Whenever there’s a new World of Warcraft expansion launch, I usually advise all my overeager friends and guildmates not to take launch day off work to play.
Like look, I’ve done it before. Multiple times. And it ended poorly every time, because the servers were so freakin’ overloaded that I was barely able to play. I’d sit in a queue for over an hour, only to finally get in, play for five minutes, and then get disconnected. It’s a miserable experience, and inevitably most people who have taken the first launch day off in the past regret it. It’s far smarter to wait a few days, until the initial rush has calmed down a bit and Blizzard has managed to do whatever video game magic is necessary to ease the server load.
But I have noticed that improving lately with the launches of The War Within and Midnight, both of which had shorter queues and fewer disconnects. And last night, with WoW: Forever launching…dare I say I had a downright smooth time?
Granted, I didn’t try to log in right at 5pm CT when it went live. I was running an errand. But I did show up at around 8pm, figuring I’d kill some time in the queue while I waited for Ocarina of Time to launch and see if I could even get in. Much to my shock, I was online in five minutes, and didn’t disconnect once. I managed to play for almost three hours before I had to go boot up Zelda.
And, and, I didn’t have hardly any of the other usual launch day issues. Blizzard’s new “layering” system is mostly working great to ensure areas aren’t too crowded, and they’ve upped spawn rates of critical quest NPCs so no one’s stuck waiting around to finish a quest. I managed to kill multiple quest NPCs in Mulgore the second I arrived in their vicinity, rather than having to wait in an actual line of characters like I remembered doing for the same stuff in the WoW Classic Beta. There were multiple stones at the water well for me to pick up. The Quilboar leader respawned the second the guy before me killed him, as did the two shamans next to him that I needed for another quest. I was able to track down the lost dog Kyle no problem instead of competing with 20 other fresh taurens chasing him around Bloodhoof Village.
In fact, the only issue I had last night was a weird bug over at Bael’dun Digsite where I could see seemingly everyone on every other layer, but none of the NPCs on their layers. This was only kind of a problem, I guess? It just made it tough to tell what was going to aggro me instead of the other 60 or so people milling around. But it ultimately wasn’t gamebreaking.
I’m not the only one who thinks things went well, either. A lot of other individuals have been complimenting Blizzard on the efficacy of the new layering system and the general smoothness of the queue. I saw several comments that this was the best WoW launch ever, and I think I agree.
Anyway congrats to Blizzard, this stuff isn’t easy at all. People love to joke “just add more servers” but it’s always been far more complex a problem than that, and with how popular I suspect Forever is, this can’t have been a slow expansion launch to test whatever magical new tech they’re using.
Can’t wait to play more later today, and it’s great to feel confident that I’ll actually be able to!