Skip to main content

WoW Classic queues: Blizzard's reveals why you have to wait

MMORPG fans have waited months for the launch of World of Warcraft Classic, the revival of the hugely popular online game in a guise close to how it appeared upon launch 15 years ago. And despite WoW Classic now being live, many are still waiting to play.

The sheer number of players trying to get online at once means that developer Blizzard's servers cant handle the strain, leading to long digital queues to enter the game world. Now, Blizzard has responded to explain why the wait is so long.

"From the start of planning for this launch, we’ve tried to prioritise the long-term health of our realm communities, recognising that if we undershot the mark in terms of launch servers, we could move quickly to add additional realms in the opening hours," wrote Ion Hazzikostas, game director. 

"But if we went out with too many servers, weeks or months down the line we’d have a much tougher problem to solve. While we have tools like free character transfers available as a long-term solution to underpopulated realms, everything about that process would be tremendously disruptive to realm communities, and so it’s something we want to avoid as much as possible."

A politer Azeroth?

Since the beta launch, Blizzard has added 20 new server realms to help handle the amount of players looking to get online. But once inside, the new player management system called Layering, which should even out populations to keep busy areas from buckling under the strain, doesn't seem to be working quite as expected.

WoW players are struggling with some kill-and-collect quests due to overcrowding, with dwarves, elves and orcs all fighting over the same monster loot drops to complete quests.

But it's leading to some rather charming behavior from the WoW Classic community. Players are spontaneously forming in-game queues to ensure that each player gets a fair chance at taking on a rarely spawning monster:

It's the sort of behaviour the hand-holding retail version of the game no-longer requires, which is, in some ways, part of the appeal of World of Warcraft Classic in and of itself. 

Old-school WoW required patience and team work in order for you to succeed, which long-time players think lead to a tighter community. It's certainly a breath of fresh air among online games, where toxicity can run rampant. Perhaps the queues were part of the plan all along...



from TechRadar - All the latest technology news https://ift.tt/2NAYlkV

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The future of Magic Leap's promising AR efforts dim after layoffs

The Magic Leap Two is now further away than ever, unfortunately. Today in a blog post the augmented reality pioneer announced major layoffs and has decided to cut up to half of its workforce, according to some reports. The original Magic Leap One was supposed to be one of the first mainstream augmented reality headsets when it launched in 2018, but a high price point and lack of interest from developers left the headset high and dry after launch. According to the blog post, Magic Leap says it will be focusing its efforts on enterprise solutions (a statement HTC has made recently as well) and shift its focus away from consumer technology… at least for the time being.  The company has been open about creating a second headset that would offer improved specs for some time, but how that work will now have to go forward without half of the team , according to some estimates, remains to be seen. Is the window closing on augmented reality?  Although it’s just one company, Magic...

Du offers new roaming bundle for summer

UAE-based telecom operator du is offering roaming bundle for travelers valid for seven days. The summer bundle features unlimited calling and 2.5GB of data to 174 destinations - all from their own UAE number. Priced at AED 300 (per week) this latest addition to du’s roaming bundles will be available for customers travelling to 174 countries, including GCC countries, UK, US, European destinations, and Egypt, starting from May 30. The postpaid mobile subscribers can subscribe to the roaming bundle by sending the SMS U to 5102. Fahad Al Hassawi, Deputy CEO – Telco Services at EITC, the parent company of du, said that the roaming bundle will enhance the subscribers’ connectivity while travelling overseas and minimise their current pain points. Etisalat doubles internet speeds for eLife Unlimited subscribers from TechRadar - All the latest technology news http://bit.ly/2KbK1O8

Airship acquires SMS commerce company ReplyBuy

Airship is announcing that it has acquired mobile commerce startup ReplyBuy . The startup (which was a finalist at TechCrunch’s 1st and Future competition in 2016) works with customers like entertainment venues and professional and college sports teams to send messages and sell tickets to fans via SMS. It raised $4 million in funding from Sand Hill Angels, Kosinski Ventures, SEAG Ventures, Enspire Capital, MRTNZ Ventures and others, according to Crunchbase . Airship, meanwhile, has been expanding its platform beyond push notifications to cover customer communication across SMS, email, mobile wallets and more. But CEO Brett Caine said this is the first time the company is moving into commerce. While sports and concerts tickets might not be a booming market right now, Caine suggested that the company is actually seeing increased purchasing activity “in and around the Airship platform” as businesses try to drive more in-app purchases. He also suggested that both the COVID-19 pandem...