It’s been a while since the pre-patch for Wrath of the Lich King released World of Warcraft Classic, and the update has seen many popular servers, including new ones designed to provide players new and old with a fully green experience, suffer some serious damage. The queue time makes it incredibly difficult to actually get in and play the game. Now, Blizzard has made a statement, but the consequences of their actions (or inactions) are starting to unfold.
This statement, posted on the Blizzard forums at a time when the queues are pretty scary, covers the issue and provides some context for the issue. In terms of resolution, Blizzard stopped character creation and moved to large, severely affected servers, locking them “indefinitely.” This basically stops the increase in player influx, making the queue worse, and when combined with free transitions, seems to curb the problem to some extent.
However, even now, some large servers still retain large queues, especially when school and work hours are over and players go home for some dungeon honing or honors in Alterac Valley streaks. In the aforementioned post, it says “we need more people to move”, but that’s unlikely to happen to some of the classic WoW player base — especially on the new servers.
“The game has almost 3 days of playtime right now… no, I’m not going to switch. Only when there’s a free character transfer,” said Gobloid, a level 61 priest, albeit on the currently locked classic new server There’s a full-time job and crazy queue times on Thekal, but he still manages to make progress. They told me that when the problem was at its worst, they had to wait more than 7 hours, and while they were able to play early today and avoid the line due to a period of time off work, the problem was still a threat to their fun. Since they are fresh, they are currently unable to use free transfers as pointed out by Blizzard, which is the key to solving the problem at the moment. However, even if you can move for free, there are other reasons not to move.
Some Classic players will find guilds and friends on certain servers. They could be the first to acquire a legendary weapon, or be part of a top-tier PvP team. Server pride is real, or maybe one of their favorite streamers exists there. It’s a chicken game where thousands refuse to budge for legitimate reasons.
Gobloid, along with many others, read the official post on the issue and encountered a major setback: they didn’t understand why additional server capacity couldn’t be added to the popular server, which the forum post pointed out was not so possible, and “There’s no technical solution to this. There’s no hardware solution to this. When Wrath of the Lich King Classic launches on September 26, it’s not going to get better, it’s just going to get worse.”
“This is nonsense,” Gobloid told me through an in-game whisper. “It’s possible, it might just cost some money, and Blizz is sadly using World of Warcraft Classic as a cash cow.” They shared a view with several classic players, including Mispeled, a member of the WoW Community Council, who initially Harsh forum posts are what forced a blue post to address this issue in the first place.
While obviously Blizzard developers know best if server capacity can be increased significantly, skepticism is understandable since we’ve seen other MMOs do exactly that. New World increased their server capacity at launch after long queues, and Activision Blizzard wasn’t strapped for cash. Unless the server is built in a unique way to prevent adding extra capacity, a factor that hasn’t been formally addressed, the obvious question is: why is the server like this in the first place?
What about the future? Well, it’s clear to everyone, including Blizzard’s official statement, that it’s only going to get worse, especially when the Lich King expansion is officially out and the community is scrambling to play new dungeons, fight on new battlefields, collect When a new mount is available. Having said that, moving to certain servers for free may have additional consequences that will affect the population of these newly built homes for global adventurers.
“My biggest fear is that it’s going to be a realm of experimentation that no one would mind. [the queues] Or use Remote Desktop to stay logged in,” Gobloid said. “And the new server, Jin’do, will be a casual server. It’s no secret that those who succumb and shift will be those with limited time, jobs and little connection to the community in crowded fields. The rest are more likely to have some impact on efficiency and the best game of hardcore players, while transfer servers can be overcrowded with a disproportionate number of casual players and ultimately worse players.
We reached out to Blizzard for comment, specifically requesting more information on these technical limitations that are holding back the increase in server capacity in Congestion Realm. In response, I’ve been linked back to the blue post we’ve mentioned several times in this article, and the team has “no other comments at this time.”
So we’re really stuck in this routine. Eventually, people give in and transfer. New players won’t be able to join, but if we’re being absolutely honest here, the problem isn’t going away anytime soon. With the Lich King expansion loose, people will naturally give up on the excitement of release day, and it looks like only then will players be able to join the server of their choice and play with their friends and community for free queue.
For more World of Warcraft classics, check out our first-hand report on the zombie plague that engulfed the game last week.
