TL;DR
1) get the addon npctime. (link to curseforge page)
(obviously version number and last update will be newer, as time passes beyond this post)
2) after turning on, type "/npctime layer" and make sure the response is "show layer id." if it's "hide layer id" type it again. layer id = unique id for the instance of the zone you're in. this solves the "wtf instance/shard/zone version are we ACTUALLY in?" - beyond normal wmon, normal wmoff, chromie wmon, chromie wmoff.
3) ???
4) profit.
Hello there. I've been tweeting stuff I find on this pondbrain twitter account. but that's not what this post was triggered for.
NPCTIME. /npctime. the addon, npctime. npc time. BIG FUCKING PROPS to Huntalari-Gul'dan who told me about this when I was doing one of my passes through storm peaks to see who was where. why do i still do this? i don't know. pick the brain malfunction and blame it on that.
so, npctime. this person was talking about npc time and how they keep track of an instance id and how they were watching an npc, blue drake specifically above brunnhildar, and i was so confused like ........ i mean.... what? what the hell? are you talking about? hahahah. it seriously made no sense to me. then they told me about npctime. i was super, super skeptical. combination of talking to literally hundreds of people about this, addon developers, bunch of players, trying to figure out how to overcome this crz issue where we wanted to figure out a way to track instance id or anything, any way to find a trackable variable that could identify which version of storm peaks we were in, specifically.
So. Here we are. The following 5 images in order are 1) normal WMoff (3133-17), 2) normal WMon (3133-31), 3) Chormie time WMon (3133-568), 4) Chromie time WMoff (3023-16248), 5) back to normal WMoff (3133-17). i had put a mark on the npc i chose, assuming it would live until i returned. it did.
(just noticed chat window contents are visible, no big, too apathetic to edit any of that out <3 )
take note of the information in the tool tip on the bottom right. or, whatever that is, the information window of npctime. specifically "layer" and "ID" - layer being essentially which instance ID / shard ID / version of storm peaks ID you're in. (or whatever zone. zone ID) - and ID being the spawned mob type. the same id can be on 20 identical mobs, but check out alive time. Huntalari-Gul'dan explains that they tested this by killing lower blue drakes and watching their alive time, compared with the alive time of the ones flying high above that they didn't kill, which line up with last server reset. seeming that those haven't been killed since they spawned, and confirming the instance hasn't reset since the servers reset. this appears to be able to absolutely solve the issue where the only way we could get an idea if we were in fact in the same instance/version/shard/phase of the zone, was to watch the IP. and even then we were skeptical that it would always be a different IP, as one machine should be able to host a ton of different instances on it.
This tool also seems to have been able to catch zones resetting without the server resetting. This was observed on an RPG server, based on the uptime of everything in the zone being about equal to the moment they entered it again after being gone for a time. I've never been able to confirm the theory that the zones shut off if nobody is in them, but restart when people enter. but with this tool, seems an easier thing to test.
note: apologies to everyone about how skeptical i am, past present and future. i want to be 100%, or more if I can, absolutely sure something is real before forwarding it to other people. wowhead is bad and it should feel bad, on heavy detailed stuff like this. i don't want to add to the noise. besides my incessant infinitely long winded typing/talking. lulz.