Things are a bit topsy-turvy in the world of Azeroth this week as a new phase of the pre-Cataclysm launch event starts up. The four major cities of Stormwind, Ironforge, Thunder Bluff, and Ogrimmar are under attack every few hours by large numbers of elementals. The players need to come to the defense of the city in order to spawn portals that then let players go attack special event bosses.

Players waiting in front of the bank and auction house in Ironforge. Even with a modern GPU, I was only getting about 10-12 FPS.



Running around Ironforge while the elementals are spawning in. I only caught the tail end of the invasion wave, so it's mostly players running hither and yon and lots of rubble from the earthen elementals.



In Stormwind, players had to put up sandbag walls, then defeat the wind and water elementals that spawned.



The lag ends up being horrific because you have dozens (maybe a few hundred) players in each city, all trying to attack the elementals. Even with World of Warcraft's simplistic graphics (an artistic choice that allows for a fair bit of whimsy), it puts a serious strain on even modern video cards. The multitude of mounts, pets, companions and spell effects just makes it worse.