If there’s one thing that a Beta test can never fully “test”, it’s server load.

They can try to simulate high-load situations, and they can catch a whole lot of show-stopping, server-crashing bugs that way, but really - it’s only on release of the software to the community of real users that true load testing begins.

Stability has been a lot better on Zul’jin tonight - we had the rolling restart that many others had, and then crashed two times after that within a half hour, but then from that point on, there was a bit of lag here and there but it wasn’t too bad at all, in the Outlands where I was hanging out.

I got my 60 Hunter into a 60s guild that a bunch of cool ex-guildmates joined over the past few months, and went out hunting with a guy I originally met when I was level 31 and he was a level 9 noob on a trial account. He’s 60 now and has way better equipment than I do :) We headed into the Outlands and started the trail of quests in Thrallmar which lead us to Splinterbone Post which had a whole bunch of quests to pick up.

I read somewhere that for the release, while there’s high competition for world mobs, Blizzard has altered the respawn time so things spawn a lot faster than normal. I definitely noticed tonight that things spawned a lot faster, but I also noticed that sometimes areas I’d been camping for a while suddenly don’t reset much anymore… I don’t know if that’s reality or just a coincidence however.

Working on gathering the blood to be boiled in the Boiling Blood quest was interesting with the fast respawns - my buddy (also a 60 Hunter) and I had to keep on our toes and each died 3-4 times because things just kept spawning and aggroing around us and we couldn’t get them all down before the next fireball-hurling orc and his skeletal minions (who hit remarkably hard for how small and skeletal the buggers are) would attack us.

I got about halfway to 61 before logging off, and I replaced my bow and two of my armor pieces with better stuff. I’ll link them in a later post, too lazy to do it right now…

Last night I also extended my Enchanting and Leatherworking skills to 375 at the trainers in the Outland. I haven’t found the Fishing, Cooking or First Aid trainers yet, however. Any clues as to where to find them? :)