Tobold's Blog
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
 
Hellfire Peninsula

I was playing D&D yesterday, and because I have infected all the players in my D&D group with World of Warcraft, we were talking about that game a lot. And our DM pointed out that if you look at the map of Outland, you notice that it only has one entry point, only one zone marked as being level 58-63, Hellfire Peninsula. So given that more than half of the players of World of Warcraft have at least one level 60 character, and that there will be lots of people resubscribing, and player caps for servers will rise to about 4,000 players, we can expect over 2,000 players in the one Hellfire Peninsula zone in the first couple of days after the Burning Crusade expansion comes out. Ouch! Talk about crowded.

There will be undoubtedly major problems with the typical "kill 10 foozles" quests when hundreds of players are trying to kill the same foozle. That will be unpleasant enough on a PvE server, but you can expect people actually killing each other over a foozle spawn on the PvP servers, as Hellfire Peninsula is the entry zone into Outland for both Horde and Alliance.

One solution around the problem will be Hellfire Citadel, avoiding the crowd outside by going into an instanced dungeon. Of course that depends on Blizzard having put up solid enough hardware, which doesn't break down when a thousand players want to play in the same dungeon.

You might think of making a blood elf of draenei character instead of leveling up your level 60 character, but unfortunately the two new newbie zones won't be any less crowded, and there will be no dungeon there to lighten the load.

What might be the best solution for the first week or so is going back to the old content, zones like Silithus, Plaguelands, or Winterspring. Once the level cap is raised, you will again get experience points for killing mobs in the upper 50s, and even for doing the high-level quests there. Maybe not the most interesting activity, but could end up being less frustrating fighting over spawns in Hellfire Peninsula.
Comments:
Is it certain we will gain xp for killing mobs and doing quests on Azeroth beyond 60?
 
Imagine Orgimmar deserted because the half the playerbase had their lvl 60 characters move to the other continent (closer to the portal) and the other half levelling their new characters (also on the other continent).
 
Is it certain we will gain xp for killing mobs and doing quests on Azeroth beyond 60?

I don't know if there is an official confirmation of that, but I think it is very, very likely. Why would killing a level 58 mob in Hellfire Peninsula give you xp, and killing a level 58 mob in Silithus not? If that was the case, WoW would effectively have two level caps, level 60 at which you suddenly were restricted to specific zones, and level 70 where leveling stops totally.

As I see it, the only people who won't be able to gain xp in the old zones are those who didn't buy the Burning Crusade expansion. If you bought the expansion, you are free to level whereever you want, as long as the quests and mobs are at least green to you. It is theoretically possible to level to 70 without ever entering Outland, but as you need to buy the expansion to break the level 60 cap, you might as well visit the new zones. Even if you might have to wait until the biggest crowd has passed.
 
Searched for official confirmation, and the best I could find was Eyonix saying: When you install the Burning Crusade, your experience bar will no longer be capped out and you'll be allowed to gain experience using all methods currently available, such as questing and killing non-trivial mobs.

"All the methods currently available" doesn't sound as if you were limited to Outland for leveling.
 
I don't know if Caverns of Time will have a level minimum, but that might lessing the load slightly. Just my 2 cents.
 
First question was mine...

I can imagine my playing will alter anyway, but at the moment i like to do some quests to have some money to spend on pots and repairs for raiding. Which is what i'm doing 80% of the time i'm able to play.

Since i hate grinding, the money instead of xp was pretty great.

Ah well, we'll adjust;)

Thorsten

lurking for a very long time here - very entertaining blog Tobold!
 
I know a lot of people who have saved, completed quests in their log, just waiting for that golden day to arrive. Wish I'd have thought of that.

Has anyone seen an official date yet? EBgames was 11/28, which I saw a blue post state was "their (ebgames) guess", and some other store showing 10/9, which I find hilarious. Reading leaked alpha info seems to point to the expansion still under major development, and I wonder if they will make the xmas rush. Or just put out junk (I hope not, but money talks...).
 
Hi Tobold,

It's true that the Outland will be ridiculously crowded on the opening week of BC. But that's a part of the fun. :) It's kind of like going to a U2 concert. Everyone else also wants to go, so there is massive crowd energy and excitement.

Plus, the world PvP will be unprecedented. It will make AV look tiny by comparison.
 
I am willing to bet 100G that during the first few days and possibly weeks of the expansion we will all see the dreaded notice from blizzard: The following realms are down for emergency maintenance, we appologize for the inconvenience and are trying hard to restore realm stability.
As for myself, I think I will stay in zones like Silithus and grind away on faction or something until the chaos of the expansion has died down; if I am able to play at all that is. The only bad part about that strategy is that I will miss out on many of the drops and end up paying an arm and a leg for new weapons on AH.
 
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