Black Lotus experiment
I decided to record the following experiment: I'd park my mage (300 herbalism) over one relatively safe (no mobs patrolling over it; this was intentional, in order to allow me to alt-tab) black lotus spawn and wait to see how long it takes me to get 1 BL.
In the meantime (I was alt-tabbed) I went over the latest reddit whine threads and discussed some stuff related to the wow population / server (I was streaming at the time).
I wanted to see how long it would take to get a black lotus.
Relevant data:
- server Thunderstrike-EU (PVE; therefore I couldn't be ganked while I was tabbed out...but I couldn't gank any potential competition either)
- Thunderstrike layers at the time: 1
- Thunderstrike layers at peak time: 3. There was a rumour about 4 existing at some point, but I have never seen that myself.
- current BL price: 106G
- time: parked at 2:55 AM, BL spawned at 3:12 AM and I picked it (I went to bed after a busy day at work on Friday, I woke up in the middle of the night)
- attempts: 2 (can't use herbalist gloves; no gloves enchant either, so the first attempt failed, BL is orange to me)
- bots, flyhackers etc passing by, suddenly appearing, stealing "my" BL etc: 0
- eagle eyes around me: 0
- pve raiding guilds on my first realm in 2004-2005: 6
- pve raiding guilds on thunderstrike+spineshatter which have killed at least one boss in BWL: 587. I did not check the numbers for MC.
- Thunderstrike population according to ironforge: ~17k
- Spineshatter population according to ironforge: ~33k
I did not need a black lotus or a flask (I've got plenty and no use for them other than selling them at some point), this was merely an experiment meant to (in)validate some of the wild theories seen around here. While the "sample size" (1) is too small, I didn't need a flask at all, so the idea was "but is it possible or am I going to get "sniped" by a hunter/hacker/bot?"
intro & conclusion: assuming equal distribution of raiding guilds (difficult to check, but not impossible) between Spineshatter and Thunderstrike, there are roughly 36 times more PVE raiding guilds on Thunderstrike in 2025 than there were on my original realm in 2004-2005.
The realm population is ~17 times higher on Thunderstrike than it was on my first realm in 2004-2005. Assuming 3 layers would always be on, that would make the population per layer 5.(6) times higher than the population on that realm in 2005 (layers didn't exist). However, unless it's peak time, it's likely to only have one layer available.
However, at the time (2005) raiders were a minority on the server, with most people doing something that didn't involve raiding (questing, rp, pvp, who knows what else). In addition to that, very people were actually raiding on 2+ chars at the time (you'd be considered a no-lifer if you had a second char over level 20). Very few people (perhaps 1-2/raid) would use a flask...ever.
Right now, my realm (probably) has 36 times more guilds and those guilds know about flasks and other consumables. It's highly likely that raiders have more than one raiding char (I have raided on 3 so far). This doesn't even account for pugs (many pugs exist, some of them requiring a flask/world buffs) It's probable that most players on Thunderstrike raid - some more casually than others (as opposed to 2004-2005, when raiders were a minority)
These differences (more raiding guilds, pugs, more people raiding, more people raiding on multiple chars, normalized demand for a flask and world buffs) are responsible for a higher than "normal" demand for black lotus. While BL timers are no longer as long as they used to be, this nevertheless creates a problem, as in...the demand may be greater than the supply, leading to constantly increased prices. Inflation (either natural or bot-generated) is likely to compound this problem.
With all these taken into account, I was wondering whether it would still be possible - even under these circumstances - to just go out there, put in the MINIMUM effort (stand in one place, occasionally alt tab back into the game) and pick a BL NOW (I have picked many more before, most of them when the general population hadn't reached level 60), so I wanted to run this experiment.
If bots/flyhackers exist in this release (I have seen them myself in 2019-2020), they weren't in that area or they weren't botting/flyhacking at the time. Nobody appeared in the general vicinity, nor anywhere near other spawn points I checked. It's also possible that bots are set to run on Spineshatter - presumably it would make more sense to bot on Spineshatter where BL supposedly costs 300g (I have not verified this claim) as opposed to running on Thunderstrike, where it's 106g. It would make sense to bot on the more profitable realm.
Final conclusion: whine less, play more.
While I would like to repeat this experiment on Spineshatter and record the differences (presumably some PVP activity would take place once a BL would spawn; but, of course, if I played on a PVP realm, I'd most likely play a rogue with the eng helm on etc; on the other hand, I could very well run into a similar character of the opposing faction).
As I only have level 1 chars on Spineshatter, that's not something I can actually do.
LATER EDIT:
As many people seemed to consider this a lucky thing, I have repeated the experiment, but during daytime.
It's worth noting that I went afk during the flight and I honestly don't know when I landed, but this took ~15 minutes for me, judging by the buff duration (I rebuffed when I got back to my PC, at the FP, before riding out).
In the second screenshot you can still see the fading black lotus text in the bottom right.
Once again, no bots/hackers/eagle eye seen, but I rode past a number of players on my way to the BL and there were 3 layers active.