Breakfast Topic: What do you expect on the 16th?
by Elizabeth Harper 
Jan 6th 2007 at 10:15AM
Looking forward to release day? A quick poll of the forums suggests that you wouldn't be the only one -- with plenty of players making big plans for the 16th. We've got people taking vacation days and skipping classes, but I have to wonder whether all this is worth it. After all, with so many players new and old planning on hitting up the Outland come release day, how many of you expect the realms to be stable at all, much less playable? So that's today's question -- what do you expect to see on release day? Has Blizzard done enough to lead to a smooth roll-out or are you more pessimistic of playability on the 16th?Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Features, Expansions, The Burning Crusade
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
John Jan 6th 2007 10:33AM
I hope that downloading updates will be minimal as I'm not going to wait in line at midnight just to buy a CD that is worthless. Aside from server queues/server lag once on, I don't think the actual expansion pack should hurt too much. /wishful thinking
Thomas Jan 6th 2007 10:47AM
So long as you've got the (now) 152 meg patch pre-loaded, you should have all the updates necessary for this expansion. Not sure how much more we'd need to download/install after TBC, but I guess we'll see. I do imagine we'll need to update all our mods before starting play. Blizzard has brought in a half dozen new servers for transfer purposes and they say they'll roll out even more new servers for this launch. Hopefully this will alieviate my main concern - queues and extreme lag.
Fabian Jan 6th 2007 10:54AM
I don't expect any playability on and around the 16th. I expect a lot of de-facto-retired players coming back for BC and thus a real impact to the servers.
If big blue manages to surprise me with a smooth start I'm happy. But I expect the worst.
On a side note: Here in europe the patch is already at 212 MB...
Kick Jan 6th 2007 11:20AM
Blizzard seems trustful. If my server doesn't crash, anyway, it will be very difficult to play with so many other players around me. I don't care if there is any patch or something to DL, i'm on a EU server, low pop, it's fast. however, there is a lil' voice in my head who keep saying "U fool won't be able to play on the 16th ! #3 is right !!!". (it must be because I'll be at work anyway 8( )
Ahko Jan 6th 2007 11:22AM
I plan to take the 17th off as I know the servers will get pounded on the 16th, I fully expect not to play on the 16th, but you never what can happen, it is Blizzard you know :P
Basy Jan 6th 2007 11:31AM
I expect the servers down for 1-3 days and lag and issues for a week or so. As usually.
Fornjot Jan 6th 2007 11:34AM
I figure it'll be tough to do the quests in outland or the starting areas, so I'm planning to take my 60 priest and camp at the meeting stone for the lowest-level instance out there and just spam LFG trying to find frustrated folks to go in there with me. None of the big-name guilds will be raiding, so I hope to join PUGs with folks who are significantly overgeared... thunderfury tanks in 5-mans! I'm psyched.
But I won't be doing the collect-ten-bear-asses quests.
crsh Jan 6th 2007 11:36AM
I'm honestly getting a bit weary of the game's playability when the expansion goes live; my server has started to have a queue in the evening (unheard of before), may be due to players still on holiday and what not, but lag and latency issues have gone way up lately.
Soup Jan 6th 2007 11:42AM
The thing I expect most about TBC on the 16th and following days is the amount of issues you'll hear from other players. Whether that be about lag, how they couldn't get all their mods to work, some people not even possibly be able to find a copy of the game. The one thing that I have noticed whenever there is an update to WoW is to expect such things. Even in small patches theres always bugs. To me, the expansion will probably (Hoping I'm wrong here) be the same way. And heres to hoping the expansion fixes some of the bugs we all know came with 2.0
Matthew M. Jan 6th 2007 11:46AM
Well...I don't expect to play on the 16th. I have the CE ordered from online, so it may not even come the day everything opens. But I'm not worried, I'm going to let it die down, maybe let the "mass" of people get done with the earlier quests so that when I go to do them there won't be as many people (hopefully...).
Plus...I'm a little nervous, I just hit 60 and don't have good gear...so I'm hoping I'll be able to get some stuff in the BC without dying horribly in the Outland...
Sylythn Jan 6th 2007 11:58AM
I'll pick up my copy at midnight, and then play a few levels (maybe up to 10) before going to bed. I'm in no major rush to get through the content. What does concern me is the number of FBEP's that will likely be there...I'm sure I won't be the only one - I just hope I don't get unfairly judged because of it later in levels.
Kang Jan 6th 2007 12:10PM
Planes crashing into the ground, ICBMs firing off randomly, and Nazis riding dinosaurs. :P
Curtis Jan 6th 2007 3:20PM
@13 rofl!
Ralex Jan 6th 2007 3:43PM
I think the peak of unplayability will be a couple days later, the weekend of Jan 19-21.
I think plenty of people will not get their copies on day 1 for a variety of reasons, and many folks will still have to work on the weekdays.
Once most people have their CDs and don't have to wake up for work the next day, then I think we see 1000+ queues on all high population servers.
Sleepy Jan 7th 2007 3:28AM
I expect to get in the queue on the 16th and play sometime on the 18th.
Aaeen Jan 7th 2007 9:03AM
@13
Greatest comment ever!!! As one that has felt the pain of outsourcing personally, I can say that your comment is the funniest and the most true statement I've read in the recent days. Ever had someone from India call you at three in the morning because you own and American bank money? Yeah, it sucks. LOL.
As for TBC, I'll just wait it out for a couple. There will be plenty of time to go and waste the next year of my life in outland. Between server crashes, filled up Outland starting areas, I'll just stick with the BGs till everything calms down. At least since everyone will getting pwned in outland, wait times for the BG will be down significantly (crosses fingers).
multikast Jan 8th 2007 4:25PM
@17
wait time for the bg's? what wait time. ever since the Xrealms, i have yet to wait more than 5 minutes.
i assume you're alliance, perhaps? oh well, all you alliance can stay alliance... i like my short queues on horde :)