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The Ahn'Qiraj Tailgate
AFK Gamer reports live from in front of the Ahn'Qiraj gate on the Medivh server in World of Warcraft. Folks on that server became the first in the game to complete the grueling quest to supply the Alliance and Horde with supplies. The supplies (food, bandages, and ore) are slated to be used in the upcoming war with the insect-monsters of the Silithus Zone. Now that the quest is complete, it will be almost five days as the supplies make their way to the front lines. At that point, the Gate of Ahn'Qiraj will open and two new dungeons will become available to the community. Players from all servers have been flocking to Medivh to witness the event, which has prompted a response from Blizzard. From Foton's report: "We had a difficult decision when players started gravitating towards Medivh. In the end, we had to make a choice between: 1) Letting everyone show up in Ahn'Qiraj until the realm crashed, thus allowing no one to experience the event whatsoever; or 2) Remove the low level players from the area, thus allowing the players who worked for the event -- the true residents and community of the realm -- to enjoy it." As a result of yesterday's events, they've disallowed new characters on the Medivh server.
This is a shock why? When several web-comics began new guilds on a server thousands of people flocked to that server, crashing it on a regular basis. Blizzard needs a better way of flood control that will prevent this same thing from happening (such as if new characters > 300 this hour, temporarily shutdown new character creation, or limit the number to 100 or 50 per hour.)
That's great, but still no mention of the ridiculous queues that most realms have seen since December. Half an hour to an hour login queues are now common - even on new servers. One of the Blizzard moderators posted something to the effect that every single day for the past few weeks has set a new record in terms of people online - which is great for Blizzard, but it means the game is practically unplayable for so many people, especially those who only have something like 2 hours to play every day and spend one of them in queue.
ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
First they came for the low level players, and I said nothing, for I am not a noob. Then they came for the Horde, and I remained quiet, for I am Alliance. Then they came for the Paladins, and still I said nothing, for they were a bunch of assholes anyways. Then they came for me...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
What are they to do with all those linen bandages (800,000 of them!)? They are basically useless for upper level characters.
my main characters are on the mannoroth server, and the queues have been really cutting into my playtime. last night i attempted to log in at 8pm to play for a few hours, and i didn't get to the character selection screen until 9:30pm.
the 30min queues that i was getting in december were rough, but these hour+ queues are killing me.
given how much the casual gamer is suffering, i was really hoping that blizzard would find some technological way to improve logging in performance.
i think i would rather quit the game then try and level a new character up to 60 on a new server-- i really hope they solve this queue issue soon.
I don't currently have an account so I'm not sure about the locations of the new dungeons and details of the whole event, but I think one basic thing they should have done is make event off-limits to lower-level characters.
I know they want to encourage everyone's participation but I would think a cap of 20 or so would dissuade most people from starting a new toon just for the sake of watching. They could have also made a certain amount of time on the server a requirement, for example, you have to be active on the server for a month preceding the unlocking of the content.
Or, even better, you have to rank up a certain amount of tasks aiding the unlocking of the content. There are a number of solutions possible, all destined to be unpopular to one degree or another, but ANY decision would have been better than the knee-jerk resolution they chose.
Option 3) Put more physical servers into the cluster that runs the (virtual) Medivh games server.
... isn't it?
With 4-5 million subscribers, they sure as hell have enough money to be doing the "right thing" and upscaling this particular cluster for the event.
The WoW server system *IS* scalable
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
As a low-level character on a different server, I'm very disappointed. I had been donating what I could (copper bars, linen bandages, lower-level stuff). I figured it was a community thing and, even though the dungeons will be old news by the time I finally got there, I would at least be helping the world event. But now I find out that, despite helping, I'm not allowed to witness the event? Even if I managed to survive walking the way there? My last linen bandage has been donated.
People in the forums were complaining that lower-levels weren't helping the collection effort. Seems the lower-level people were in the right this time.
Wow... a tailgate party. How (yawn) exciting. Almost as fun as camping outside Best Buy for two days for a small chance to get a XBox360. I'm glad... that this... (yawn) made the games sectionnnn... ZZZZzzzzzz
According to the War Effort Ranking page, even though the resource turn in is complete, the gates are still not open. It now has a green box and a number 1/17. Can anyone enlighten me as to what happens AFTER the turn in is complete but before the gates are open? What does that number mean?
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Hooray, another breathless story about a non-event in WoW. Here's a hint, guys: this sort of thing happens every day, in every MMORPG. Meanwhile, the continued success and acclaim of Eve Online goes unreported on Slashdot, despite yesterday having won 4 of 7 of MMORPG.com's top awards, including Best Graphics (which really are several notches above the competition), Best Company (2 *free*, major content expansions last year, and another one forthcoming), Best PvP (how many other games actually give you butterflies in the stomach from *traveling*?), and the big one, Favourite Game.
Seriously, what else do they need to do to get attention here? Add big-titted space elves?
Did somebody on the Slashdot story selection board get podded in beta or something?
Ahn'Qiraj? Even people not from Alasksa should know it's spelled _Anchorage_.
If you want to see the event soon and you're on a realm thats 50% or less done... make a char on the number 2 server now and get it up past level 10 or 15 before they finish.
.. watch out fer l. bob rife, and keep your katana sharp, monkies!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
With Community Moderators like this: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=w ow-off-topic&t=1179358&p=1&tmp=1#post1179358
It's no wonder Blizzard has idiotic policies that end up hurting their users.
How to Speak Leet
What the sibling post said, plus, the policy on Medivh and Mannoroth was the right decision, because Ahn'Qiraj will open on all the servers eventually. The folks on Medivh who worked hard to see the quest completed don't need a bunch of looky-loo rubberneckers crowding their server and making it so that nobody can see anything when the server crashes.
...all the low level players whose peacebloom farming made the opening possible in the first place.
/rolls eyes and continues to sell war material for a massive profit.
Yeah, we didn't see that coming.