Blizzard “de-blipping” zones after NPCs and mobs doubled up across layers
· ForeverDB
Players saw extra copies of NPCs and mobs turn up across the game's layers, in some spots stacking into dangerous packs. Blizzard put out an in-game server message about a blip in the multiverse and said it's clearing it up now.
For a short while on November 6, NPCs and mobs showed up more than once across the game's layers, according to Wowhead. Wowhead says single NPCs had several clones of themselves, and in some places the extra mobs stacked up into packs that made those spots a lot more dangerous than usual.
The duplicate NPCs and mobs are a Wowhead report, not something Blizzard has described. The only part confirmed by Blizzard is the server message quoted below.
Blizzard put out an in-game server message about it. Wowhead quotes the message as:
In substance, Blizzard server message (reported by Wowhead) said (source): Greetings! There was a slight blip in the multiverse. We are in the process of de-blipping all zones now.
So Blizzard knows about it and says the fix is already going out zone by zone. The message doesn't say what caused the extra copies, how long they were around, or which zones were worst hit.
Speculation. “Layers” here likely means the separate copies of the world the game puts players into when a realm is busy. Blizzard's September 24 beta notes already flagged that changing your party could move you to a different copy of the world (a world instance). That's our reading of what “de-blipping all zones” points at; Blizzard hasn't spelled out the cause.
If you ran into a spot that was suddenly packed with doubled-up mobs, that's what this was. Give the fix time to reach your zone, or hop to a different layer if you can.