Hello everyone,

I'd like to thank everyone for jumping onto our test server and helping report issues. We were able to fix many crashes, young and old, and we hope to make sure the server is as stable as possible after launch. It has been a while since I have done a development update, so let’s jump into what you can expect in the coming weeks:

On March 11th, at 18:00 CET, we will be launching the server. Prior to this, the PTR will go down a few hours prior for preparations.

As I am sure you are aware, launches are often messy events and we expect we will have our share of difficulties. Our task for stability and good gameplay is a tall order in and of itself, and we will do our best to deliver.

Part of our plan to tackle server stability - if required - is the possibility of capping total population temporarily and implement a queue while we monitor for performance issues, scaling up population cap as we go.

After stability, the top priority for the first week is performance and vanilla content support. We have made improvements to vanilla raids across the board, but because TBC content is our top priority, we have not put as much focus on polishing vanilla content to the same degree the Nost-Elysium-LH core has had. You will likely encounter a few issues in vanilla, and we would kindly ask for your patience when playing vanilla content. It is one of our long-term goals to improve it, but it takes time.

When we have sufficient stability on the Stormspire realm, I will stream some more fixing issues from gitlab so we get rid of those pesky gameplay issues. So in the meantime, please continue submitting any issues and documentation you may have at https://gitlab.com/lights-vengeance/issues/issues. You may even get to watch as I work on some of these issues you’ve reported.

The second week of the portal event will be focused on vanilla as well as preparing for the launch of TBC content on 25th. From that point onwards, our focus will be on TBC content.

Even if you have played on our server before, you can expect some new stuff. We were able to implement Solarian pre-nerf as promised. This means that all T4/T5 bosses will be available on launch with their respective pre-nerf mechanics.

For those concerned about difficulty, we will gradually "nerf" these boss fights in order to increase the accessibility of content to other raiders on the server. This was a feature in retail TBC, and we intend to follow a similar progression.

We have also made significant changes to heartbeat resist in light of new evidence. So be sure to watch out for those annoying mind control interrupts.

We will also be improving our player Mind Control AI. We have started development on it, but we want to be careful that we do not want to make it too hard. It could make some content like Vashj and Kael’thas nearly unbeatable. We plan to adopt a more iterative approach to developing it.

What can you expect in the future?

We are currently in development of movement tech, specifically for formations, and some smooth flight tech for creatures during scripts. We are also working on reworking all of TBC content with new tech and goodies. We started this approach months ago, but we opted to propagate it to raid bosses first. We will continue going over other 2.0.3 items as we go, eventually also finishing Zul’Gurub and C’thun in vanilla.

We will also be gradually adding tons of missing RP to Outland. This is noncritical, and time-consuming, but is a nice flavor element.

Be sure to come by the development stream or discord and ask some questions.

I hope we will see you there. (KW)