AQ Expectations

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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As we approach the content unlock next week that will begin the events around the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj, we’ve seen several questions from players about precisely how many aspects of the events are going to work. What follows is a rundown of some of the those details.

Spoiler alert! If you’ve been hoping to experience the AQ events for the first time in-game, turn back now!

The Calendar
First and foremost, we have the exact time of the content unlock. This will occur with the weekly raid reset in each region, because the content involves Blackwing Lair. In this region, the content will unlock on:

  • 29 July at 9:00 CEST / 10:00 MSK

This is the time when the War Effort will begin and each faction can turn in immense amounts of supplies that, once completed, will require five days to be transported to Silithus. Due to the raid requirements in the quest chain leading up to the “Bang A Gong!” quest, the earliest that the gong-ringing can occur in Silithus on highly-motivated realms will be just over a week later.

Once the gong is rung on a realm, the 10 Hour War begins. Once the 10 hours has elapsed, "Bang a Gong!” can never be turned in anymore, the two Ahn’Qiraj raids will open, and the “Treasures of the Timeless One” quest will become available.

The exact times for the ringing of the gong, and therefore the raids opening 10 hours later, will differ on every realm.

Becoming the Scarab Lord

Ringing the gong can only be done by players who have completed all of the steps of the Scepter of the Sands quest chain before the end of the 10-hour window. In addition to raid requirements, players are able to use the Proxy of Nozdormu to deputize other players to help them amass Silithid Carapace Fragments, so this is likely a guild-wide effort to help a chosen individual complete the quest chain.

Only the first player on a realm to ring the gong will be announced across the zone in Silithus. On realms that have multiple layers, once the gong is rung on one layer, the 10 Hour War will begin on all layers. All players who complete the questline and turn in “Bang a Gong!” before the 10 hours are up will receive the Black Qiraji Resonating Crystal mount. Any player who completes the questline up through “The Might of Kalimdor” will be eligible for “Treasures of the Timeless One,” which rewards an Epic weapon, regardless of whether they were able to complete “Bang a Gong!” in time.

Some Restrictions Apply

In original WoW, the Scarab Lord wasn’t used as a title, and that will be the case in WoW Classic. The ability for players to manage their titles came after original WoW.

During the 10 Hour War, world bosses do not only spawn in Silithus. Resonating Crystals that spawn major enemies will appear in Tanaris, Feralas, Thousand Needles, and Barrens. This is important to know because we expect there to be an overcrowding issue in Silithus on realms whenever large groups of players all go to Silithus at the same time. While the negative effects of overcrowding can’t be eliminated, we’re taking several steps to mitigate the worst outcomes:

  • Thanks to players who helped us test on the PTR in June, we can support a higher number of players in the zone than we could before.
  • Those PTR tests also helped us determine the maximum number of players that can be supported before “a little laggy” became “unplayable.”
  • If the maximum is reached, players will be automatically removed from the zone.
    • First, players will be removed if they are below level 60. Alliance players will be ported to Westfall, and Horde players will be ported to The Barrens.
    • Level 60 players who are ported out will be moved to to Un’goro Crater, Tanaris, Thousand Needles, or The Barrens.
    • If Silithus is at max population, a level 60 player can only zone in when another player leaves Silithus.
    • Players who have a Scepter will never be automatically removed from Silithus.
  • Zone maximums and automatic adjustments are per-layer.

There are restrictions on realm-to-realm character transfers, which are in place to prevent players of a different realm from coming to your realm and disrupting the progress of events. The quest “Bang a Gong!” cannot be completed by characters who transferred to the realm in the past 90 days, however, those players can complete “Treasures of the Timeless One”. Before the end of the 10 Hour War on a realm, there are also other restrictions on transfers for characters who have participated in significant event activities elsewhere. For example, players cannot transfer a character that has Silithus Carapace Fragments in their bags or bank.

And Then…

The initial War Effort requires a great deal of supplies to be turned in by your faction on your realm. If this is not complete 30 days after the content is unlocked, small amounts of supplies will begin turning in automatically, as they did in the version 1.12 of original WoW. The gates still require somebody to “Bang a Gong!”, but this will help ensure that all realms have the chance to unlock Ahn’Qiraj before Naxxramas is released.

We’re very excited to follow the unfolding events on WoW Classic realms around the world over the next few weeks. We’ll see you in Silithus!

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If Silithus is at max population, a level 60 player can only zone in when another player leaves Silithus.

… not to sure how to react to this… are you seriously telling us that there’s a maximum number of players able to occupy the zone (Sillithus) at any time of the day?.. and you don’t immediately foresee how players will abuse this fact?

well let me tell you; people are gonna crowd the zone day and night and make sure nobody else can enter, in order to get their precious mount… meanwhile those of us not going for that mount will be locked out of the zone until those other players decide to let us in.

you are allowing players to gatekeep the whole zone lol.

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None of this is original.

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Bone for the Judgement then. Enjoy it.

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how can i world pvp if layers either locked or empty

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And what about server unlocked and transfers? Why again No word or update about that? My server is a medium pop server now.

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How is this better than layering? All this will do is exclude a significant amount of the player base from the event, especially the more casual players.

This isn’t the way to run the AQ event.

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It really depends on how many people can be in the zone at the same time; they’ve mentioned a limit but not the number. Also, some of the event is going to be taking part in nearby zones so you’re not limitted entirely to Silithus.

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It’s… It’s almost like making the population limits much larger than they were in Vanilla was a BAD idea? Go figure.
Layers is, and always has been, just a small external band-aid on a large wound with internal hemorrhaging.

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This is someone pouring water into burning cooking oil, while trying to fix the issues with the server.

Stop running the sever client based on 7.5 and respect your master piece blizzard!

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That doesn’t affect anything but the 10 hour event, the bug farm will still be a huge issue.

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The bug farm is going to be a huge issue anyway because of how few mobs there are as opposed to players. There’s probably going to be 10-15 players for EACH bug spawn, and they have fairly long respawn timers.

The bug farm is also only important to the hardcore players aiming for the mount; the majority of the players wont even bother with that.

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I’m a bit sad that you’ve planned the release around weekly unlocks rather than a set date as you did with ZG and BWL.

By doing it like this you make it impossible to have a global world first race for AQ40, since the determenistic factor will be the 2 dungeon lockouts and they are not synchronized world wide.
^ This has been somewhat of an issue in the past for retail, but it’s been alleviated by the content taking 2-3 resets to clear. Here every realm will clear it within 2-3 hours of release. Giving NA a 4h headstart over EU for instance, will nullify the race.

Most realms that aim to compete are already more or less done with the (expected) war effort turnins and will be able to turn this in in the 48h window.

We will be able to do the reputation grind and the scepter questline within the 7 day period.

The only limiting factor for the world first race (currently) is the resets.

It should have been rep farm / bwl farm speed / quest chain to unlock the gates and each realms preparedness that should have decided who openes the gates first.
Instead you are handing the “race” to whichever region has the most beneficial reset timer…

Let’s pour one out for the 550k+ gold we wasted on not being able to have a somewhat fair world first…

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The limit is only for the 10 hours event that has other bosses spawns in other locations so literally everyone will be able to enjoy the content.

It’s overall pretty good ! Let’s go AQ

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The bugs amount allow up to max 9 bug grinds concurrently (to get the required amount). IF the gong rung / war effort gets delayed more could be made. A scarab lord pretender is expected to have like:

20+ people - above ground at the southern hive
10-20 people - southern hive below ground or the swarming pillar
5-10 people - western hive
<5 people - northern hive

each team would need

A skinner (305+)
A miner
Proxy Holder
Farm 200 Carapace Per Hour
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This doesn’t come as a surprise tbh.

As usual, a big event is sh-tty because of Blizzard’s piss-poor servers, only this time, they openly ((fix)) the issue by screwing up the players.

So basically, they either screw up players by doing nothing because of garbage servers or they screw up players by sacrificing a chunk of them.

I’m still waiting for the day where players will wake up and agree to boycott this game on a massive scale.

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Don’t you think implementing zone quotas is the worse solution? You have other better choices other than preventing people to be in Silithus.

Just use your tech for dynamic spawns depending on how many players are in the zone like you did at the start of Classic because bugs aren’t spawning fast enough to support the number of players .

Or just implement additional layers . If you’re going to mess with the zone, at least do so in a way that allows all interested players to participate.

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Lmao dude this has nothing to do with mob scarcity. The only reason for all of this is because their garbage cloud servers are not capable of handling even a tenth of the players private servers could handle in a single zone

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You people legitimately couldn’t run a piss up in a brewery.

What a shambles.

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Guess I’m screwed then. Sigh.

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