… but it DOES remind me of early days when the game’s popularity was surging and they were struggling to keep up…
I love a good train wreck. I have every intention of rolling a toon on Herod just to go have a look at how crazy it is on opening day.
In fact, I have time for zero games, but somehow play anyway.
Yes, I know, I’ve played paladins for a long time. I’m not going to play with any sort of rush. I love the mechanics of the classic Paladin: auras, blessings, seals, judgements. The grind is fun when I’m a Paladin.
But in any case, I’m sure to make alts of every class.
You know, Pleonast, ever since I replied to you, I’ve been pondering…yeah, Paladins are slow to level, at least in solo play…but darn they are kind of fun. To me, at least as fun as Druids, which will be one of my alts.
I’m looking forward to Classic. 99% decided on Resto Shaman.
My guild is getting dang close on Heroic Azshara. Really hoping we get her Thursday night (we raid Tues-Thurs) so that we’re not trying to push it next week when people wanting to mess around with Classic instead.
Full Americas realm list, including several that will be added Monday August 26 at 1pm Eastern/10am Pacific:
Name Type Time Zone
Atiesh Normal Pacific
Mankrik Normal Eastern
Myzrael Normal Pacific
Old Blanchy Normal Pacific
Pagle Normal Eastern
Westfall Normal Eastern
Name Type Time Zone
Bigglesworth PvP Pacific
Blaumeux PvP Pacific
Faerlina PvP Eastern
Fairbanks PvP Pacific
Herod PvP Eastern
Incendius PvP Eastern
Skeram PvP Eastern
Stalagg PvP Eastern
Thalnos PvP Eastern
Whitemane PvP Pacific
Name Type Time Zone
Bloodsail Bucc. RP Eastern
Grobbulus RP-PvP Pacific
In addition, up to 10 names per server can be created/reserved starting at that same time, which is 5 hours before official US launch.
I’ve already created 3 on Mankrik, but I like the Westfall name better, so I may create some there, too.
I’ll try to log in on Monday, but if there’s a queue, I’ll play CoH instead. There’s no way I can keep up with the main group of levelers, so I’ll be content to putter later.
I’m glad there’s only one RP server, but a little worried that it’s only “medium”. That might encourage some players to roll there just to avoid queues. I hope Blizzard keeps being proactive on the server count.
Today is the day!
I’m either going to be on Alliance on Stalagg (sic) or Incendius, depending on some last moment queue things. If you’re also on one of these servers, that’s cool. I would like to add you on B.net.
I’ll post my tag once I’ve picked.
Anyone manage to play? When I tried to log in I faced a queue of 5800 and an estimated wait time of around an hour, so I just played FFXIV instead. I can wait until the novelty wears off and wait times get more reasonable.
I got home from work and queued up about 5 minutes before the servers went live. I think when i first got in the queue i was about #6700 in line on the Fairbanks server. It took over 5 hours before i was able to log in.
I rolled a Tauren Shaman, and starting area wasn’t over crowded at all (that aspect was about 1,000 times better than i expected it would be now that i think about it). Good number of people running around questing, people grouping up and working together and buffing each other. I healed a few random strangers that were in trouble, and a few that weren’t. I made it to level 10 before calling it a night. All just questing in Mulgore (but i haven’t been to Thunder Bluff yet!).
Maybe this was just launch day, but i’d say don’t pay any attention to the estimated wait time, just watch how fast the queue is moving (if it’s moving at all). In the 5+ hours i had to wait, i don’t think the estimated wait was ever accurate. It hung around 24-27 minutes estimated wait for a couple hours, then it started jumping all over the place.
No queue on the EU PvE RP server (as expected 
), but man, those first few hours were annoying. Everybody killing wolves as far as the eye can see ! There was even a dungeon long queue to kill the named troll for a quest, it was ridiculous. I kept a screenshot, I’ll dub it “how hard are you prepared to work for 450 XP ?” 
I 'aff Zog-zogged nothink !
On Monday launch at 0 hour I got right in, chose my pre-created character, and got to level 4…until Wife aggro’d and I got called for dinner. Logging in again after 2 hours I ended up with about a 100 minute (actual) wait.
Today, during the day (I took the day off), I got right in, twice, and played as much as I wanted, dinging level 10. But just now, at 7:50ish, I’m back in line for probably well over an hour.
This will change over time, I’m certain. There are a lot of people who are curious, and they’ll probably start fading in a week or two. Not fun for the moment, though.
I have not been able to play a character yet.
Why the heck would a company like Blizzard have wait times over an hour? Surely they’re renting server space from some cloud service, and have arrangements to ramp it up as needed? And surely the ramping wasn’t even unanticipated, because they have a clear model of when people game?
I’ve been a fan of the Warcraft RTS games for a long time now, and while I don’t particularly like the MMO incarnation, I can understand why they don’t just “ramp it up”.
From what I can gather on Blizzard’s forums, it’s a design problem, not a technical problem. The game world is designed for “smaller” groups on purpose, something along the tune of three to four thousand people per game at once. There might be a thousand players who want to see the king right now, but the virtual castle is only designed to hold a hundred people. Also, each game is always running on Blizzard’s servers, and goes on for years and years unlike video games of other genres.
So they run multiple copies of the game. But once you pick one “realm”, your character is locked-in for life. Again, this is due to design, not technical limitations. Well, the original game 15 years ago might have been limited by technology, but that limitation is long gone.
I found posts on battle.net lamenting how the modern World of Warcraft lets players “jump” from one game to another, just to assassinate unwitting players and then disappear before they can be arrested by other players. Apparently people are also annoyed because there are so many different games going on, you don’t know if you will ever see a person you played with again. How can you make any friends?
It appears that this “cross-zone” system of jumping between games is one of the things players specifically do NOT want in World of Warcraft: Classic. Instead, Blizzard opened multiple copies of the game and locks characters to the “realm” they choose. Each “realm” is capped at so many thousands of people connecting at once, and after that you have to wait in line for people to log off before you are let in.
Apparently the problem is that Blizzard underestimated the number of “realms” they would need. Too many games and after the initial wave at launch, some will not have enough players to function properly. Too few realms and everybody will have to wait five hours just to log in. Blizzard opened two or three extra realms at the last minute, but by then it was too late since people have already created their characters and become locked to a high population realm. Then those people’s friends will only want to play on the same realm, etc. Another problem I am reading about is that some people are just staying logged in while they sleep or work so they don’t have to wait in line, which only exacerbates the problem.
~Max
… And all those problems existed the first time around for Vanilla 15 years ago. So guess what - the game play (and wait to log on at busy times) is an authentic recreation!
Alright, it’s a slightly different/more intense problem this time around, and Blizzard could have anticipated the interest a bit more.
Ah, but do they have to shut the entire game down for six hours every Tuesday morning?
'Cause if they’re not doing that, then I call shenanigans on the nostalgia factor.