Blizzard Reimbursing Users For Downtime

[Daehawk]

C/P...

Since its release two and a half days ago, World of Warcraft has already seen incredible concurrency numbers across all active game servers. To keep up with the demand from our players, 47 new servers were made available, increasing the total number of servers to 88. Doubling our server capacity in such a short period of time created issues in existing servers. We immediately recognized the issues and began implementing fixes. However, some players were unable to log in and enjoy the game during this period.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience and are dedicated to providing World of Warcraft players with the best play experience possible. Therefore we'll be adding a small trial-period extension for players who created accounts before or during the downtime. In the days ahead, we'll provide additional details on how the trial-period extension will be determined. As always, we appreciate your continued patience and support; we're still monitoring the servers very closely and making adjustments as needed in order to ensure that World of Warcraft continues to run smoothly for everyone playing.

[-Lord Ebonstone-]

An unprecedented and utterly incredible show of class.  Wow.

[Turtle]

Nah, these days, for MMOs it's standard procedure.  Anarchy Online, one of the most botched releases ever had to give people several months of free time, and even then the game wasn't ready.

A few other games have done this too, I don't remember which, though.

[none]

even so, i appreciate their gesture.  and to tell you the truth, i don't even require any sort of compensation as i have had no problems logging in and playing my characters.  i'm glad i had several of them spread out on different servers in different time zones.

[unbreakable]

AO didnt do anything for me, but then again I didnt stick around long enough to care- the game was clearly a steamer and a waste of time/money.  In the immortal words of the Diakatana team, "you cant polish a turd".

It would have been nice to get UO time free when I was on it, suffering with crappy gameplay and lag, but I recall UO actually had to get sued to give up the booty.

[Misguided]

Their numbers on this one are simply staggering. Consider that CoH is a considered a big hit and it seems like WoW matched their number of accounts more or less overnight. I mean, obviously any Blizzard game is going to have a buzz about it, but I didn't realize the anticipation levels were THAT high.

Congrats to Blizzard.

[olaf]

It definitely is not standard practice to give people free time in these games, but it ought to be.  I dont think it is unprecedented though.

Still, I was impressed.  The game is selling very well, and this wasnt something they *had* to do.

olaf

[Reed]

Definitely not unprecidented. They did it for EQ when it was released, they extended the free trial for 1 or 2wks, I think it was.

That was a worse launch though.

[Dudd]

I don't think I paid for WWIIOnline for the first 3 or 4 months after I bought it.  Didn't play it much in that timeframe either, but hey, I could have if I wanted to!

[Toe]

Yea, Everquest did when they opened up.  

Some games haven't because they haven't needed to because they knew how estimate the number of initial customers correctly.

[Dreamshadow]

Lucky WOW players.  EQ2 usually pulls their servers offline for up to two hours (it's rarely actually been down that long) each morning.  even on a saturday. :/

[Bob]

I'm more impressed that they had to DOUBLE their server capacity.   That's a lot of servers.

[Burwil]

Horizons did the same thing.....for those unfortunate enough to have bought into their disaster.

[Charlatan]

Heh, I just looked at the Horizon server boards at vnboards - they are down to 1 NA server. It's shocking.

But back on track - it's typical Blizzard how they announce that they're doing something like this, but then they take 3 weeks to announce specifics. I guess it's better to do it this way rather than say nothing, but somehow I get the feeling that there is some great management bureaucracy that all statements like this have to bubble through before some concrete announcement can be made.

It's frustrating to ask em questions and keep getting the "we're checking on it, more details when we can release them" but I tell ya, that's what 90% of the community rep's answers were thru Beta.

Still, I give them kudos for this plan. It's classy.

[Phouka]

Horizons did the same thing.....for those unfortunate enough to have bought into their disaster.

I still chuckle when I think about this... I remember when it came out; back on the gonegold boards virtually everyone who had been in beta said: "Trust us, pass. Not worth it."

A number of people beat on us pretty heavily and gushed about its graphics, crafting, or whatever.

Feels good to say I told you so.

Ok, back to not gloating.... :-)

Pooks

[olaf]

They finalized what they will be reimbursing, and its not very impressive afterall, at least to me.

First off, a number of servers still have queues and other technical issues.

Second, 4 days as the best reward?  I expected, honestly, at bare minimum a week with a month on the outside range.

Finally, the CE guest passes are not eligible for any extension at all.

Yeah they could have easily done nothing, the game is breaking records after all so what do they care?  But still, it was an underwhelming response if you ask me.

olaf

[Sepiche]

They finalized what they will be reimbursing, and its not very impressive afterall, at least to me.

First off, a number of servers still have queues and other technical issues.

Second, 4 days as the best reward?  I expected, honestly, at bare minimum a week with a month on the outside range.

Finally, the CE guest passes are not eligible for any extension at all.

Yeah they could have easily done nothing, the game is breaking records after all so what do they care?  But still, it was an underwhelming response if you ask me.

olaf

A week to a month for a few nights of problems?  Seriously?!?

To me, it's only fair to reimburse people for the amount of time lost due to downtime, not to over compensate as a reward.  4 days more than covers any time I lost to server problems.

Honestly even being reimbursed at all is nice.

s