European mass server shutdown sparks tempers
by Jennie Lees 
Jan 11th 2006 at 6:00PM
Have some
sympathy for us European players, as we are once
again experiencing troubles beyond the 1.9.1 stuttering and the usual lag. Thanks to a data centre move, thirty EU
realms are down until at least tomorrow morning (maintenance usually ends on Wednesday mornings), leaving players
flocking to secondary realms and huge login queues all round. The forums are full of extremely angry users, tempers are running high, and the few people I did manage to speak to ingame were all creating new characters and furious that they couldn't access their normal servers.
Even some of the realms marked 'Recommended' had queues of over 400 during the peak hours, and most of my characters were inaccessible--the client refused to get as far as the character list. This might not be so unusual except I use over ten different servers (mainly so I can keep in touch with friends)--adding another to the list seems a little overkill. Fortunately I get an additional 4 days of play for my trouble--if only that were multiplied by the number of characters I can't reach!
The Ahn'Qiraj world events and post-Christmas boom seem to have combined to make this the worst WoW experience yet--but creating new game servers is definitely not an overnight job, and it's frustrating but not the end of the world that I can't log in tonight. What surprises me is the number of level 1 characters apparently flooding the servers that are still up--some people just have to get their fix.
Filed under: Patches, Realm Status
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Golradir Jan 11th 2006 6:30PM
Queue of 400? Only? Try Feathermoon on any night after 8pm EDT. We get 500-600 people, and 30-50 minute wait times are the norm. It's been this way since they introduced the whole "queue" thing. I think once the Feathermoon queue was at 200, and that was a blessing.
So quit bitching about queue times. It's a necessary evil. Otherwise, lag would be horrendous when you finally DID log in, and you would just log right back off in frustration. You know how I know this? Because that's how it was BEFORE the queue thing started.
Euro servers down an extra day? Boo-hoo. I'm quite unsympathetic.
thraal Jan 11th 2006 7:30PM
Please put everything into perspective. WoW is still one of the least buggy games I've played for a very long time. Considering the number of users they serve, I think they're doing a tremendeous job, even if I can't play my usual character tonight.
Large banking databases with a lot less users have more downtime than the average WoW server.
Aaron Jan 11th 2006 8:05PM
Wait...So...The servers are down for one extra day, but they gave you four extra days to your billing cycle?
Not a bad deal. Suck it up.
Kovah Jan 12th 2006 4:59AM
Oh noes! NO WOW FOR A DAY OR TWO! HOLY CRAP, I'M GONNA DIE!!111
Prime example of sarcasm. Anyway, people should take the oppertunity to meet up with friends and family they havn't spoken to since they began playing, and maybe get som fresh air. People should really stop complaining about "poor customer service" and shit like that, Blizzard are doing the best they can. Think will eventually go back to normal.
And I find it funny that people "threaten" to quit wow. Does anyone hear /violin at this? There is nothing worse then /1 being flooded with moans and groans about how Blizzard and WoW is shit. WHY NOT JUST QUIT!?
gghf guys, gghf.
jennie Jan 12th 2006 5:27AM
#1 -- It's all very well an established realm having a long queue. We're all used to that by now. However, a brand new server marked as "Recommended" having a queue of 494 at 6pm... Something about that scares me. It's all due to the thirty servers that are down, too. Somehow it's worse than every server being taken down -- the population squeezing on to the remaining servers is causing all sorts of trouble.
#3 -- The servers aren't up yet (AFAIAA) and most people (especially on the forums) don't really believe Blizzard when they say they'll be back today. Especially as they are giving the four days' play time (two days of that is to make up for them halving the player cap on lots of servers, including mine, as a temporary fix for lagginess. The other two is for today's and yesterday's downtime--it just about fits.)
thies Jan 12th 2006 8:32AM
Actually, not 30. Those look like the UK servers to me. Of the German servers 41 out of 56 were down. No idea about how many french ones.
Psychedelic Pariah Jan 12th 2006 10:28AM
Hello: I'm not currently playing the game, but a thought occurred to me while reading your complaint. This might be stupid, so take it for the little it's probably worth.
You've no doubt seen the websites that allow you to download a small program and thereby participate in a distributed computing environment.
Would it be possible for Blizzard (or some adventurous programmer with time on his or her hands) to write such a program to allow gamers PCs to act as game servers?
As I said, might be a really dumb idea. But an idea, nevertheless. Thanks.