The first-ever simultaneous worldwide release of a World of Warcraft expansion has not gone easy, to say the least. Blizzard flipped the switch on all servers at 3:00 pm Pacific yesterday and that's where the trouble began. Multiple Reddit threads and Twitter posts and official forum posts have been complaining of disconnects, log-in issues and horrendous lag in the game if they managed to actually play. While launch hellish for some, the "world first" level 120 happened mere hours after BfA began.
Even "green" VIP volunteer moderators on the WoW forums expressed frustration with the world first 120, a feat achieved by a gaming conglomerate member of Method.
Lvl 120 world first...
... has already been won when half your US player population cannot log in? I do love you, Blizzard; but what kind of Mickey Mouse outfit allows that? It's been a very, very, very long time since you were a little independent struggling to get your product played. Not that anyone would have had a chance at WF120 against a Method player, but your system/server failures for many of your players pretty much guaranteed many would not be given the opportunity to even fail at it. Maybe want to put some thinkage on that - perhaps set a delay to any achievements until a period of five days past launch day (tossing a random figure out there). That gives *you* time to sort out issues and the players a chance to get access to the game to make an effort for those things. Personally, I don't plan on hitting 120 for a while because I enjoy the game like a tourist. I'm speaking up because this circumstance is an unfairness which you created and which you could have avoided.
Not everyone experienced issues -- our own Bill Murphy, for instance, was able to play and stream with relative (if crowded) ease. Streamers were prolific on Twitch which led to conspiracy theorists claiming that somehow Blizzard understands which servers are populated by "influencers" and is placing more resources on those servers than on "normal" servers.
In addition, many players who could enter did not receive the "Heart of Azeroth" necklace, an integral part of the entire expansion similar to Legion's Artifacts. When Blizzard Customer Service tweeted the link to how to solve the issue, players spammed the thread with comments such as, "How about you fix the issues that do not allow people to log in and stop worrying about the people already logged in?"
BlizzardCS, an official social media account of the company, snapped, "Why not both? You realize we have teams of people working on multiple things right? And that their specialties allow them to address different types of issues? It's not 1 person with a wrench in a server room. ^KAL".
Nearly 12 hours later, things seem to be calming, though several servers are reporting issues. In the meantime, Blizzard has posted a Known Issues support page on the customer service site and the Twitter account continues to report headway regarding the login in issues with several servers.
Maintenance will be underway starting at 5:00 am Pacific / 8:00 am Eastern today.
What have been your experiences so far with Battle for Azeroth?
