Break summary: thirteen days of temporary server

In short

• From 17 October at 20:43 UTC to 30 October at 19:22 UTC, 2,500 autonomous players starting at level 1 played on their own, at x10 progression speed. Up to 2,432 were online at the same time, 1,862 on average.
• 2,083 characters reached level 80 (83%), and the final average level is 77.2. The median time to level 80 was 2.5 days.
• 577,000 cumulative hours of play, 3.1 million monsters killed, 190,565 levels gained, 62,225 quests turned in, 217,000 battleground entries and 820,261 deaths.
• The server held up. The game server never crashed, and the watchdog never had to restart it. The only incident was a 39-minute machine freeze on 24 October.
• On 30 October, all autonomous players were stopped. Their progress is kept.

Progression

• Median time from the start: level 20 in 10 h, 40 in 16 h, 60 in 23 h, 70 in 36 h, 80 in 2.5 days. Among those who reached it, 10% got there in under 1.9 days and 90% in under 5.8 days.
• 1,519 characters reached 80 on 19 and 20 October. The population then spent its last nine days at the level cap, with almost no further progress.
• Average level per class: warriors 79.1, paladins 78.9, rogues 78.8, priests and druids 78.6, hunters 78.5, warlocks 77.3, shamans 76.3, mages 68.1 (49% of mages at level 80).
• The 62,225 quests turned in cover 1,142 different quests, mostly starting-zone and class quests. With x10 experience, characters levelled mainly through combat: 3.1 million monsters killed and 4.9 million honorable kills.

Deaths

• 820,261 deaths, or 1.42 per hour of play, 72% of them between levels 71 and 80.
• 64% of deaths happened in Northrend. Deadliest zones: Borean Tundra (222,400, or 27% of the total), Dragonblight, Hellfire Peninsula, Howling Fjord, Grizzly Hills, Blasted Lands.
• Deadliest enemies: Felguard Elite (38,651 deaths, almost all in the Tainted Scar, in the Blasted Lands, 550 m from the Dark Portal), Crypt Crawler, Duskhowl Prowler and Gorloc Hunter.
• 89% of deaths were against a monster of lower level than the character, 73% against a single enemy.
• 45% of deaths happened less than 2 minutes after a resurrection (death streaks), and 56% leave at least one broken piece of gear, including the wear from that death.
• Deaths per character: priests 858, rogues 483, druids 359, warriors 277, hunters 234, warlocks 222, mages 124, shamans 90, paladins 31.

Behaviours to fix

• Back and forth through the Dark Portal: more than 460,000 crossings between the Blasted Lands and Hellfire Peninsula. Two class quests the brain cannot do ("Beat Bartleby", "The Dispute") were counted as doable: the character went back towards their quest giver, then towards its levelling zone, about every 45 seconds.
• Mail loop: 2.5 million mail retrievals, almost all for the same item, "The Mischief Maker". This unique item is sent twice by Minigob Manabonk in Dalaran: the second copy is refused and stays in the mailbox, and the brain kept retrieving it. On 30 October alone, 31 characters retrieved it 6,986 times each on average.
• Resting mages: when play was stopped, half of the mages online were resting, against 16% of the other classes. This probably explains their 68.1 average level, even though they have the longest play time (244 hours on average).
• Hopeless fights: more than 27,000 fights abandoned. Against Felguard Elite, elites with 56,000 health points whose health goes back to full after each death of the character; against Daggercap Hammerhead, almost all of them (11,929) by a single character, stuck underwater in Valgarde for five days.
• Routes and goals: 1.58 million automatic corrections (blocked on the way 514,000, idle without progress 264,000, death streak 139,000, unreachable target 128,000). They keep characters from getting stuck, but reveal poorly chosen routes and goals.
• Money and gear: median wealth is 2 gold despite x10 money. Despite 138,000 visits to a repairer, 56% of deaths leave a broken piece of gear. The 2,083 level-80 characters own only 61 epic items, and only 193 items were put up for auction.
• Dungeons: 76 attempts, mostly Utgarde Keep. None succeeded, and 114 groups were wiped out.
• Professions: only 923 characters (37%) have a primary profession, with fewer than 50 points on average. Secondary skills fare better: fishing up to 450 points, first aid up to 410.

What worked

• Fast, steady levelling: 2,083 characters at level 80.
• Battlegrounds: 217,000 entries, in Warsong Gulch (110,611) and Arathi Basin (106,747).
• Travel: boats, zeppelins, flights, portals and translocation orbs, with 4.7 million travel steps.
• Believable play rhythm: 193,908 offline breaks (20 minutes median) and 199,493 session ends.
• Social life: 6 guilds with 645 members, 65,336 achievements.
• Robustness: only 26 errors reported by the module in 13 days.

Server

• No crash: the game server ran in one go from 17 October to the freeze on the 24th, then until the shutdown on the 30th.
• The load regulator adjusted the population every minute: 17,115 "stable" decisions, 122 increases, 27 decreases for overload.
• The server used 28% of the machine's CPU on average. A world update took 30 ms on average, and 44 ms at the 95th percentile.
• Game server memory grew from 4.4 to 12.1 GB during the first week, then from 7.8 to 8.8 GB after the restart on the 24th.
• On 24 October, the machine froze completely from 12:41 to 13:20 UTC, then rebooted. Everything restarted on its own. The cause remains unknown, because the system log is not kept from one boot to the next. The disks and the RAID are healthy.
• The connection probe saw 14 isolated authentication refusals, never two in a row.

Beta and website

• First public beta: one sign-up.
• Website: 5,289 page views by human visitors, 157 visitors per day on average. The most viewed pages are the home page, the character sheets, the log and the Play page.

Shutdown on 30 October

• At 19:22 UTC, the regulator was switched off and the population cap set to 0. 1,215 characters logged off on their own within 6 minutes, out of combat and away from monsters.
• At 19:28 UTC, the game server restarted for the 920 remaining characters, still in contact with monsters. The shutdown was clean and took 7 seconds. The cap stays at 0: no autonomous player logs back in.
• The server stays open to human players.

What next

The project is paused. What comes next will be announced here: resuming the Pantheon, fixing the behaviours above, the future of the beta.

Correction (30 October, evening): the detailed investigation corrected the first version of this summary. The Felguard Elite kill in the Blasted Lands, not on the Outland side; "The Mischief Maker" is not a Hallow's End item; 31 characters, not 95, were looping on the mail on 30 October; the fights against the shark come from a single character.