player weapon skill - 10) *0.4+7 That runs all the way up to 304. At 305, the formula becomes: Miss %: (mob defense - player weapon skill) *0.1+5 So your miss chance against lvl 63 (boss) is as follows: 9.0% @ 300 8.6% @ 301 8.2% @ 302 7.8% @ 303 7.4% @ 304 6.0% @ 305 5.9% @ 306 5.8% @ 307 5.7% @ 308 5.6% @ 309 5.5% @ 310 I pulled the numbers back when Nost was still around, don't remember where I got them from. Would've either been from Nost or from an old EJ page. I have a spreadsheet with all the numbers for it. Dodge/Block/Parry formula doesn't change, it's (mob defense - player weapon skill) *0.04+5, so 5.6% for each of those 3 @ 300 weapon skill, 5.4% @ 305 and 5.32% @ 307. I'll look to see if I can find the source material. Edit: Oh, also, each point of weapon skill reduces the damage reduction from glancing blows (40% of hits vs. boss mobs) by 3%, from 30% at 300 weapon skill to a 0% reduction at 310 (however, a glancing blow still cannot crit because attacks are single roll). Edit 2: Before anyone takes those numbers as gospel, let me find the source; the spreadsheet I have was just for me to compare gear for myself, so I don't know what was and wasn't tweaked around my stats on there.

Basically, every additional point of threat that you generate is 1.375 extra DPS til cap for melee and 1.625 extra DPS til cap for ranged (most dps classes have a .8 threat modifier and you've got the 10% additional for melee and 30% additional for ranged). So if you gear to 3% hit for your MC example and it averages to 3 TPS per point of hit, you're getting 9 TPS which gives 12.375 DPS til cap to melee and 14.625 DPS til cap for ranged. So you're looking, at most, at a 2.5% potential increase in DPS for those dps members who are already threat capped. So sure, if you're in a guild where everyone is a god at their class, you might see a noticeable increase in overall DPS. But realistically, even if you have a couple raid members who are holding back a little, you're not going to see much difference. I just don't see the reason behind gearing for hit. And even if you feel that you're too buff to need more Def/Armor/Agi/Stam and you're struggling to generate enough threat, you'd get a bigger boost to TPS using Edgemaster's than replacing 3 pieces of tanking gear with hit gear (7 weapon skill works out to 4.04% reduced chance to miss/be parried/dodged/blocked as well as reducing the glancing blow DR from 30% to 9%).

And how do white hits change things? A 1% increase in hit is a 1% increase in threat from your white damage (assuming you're NOT rage capped and replacing every white hit with HS), except your white damage is less TPS than any of your yellow abilities. So let's say that you're using Finkle's Skinner (because that's ballpark best you're going to see when you enter MC), which is 41.2 DPS (with tank talents and in def stance, 67.75 TPS). A 1% increase would be 0.68 TPS. That 3-4 TPS I quoted above is your best case, that's for your high threat abilities (SS and revenge and HS *if* you're using a fast dagger). Call it a bad example if you want, but if you're going to disagree, show me some numbers that back up hit being a worthwhile stat to gear for. Saying you need it to hold threat is all well and good, but show some numbers as to how it helps.

Why would you want to prioritize hit? Each 1% increase in hit is going to be a 1% increase in TPS, on average. In 5 man tanking, where you're trying to hold multiple mobs, misses become more important, because of variance and the reduced number of attacks directed at each mob, and I can see gearing for hit (especially because only a few mobs in 5 mans are lvl 63). For raid tanking? 1% increase in TPS means you're seeing a 3-4 TPS increase per point of hit, which is not exactly massive. For example, my revenge generates 577.82 raw threat over 1.5 seconds (GCD) for 385.21 TPS. A 1% increase would be 3.85 TPS. Basically, it's peanuts. Unless you're missing enough for variance to really bite you in the попа, you don't care about hit at all. It's very slightly better than crit until you hit the yellow cap (because Sunder can't crit, but you're only using Sunder when your SS and revenge are both on CD).

Honest suggestion to you, start with a mage, then level the warrior. When DM opens up, mage farm becomes pretty insane and you can fund your warrior with the money you've made from the mage (not to mention you'll have made friends that you can get to do cyclonian for you at 30 or 31). A mage with skinning and herbalism can make pretty crazy amounts of money even before DM opens up, as you can aoe farm skinnables in Feralas or Un'goro and collect decent herbs while doing it. Then, you hit 60 and you've already got 800-1k gold ready for Medallion/Pauldrons/Boots, etc.

I mean, I agree that choosing a warrior for your first toon is a bad idea. I think you over-stress the down sides, but it's definitely one of the most difficult classes to level to 60. The people saying "oh, it's easy if you just fight things lower level than you!" are missing the point that other classes aren't gimped like that. Yeah, you can level to 60, but your /played is going to be pretty high when you get there. I wasn't exactly rushing for 60 on my warrior, but I wasn't standing around IF all day jerking off either and I think I was around 12 days played when I hit 60. 300 man hours of play time to level cap is nothing to sneeze at. It was 7 days played to hit 60 with my mage. Especially if you're not familiar with vanilla WoW, a warrior is going to take you at least twice as long to level as a hunter and at least half again as long as a mage or warlock. They are incredibly gear dependent, and if you're not taking the right professions (or if you're rolling on the fresh start server, where no one is going to have enough money to be buying gathering mats off the AH for the first 2 months), you're going to have a very rough time. Now, if you've got a group of people leveling with you, then sure, you can leech off of them for quests and grinding and play pocket tank for 5 mans, but again, we're talking about first time out, which means you probably don't have a huge support network. That means no Whirlwind Axe right at level 30 (one, because you can't get the mats for the quest and two, because you don't have anyone to kill Cyclonian). Whirlwind Axe is still good until about 45 (if you're a human, the 2h sword from Archaedes in Ulda is an upgrade, otherwise, Gatorbite Axe from inner Mara), but not having it for your 30's is going to make that slow and miserable. Especially if you're on a PvP server where you're an easy target for any gankers. Because you're going to be stuck grinding out mobs and quests lower level than yourself, you're also making less money from gray items as you level, which contributes to the gear problem. Oh, and those pre-raid BiS tank pieces for 60? Two to three times more expensive than BiS BoE's for other classes. Not sure why, as there aren't actually that many raiding tanks out there, at least not compared to other roles, but perhaps it's because a guild is far less likely to take a tank in half-assed gear than a dps or healer that looks equally shabby.

Hey, just wanted to say "thanks" for moving up the PvE launch. I realize that this probably involves a bit more effort from you guys and I appreciate you going to the trouble. My friends and I are stoked to be able to come back to what we consider our home far earlier than we had expected. I have a conference that I'm going to on the 17th, but I will be happily starting back up on the 18th.

I think warrior is probably a poor choice for your first raiding character. First, you're probably going to burn out on a warrior before you even hit 60. You haven't made the commitment to 60 on any characters so far, and warriors are hands down the most miserable class to level. I love my tank, but there's a reason I haven't made a new warrior after Nost shut down. They have an abysmally slow kill speed, they don't handle multiple mobs at once (well, except once every 30 minutes when retaliation is up) and their gear is more expensive to buy and repair. Once you hit 60, there are two options for raiding. You can tank, or you can DPS. Tanking requires a huge commitment. No guild worth joining is going to give you an MT or OT spot if you cannot consistently make raids. You might be able to get an OT2/OT3 spot, but those are usually fury warriors who have farmed up reasonable tanking gear. For MT/OT, you need to be well-versed in tank theory. Threat mechanics, rage mechanics, avoidance vs. mitigation vs. stacked hp and when each is appropriate, various boss strategies your guild might want to use, etc. It's very rewarding (both emotionally and in terms of loot), but it's a lot of work as well. If you want to DPS instead, Fury warriors do great damage... if you're geared. But while every class depends on gearing for optimal DPS, Fury warriors are the most gear dependent. Also, as a fury warrior, you may be expected to keep a set of tanking gear for fights where you need 3 or 4 tanks. Your DPS gear is not going to work for those occasions, because your ideal DPS gear is mostly leather. So it means farming up and carrying around 2 sets of gear as well as being passably conversant with the theorycrafting for both fury and prot. If you're looking for something to experience end-game content, Druid is a good choice. Most of the time, there's a shortage of raid druids, which makes getting a spot easy, even if you're not experienced and can't make a full-time commitment (and seriously, there are enough people out there who have raided in vanilla or on p-servers AND can make all the raids that getting a raid spot without either of those is kinda tough). Since druids are in short supply, it means getting gear in raids is pretty easy as well. Hard not to collect gear when you have no one to roll against.

I would like to see the guild forum split into PvP Nost, PvP Fresh and PvE Nost sub-forums so that it's easier to keep track of who's looking for what and where. I don't care at all about PvP Nost and Fresh realms, but I care quite a bit about what guilds are reforming on the PvE server (and whether or not my old guild is going to be one of them). Would be nice to be able to browse your own specific sub-forum.

The keyboard turning bit made me lol. I agree with you though. Very well said!!! OP, seriously, calm down. That's part of the feel of the original experience that's not coming back, for better or for worse. And frankly, if you want something closer to the original vanilla experience, the chat isn't nearly as big of a deal as the fact that the servers have a population that's double or more the MAXIMUM population that vanilla retail had. And ваууing with spawn timers doesn't bring the experience closer to the vanilla retail experience, it just makes the server go from unplayable to playable. If you really want to expend a ton of energy rallying for some change, I'd think that'd be the first thing you'd go for. Vanilla WoW emulation is not a perfect reproduction of vanilla WoW. What you're asking creates logistical nightmares for hundreds or thousands of people, as Pottu pointed out. And yet, OP, you're still bitching because YOU don't care about how it hurts others. That attitude of 'let the nasty foreigners make guilds if they want to speak in their native tongue' shows that it's not about creating the best experience for everyone, it's about you. You're a selfish prick and frankly, for that reason alone I'd be happy with you not getting your way.

Oh, I dunno. First server is the existing Nost PvP, so it's going to have far less stress on the starting zones than the fresh PvP server will. They could probably release the existing PvP and be just fine without more testing. That having been said, while I'm itching to play again (and I've got a much longer while to wait on my beloved PvE server), I'm perfectly happy with whatever the team decides to do. I thoroughly enjoyed my experience on Nostalrius and I trust the staff to do what's in the best interest of the servers. It's a free product that takes far more technical expertise than I'm capable of, so I've got nothing but gratitude, whether it's up next week or next month. Of course, sooner IS better, because in the mean time, I'm wasting time leveling a priest over at Rebirth, and all that time is going straight down the tubes once the PvE server opens up.

I've never really understood this. I came into retail vanilla right after ZG came out, so the economy was already well-established at that point. The early economy on the Nost servers was horrible. Oh, dumb people put things on the AH, but I could frequently find items on the AH for less than the vendor price (and would buy out and promptly vendor them for profit), and with the AH listing fee being as high as it is in vanilla, it was generally a better idea to vendor greens and mats rather than hope that someone would be interested in your item. There were a lot of times where I just vendored ore/leather/herbs/gems/etc. because the going rate on the AH meant that having to relist something even once would result in a loss of money.

The pserver community makes me roll my eyes. Always wanting to run to the next new thing, releveling toons and then once things are stable, they jump to the next new thing. I don't get you guys, I really don't. I've got a 60 on Nost PvP and 2 on Nost PvE - because 8k people in a world built for 3k max makes for a toxic and unappealing leveling process even without ganking (and we're not even going to talk about the irony of people bitching about "blizzlike experience" then pushing for uncapped servers) - and frankly, I never wanted to go anywhere else. Now that Nost db is coming back, I'm not going anywhere else unless and until Elysium shuts down. End game content seems way better than race to first through MC (which to someone with REAL server firsts, seems kind of like bragging that you can piss without getting it all over your shoes) and stable economy seems better than "the AH is empty because vendors will pay more for any mats you collect than other players can afford". Anyway, bitching aside, serions question: I'm not a programmer and know next to nothing about how the behind the scenes stuff works (excepting what's necessary for theory crafting), but do you actually expect the launch to be buggy? I would assume that the server would be in the exact same state that it was when the last snapshot was captured, meaning that the only bugs would be the ones that were still extant at Nost when it was shut down. I.e. not that many nor that impactful. Can someone explain to me why there needs to be a stagger in the first place, issues of population control aside?