The opening of Ahn’Qiraj is approaching soon in WoW Classic. But will the servers hold up? At least the PTR has already hit its limits …
In the good old “Vanilla” world of World of Warcraft, there is an event that most players have probably never experienced in all its glory. We are talking about the opening of Ahn’Qiraj. This is also approaching in WoW Classic, which is why the developers wanted to test this event on the PTR.
But can the servers withstand this devastating event? The results from the PTR clearly show: it’s going to be pure chaos again.
What is the opening of Ahn’Qiraj? The opening of Ahn’Qiraj is considered the largest, one-time event that World of Warcraft has to offer. For weeks (or even months), the entire server must gather resources to be able to open the gates of the ruins of Ahn’Qiraj in Silithus. A chosen (and very ambitious player) then completes a questline that grants them a special mount.
The opening of the gates attracts almost all players of the realm, which can make it extremely crowded. Immediately after the opening, numerous enemies pour out of the gates, and there are a few events across the entire continent for a few hours.
However, the centerpiece is the Temple of Ahn’Qiraj, a large raid for 40 players that is finally unlocked and offers new loot as well as an Old God as an opponent. This will be unlocked with Phase 5 of WoW Classic, even though the raid has some of the craziest boss mechanics.
It was different back then: The “AQ event” has a legendary status among WoW players. Almost all veterans can tell stories about what they did during the opening of AQ or how their server went haywire.
Because the opening brought numerous problems back then. Ships no longer followed their usual route and suddenly appeared in the middle of the mountains. Disconnects and delays occurred constantly.
PTR test was pure chaos: Blizzard has now tested the event on the PTR in advance and invited all players to Silithus. After all, they wanted to find out how well the realms can withstand the burden of player numbers. Even beforehand, this led to the (familiar) problems. For example, dozens of players gathered at the flight master, unable to dismount and trapped, leading to this image:
Event ends in boss mayhem: To fully push the limits of the server, Blizzard exaggerated a bit at the end and simply spawned additional bosses – including those that had nothing to do with AQ. In the following video, you can see the Nightmare Dragons, Baron Rivendare, and Ragnaros slicing through the players before the server goes down.
However, it will take a while before AQ arrives on the live servers – and even then, many weeks of farming are still needed before the raid becomes accessible.
Were you present at an AQ opening? What bugs or funny situations did you experience back then?
