Blizzard calls WoW Classic AQ Gate stress test on PTR “successful”

Blizzard held a stress test last night to see how many players one layer on World of Warcraft Classic could handle during the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj opening event that’s set to release in the coming months—and stress was the operative word.

Since the release of Classic, there have been numerous issues with the game’s servers being able to handle massive amounts of players. And there have been just as many complaints from players who have been forced to wait in queues to get into the game because of high server populations.

The opening of the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj is one of the most iconic open world events in WoW’s original iteration. Following a massive war effort by both factions on a server, access to the game’s third 40-man raid, Temple of Ahn’Qiraj, is preceded by a ceremonial 10-hour event in the zone Silithus.

During this event, a plethora of powerful elite world bosses spawn throughout the zone, giving heroes lucrative rewards if they manage to take one out. 

Because of the grandiose nature of the gates opening, Blizzard and Classic players are expecting the event to make Silithus severely overpopulated during that 10-hour period on most servers. 

As a way to test the limits of Blizzard’s servers, the developer held a stress test on its PTR yesterday evening, with content creators like Asmongold taking part. With so many people trying to get onto the server, the resulting festival of disconnection and lag were difficult to watch. But according to Blizzard, the company got all the information it needed. 

“Thank you very much to everyone who joined us on the WoW Classic PTR today,” Blizzard community manager Kaivax wrote in a post. “We reached our goal of filling the test realm, as well as substantially over-filling the zone.”

While Asmongold was streaming the event, he experienced multiple disconnections but made sure to tell his viewers who are trying to be involved that they should keep logging back in.

Because the test wasn’t meant to test actual gameplay as much as it was intended to test the capacity of servers, Blizzard encouraged as many players as possible to pile on in and keep coming back if they got kicked out. 

The developers haven’t detailed exactly how they plan to handle the inevitable influx of active players when the gates open up, but yesterday appears to be a step forward in figuring everything out.