When World Of Warcraft Fails, It Fails HARD
So, let’s see if we can get this all straight:
- Wrath of the Lich King to launch tonight, one of the largest MMO releases ever with millions expected in sales the first week, and launch day events so large rumors are Blizzard is subsidizing mall openings so that Gamestops can stay open to do midnight events
- As Burning Crusade last year, a patch is initially released to front load the usual teething pains from a major code upgrade
- Players squirrel away an unbelievable amount of resources in order to be first out the gate to power up new trade skills, and in many cases stash them away in the in-game email system
- During Tuesday’s maintenance period, the mail system crashes and all in-game mail from the past 2 weeks is lost causing wailing and gnashing of teeth
- Said wailing and gnashing of teeth causes the official forums to crash and burn, and in some cases brought back up as read-only
- The game servers remain down most of Tuesday and finally come back sans mail, but with an in-game email to everyone telling them their in-game email isn’t working (no, I’m not making that up)
- Once the servers are up, a slight bug is discovered which allows players to purchase PvP epics for free
- MASS CHAOS
- Servers are back down today to fix, um, free epics
- But hey, Wrath of the Lich King is coming out tonight, biggest MMO release ever!
Did I miss anything? Because when an MMO failure is so large even Prokofy Neva notices from deep within the SL bunker, you know it’s kinda a big deal.
Edit: Oh yeah, missed one minor thing: 7-11 broke the street date. So if you don’t want to wait for a midnight launch party, buy a copy now and wait for Blizzard to pop open the servers at 9PM Pacific. Assuming, you know, the servers haven’t melted into small puddles of liquid silicone.
