WoW's 11th-hour server issues continue

by Krystalle Voecks Nov 12th 2008 at 1:00PM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Bugs, Launches, Server downtime, News items

As the axiom goes, you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. If that's the case, Blizzard's doing a pretty good job of setting up for the launch of Wrath of the Lich King at midnight. As many World of Warcraft players have undoubtedly noticed, the servers have been down off and on since the regular Tuesday maintenance window. However, history has shown that launches have been generally unkind to Blizzard's servers.

After the first maintenance extension, many suspected the downtime was related to the Battle.net account collation that Blizzard is implementing with Wrath. The servers came up briefly, but then the word went out that there was a problem with the in-game email system. Blizzard, trying to assure the community, sent a warning email to players letting them know that there was a problem with the in-game email system. The problem is that they notified everyone by emailing players through the messed up in-game mail system. You know, the one on the servers that were going back down to fix the mail problem. To their credit, they did post the message out on the forums, but there was a small catch there; the forums were up and down all day.

Update: As of 1pm EST, the WoW login screen states that all servers are back up and the service should be working as usual.

Late last night the majority of the issues seemed to have been resolved, and Blizzard cautiously flipped the switch, letting players back on the servers. Only there was a problem with the PvP gear vendors, who seemed to think that it was a good idea to give out several pieces of their inventory for free, and without any type of PvP requirements. While many of the players thought this was good fun and snapped up their (knowingly-temporary) rings, trinkets and other odds-and-ends, Blizzard realized the mistake and yanked the servers offline. As of this 10:15 EST this morning, the servers remain offline, with no firm ETR.

How today's continued server outage plays out for World of Warcraft's player-base is anyone's guess at this point. That said, we're really glad we're not the Blizzard employees slated to hang out with the crowds at various launch parties this evening.

Tags: breaking, bug, launch, server-downtime, server-hamsters, world-of-warcraft, wotlk, wow, wrath-of-the-lich-king

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Leshrac said on 4:00PM 11-12-2008

Typical, after 4 years, countless patches, 2 expansions, and more money then most countries; how they can continue to fuck up stuff like this is beyond me. They make great games, but from a technical standpoint they suck at supporting them. And also who could forget the abortion recently that was the Blizzcon ticket sales thru their store. Totally unacceptable from a company of this size, with that much experience and those resources.

Wjowski said on 1:32PM 11-12-2008

Because WoW's the only MMO in the history of the industry to ever run into server issues.

Havok said on 9:14PM 11-12-2008

WoW's the only MMO in history to have 11 million players on to run into server issues, though.

mikejl said on 1:21PM 11-12-2008

Did not know Funcom purchased Blizzard?

Kilawhar said on 1:31PM 11-12-2008

I could see one huge plus to that - The Funcom guys know how to party. Imagine the kind of parties they could throw with Blizzard money!

Hot$auce_Magik said on 1:43PM 11-12-2008

It may have something to do with the 11 million players they have playing their game. WoW:BC sold 2 million copies in 24 hours which mean most likely 2 million people tried to log on in that time.

And your surprised there are server issues?

Krystalle Voecks said on 1:45PM 11-12-2008

If the expansion was live, I'd totally agree with you, and I suspect most of the player-base would chalk it up to that. The expansion doesn't drop until midnight tonight, however. Thus the notation that the problems are 11th-hour, pre-launch.

Hot$auce_Magik said on 1:48PM 11-12-2008

True but I would imagine, there are a heck of a lot of people jumping on right now in anticipation of the forthcoming WOLK. Obviously this is oversimplifying the problem but I'm sure its part of the issue none the less.

Vrain said on 1:54PM 11-12-2008

After 4 years and piles of money made Blizzard cannot use the "we didn't know how many people would play so our equipment is inadequate" excuse anymore. They can obviously afford to get the best servers money can buy.

tanek said on 2:05PM 11-12-2008

At the moment, I'd think it is more the massive amounts of data rather than the hardware itself.

The fact that they scaled back on some of the stats tracked in the new Achievements interface would seem to support that.

Databases can be tricky things at the best of times. I don't even want to imagine the kind of things Blizzard has to deal with.

torak said on 2:27PM 11-12-2008

Club Penguin never has these sorts of problems :)

Hot$auce_Magik said on 2:34PM 11-12-2008

You can't just throw money at every problem and expect results. Its possible that they DO have the best servers available, but as was said before, its most likely about data processing.

I'm sure the servers haven't seen this kind of influx of active players since BC. That said they don't deal with these numbers that often. So much new stuff in the last couple of weeks, combined with an influx of players makes quite the cacophony of chaos for the servers...