The World of Warcraft: Classic servers have been far from perfect since the game’s release. Whether the issue being dealt with is overpopulation or some other of the myriad of complications posed, the servers have a reputation for being tumultuous at best.
For that reason (and several others), Blizzard has been vigorously testing the servers via the PTR to see the strain that will be presented by the upcoming Gates of Ahn’Qiraj event to kickstart the new raid.
We discussed their most recent test earlier in the week, which Blizzard regarded as a massive success. Now, they’ve held another event to help discover any sort of issues that they’ll need to work towards fixing with the event approaching.
The previous testing was far from perfect, which was the point, of course. Those that are helping to test these PTR events aren’t going in to enjoy a well-tuned sneak peek at the upcoming content but to headbutt the issues to help devs see what needs fixing.
Previously, there was a massive lag issue, which is among the most guaranteed issues that the servers will be suffering. Players also were faced with issues of not being able to enter Silithus or being teleported away.
There were also issues presented with flight paths, which players were being stuck on entirely without being given a way to get off. With so many issues discovered, Blizzard had plenty to fix.
Some of these fixes were already in place by the time the new stress test took place today. Blizzard announced an hour before the event that they had made some improvements that would make the stress test just a bit more painless.
“We’ve got all of our optimizations in place this time, so we expect it to go quite a bit faster than it did last week,” Blizzard said in their announcement. “We’re really looking forward to seeing you there.”
There was also some talk of code optimization that Blizzard discovered needed to be completed as a result of the first stress test, so these could likely have already been implemented as well. Hopefully, with this newest stress test, the developers have been given plenty to work with.
As Blizzard moves closer and closer to releasing the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj event, the testing that they’ve completed recently on the PTR is likely to have been a driving force in improving and honing the live servers for a more pleasant event as a whole.
