Author: Ethic

Well, he writes anyway:

I am sure that many of you are wondering what has been going on with the World of Warcraft servers, as there was another period of extended downtime during peak hours last night. I want to be as candid as possible with you, in the hopes that I can both shed light on the situation and reassure you that we are doing our utmost to ensure that these problems get fixed.

Last night, we took down 20 realms for emergency maintenance. The boat between Menethil Harbor and Auberdine was disappearing intermittently, dropping players into the ocean and crashing the servers. Passengers on this boat who were disconnected and tried to reconnect would crash the server yet again when trying to log on. We knew that this was unacceptable and immediately took down the servers when we discovered the problem in order to implement a fix. That occurred at 6 p.m. PST, but unfortunately, complications arose while we were testing our fix, and we were unable to bring those servers back up until more than a few hours later in the night.

Players on these same 20 realms also experienced service interruptions earlier in the week, following last Thursday�s extended server maintenance. While last night�s downtime was unrelated to the issues in the days prior, this is no consolation to those of you that were unable to play. Therefore, in addition to the three days already credited to these players as a result of the server issues earlier in the week, players on these realms will be receiving an additional four-day credit to their accounts. The credit will appear as a total of seven free days on your current billing statement (or on your trial period for those who recently purchased the game).

I want to take this opportunity to say that we will do everything possible to ensure that unexpected downtime like this does not occur in the future and that if it is necessary, we will do everything possible to give you better warning and keep you informed. In the future, we will avoid doing maintenance during peak hours, unless no other alternative presents itself. When complications occur that could impact your playing time, we will provide that information as well. We failed to do this last night, and I assure you that we are making changes to ensure that we do a better job of communicating with our players next time.

I want to extend my personal and heartfelt apology for the problems that some of you have been experiencing on our servers. We remain committed to delivering the best possible service for you and will continue to work around the clock to ensure that we provide an experience that you and I have to come to expect from Blizzard games.

Sincerely,
Mike Morhaime
President, Blizzard Entertainment

I know that levels have been a part of MMOGs for a good long while now, with a rare exception, but I am sick of them. I guess the devs think they need those small rewards to keep people playing. Everquest has levels and it was/is popular so all the rest of them have to copy it, I guess.

I logged into WoW last night after a few days away. I looked at my XP bar and noted that it was just barely into level 24. That means I have two levels before I get any new skills. I just did not want to get started again. I felt the treadmill weigh heavily upon my gaming soul. I started to think of playing the game as levelling and it made me sick. The magic was wearing thin.

Had a chat with an in-game friend and he put me focused back on the fun. He encouraged me to just pick a quest and “get into” solving it. Have some fun, forget about XP and your level, it does not really matter. So I decided to try one of the quests I had not yet done because it required I run into enemy lands and I just didn’t feel like it before.

I gave it a go, had some fun exploring and avoiding the other faction guards. Eventually I found the area I was looking for and after about 30 minutes of strategic pulling and killing and moving through the area I was able to reach my objective. My heart was pounding and I had a smile on my face.

I didn’t level (still 24) but I also did not look at my XP bar the whole time. I had fun, so that was all that mattered.

World of Warcraft has announced some details about the recent server upgrades. I have snipped the important stuff below.

Last Thursday we made our first such upgrade. 20 of our 88 realms were moved off of the original hardware and placed on a new hardware configuration. These 20 servers initially performed very well, up until we reached our maximum concurrency Friday evening. The high population numbers uncovered an issue in the new backend shared infrastructure. This issue caused some players to experience severe lag and disconnects on a few of the realms, making them virtually unplayable.

In order to stabilize the affected realms and allow as many players as possible the ability to continue playing, we lowered the population caps by 30%. This stabilized the realms to the point where 70% of the players on the realms in question could play, but it also resulted in large queues.

The problems were attributed to high concurrency numbers on individual realms putting extreme stress on the backend infrastructure. We were able to address this problem by implementing additional hardware into the infrastructure this afternoon. This additional hardware has allowed us to stabilize the affected realms, and thus increase the server caps. We will continue to monitor the performance throughout the evening. If we notice any of the performance issues starting up again we will lower the population cap level enough to stabilize performance.

They also announced a 48 hour free time extension:

We do appreciate your patience and enthusiasm about playing World of Warcraft, and we regret that you faced periods of high traffic this past weekend that caused some of you to have a poor game experience. So, due to the extended nature of the server issues, we will be providing a free 48-hour extension of play time. As with previous extensions, this will show up as free extra time on your current billing period (or on your trial period, for those of you who purchased the game recently). We hope you’ll bear with us as we continue to work hard on implementing changes for long-term stability.

This brings my free time up to 8 days.

Part 2 of the Battlegrounds plan is up at the WoW site.

I just doesn’t stop today. Posted on the official WoW forums:

[Realm/Login]
All levels of the organization are working to address this. I would like to stress that real progress is being made on the issue behind the scenes, and again, we are all fans of the game and want as much to rid of these problems as much as our players. I know the perception is contrary to that, but there aren’t enough words to express how much dedication, from the president on down, is going into resolving these issues.

[Character migration]
We plan to offer a 1 time migration from high population realms to low peopulation realms to ease the overcrowding. It is currently undergoing implementation/testing. More details to follow.

Both are very good news for the players. The sooner they implement these fixes, the better. As long as they *are* fixes.

I normally try to avoid “official” MMOG forums due to the incessant complaints and mindless drivel. World of Warcraft’s forums are no exception, in fact they could possibly be one of the worst MMOG forums ever.

I spent some time on them, looking for some diamonds in the rough. Let’s examine some of those gems.

“Your solutions for your inadequacies are for shart. Your rhetoric about dilligently working to resolve them is like crying wolf. No one gives a rats arse anymore.”

Not too bad. He speaks for everyone and spells things in a fun way. Moving on…

“Im so pissed right now I’m gonna go beat my dog.”

This guy is real mad.

“How poor can your servers and customer service be? I have an idea, why don’t we toss a few more million dollars your way, and this time you can spend it on something besides hookers, marijuana and BBQs.”

I’m going to start an MMOG, didn’t realize I could buy hookers to smoke pot with me at my BBQ. Sweet!

“whoever started up this casino rolling thing needs to have their genitals flayed and rolled in salt and vinegar potato chip bags.”

I’m going to have to agree with this comment. Flay and roll!

“i was killing the monsties and a guy asxed me if i could use and then i kept killing the monsters and then i found an item!Then he Axed if i could steal it but so i said yes until i said no.”

That’s a beauty. Either that’s an attention whore or a total idiot. Probably both.

“I SAW THE MUSHROOM AT THE MUSHROOM INVENTOR AND IT LOOKKED LIKE A MUSHROOM FROM THE MARIO MUSHROMS !!!!! WOHBNO!”

Same guy, different post. I smell a ban for being a loser.

“The other day i was playing and this uber level 60 shammy came by and was like u suxorz and killed me. Then he like corpse camped me and stuff so i had this priest come by and rezz me only he couldn’t cuz they nerfed rez so it only works on pallys. So I had a pally buddy come by who was level 38 and he killed the shammy.”

Good story, thanks for the entertainment!

“I see bongs and people snorting stuff…. This is funny!…. why cant players do this? We can get drunk and get behind our horse and ride around but we cant take drugs or smoke outa a bong?”

Where does this guy live? He would be wise to move away from there.

“OK I AM LOOKING FOR THE DRUID IN FORIST SONG SRINE AND I CANNOT FIND HIM IM ON ULDUM SERVER HELP”

Where is that damn druid in forist song srine anyway? I couldn’t find him either.

“New Blizzard forum rule petition: Hence forth, anyone posting their ‘demands’ of Blizzard should be permanently flicked off the planet like the slimey little boogers they are.”

Start flicking! Please.

“last time i checked we are adults paying for this montly game. *well some of us*”

Some is a guess, and probably too high.

“utmost respect for GMs, but one said ‘Please try and post constructively. Thread closed.’ it shhould be please try TO post constructively, see? this is constructive post, and ordinn im not making fun of u just demonstrating my knowledge of english lang.. w”

He is just demonstrating his knowledge of the english lang. Leave him alone.

“i like money, but farmers mess up so no thx”

This is why they invented money laundering.

“the game failed me, im very dissappointed. u need to add 1000 more stuff to make it work. sorry guys, but im leaving. cya tomorrow”

Ha ha ha. The game needs 1000 more stuff so he is leaving. But why come back tomorrow?

“BLIZZ OMG WTF?!?!?!? WE R PAYING U $$$ FOR DOWNTIME?!?!”

Pure genius.

“My nephew deleted my main a lvl 42 rogue… is there any way to restore this toon? or is it start from the begining time again?”

His nephew rocks.

“I swear… get rid of netzero or whatever isp/hardware the servers are on. Every night I get the same lag and its ridiculous. We can just call the game ‘World of’ because warcraft is f’ing impossible with the LAG.”

I can’t believe someone found out they use Netzero.

“listen i like this game in all but some things just need to be added i personally think one should be launguage to talk to the other team and an area where you could go that combines all the different servers so you could meet your friends that are on a different server”

Um, what?

“I WANT A BODY COUNT WHIT CATEGORIES”

Me too.

My brother who said “I have no use for gold now.” gave me 25 gold last night in WoW so I spent some time in the Orgrimmar Auction House buying lots of uncommon (green and some blue!) goodies. Now I feel all elite or something.

My brother plays a level 60 rogue. He wields what he says are the 2 best swords in the game. They sure looked impressive anyway. I guess when you are at max level, have the undead mount that costs 1000 gold and have the best weapons in the game, gold probably is not of any use to you any more. I do not feel bad having gold given to me in a game. Never have and never will. It just makes it easier for me to have more fun. Besides, now I have a full length cloak and that means I rock.

Got about 2/3 of the way to 24 tonight just doing a few quests around Tarren Mills.