World Bosses

[Jawohl 3]

There have been alot of questions and confusion around the World Bosses, Emerald Dragons being the hottest topic. There is a report made in Bugtracker by Slicy World bosses spawn/re-spawn mechanic is incorrect about bugged spawn times but much of "information" it contains is incorrect and is based upon the observations made by one person over a period of few months(edit) on a server we dont know anything about. A person who "created a formula" about randomness he might not understand anything about.
(edit: i might have hitted Slicy hard here for no good reason other than my bad mood and termper (sorry) and i do not have any better or comparing evidence to support this other than my own observation from the Retail Vanilla.)

"Why did dragons spawn multiple times per week and often during Thursday - Friday mornings in Retail?" directed people often thinking it had something to do with the server restart, maintenance and especially those playing at the time. This is the case, in some sence. When World bosses was added into the live servers of Blizzard it was done at Wednesday maintenance. For the last Emerald Dragon or another world boss to die was in most cases on most servers not in the first 24 hours nor the 48 hours because of the competition. The day these dragons die will start a spawning sycle of 4 to 7 days. Why the World bosses will "remain" in the same hours and days of spawning for weeks on end and why it appeared back in the days it had something to do with the Maintenance? There was cases in Retail where unscheluded maintenanes caused the dragons to spawn immediately but they could have been A) supposed to spawn during the server being down B) they were fixed / manual spawned and myself witnessed two cases in Stormscale EU of such incidents.

1. Given idea that days are numbers, sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday - 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 -  When dragons in live servers was killed at say thursday(5), the next time they could spawn was 2,3,4,5 . Why people created theories, they can "spawn twice a week" is because the origin of the first death the dragons had , given it was a "4 day(first chance to spawn) or 5 day spawn" wich would be monday, tuesday would make it look like you got two set of dragons per a period of one reset week (chance around 50%.) The next chance from days 2 or 3 they could spawn (if 2, 6,7,1,2 and if 3, 7,1,2,3). People created alot of "pattern" and "formula" regarding the spawns back in the days because they didnt know better. The chance to "break off" from the original day of spawn rotation is not that high or low, it just requires a certain set of varying spawns to occure in a row so that the original rotation breaks BUT at the same time it is equally high chance to simply slip back on it. It is the nature of the "first chance to spawn 4 days" value.  So in Blizzard Vanilla servers DEPENDING on the day these dragons was first slain ( They were all added on Wednesday , so in most cases the first death was thursday or friday morning / night ) , they kept on the spawn rotation of wed, thursd, frid / sun, mon, tuesd.
2. Why its different in other servers, such as in the case of Nostalrius Azuregos was added in Saturday (if i remember correct) and since then its spawn rotation was Sun,mon, tuesd / thursd, frid, sat for the most part. 
3. Emerald Dragons however the spawn rotation, they were added on Sunday evening and the last one (Emeriss) did not die at all, it was despawned and the script was Re~started (so i heard) in the next server maintenance ( Wednesday ). On the second spawn think it was Monday (5 days from wed), they all died and the spawn rotation started being mostly sun,mon, tuesd - thursd, frid, sat
4. In Elysium the server was launched at Saturday but the dragons were disabled (afaik). I dont know if they was added in the first server maintenance and did they spawn the next week, i wasnt checking but in Elysium these dragons have been now disabled / enabled and tinkered with multiple times now and each time you tinker the scripts / values behind these dragons will /run script for spawn timer for the upcoming week and "break the spawn rotation". The latest breaking point was last wednesday, 15.3.2017 and that is what im going to brag about later in this post.

So the very simplicity behind the "World bosses seem to spawn on the same day or time" is simply bullshit and about chance. Speaking about this fights against common sence of sharing information regarding World bosses, but i am too angry about the recent events on this server and the falsehood of this bugreport that i have to make sure this will never happen.

 

Now to my original topic i was going to talk / question about. We have now witnessed multiple "bugged spawns" of Emerald dragons on Elysium Anathema server. There was a day when the Emerald Dragons spawned twice inside 12 hours, the first spawn being the "closing in to 7days ghost" spawn and the 2nd being 5 day mark spawn from Wednesday maintenance tinkering. The first wave of spawn did not give any loot, but the second wave of spawn did give loot however the Emerald Dragons didnt have any abilities.

The next spawn happened by the book in terms of 4 to 7 day rules but the Dragons still didnt have any abilities. Next spawn from that we got again double spawns and the first wave did not give any loot + they despawned "mysteriously". Someone made a System Announcement saying that the "Emerald dragons are disabled because of bugged abilities. We are sorry for inconvenience" and approximately 1 hour after that a second wave of Dragons spawned, this time giving loot but still not doing abilities.

After this the Emerald Dragons was finally disabled and we didnt get a spawn for two weeks. Once added again 12.3 with working abilities, last of the dragons was despawned, not killed by any guild. Next spawn happened 17.3 by following the normal spawning schelude and the next spawn supposedly happening between 21.3 - 24.3 BUT...
Emerald Dragons spawned this morning 20.3 at 4-5AM, below 3 days from the last kill HOWEVER 5 days from Wednesday maintenance. To point out that not only the spawn for the Emerald dragons was "wrong" they had mixed abilities. Emeriss was using the chain lightning seen with Ysondre, while Ysondre was doing Lethon shadow bolt volley and Lethon in the other hand was casting Emeriss mushrooms.

Now when you change the script / code / values / core information regarding Emerald Dragons for example and Add it on the live server you will make the script related to the spawning of these Dragons RUN, creating a new spawn time.
Nostalrius Devs did this same thing few times in the past and that is why we had few 8 day spawns for example, but they cleared the old spawn timer from the Log wich you have not done in any of the given examples above. You change the code / scripts related to these Dragons, you leave the old timer running and by maintenancing the changes create a new timer.

^ This is a problem in itself but what have been happening in terms of "Blizzlike" i am angry. The reason why Emerald Dragons did not have their abilities few weeks back was because your Developer team wanted to change the 75%, 50% and 25% abilities of these dragons to be more "random", so that they would cast these abilities between 80%-70% , 55%-45% and 30%-20% to not be predictable. You had this idea that "it would be fun" and in the process you broke the script, you caused duplicate / multiple spawns and ended up in a downtime and disabling the Dragons.

Now after fixing the dragons back to as they were and we have had two normal spawns now i can CLEARLY see from what happened today with the Dragons and the Spawn timers that last Wednesday you have changed the Core / Script regarding Emerald Dragons, making them not find their own abilities by the NPC name but by taking one of the 4 by random. THIS is not Blizzlike and it is NOT a bug, it is Obviously made by human hand.

Why i am not surprised ?  You staff was trying to Customize Emerald Dragons before. You staff announced and was going to Customize the War Effort event YESTERDAY. You staff OBVIOUSLY customized the Dragons in the last Maintenance, and the MOST REVERED, Looked after and RESPECTED Game Master of all times LEFT this project. The only reason he would in my books do that , since the only real thing he cares about is being Blizzlike and following in the footsteps of Nostalrius is that YOU, are not.

Nostalrius gave you, Elysium staff and voulanteers the mantle and RESPONSIBILITY of the largest WoW legacy community there is and you gave us your promise to follow and respect the Blizzlikeness and values of Nostalrius. I am one of the "silent majority" , but i am now being loud. You have broken that promise , not once, not twice but three times already. Will there be an announcement in the future that you will change your policy about the path you are going forward or should we continue to blindly trust you and get hit in the face by the decicions you make from the bushes without asking or telling anyone?

 

As a sidenote to anyone wondering, i am not a coder myself. I dont understand much about scripts or such but i do know this : 

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday = 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7              4 x 24 x 3600 = (345 600seconds)
                                                                                                                                                              
When server wants to know a World boss die (day) = number = day                                                   7 x 24 x 3600 = (604 800seconds)
When server wants to know a World boss die (hour) = hour                                        /// 604 800 - 345 600 = 259 200sec ( 3 days )
When server wants to know a World boss die (second) = second (there is 3600 seconds in hour)

How does server decide when boss died and when is the NEXT chance to spawn ? Minimum chance to spawn is 4 days from the death wich is 345 600 seconds, and the last chance is 7 days wich is 604 800 seconds.

as example a world boss dies at Tuesday 10 am and 100 seconds  over (1min40sec)  = A-3, H1-10, S1-100 (3,10,100)
A = Current Day / Date
H1 = Hour of death/next spawn min/max
S1 = Second of death/next spawn min/max
C = 1st chance to spawn = A + 4 = 3 + 4 = 7 ( saturday )     = A-7, H=H1, S=S1 (7,10,100) / Saturday 10:01:40   ///  C = 10x 3600 + 100 = 36 100
D = last chance to spawn = 7 = A,H1,S1 ( tuesday )             = A-3, H=H1, S=S1 (3,10,100) / Wednesday 10:01:40
B = /roll 259 200 ( being 3 days between 4 and 7 in seconds )
 

Server gets the day of death and checks the 1st chance to spawn, last chance to spawn. It figures out the seconds inbetween those 3 and does a roll. With the rolled number of seconds you get the next spawn by seconds.
So when A = C + B  --> you have a spawn.

2nd way to go is more simple and requires less "if" lines in terms of the days.

as example a world boss dies at Tuesday 10 am and 100 seconds over (1min40sec) = A-3, H1-10, S1-100 ( 10x3600 + 100 = 36 100 )

A = Day / Current day / Date
X = Day of death = A-3, 36 100
C = 1st chance to spawn = X + 345 600
D = last chance to spawn = X + 604 800
B = Next spawn = ??
F = Time between C and D = 259 200, server script do /roll 259 200  = F

This way server would get the first chance to spawn and last chance to spawn by seconds accuracy with very little work.
How to get the next chance to spawn then ?

B = C + F

My whole point here is that the spawn timer for World bosses is actually very simple and "random". I dont deny the possibility that back in the Retail days when the World bosses was announced the script relating their spawn was even more simple and was interfered with server crash / maintenance. It is possible they were missing some function to protect their script from stability hits caused by crashes. Having MULTIPLE spawns or duplicate spawns though is the cause of Admins / Developers interfering with the script / values and then forcing the scripts related to calculating next spawn to be /run again when Maintenance. As far as i know this does not happen if you just dont f*cking touch anything.

So, obviously, you are touching. My question is, WHY and suggestion is DONT.
 

 

Edited March 20, 2017 by Jawohl
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[Slicy 11]

I have given up on trying to have world bosses working as intended. The last shit show with X dragon doing Y dragon abilities killed the recent fix they did to re-add abilities to them.

Great post. I hope what you describe is what it should look like, although it is just assumptions for what they should be and not sourced at all, so it will probably not make it through or be ignored...

Kazzak spawning at 6+ days every week since a month now, sometimes past 7 days. Meanwhile you will find reliable retail sources on thottbot, zam and guides all indicating maximum respawn should be 4-5 days tops.

But whatever if ppl still think it should be 4-7 days for every boss when nobody actually ever brought up sources about that.

FYI when they re-added abilities to EDs, it wasn't just Feralas which despawned. Hinterlands got killed and while it still had items in it, it despawned exactly same time as the despawn in Feralas.

Information I provided in the bug report are exactly what you described : 3-7 for Kazzak and Azu, 4-7 for EDs, which is not blizzlike. End of the debate.

Oh and please provide sources going the opposite ways of the ones I put in the bug report at correct behavior instead of stating it's wrong. For now nobody else bothered doing the research. Time to step it up if you claim it's wrong ;)

I guess you know better than what is being said in the .pdf guide and 2006 comments sources dating from retail vanilla ?

Edited March 20, 2017 by Slicy

[Jawohl 3]

6 minutes ago, Slicy said:

I have given up on trying to have world bosses working as intended. The last shit show with X dragon doing Y dragon abilities killed the recent fix they did to re-add abilities to them.

Great post. I hope what you describe is what it should look like, although it is just assumptions for what they should be and not sourced at all, so it will probably not make it through or be ignored...

Kazzak spawning at 6+ days every week since a month now, sometimes past 7 days. Meanwhile you will find reliable retail sources on thottbot, zam and guides all indicating maximum respawn should be 4-5 days tops.

But whatever if ppl still think it should be 4-7 days for every boss when nobody actually ever brought up sources about that.

FYI when they re-added abilities to EDs, it wasn't just Feralas which despawned. Hinterlands got killed and while it still had items in it, it despawned exactly same time as the despawn in Feralas.

There is sources in the Core atleast. There are two sets of Values :  (4 x 24 x 3600 ) and (7 x 24 x 3600)
These are just values other scripts use as "guidelines", but the 4 and 7 as values indicates quite obviously to the min- day and max- day for other scripts to use. In Retail Vanilla i would like to also mention that Kazzak, Azuregos and Emerald Dragons was from time to time being "fixed" or "tinkered" with. When the code / scripts are being tinkered with the next time Maintenance launches the server there will be /run for new spawn timer.
(edit: the "sources in the core" is not necessarily given granted to be a source since that is the values we are using, not necessarily the right ones but i have been in World dragon business since Retail, not so much in Private servers and i am very certain it was 4-7 in Stormscale EU, with few awkward spawns most likely caused by the maintenance changes.)
So incidents in Retail Vanilla happened aswell for bosses to spawn in "3 days" for example, if the last kill was Thursday and there was server maintenance fixing something for that same boss , that maintenance started a new spawn timer and if it was a 4 day spawn, it would look like for players after killing it Thursday that the spawn was only 3 days.

There can be 2x Spawn timers rolling at the same time if the OLD one is not deleted after you make changes.

Edited March 20, 2017 by Jawohl

[Jawohl 3]

Anyway, "information" regarding World bosses should most certainly not be shared with the public. If someone learns something useful from this , good for you! 

However, the current Customization efforts wich are OBVIOUSLY done on purpose, these are not bugs, i really cannot help myself not raging about this publicly.

[Slicy 11]

Just now, Jawohl said:

There is sources in the Core atleast. There are two sets of Values :  (4 x 24 x 3600 ) and (7 x 24 x 3600)

Regardless of what is currently in the core, it is completely wrong. But thank you for confirming the 2 sets of values which just imply the exact same statements as I wrote in the bug report. 4-7 days is well known from when they got released on Nost and here is just the same with some more bugs and bug fixes.

Again, please provide somewhat reliable retail sources concerning what it should be like so this issue can move forward. You are just talking about isolated hotfix maintenances on retail which MIGHT have changed things to bsoses and change respawn timers. Where are the proofs about that ?

I have found no sources which would confirm a 4-7 days base re-spawn. I would like to see them though.

[Slicy 11]

6 minutes ago, Jawohl said:

Anyway, "information" regarding World bosses should most certainly not be shared with the public. If someone learns something useful from this , good for you! 

However, the current Customization efforts wich are OBVIOUSLY done on purpose, these are not bugs, i really cannot help myself not raging about this publicly.

I disagree with you. The information should be public for the entire player base in order to have the maximum amount of ppl providing what they can find about it. It's a shit show 4 spawns out of 5 right now anyways.

Having more players/guilds going for them is clearly not a bad thing either.

Edited March 20, 2017 by Slicy

[Jawohl 3]

Oh well, you are right. 

I take my statement back about not sharing information now that i think about it for a second and dont let my temper blind myself.

[Slicy 11]

Just ask to officers in horde guilds what think about it. I'm pretty sure every guild going for these bosses on both sides would love more action at every spawn (afaik that content with world pvp is probably the funniest shit we can get right now in game - Emeriss giggled) and properly working abilities/spawns.

The fact Azuregos can randomly reset while not even moving and get re-tagged with no hp regen tick for instance is yet another example of what makes this content kinda meh atm. I was working on a bug report regarding its Spell Shield being dispellable while it shouldn't from what I could find too, if anyone wants to take that over (bug reports gotta be remade and posted on the Github now if I understood correctly) as well.

[Jawohl 3]

13 minutes ago, Slicy said:

Just ask to officers in horde guilds what think about it. I'm pretty sure every guild going for these bosses on both sides would love more action at every spawn (afaik that content with world pvp is probably the funniest shit we can get right now in game - Emeriss giggled) and properly working abilities/spawns.

The fact Azuregos can randomly reset while not even moving and get re-tagged with no hp regen tick for instance is yet another example of what makes this content kinda meh atm. I was working on a bug report regarding its Spell Shield being dispellable while it shouldn't from what I could find too, if anyone wants to take that over (bug reports gotta be remade and posted on the Github now if I understood correctly) as well.

Emerald Dragons today had the same "attribute" reseting if the current aggroholder was not in range. Sure that is some kind of optimization to prevent people from kiting the bosses but its not quite working as intended i would say.

Overagroing as ranged will have some severe consequences, and getting the dragons in position today was quite hilarious.

[Slicy 11]

You can't kite them anyways normally. They should be resetting at the phasing points which won't be removed since they were initially added to reduce lag for super high population.

Also they should reset if you try to kite them away from Dream Bough, Seradane, etc. areas. World bosses (and including mobs like Anachronos, Teremus, etc.) have a super short leash range and will reset currently.

 

[Haestingas 30]

All I know is that the scripting is sloppy as hell. Not only did they have the wrong abilities, but they were using those wrong abilities at super screwed up timings. If you got a dragon below 75% and they reset, during the reset they would do their 75% ability. So for instance lethon (who was using all of the Emeriss kit) when he was reset for a wipe or whatever would do the 100 yard corruption. We also had some BS reset where an ally druid taunted at 22%, our tank taunted back, and the fucking boss reset right then and there, and ALSO TRIGGERED THE CORRUPTION due to that reset. Slopp sloppy sloppy, and the bosses worked just fine before the team started tinkering. IF IT AINT BROKE DON'T FIX IT

[Hurricane2 2]

2 hours ago, Slicy said:

FYI when they re-added abilities to EDs

Magic blue pill ftw.

[Slicy 11]

30 minutes ago, Hurricane2 said:

Magic emerald green pill ftw.

Fixed it for you :)

[Noom 2]

Nice post dude, if i can give you my opinion about this.

Imo Elysium need to do some un-blizzlike things for a blizzlike experience, yes I just contradict myself in 4 words. Peoples don't need to know the exact formula so we can't guess the exact respawn time and instant down the boss. 

The most important thing for a blizzlike experience is not the blizzlike exact formula, but the way players interact with the feature. Boss spawn-killing don't look blizzlike to me.

Just my personnal opinion, i don't know much about world boss and i may be wrong.

 

Edited March 21, 2017 by Noom

[Jawohl 3]

There will be no chance to predict the spaw as it rolls from 259 200 possibilities. You cant just copy the formula and know for sure and i dont want or ask that to happen.

What i cannot accept is the team constantly trying to alternate the mechanics of these dragons, they make these changes on live server and cause duplicate spawn in random weeks in the process and that is not cool.