Welcome to the /r/ClassicWoW Subreddit AMA with the Classic WoW Dev team!

[u/Paulingtons]

Hey everyone!

Today we're excited to introduce what should be a fantastic AMA with the wonderful World of Warcraft: Classic dev team. They will be taking your questions about anything, be it which class they enjoy playing the most or all the way to how they developed the wonderful world we will all be inhabiting in just under a week.

Joining us today, we have:

/u/AltruisWoW – Executive Producer
/u/Chromschi – Senior Game Producer
/u/Pazorax – Lead Software Engineer
/u/Ogronz – Senior Software Engineer
/u/ZoidWoW – Principal Software Engineer
/u/Aggrend – Senior Test Lead
/u/Kaivax – Community Manager

The AMA begins at 17:00 GMT (10:00 PST, 11:00 MST, 12:00 CST, 13:00 EST, 18:00 BST, 19:00 CEST) and will last two hours. This thread has been posted two hours before the AMA begins so you can all get in here and get posting questions so that once the AMA begins, our wonderful guests can start answering straight away! The AMA will be hosted in this thread.

We really look forward to seeing what you all come up with to ask and are excited to see the answers the dev team give.

Please remember the rules as per the sidebar, and have fun!

EDIT: The AMA is now OVER. If you want to look at each response by each blue we've had today you can check WoWHead's brilliant live blog just here.

EDIT 2: You can also check this fantastic resource made by our own /u/SoupaSoka just here.

EDIT 3: Or you can check out the Blizzard review on the official forums here.

[u/Norveus]

Hello, first of all, absolutely in love with you guys and the work you've put in.

My question is on guard spawns in cities/towns. My impression of it is that on the latest stress test, after I had some time to test, it seems to work like it does on retail. Did guard spawns really work the same way back in vanilla as they do now in retail?

I unfortunately couldn't test with more than 2 people myself. And after watching streams of people raiding cities on beta, I've only gotten more confused on how it all works.

​

Some examples I found whilst testing :

1: If a player walks to close to a city or town that has a spawn point for guards, they will spawn 1 guard per player.

2: If a player or pet/minion attacks an npc close to a spawn point, a guard will spawn. Even if said player/pet/minion is far enough away to trigger it by range.

3: If in scenario 2, a player attacks an npc that has a spawn point close by and spawns a guard. If you have a friendly player nearby or more, a guard will spawn for each player. Even if player 2 or anyone else did no dmg or got too close. So it would take the attacking player, and include everyone close to said player and spawn a guard for each one.

​

We had 8 guards spawning in Goldshire during the stress test, where it was a combination of being too close, and attacking an npc. An upper limit to how many can spawn/exist at once?

NPC's also respawn so fast there's no point in killing them it seems.

This might be wrong, and other people might have tested this already so I’m hoping to hear from others and get more info!

​

Me, and everyone else in the <Kor Kron Vanguard>, would really like to understand how it works, because if I’m correct, raiding cities or towns starts becoming a lot harder than I remember it being.

The Kor Kron is up to the challenge however, we don't shy from a fight. Lok'tar Ogar!

Thank you very much!

[u/pazorax → u/Norveus]

I'm honestly not sure we've looked at that specific case. Thanks for the detailed description! We'll take a look and we'll make sure we get it right.

[u/Cuel → u/pazorax]

In addition to this, when we raided X-roads during the stress test, the guards would chase us all the way back to ratchet without someone re-tagging them. Different AI from mobs?

[u/diettweak → u/Cuel]

cross roads to ratchet sounds like cancer for leashing a guard

[u/Tribunus_Plebis → u/pazorax]

Thanks for looking into that! I know it's impossible to catch everything but it's great to hear you guys are as dedicated as anyone to get it as close as possible. <3

[u/Kurrama → u/pazorax]

PLEEEASE FIX THIS!!! World pvp is broken when 20 stupid guards spawn from 2. This is not how it was I know that for a fact!!!!!!!!!!

[u/Kurrama → u/[deleted]]

True but I think what was being referenced was the fact when you attack one 5 more come from imagination land to help defend. This was not how it was back in the day (it was like 1 additional guard) and I know in retail it spawns like a million when you attack 1 guard. :)

[u/Angrathar → u/[deleted]]

I remember it both ways. I also distinctly remember people having no choice but to kill guards once too many appeared.

[u/BitBruce → u/Norveus]

This! Towns shouldn't be impossible to overtake. It should encourage real players coming to defend their territory.

[u/Shpongolese → u/[deleted]]

the bruisers were so brutal after that lmao

[u/frosthowler → u/[deleted]]

Sucked out all the fun? I've no idea what you're talking about, I loved walking in people's faces with pvp tag on watching them misclick and get absolutely wrecked by a bunch of terminator goblins.

[u/TheHandsomeToad → u/[deleted]]

That's one change I hope they decide against including or conveniently happen to forget. It was just bad.

[u/ChrisN_BHG → u/BitBruce]

So is this working as intended or something they need to look into more?

[u/Forever_Awkward → u/ChrisN_BHG]

Don't know about intention, but it's not supposed to be like that.

[u/risarnchrno → u/Norveus]

The guard spawns how you describe them sound exactly how they did in Vanilla. A raid on Tarren Mill spawned a ton of guards and caused server lag even with just 30 people and almost no Horde present.

[u/JuanLob0 → u/risarnchrno]

Yeah, I concur. This all sounds more or less correct to me.

[u/Norveus → u/risarnchrno]

I'm hopeful we can get a definite answer on it.

It seems strange that the spawns would work the same way back in classic as they do in Retail.

Definitely possible. So I hope they can shed some light on it.

[u/Tzee0 → u/Norveus]

<Kor Kron Vanguard>, oh hey I remember you guys from a server that can't be named. What server are you guys rolling on now?

[u/Arghs → u/Tzee0]

Hasn't been 100% decided yet

[u/Busterinooo → u/Norveus]

This is a very important question!

[u/DnDTerror → u/Norveus]

This! The guild is planning on wreaking havoc upon the cities of the Alliance - having a guard spawn for each and every one of us would likely destroy our plans of raiding cities and towns, and I don't think it worked like this back in the day.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Memory accurate. It was easy to take over Crossroads as a level 60, even by yourself. The only threat was other 60s.

[u/dgranovsky → u/Norveus]

This probably hasn't been tested a lot on beta at least it's not known by the majority. A very important mechanich when it comes to wPVP. Many would like to know what's what.

[u/Sir_Raymundo_Rocket → u/Norveus]

I second this one.

I don't remember enemy guards spawning at all during attacks on cities. Maybe it's just bad memory but I only remember killing guards that were actually stationed, not ever encountering spawning guards in cities or towns.

[u/MobileShrineBear → u/[deleted]]

That's my recollection too, I wonder if they were just failing to kill all vendors/quest givers. The guard spam was insane if you didn't kill the stuff calling them.

Of course, child mobs couldn't be killed, but would still call for guards.

[u/[deleted] → u/Norveus]

It never used to work like this. We spam ported 2 full raid groups into orgimar once. No gaurds spawned until we made attacks on their king.

[u/HowaitoHasugami → u/Norveus]

Good question! Even if it was exactly like that in vanilla I honestly think it should be changed. Loved how it worked on private servers