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World of Warcraft - Then and Now
MMORPG.com has an excellent feature up discussing the trajectory of World of Warcraft as it's progressed since its launch day. They touch on the recent honor system features, the added dungeons, and call Blizzard out on their inability to keep to a consistent update schedule. From the article: "So you may ask, 'How well has Blizzard delivered on their monthly content updates?' The simple answer is: they haven't. In fact, a couple months post launch some players challenged Blizzard as to their promise on scheduled updates. Official Blizzard posters denied making such claims but were quickly pointed to their own website where, in plain text, monthly content updates were promised. After some backtracking Blizzard announced that they would not be able to keep to a definitive content update schedule."
Some guy in marketing thought it would be nice to promise monthly updates without realizing that the developers didn't have the resources to deliver anything like this.
Happens in every company, and the marketing guys should be held accountable for making such stupid promises.
,i>They need to get a stable, playable environment up before they put in more content. I disagree. Not everyone is affected by those bugs. Many people do not give a toss about PvP and are demanding more areas to explore. The rais timers, as I understand, really only affect some of the very high end instances. This bug affects only a fraction of the total player base. More content must be delivered, preferably in a steady schedule.
Speaking as a current WoW player, I have experienced none of the problems that you speak of. And as yet haven`t explored the whole world of azeroth and therefor am in no state to complain about the lack of content.
Sorry. But this proves why people who don`t have any problems do not say anything, it is otherwise incredibly boring reading such comments.
First, the article is wrong about Battlgrounds. Blizzard has recently stated that they WILL be in the next patch, not the patch after next. My guess is that means ~3 weeks; figure a week or two before we see the test servers back up sporting Battlgrounds, and a week or so after that for the patch to go live.
Second, while stability is still an issue where large scale PVP is ocurring, overall stability has been pretty good in my experience. I'm on Arthas -- one of the most populated servers -- and it's been at least a month I think since I wasn't able to log on immediately. I had a server reboot in the middle of an instance run about a week ago, but that's been it in the last few weeks.
Frankly, I think the ungodly lag in places like Tarren Mills will slowly decrease as people piece together how little honour they get from large scale, one-sided town-raiding. It's far more efficient to form small posses and find a decently populated area to 'farm'. It's tricky though, since killing anyone a second time is worth next to nothing. Once people realize that too I think we'll see people sweeping the globe rather than haunting a particular quest area (unless it's a throughfare that promises a steady stream of new victims).
I haven't seen a serve queue in even longer, though I hear queues were cropping up on the new servers they just opened yesterday. Apparently that's typical on new servers for a day or so though.
Anyways, YMMV, but that's how I've had it lately.
Wood Shavings!
- Godai
Let me preface this by saying that I play a couple of hours a day (more on weekends) on the Earthen Ring server, which is hardly low pop.
The WoW service frequently has unplanned outages, slow performance, server crashes, rollbacks (where you lose X minutes/hours of play development), and occasionally actual bugs.
I have never had the service go out on me or the server crash. Ever. They've had extended downtimes with their routine maintenance at times, yes, but other than that nothing unplanned. There are the occasional bugs, yes, and they are usually of the broken quest variety or a talent not working correctly in a certain instance. Hardly anything show-stopping.
Anyone who denies this or defends Blizzard's track record here simply doesn't play often, or plays on one of the rare low-population servers.
As I stated above, I play regularly almost every day and heavily on weekends (when the servers are most stressed) on a fairly high population server, and I have experienced none of the major issues you reference.
And despite seeming like an obviously useful option, Blizzard has been extremely reluctant to allow character transfers. At this point I believe that's because their game is very poorly designed, at least with respect to how they manage character data.
You have a point here. It looks like they are starting to get better about the transfers, but as of yet, it still looks like it's only for VERY high pop servers. At some point, I think it would be nice if they allowed you to transfer to any server you like. They would have to limit the number of transfers you can make, of course.
There is no valid excuse or defense against the claims I make.
Yes, there are. Blizzard can not anticipate every end user's situation. Many crashes, network stability problems, etc occur because of problems on the CLIENT SIDE. Whether someone has a crappy internet connection, a slow computer, or is infested with spyware are surprisingly never mentioned in any of these articles. For some reason it seems it can't ever possibly be the fault of the consumer, and yet I bet you that a LOT of the problems that come up are because of those things that I mentioned.
My experiences are mirrored by thousands of other players.
Quite possible, given the sheer number of WoW players. However, 15,000 of over 1,000,000 copies sold is a very small number.
Anyone who isn't experiencing these issues simply isn't playing often, isn't playing on a moderate/high pop server, or isn't willing to concede that a previously high quality game company has slipped.
Again, pure rubbish. Re-read my post to see why. I'm not saying you aren't experiencing these problems; I'm sure you are. But to make it out like EVERYONE is in your situation is just naive.
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This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
Anyone who denies this or defends Blizzard's track record here simply doesn't play often, or plays on one of the rare low-population servers.
You have no idea what you're talking about. I play everyday 4+ hours a day, more on weekends, on Sargeras a High Pop server, and I have NONE of the problems you speak of.
I mean we all had problems at launch and through February... but for the most part in March and April I have had ZERO downtime other than the scheduled ones... of course there are exceptions here and there, but you sir have no idea what you're talking about. Blizzard has finally got their act together, and they deserve to be praised and not bashed by all the whiny people like yourself.
First, let me say right off, I haven't played WoW nor do I plan to (too many games competing for my time as it is). But I have been playing City of Heroes and Guild Wars.
City of Heroes has instanced missions, but there are other zones that are free-for-alls. Works relatively well, I guess.
Guild Wars has instances for everything other than city zones and PVP areas (I guess, I've only been playing a little while).
I guess I don't get why people would want to play a MMORPG, but also want instances to make it into more of a Not-So-Massively-Multiplayer ORPG. I always thought that Everquest was kinda cool in that everyone was competing/cooperating with one another (and yes, I know the inherent problems that come with that: camping rare spawns, etc).
Guild Wars seems to go even further, basically making a game that has a bunch of different lobby areas (Cities) that allow you to join up for adventures (with up to 8 people). Is Guild Wars really a MMORPG, then (discounting the fact that no MMORPG is actually a RPG, really)? Now, I haven't done any PVP, so maybe that's where the MM part comes in, but it seems a little odd to me.
Not that I'm not enjoying the game: it's nice, simple, and cheap.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
World of Warcraft is doing alright. Ive played SWG, EverQuest, and Ultima Online in the past, and honestly the biggest response people would get from those games is a big TS. Blizzard has been pretty damn generous with giving people extra days when the servers are having problems, and server stability *has* improved. And the amount of content so far delivered is nothing to sneeze at, its a lot more than Ive seen in the other MMOs Ive played in a six month time (SWG has basically been in beta since the game launched ~2 years ago, so I dont really count it, WOW was in much better shape). I really think Battlegrounds are gonna change the dynamic of the game, and almost give it a Planetside-style capture/control gameplay element. I really cant wait for it to happen.
Speaking as a WoW "veteran"... I can say that it is extremely easy to change servers and roll a new character. I have never had to wait in a queue, and the only time where I experienced prolong downtime was on that one patch day, for which I was reimbursed. One day out of five months is not bad at all.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.