WoW: Did they put all of china on our servers?

[Ryan A]

I've noticed that since 1.6 went live and the game has launched in frikkin' china, there have been nightly queues to log on to several servers. What's up with that? I thought that was a thing of the past.

Whether it's rational or not, I blame the chinese. Because they're all evil gold farmers or something.

[Rywill]

Yeah, I just hit a 750 person queue on Frostwolf.

W

T

F

[Wholly Schmidt]

Maybe it's a bunch of chicken littles fleeing CoH?

[Mark Asher]

1) Frostwolf is messed up tonight. Really messed up.

2) There's a 14-day WoW free trial on the latest PC Gamer DVD. That may account for some added traffic.

I have also noticed that the gold farmers are getting a bit out of hand on Frostwolf. Tyr's Hand is simply overrun with them. I went there the last several nights and there are between 15-20 Alliance farming there -- half of them rogues. The farmers are also encamped at Hearthglen and their numbers there are growing. Horde players are more or less shut out of these areas on Frostwolf.

[HRose]

I think they are lowering the caps due to server instability.

[mystery]

I think they are lowering the caps due to server instability.

Normally, I'd say that HRose was drawing a lot of baseless conclusions -- on any subject. Here, I'd like to say that my experiences with the various servers might agree with this assessment.

Every time there's a new server, I enjoy taking a couple of character through the opening levels. There's nothing quite like experiencing a rich open world that's practically empty. One of the first things that you note is that there is absolutely no lag. On Moonrunner (which opened 4-5 days ago), you can page through the AH like it's a book, and grab all your mail without having to wait for the last mail to disappear.

On servers where they've announced hardware upgrades, you'll notice a certain responsiveness and stability. Stormrage is a high population server, and has been for quite a while. However, even during prime times, the AH and the email systems are still usable.

Compare that to Llane, a server that's never been brought down for upgrade. During prime times, both the AH and email are completely unusable. You've got to mash the Search button on the AH at least 4 to 5 times before getting any results, and you end up spending an hour going through a full inbox.

Now, I use the AH and the inbox as my examples as they appear to be infrastructure direct database access applications within the game, and they're the things with which I'm most familiar. I'm betting that, given the same time an drelative populations on servers, you could move from server to server and guage the age of the hardware by the responsiveness of these systems.

[dannimal]

Yeah, it was funny hitting my first queue ever logging in to create a new alt on Moonrunner when the server was < 3 days old.

Pseudo-hijack:

Two questions. Can someone suggest some good addons for a Warrior? Having never played one before, it'd be good to know. Also, is there a way to reduce the size of the UI (or whatever it is) other than disabling addons? I got the error of "over 32 MB" the other night, and I wasn't sure what I could do other than turning some stuff off.

[McBain]

Can someone suggest some good addons for a Warrior?

CTMod for raidassist. I also like using Damage Meters to see how effectively I'm taking the punishment... if I'm not taking 90% of the damage in a 5 man group, that means I'm probably doing something wrong.

There's also a mod called Wardrobe (I think?) that lets you change gear sets with the press of a hotkey, although I've never used that one personally.

Mostly the key for warriors is to have enough buttons hotkeyed that you can do everything you need to from the keyboard. For example, I have my stances in my Q,W,E, hotkey slots. That way I can stance twist for taunts, executes, hamstrings, overpowers and revenges.

Really, that's all you need to play a warrior effectively in PvE. I logged in for the first time in a month the other night, and in my blue gear I was successfully out-tanking a guy decked out in MC + BWL epics.

In PvP you will most definitely want the wardrobe mod to switch between sword/shield and 2hander quickly.

[mystery]

Also, is there a way to reduce the size of the UI (or whatever it is) other than disabling addons? I got the error of "over 32 MB" the other night, and I wasn't sure what I could do other than turning some stuff off.

You could go the other route (which I did). On the same screen as enabling/disabling addons, you can increase the size of memory dedicated to addons. I've got 2GB on my rig, so I've got some room to spare. I bumped it up to 64MB, and damn if the game isn't performing better.

[Tyjenks]

Frostwolf go crash.

Me back to PvE server.

Frostwolf need vet.

[Shadari]

In PvP you will most definitely want the wardrobe mod to switch between sword/shield and 2hander quickly.
You actually don't need a mod to do that. You can build a macro to do that. If anyone wants to know how, let me know and I'll dig it up. FWIW, I try to use as few WoW mods as I can get away with.

[dannimal]

Yeah, I figured that out this afternoon (bumping UI memory). I always thought that was how much you were using, not how much to allocate. I'm brilliant.

[McBain]

You actually don't need a mod to do that. You can build a macro to do that. If anyone wants to know how, let me know and I'll dig it up. FWIW, I try to use as few WoW mods as I can get away with.

Unless they've made changes, you at the very least need the scripting language Cosmos comes bundled with (I forget the name of it).

[Shadari]

You actually don't need a mod to do that. You can build a macro to do that. If anyone wants to know how, let me know and I'll dig it up. FWIW, I try to use as few WoW mods as I can get away with.

Unless they've made changes, you at the very least need the scripting language Cosmos comes bundled with (I forget the name of it).
You can use the macro scripting language that's built into the game. Here's the script that my paladin uses to switch from a two-hander to a sword/shield setup:

/script
PickupInventoryItem(17);
if(CursorHasItem()) then
PickupContainerItem(2,2);
PickupContainerItem(2,1);
PickupInventoryItem(16);
else
PickupContainerItem(2,1);
PickupInventoryItem(16);
PickupContainerItem(2,2);
PickupInventoryItem(17);
end

[Tyjenks]

Blizzard is having a special:

24 Hour Maintenance Tuesday!!!


The following list of realms will be taken down tomorrow for a period of twenty-four hours starting at 5:00AM PDT. We realize that this is inconvenient; however, this downtime is necessary to address the recent issues adversely affecting performance for players on these realms. All World of Warcraft players on these realms will receive a one-day time extension for the downtime caused by this maintenance. All other realms will be brought back up at the normally scheduled time of 11:00AM. We thank you for your patience and understanding.

Alleria
Blackhand
Blackrock
Cenarius
Deathwing
Destromath
Dethecus
Doomhammer
Frostwolf
Garona
Gorgonnash
Hellscream
Hyjal
Icecrown
Illidan
Kel'Thuzad
Kilrogg
Kil'Jaeden
Lightbringer
Ner'zhul
Proudmoore
Silver Hand
Spinebreaker
Stormreaver
Sargeras
Tichondrius
Uther
Whisperwind

Who are they talking to with that sentence in Blue?

Glad I did not desert my Paladin on Skywall :)

[Frumple]

Hehe, yeah I've been enjoying playing with you guys but Frostwolf seems to have way more issues than my usual server Arthas. I dont really get it because Arthas is an east coast high pop PvP server and Frostwolf is west coast and seems to have a lower pop AFAIK( I live in the west ). Arthas is almost never down and the AH performance is decent even under heavy load. Ah well I hope they sort it out.

[HRose]

I think they are lowering the caps due to server instability.

Normally, I'd say that HRose was drawing a lot of baseless conclusions -- on any subject. Here, I'd like to say that my experiences with the various servers might agree with this assessment.
It's just a deja-vu (http://www.grimwell.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=14788#14788).


Blizzard is having a special:

24 Hour Maintenance Tuesday!!!
...for the same 20 servers cluster that is having issues since release.

As I said, deja-vu.

[Sean Tudor]

I have also noticed that the gold farmers are getting a bit out of hand on Frostwolf. Tyr's Hand is simply overrun with them. I went there the last several nights and there are between 15-20 Alliance farming there -- half of them rogues. The farmers are also encamped at Hearthglen and their numbers there are growing. Horde players are more or less shut out of these areas on Frostwolf.

I am puzzled about this comment. Both Tyr's Hand and Hearthglen are high level elite areas. I farm there frequently with many of the Chinese gold farmers. There seems to be more than enough mobs to go around and I haven't had a problem where there was nothing to kill.

Is it because you're on a PvP server and are getting ganked ?

[Duality]

Two questions. Can someone suggest some good addons for a Warrior? Having never played one before, it'd be good to know. Also, is there a way to reduce the size of the UI (or whatever it is) other than disabling addons? I got the error of "over 32 MB" the other night, and I wasn't sure what I could do other than turning some stuff off.
No, this is all pretty much set. You either have to remove some mods (I found simply disabling doesn't seem to do it, but had to physically remove them), or allocate more memory to mods -- in the main UI mod list, you can change it from 32 to 64MB in the top.

After realizing that Insomniax was crippling my AV play, I decided to cut down drastically. Now I'm using convenience mods like LootLink/Auctioneer, AF_ToolTip and whatnot. But I found FlexBar to be the most useful for me.

The good thing about warriors is that we don't seem to need too many modifications, and you could just as easily get away with using the stock UI options. I have FlexBar buttons placed around the button, all bound to Shift + 1 through = and Mouse 5. Shift 1-3 are set to warrior stances. Since action bar page 1 will switch according to your stances, you really only need to use that one for talents/attacks and whatnot.

I have all my shouts (Demoralizing, Battle, Challenging, and Intimidating) all set to FlexBar items that are close enough to use in the midst of battle. Instead of having to reach over and hit Shift 9, 0,.-, or =, I just click on them when necessary.

Compared to, say, a druid or warlock, we get it pretty easy in UI management, I think.

Regarding 24 hour downtime: many of us on Kil'Jaeden created a guild on Dragonmaw called KJ is DOWN AGAIN, where everyone from KJ is an albino Tauren.

They get so pissed at us there. :)

[Mark Asher]

I have also noticed that the gold farmers are getting a bit out of hand on Frostwolf. Tyr's Hand is simply overrun with them. I went there the last several nights and there are between 15-20 Alliance farming there -- half of them rogues. The farmers are also encamped at Hearthglen and their numbers there are growing. Horde players are more or less shut out of these areas on Frostwolf.

I am puzzled about this comment. Both Tyr's Hand and Hearthglen are high level elite areas. I farm there frequently with many of the Chinese gold farmers. There seems to be more than enough mobs to go around and I haven't had a problem where there was nothing to kill.

Is it because you're on a PvP server and are getting ganked ?

Yeah, they shut out Horde players. I wouldn't mind that much if it was just regular players, but when it's players farming gold for real cash it's irritating.

[Ranulf]

I think they are lowering the caps due to server instability.

Normally, I'd say that HRose was drawing a lot of baseless conclusions -- on any subject. Here, I'd like to say that my experiences with the various servers might agree with this assessment.

Every time there's a new server, I enjoy taking a couple of character through the opening levels. There's nothing quite like experiencing a rich open world that's practically empty. One of the first things that you note is that there is absolutely no lag. On Moonrunner (which opened 4-5 days ago), you can page through the AH like it's a book, and grab all your mail without having to wait for the last mail to disappear.

On servers where they've announced hardware upgrades, you'll notice a certain responsiveness and stability. Stormrage is a high population server, and has been for quite a while. However, even during prime times, the AH and the email systems are still usable.

Compare that to Llane, a server that's never been brought down for upgrade. During prime times, both the AH and email are completely unusable. You've got to mash the Search button on the AH at least 4 to 5 times before getting any results, and you end up spending an hour going through a full inbox.



Eh, the AH/email is usuable on Stormrage but its not very pleasant. I can't wait till I get a new system and a new vid card. IF just kills my hd and ti4800.

[BDGE]

Go here for great Warrior equipment swap mods!

http://capnbry.net/wow/

Get both Stancesets and Weaponquickswap. Set up a hotkey for the equip menu, and enjoy!

[dannimal]

I've noticed that many servers are listing as "Full" now in the Realm Select screen. It still will let you to the character creation screen on a Full realm, though I don't know if you can actually create a character and enter the world (on the off chance you can, I didn't want to waste a character spot in case they did hard-cap it at some point).