Botched Warlords of Draenor Launch Nets Subscribers Five Bonus Days

John Keefer

Devilish Rogue
Aug 12, 2013
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Botched Warlords of Draenor Launch Nets Subscribers Five Bonus Days



The launch of the Warlords of Draenor expansion for World of Warcraft was full of problems for the first 48 hours. Blizzard says it's sorry by adding five extra days to subscribers' time.

Blizzard launched Warlords of Draenor on November 13, and the game was immediately hit with lag, log-in issues, crashed instances and massive queue times. Add in a DDOS attack, and needless to say, World of Warcraft players were incredibly unhappy.

Warlords of Draenor executive producer J. Allen Brack took to the forums [http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/15269759060#1] to let users know that they heard the frustration and negative feedback. He said the company has upgraded servers and added new instancing tech to fix the problems. But he didn't stop there.

"In recognition of the difficulties so many of you ran into when trying to play over the first few days, we're adding five days' worth of extra time to every subscription in the Americas, Oceania, and Europe that was active as of Friday, November 14," Brack said. "Things are already in a much better place than they were going into the weekend, so I hope you'll now be able to focus on having a ton of fun with this expansion."

Personally, I had problems for about a day, so I'm grateful for an extra four days of game time. Problems aside, the new expansion improves a lot over Mists of Pandaria, with the addition of garrisons being a nice touch. Now, back to leveling my second 100.

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TheEvilCheese

Cheesey.
Dec 16, 2008
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Can't honestly complain, except that I've started a new job this week and haven't had time to play. 5 Days is a pretty nice little thing though.
 

Lunar Templar

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Sep 20, 2009
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They sure it was an actually DDOS or just 'the new expansion rush' causing one naturally/on accident?
 

Diddy_Mao

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Jan 14, 2009
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Pretty decent. I didn't really have any issues myself but my home server isn't exactly high population.

My only real issue was LFG for dungeons. I can't imagine a non technical difficulties isse that would result in a 65 minute queue on a new xpack.
 

thetoddo

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May 18, 2010
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A lot of the dungeon queue issues is that there are not a lot of tanks and healers queueing right now. I'm used to instantly getting into dungeons with my warrior and end up waiting 10-15 minutes. Everybody is getting their leveling on right now, including most of my tanky pals. I've been doing each of the dungeons once as a little reward every time I complete a zone just so I can see them, I can't imagine I'm alone in this. Having way too much fun with the new zones.

On-Topic: Thanks Blizz! I only had a 15 minute queue and one DC this weekend so you're overcompensating me. :p
 

Li Mu

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Oct 17, 2011
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This wont stop WoW whiners from complaining like crazy! Thankfully most WoW players are pretty chilled and just accept that it's a game. But there are some who are totally insane.

Here's a great example of a WoW gamer who was more than slightly angry about the down time. Warning; STRONG LANGUAGE
http://youtu.be/sJ4cDFOflwo
 

DugMachine

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Apr 5, 2010
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Good on Blizzard and its why they'll always be one of my favorite developers. I honestly wasn't expecting anything and was working during the down time anyways so I didn't have time but I know a lot of people were upset that they couldn't play for those two or three days.
 

sneakypenguin

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Jul 31, 2008
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Meh I'd rather have some sort of catch up mechanism. I'm still hitting 1k player queues at least its not 8+hours like last few days. Sucks to just be getting to p lay and be so far behind.
 

WhiteTigerShiro

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Sep 26, 2008
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Li Mu said:
This wont stop WoW whiners from complaining like crazy!
I've already seen people complaining about how 5 days is barely noticeable, and that anything less than a month might as well be nothing at all.
 

Thaluikhain

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Jan 16, 2010
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Micah Weil said:
See? SEE?! This is how you respond to screw ups, even if some of it was out of your control!
Yeah...5 days doesn't sound like a lot, in that you aren't losing much, but it sounds like a lot, in that it will be appreciated.
 

Leemaster777

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Feb 25, 2010
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Lunar Templar said:
They sure it was an actually DDOS or just 'the new expansion rush' causing one naturally/on accident?
It was both. There WAS a DDOS attack, but they also said that the servers flat-out couldn't handle the huge influx of players. They didn't expect so many people to come flocking back.

I guess you could say...

*puts on sunglasses*

...they were not prepared.


OT: I had some minor issues here and there, but nothing major enough for me to really complain. However, 5 extra days is a very nice thing to have. Blizzard keeps it classy.
 

DocMcCray

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Oct 14, 2010
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How in the hell is Blizzard/Activision still facing launch issues for online games!?

It's as if the are intentionally trying to f*** things up for some reason.

"Well, George, we have a big ass game that we've hyped to god damn Pluto and back. We'd better not look back at the mistakes we made with Diablo 3, CoD:AW, Black Ops 2, Starcraft 2 (both of them), and make sure we have proper resources dedicated to the launch and stress testing the damn things before they launch!"

"Good idea, Dave! If you will excuse me it is time for my daily 'run headfirst in a wall' exercises."
 

Lunar Templar

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Sep 20, 2009
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Leemaster777 said:
Lunar Templar said:
They sure it was an actually DDOS or just 'the new expansion rush' causing one naturally/on accident?
It was both. There WAS a DDOS attack, but they also said that the servers flat-out couldn't handle the huge influx of players. They didn't expect so many people to come flocking back.

I guess you could say...

*puts on sunglasses*

...they were not prepared.


OT: I had some minor issues here and there, but nothing major enough for me to really complain. However, 5 extra days is a very nice thing to have. Blizzard keeps it classy.
heh, how could they tell?

assuming the log in was something like this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sZ2a0VaOQM] I'm rather curious how they could sort out the DDOSers from the people trying to get in.