WoW Classic Season of Mastery Goes Live on November 16th

Your chance to experience the rush and the crowds and queues, both in game and out, of a WoW Classic launch has returned

I bet they don’t line up this nicely in FFXIV

Blizzard has announced the launch date for their WoW Classic Season of Mastery servers.  Come November 16th 2021 in the US, or November 17th if you’re in Paris or beyond, you will be able to pile in to old Azeroth for another run through the game as it sorta was back in the day.  It will be a world-wide launch

The Season of Mastery Global Launch Times

If you’re jazzed to get back into semi-vanilla times again with your guild, you will probably want to get in there early and reserve a name for your main character.  You will be able to do so the evening of November 11th, at which time everybody with an active WoW subscription will be able to log in and reserve one name on one server.  Choose wisely and all of that.

There are some changes this time around when compared to the last run at a classic experience, which includes some pacing, difficulty, and quality of life changes I mentioned in a previous post.

While I am not exactly chomping at the bit for another run through a vanilla WoW experience… I think that might be more of a “once a decade” thing for me, I am sure there are plenty of people who missed it the first time around and raiding guilds who want to take another stab at the classic raids from the good old days.

Not mentioned so far that I have seen are the number of servers they plan to stand up.  We’ll probably get that soon as it will need to be decided on by the time they hit the name reservation day.  Of course, if things get swamped on the 11th then they might put more servers up before launch.

But if things are light… and given the mood about Blizzard right now that could be a possibility… well, I guess we’ll see.

But this completes the trifecta of nostalgia launches for 2021.  We got Burning Crusade Classic, Diablo II Resurrected, and now WoW Classic Season of Mastery.  I am happy with nostalgia trips, but it is tough to live on that alone.

EverQuest Launches the Mischief and Thornblade Servers

The EverQuest team successfully launched two new special servers, Mischief and Thornblade.

Arrived on time

Originally just the Mischief server was announced back in April, but the team apparently decided that this new server would be popular enough that they would forgo the usual launch day crowd and queue problems and just launch two servers.  And so the Thornblade server joined the mix.

Both servers are up and live

I will be curious to see if there is enough interest to justify doubling up on these servers.

Both servers are “random loot” progression servers which, as I mentioned in the previous post, means that loot from rare and raid mobs in the same expansion all share the same loot table.  So your Lady Vox raid can get loot from any other raid boss of similar level from the initial content.

As an upside, rare mobs are supposed to spawn more frequently, so your ability to test the random loot theory outside of set piece raids is greater.

According to progression server FAQ, which has been updated to include the new servers, Mischief and Thorneblade will unlock new expansions every twelve weeks, though the post announcing the new servers contradicts that, with the following information I previously reported being reiterated:

• EXP: Mangler EXP Progression
• Pick Zones Enabled
• Agents of Change Enabled
• Truebox Enabled
• Free Trade Enabled
• Random Loot Enabled
  • The Mischief server is a new experimental server that randomizes loot.
  • Rare NPCs will drop loot from other NPCs of a similar level within the same expansion.
  • Raids will drop loot from other raid NPCs of a similar level within the same expansion.
  • We may add other special case randomization.
  • Rare NPCs have a greater chance of spawning
• Unlock Cadence:
  • Expansions:
    • 1 month Classic
    • 2 month Kunark
  • 2/3 month regular release cadence
    • 2 months for no level increase
    • 3 months for level increase
  • Exception: LDoN will only be one month

The exp setting put this server as faster than classic, but slower than current live servers.

“Pick Zones” indicates that multiple versions of the same zone can be active to alleviate crowding.  You can pick which instance of the zone you want to play in.

“Agents of Change” allow players to spawn a raid instance for their group, though there is an exp penalty to keep groups from just spawning them to have their own camp.  You get a full spawn of all mobs in the zone, but no respawns.  Rare mobs have a chance to spawn, but are not guaranteed.  Somebody did a video about them if you want a deeper look into this feature.

“True Box” means you are only allowed to have a single client running the game per machine when you play on the server.  No full group multi-boxing allowed.  If you want there, there is a different server for you.  And “Free Trade” means nothing is bind on pick up, you can sell or trade any loot you get.

As this is launch day, when the servers are the most crowded, the team also published a FAQ about the server login queue, which isn’t quite as user friendly as the ones you find in newer games, as it was something added later on to accommodate such launches.  The queue kind of depends on your trust in it, because the time estimates are approximations and or you are not told your position in the queue.  You could be next and you would never know it.

Still, it is better than the old days when the server just told you “tough luck, try again later!”

And, as with all special servers, you must be a Daybreak All Access subscriber to play on them.  There is no free to play option.

In addition, Daybreak is offering two special packs as part of the server launch.

There is always an up sell

Roguish Rapscallion Pack

• Roguish Rucksack – One 40-slot 100% weight reduction bag claimable on any server! (Lore)
• Bottle of Adventure II (x3) – A bundle of three 25% experience potions usable on any server.

Successful Shenanigans Bundle

• Everything in the Roguish Rapscallion Pack, plus:
• Shenanigan Satchel – One 40-slot 100% weight reduction bag
• Bottle of Adventure II (x5) – A bundle of five 25% experience potions usable on any server.
• Token of Challenged Resurrection (x5) – A bundle of five 85% experience resurrection tokens.
• Bottle of Clarity Pack – One mana regeneration potion appropriate to your level.
• Bottle of Alacrity Pack – One melee haste potion appropriate to your level.
• Potion of Speed – One movement haste potion.

You can apparently only purchase each pack once per account, but you can purchase both, which will let you claim the bag on two characters.  These are not “get one on every character” promotions.

CCP Takes Aim at Cloaky Campers in EVE Online

Last week we got news that changes relating to warp core stabilizers and interdiction nullification were arriving on the test server.  This week changes meant to address cloaky camping are on the menu.

Cloaky camping is next on the list

For cloaky campers are pilots who land in a low sec or null sec system, cloak up, and just sit there.  The idea is to inspire paranoia and suppress activity like ratting and mining in a system because you never really know if the cloaked pilot is AFK or is quietly stalking you or about to cyno in some friends to blap you.

While I’ve tended to think of cloaky camping as just a cost of doing business, having been cloaky camped by various parties from random passers by to the Olmeca Gold Goon-Hate campaign, a lot of people get very upset because you cannot really “do” anything about a cloaky camper.  So people have been complaining to CCP about the practice since long before I knew it was a thing.

So, 18 years into the life of the game CCP is planning to introduce a new deployable call the Mobile Observatory which, once activated, will ping the system every ten minutes with a chance to decloak anybody cloaked up in the system.

The Mobile Observatory

And the attributes:

The attributes

The observatory, once it is correctly coded, is deployable in low and null sec space (not wormhole space) with a limit of ten per system. (Currently it can be deployed in WH space and next to stations and you can have as many as you want deployed in one system.)

In order to protect the legitimate cloaking pilot, cloaking up will give you 15 minutes of “cloak stabilization” to keep you from being decloaked.

Cloaking Defense

I tinkered with one a bit on the test server with a stealth bomber and was decloaked fairly reliably once the cloak stabilization wore off.

Being decloaked at the same tick every time

The effect is system-wide, so proximity to the observatory presumably has no impact.  I was 15 AU away for three of those four decloaks.  It did not decloak me at the 19:53:03 tick, when my stabilization had worn off, but the other three times it decloaked me on the first tick after I was no longer protected.

For the last round I was close by when it decloaked me as its lifetime was nearing its end and I wanted to see how much it would take to kill it.

Well within torp range

Five salvos of faction torps from my Purifier was sufficient.

There was no cool explosion or anything because the item doesn’t even have artwork associated with it yet.

That fact indicates to me that we’re likely not going to see this pushed into the live game quickly.  As with the warp core stabilizer and interdiction nullification, I expect that CCP will take time to digest feedback and make changes for a while.

And the comment thread is getting a lot of feedback, though you have to skip down the page a bit because the first problem was that CCP announced to everybody that it was available to test… and then it wasn’t on the test server for another couple of hours.

This will clearly shake up the cloaking meta.  AFK cloaky camping might even cease to be a thing.  But it is the impact on other playstyles that use cloaking that might be the trick here.  I’ve sat on a blops in a hostile system for 90 minutes easy waiting for a hunter in a distant system to get in position.  While those waiting can stay safed up and recloak, that hunter is in a bad spot if they get decloaked.

Related coverage:

• INN – Mobile Observatories: CCP Announces Cloaking Counter
• NEP – Cloaky Campers Beware, CCP Is Coming For You

Burning Crusade Launch Load Test Round One

As I mentioned in the previous post, Blizzard was planning a server launch load test for Burning Crusade Classic to go along with the flood of beta invites they sent out.  The idea was to roll up a fresh server and get everybody to log in and try to get through the dark portal.

When the hour hit, 11:00 Pacific / 14:00 Eastern / 19:00 UTC, I logged in and picked the new server, it being the only one available, copied over my level 60 hunter again, and logged in.  I was back in Ironforge, where he sits in live WoW Classic, so had to fly on down to the Blasted Lands and the Dark Portal.

Landing there, I rode with a pack of others towards the portal.  The server was setup as a PvP server, so I was determined to ride on through the inevitable crowd at the portal looking to gank.  But when I hit the portal it was apparently out of order, so I ended up in the scrum forming around it.

Traffic control at the gate

Everything was very laggy at that point too.  It was a good ten count to get anything to respond.  And it was only when I was in the thick of that when I realized I had not set my spec, so I opened that up to try and pick… but like everything else, it was 20 clicks behind on anything you wanted to do.  Even dying was slow.  I saw I had zero health for about a minute before I actually got the notification asking if I wanted to release… and it took even longer for me to actually fall over and the screen to go to the dead gray.

Eventually I was back at the graveyard and running to the portal again with the other victims of the fight.

Corpse run time

I got back into my body and tried to rush the portal, but it wasn’t letting anybody pass, so it was just that run through to hit the wall routine.  Comedy gold, except for the fact that I died again.

Corpse pile at the portal

Then, as I was running back they put out a server message saying they were going to disconnect everybody so we could load up the system with a mass login hit.

The dread mass-loing

So offline things went.  I logged back in, got in a short queue… maybe 85 deep when I landed, which amounted to less than a minute of waiting, which made it the most responsive aspect of the test… and then was foundering about trying to get back to my corpse and healed up.  I spotted a bunch of alliance players trying to gather around the edge of the portal, out of line of sight and joined them.

Another line? This reminds me of the WoW Classic launch

However the Horde was wise to this and there were a few players off to the side of the portal on the hill picking people off, myself included.  Again, it was a long wait to die, fall over, and actually be dead.

Then we got another message indicating that the test was over.

All done here

Further announcements went up about the beta servers being up again and the test was pretty much over.  The whole thing ran about 30 minutes.

I must admit that I didn’t go through the dark portal on the day it went live back in 2007.  The instance group, which only kicked off in September of 2006, was around level 40 and still doing Razorfen Downs.  So while I was able to log into WoW on launch day with only a modest queue, I have no feel for how things at the portal were.  Certainly being on a PvP server made the test more chaotic, but the whole thing made me wonder if Blizz is up to a launch like this again.

The battle of the portal

I’ll give tomorrow’s test another try to see how they’re doing, but the laggy behavior in the regular beta and the way things played out at the portal is not inspiring me with a lot of day one confidence.  But at least I will be on a PvE-RP server.  We’ll probably all queue up for the portal for real when the time comes, just like we did before.

EverQuest II Returns to PvP with the Tarinax Server

The relationship between Norrath and PvP has been fraught over the years.  The rare high points have generally been drowned out by long stretches of bad times and low participation.

There was that brief period on the Nagefan server where PvP flourished, but only with people who stayed level locked around level 20 because PvE focused skills like evacuate opened up too many escape loopholes, frustrating players.  For the most part the tale of PvP in EverQuest II has been one of dead servers and people complaining on the forums.  The last run at a PvP was the 2016 Deathtoll server which lasted less than six months before it was merged into Antonia Bayle and forgotten.

But, in the search for something to get people back into the game Daybreak has decided to try the PvP route for EQ.  And so today they launched the Tarinax PvP server.

Welcome to Tainax

Tarinax is a time locked server, which means that expansions will be opened up over time.  It is launching with the original content along with the Desert of Flames and Kingdom of Sky expansions unlocked.  It also features faction based PvP, which hearkens back to the high point of the Nagefan server of old.

Will is succeed where past attempts have failed?  We shall see.  The only thing I don’t doubt is that, should it not become popular, the forums will be alight with all the things Daybreak did wrong, many of which will be contradictory.

For more information there are today’s update notes and the forum thread announcing the server.

Otherwise the server appears to have gone live at about the time expected, which in and of itself is no small feat for Daybreak.

Tarinax is live! It's time to test your mettle against other EQ2 players now!

Find Tarinax under event servers on your server list! pic.twitter.com/MEhKrrNjZX

— EverQuest II (@everquestii) May 11, 2021

Now to see if it thrives.