koaschten

All this testing is always "poisoned" by the chance that an item you want to probe already is online on the server after weekly maintenance and you dont know.
So the best way to figure out this works is to probe Kalecgos loot table on patchday, keeping the instance open till you down Kalecgos and check against that result.

 

Farstrider

You do realise this is not only incredibly timeconsuming, but also applies only to a very small population of servers?

IF it does work, which I am fairly sure it wouldn't, I'm pretty sure Blizzard wouldn't really be that fussed.

John O'Groats to Lands End 2009 for Leukaemia Research

 

◊ Praetorian

I think it's actually an interesting idea. Before I was done reading the post I thought to myself about how a warglaive suddenly became linkable in the middle of Nihilum's attempts, and people assumed the orange weapon had some role in the fight. It also explains, for example, why you can't data-mine Kil'Jaeden loot on the PTR -- the entity Kil'Jaeden doesn't actually "exist" and presumably spawns when you arrive at the end of the zone after killing M'uru. Similarly, is it possible that even back in the AQ40 days people could datamine all the AQ40 loot except C'Thun drops, because the actual mob with the drop table is "C'Thun", which doesn't exist until someone gets to p2 of the fight, and no one did on the PTR?

 

lightstrike

I highly doubt that. Most likely, it's a process that runs all instances of an "instance-zone", or even a process that runs all instanced zones. This is necessary to allow static data sharing, reducing not only the amount of memory required, but also the amount of preprocessing on that data when spawning a new instance... The fact that they're using 64bit GUIDs for unit ids, is also a sign that these are to be globally identified. Interestingly, the top word of the GUIDs match for the same mob, which could indicate that the GUIDs are a combination of some kind of ZoneId, mob type, and/or something else, stored in the top word, and then the actual 32bit generated Id...

Yes, hence why I thought it would be interesting to test that. Because there's two ways to reset an encounter; either they destroy and re-spawn all the involved entities, in which case most likely they come in with new GUIDs, or, they hide-reset-show them. If they just hide/unhide then the time-of-birth timestamp probably doesn't chance. If it's recreating the involved entities, then most likely, the new entities will have fresh new GUIDs and a new timestamp, influencing which loot you'll get... This is assuming that the loot is generated when the mob dies, from the saved timestamp, which is itself highly speculative...

Would be interesting to understand how they implemented these things...

 

Legh

You may have missed my previous post with the link of a dev stating (or at least I understood it that way) that despawns of the mob and consequent respawn would generate a new GUID for it

 

◊ Praetorian

Hmm, so if you wipe to a boss fully and it leashes, it keeps the original loot (and GUID) but if you leash it and it vanishes entirely upon crossing the leash point, and then respawns anew a minute later, then the loot is rerandomized? Makes sense.

 

• Nemesis

So if it were possible to leash Illidan you could keep leashing him until the server lets you link a Warglaive, then kill him.
At least that's how I understood all of the above?
Ofcourse, only possible if the server cache is empty and there are no warglaives online.
This kinda makes me hope they open a new server so I can roll a rogue. You should be able to guarantee some Warglaives ;-)

 

◊ Praetorian

Doesn't Illidan despawn and reappear as a friendly NPC when you wipe to him?

 

Legh

Correct.

 

Emeraude

Why yes, yes he does.

Now, who didn't kill Illidan last night and wants to test this theory?

 

◊ Praetorian

This should be easily confirmable on one of the recent new servers, and it doesn't even have to be with Warglaives. On a brand new server with no established raiding guilds, stuff like Vashj loot should not exist, and anyone can zone into SSC and try to link some Vashj drops, and repeat each time they soft-reset the instance.

 

◊ Praetorian

Well there's nothing to test on most servers. On Mal'Ganis someone with Warglaives will probably log on soon after a server reset and there's no way of really knowing for sure if they have or not. Certainly on most servers this won't work.

Also wouldn't it follow that the item has been "seen" on the server once it appears once in someone's instance, even if it's not obtained by a player, if this theory is true? So even if no one has any glaives, someone zoning into a BT instance in which a warglaive exists on Illidan's table might make the item linkable.

The only way to properly test this would be to know for a fact that no one on a given server has a piece of loot, and then to know for a fact that you are the first person to enter the zone in which that loot might spawn after a server reset. Right?

 

Romerz

After you kill supremus you can /Target illidan. I don't know if this means he is actually there, I would just assume it does.

 

◊ Cadfael

A blue stated that long ago during a discussion of I believe also loot generation. It was before the forum change so the post is certainly lost but might be available in some bluetracker. I don't have it at hand though.

That's right, though Slouken said that quite some time ago: WoW Forums -> Upcoming 2.4 Changes - Concise List

The "upper-middle" part is the mob-id. Taking Vaeys' example, Vexallus - NPCs - World of Warcraft is Vexallus. Enter 24744 in DEC, convert to Hex and you'll get 60A8. Compare with the combat log GUIDs:
WoWhead pulls these mob-id numbers out of the MPQ in one of the dbc files. So the lower 3 Bytes denote the variable ID, the following 2 (3?)Bytes denote the mob id and the uppermost part is probably some flags.

Loot is generated on spawn, its really an old argument and confirmed at least twice by blue. Also the community long ago before any confirmation found that there are specific mobs who wear the weapon they are going to drop IF they have that weapon in their loot table. I've seen and confirmed this myself. This would not be possible if loot is determined on kill. It really happens on spawn time.

So if we were to test this with 2.4 we need to track the bosses that are not there when the instance gets created but spawn later. We can assume this is true for Kil'Jaeden. It certainly isn't true for Kalecgos (unless Sartohvarr or whatever his name is, is spawned dynamically, as we don't loot Kalecgos after all). Brutallus is always present and Felmyst could be dynamically spawned as it is part of the event with Brutallus and Madrigosa. I have no idea about M'uru and Twin Eredars, save that M'uru has 2 phases and one probably loots Entropius.

 

◊ Kalman

They aren't. WoW uses a specific PRNG algorithm, although I can't source that - it's IBAA, I believe.

 

Legh

Roana posted that at the very beginning of page 2 of this very same thread

 

◊ Cadfael

Yes, that's how I understand the process. Since for a normal live realm you cannot guarantee you are the first to spawn a raid instance, it's probably easiest if one concentrates on observing later bosses which spawn in on player-interaction. So they are not present when the instance spawns and possibly they respawn on wipe.

It's easier to track server wide raid progression and with that the possibility to engage/activate a boss than trying to ensure no one else runs into the instance and spawns it.

If you furthermore are the first guild to reach a boss you can check to see if between each pull/attempt, the available loot for linking increases or not. If it does, you can for the first few pulls predict what he would drop. (Unless the entire loot table becomes active for linking once the boss spawns in for the first time)

I think 2.4 is a unique opportunity to gain a bit of insight into this mechanism.

 

Nurru

I know this was the case with Everquest, but I've never seen anything similar in WoW. Do you have any examples?

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

vorda

Some of the humanoid casters in Blasted Lands wear the weaon they are going to drop. Personally confirmed this pre tbc (yet it was already 2.0), but havent checked after that.

 

Emeraude

Ouch of curiosity why can I link items like or [Teebu's Blazing Longsword] without crashing? You'd think these items don't exist on the server just yet no? Or they're rare enough that a mob/GM wouldn't spawn with them.

 

Nurru

Tichondrius had a Teebu's on horde years ago. In the past people merely thought the item had to have existed on the server at some point to be in the cache and linkable, not that it had to be on someone who logged in since a restart. I'm positive the character with Teebu hasn't logged in for about 2 years, so it would be easy to check.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

JamesVZ

I would assume that those are loaded into some sort of global file. Teebu's can drop anywhere in the old world from what I understand, and mob generation mechanics outside of instances might be somewhat different than those inside. Martin Thunder I would assume for similar reasons, being a GM item and all.

Official Slackie Fanclub. The dude gets ALL the ladies.

In regards to Icecrown Radiance:

 

Emeraude

I linked [Runeblade of Baron Rivendare] and [Blackblade of Shahram], instance based epic drops on the brand new server Ghostlands. The chances of these items existing is extremely low, granted they could exist, and I could be wrong, but I did not crash when I linked them.

 

◊ Cadfael

Blasted Lands, Altar of Storms there (NOT the Altar in Burning Steppes, it's really the one in BL all the way in the west).

There are 3 types of mobs there. If they don't drop a weapon, they have a default weapon in their hand. If they will drop a weapon, they will show it. There are pics showing them holding a Warden's Staff for example and then of course dropping that one rare drop.

I didn't see an epic but they certainly showed another weapon when they dropped exactly that weapon. They don't drop weapons often though, so if you want to confirm that, calculate at least an hour of non-stop killing them to see it. However when they wear their "model-normal" weapon, they drop no weapon at all, so that's at least a "half-proof".

 

JamesVZ

But neither of them have lockout timers. I wonder if you could do the same with Heroic instance loot?

Official Slackie Fanclub. The dude gets ALL the ladies.

In regards to Icecrown Radiance: