World of Warcraft®

so.. the challenge on a high population realm is getting npcs at all especially when outside of a group, and the challenge on a low population realm is having multiple npcs spawn on top of each other.

03/03/2011 3:29 PMPosted by Prifdinnas

Nothing on the island is overtuned.

Except spawn rate. :)

And the reason for that is that it is less work to do smaller area with 'over-tuned' spawn rate then the bigger one with 'normal' spawn rate.

03/03/2011 3:15 PMPosted by Ameila

It is sort of a catch 22 and a side effect of dynamic spawning. When there are a finite number of spawn points for certain creature types, and the rate of spawning is determined by the number of players in the area, this can lead to instant respawns at specific locations. We still feel that's preferable to set spawn times regardless of player population in the area.

I know I'd rather have a few creatures spawn on top of me and have to prepare for that potential outcome, than camp out and really fight with nearby players to get my quests done.

I'd rather not die because I've been camped by respawns.

Then pull the mob you're killing away from it's spawn point and then kill it, if it respawns it won't be right on top of you.


For once I actually agree with Blizzard, I like TB just the way it is and I can complete a full daily run of the island in under 30 mins.

03/03/2011 3:32 PMPosted by Cadenbrie

For once I actually agree with Blizzard, I like TB just the way it is and I can complete a full daily run of the island in under 30 mins.

I like the spawn rates and quests (Except for that awful escort quest), but I think the island's a little too small.

There are plans for a new daily quest hub in Mount Hyjal to be released in conjunction with the Firelands raid. We're planning to make it phase and unlock more content as players progress, very similar to Isle of Quel'Danas. One downside of the phasing and unlocking of new buildings/quests there though, was that you had to be participating during the world event to actually see the change take place. We'd like to make the Mount Hyjal hub phase per player so that your personal progress unlocks new content for you, rather than for your whole realm.

We'll have more details about that a little later though. ;)

NICE!
...

Can you tell us if it's more spread out than TB is, and if you can PvP there? :D

Zarhym.

You mistake 'tedium' for 'challenge'.

This is the overall problem of the expansion so far.

Especially Tol Barad. I welcome difficult quests with appropriate rewards. Instant, repeating respawns, entire villages patting between you and your one objective -- that is not difficult, it's boring.

The challenge should be to ones abilities, not patience.

The spawntimes do make me frown though. Killing something than having it instantly respawn on your face isnt a challenge, it's annoying. Although granted waiting for a mob to respawn while 7 other people need 12 of the same thing is also annoying. Catch 22.

It is sort of a catch 22 and a side effect of dynamic spawning. When there are a finite number of spawn points for certain creature types, and the rate of spawning is determined by the number of players in the area, this can lead to instant respawns at specific locations. We still feel that's preferable to set spawn times regardless of player population in the area.

I know I'd rather have a few creatures spawn on top of me and have to prepare for that potential outcome, than camp out and really fight with nearby players to get my quests done.

its something that people need to adapt to, it really doesn't bother me.

For example when on my Pally i round up like 10 mobs and AoE them down, when i first started this the mobs I killed would respawn on top of me.
what was the solution ? drag the mobs away from the spawning area.

Same goes for hunter, you CC the newly spawned and continue killing the old one.

I love it when you get all the dailies that are just kill the named guy, makes dailies really fast .

and new daily quest hub sounds nice.

03/03/2011 3:35 PMPosted by Prifdinnas

For once I actually agree with Blizzard, I like TB just the way it is and I can complete a full daily run of the island in under 30 mins.

I like the spawn rates and quests (Except for that awful escort quest), but I think the island's a little too small.

Well referring to size I can sort of agree, at least for the PVP island.

Compared to it's Wrath equivalent of Wintergrasp it feels tiny and cramped, there's no real travel as everything is all clumped together.

There are plans for a new daily quest hub in Mount Hyjal to be released in conjunction with the Firelands raid. We're planning to make it phase and unlock more content as players progress, very similar to Isle of Quel'Danas. One downside of the phasing and unlocking of new buildings/quests there though, was that you had to be participating during the world event to actually see the change take place. We'd like to make the Mount Hyjal hub phase per player so that your personal progress unlocks new content for you, rather than for your whole realm.

We'll have more details about that a little later though. ;)

Could a reward from the new daily vendor guy, if there is one of some sort, be a Green Drake?

Please?

It's the only flight we can't get a drake of so far. <_<

If you find the content too hard then your doing something wrong. Either you under gear the area you are in or you simply don't know how to play your class as effectively as you think you do.

03/03/2011 2:46 PMPosted by Zarhym

No, I didn't say any of that really. :)

Gotta love it when people try to dig their own meaning out of something someone says.

Were you there the first few weeks of cata? It was 20 times worse. Also, warlock fel armor was changed so we're not as carefree as we used to be doing dailies.

always fun kiting around 5 ghouls/skeletons, 3 infantry, 2 spiders a handful of the caster ghosts and lord farson ...... for around 10 minutes.... (started at farson, and just kinda kept running waiting for combat to drop) I was frost at the time so that might have had something to do with it lol not sure.

just made me wish they still had mob trains so I could have dragged them into another player then vanished lol.

We didn't decide on the size of the two zones because it would have been more difficult to make the areas larger.

I totally get players' points about the area feeling cramped. I can understand how many players would feel that way, particularly on PvP realms. At the same time though, I think if we spaced everything out according to what players are asking for in this thread, we'd see at least an equivalent number of complaints about how the distance between all questing points of interest is too far -- that traveling around the zones to quest just takes forever on land mounts.

We tried to find a happy medium so that everything doesn't feel insanely far away, but doesn't feel insanely cramped either. As it stands, it doesn't take long to get around, but the size allows for a little interesting chaos. We're not trying to make things overly difficult or elitist, but we don't want everyone to be on full auto-pilot while doing dailies.

IMO, it wouldn't have to be too much bigger to have an improvement. Hell, I think even if it was only 10% larger it would make a huge difference, and people wouldn't complain that it would take slightly larger to get around because they'd no longer be aggroing 15 spiders and getting rooted forever as they head around the forest to turn their quests back in. The spider forest and rustburg are really really hard to maneuver through without aggroing everything, and the spiders are especially infuriating because they have an ability that can root the player; This is even more frustrating on PvP realms where because it's so cramped, people will often pull mobs onto themselves while they fight. If a spider decides that a melee class or hunter looks tasty, it's often game over for them because they'll get continuously rooted and will be unable to run to/from the people they're PvPing with. QD struck a nice balance between travel time and distance between mob spawns- I think that tol'barad however, is too small for the amount of mobs, and how quickly said mobs spawn, and that actually suppresses world PvP there, even on PvP servers.

03/03/2011 3:13 PMPosted by Zarhym

The spawntimes do make me frown though. Killing something than having it instantly respawn on your face isnt a challenge, it's annoying. Although granted waiting for a mob to respawn while 7 other people need 12 of the same thing is also annoying. Catch 22.

It is sort of a catch 22 and a side effect of dynamic spawning. When there are a finite number of spawn points for certain creature types, and the rate of spawning is determined by the number of players in the area, this can lead to instant respawns at specific locations. We still feel that's preferable to set spawn times regardless of player population in the area.

I know I'd rather have a few creatures spawn on top of me and have to prepare for that potential outcome, than camp out and really fight with nearby players to get my quests done.

Theres a simple fix (conceptually, not sure if technically) to that. For 5 seconds after mobs spawn they will not start attacking unless attacked first. After 5 seconds, they behave normally.