Blizzard vs. Pessimism: Blizzard wins 4:2
by Barb Dybwad 
Jan 16th 2007 at 10:00PM
Tobold had a nice scoring system going for the Burning Crusade install, in which Blizzard was pitted against the inevitable Pessimism inherent in combining major content upgrade + massive rush to sign in, which typically and notoriously causes major technical problems, server crashes, glitches, downtime, etc. He ended up awarding the victory to Blizzard, 4:2. Most of us here at WoW Insider didn't have any serious problems getting up and running with the expansion (so far so good!*), but we're sure there are tales of woe out there. How would you rate Blizzard's handling of the Burning Crusade launch? Did you have any problems getting going, or was it pretty much smooth sailing? Let us know who won the Blizzard vs. Pessimism battle on your scorecard.
[*Update: except Mike! Also reporting that Bronzebeard went down a couple of times around 10pm EST before I gave up and rolled a draenei shaman (along with about 2.1 million of my new best general chat enemies) on Shadowmoon.]
Filed under: Patches, Bugs, Blizzard, Expansions, The Burning Crusade
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Niru Jan 16th 2007 10:05PM
Easy peasy installing and getting in earlier today.
Then the lag started around 5.
There has been 10+ crashes since then.
Dan-O Jan 16th 2007 10:08PM
Started a Draenei Hunter (since I have no lvl 60s) after picking up my cop at EBgames around 1 PM (no school today!), and had it installed and patched by 3 PM. Around 9:30 PM Korgath realm crashed, and isn't back up yet, but I knew this was going to happen. At least I was supposed to get to bed anyway, considering Midterm Exams are this week :(. All in all, I'd give it a 8/10 for ease of account upgrade and installation. I'll bump it to a 9/10 if the rolling restarts in the morning fix Korgath by the time I'm home from school.
G Jan 16th 2007 10:18PM
My DVD install went perfectly, but I'd still say this evaluation was completed a little prematurely, as I wait to get back into Kilrogg..
Sttuoc Jan 16th 2007 10:42PM
I thought Blizzard did an amazing job. Bought my CE copy at Wal-Mart around 12:10. Was at home installing by 12:20 est. Didn't hit 1 glitch, very little lag and no crashes so far.
Jason Jan 16th 2007 11:32PM
For Azjol-Nerub, queues have been a bit heavier, but the realm hasn't crashed to my knowledge. All in all, there were a few hiccups, but they're on top of it as per the usual.
My score? Blizzard wins 2-0, with 3 hits allowed.
arras Jan 16th 2007 11:59PM
installing from the dvd was a piece of cake, getting the last patch took longer than it should have to download a 3mb file
account upgrade(s) were quick and painless - just had to remember which account I wanted to upgrade with the CE key...Blizzard scores 2 ponts
actual playing however...not so good. Whisperwind has been plagued with sever disconnects, world server down and at least 1 restart. Pessimism scores 3 points
One of my guildies summed it up best (paraphrase) "Blizzard has had nine months to prepare for every single one of their subscribes to sign in today and roll a draeni, a blood elf and take their 60(s) into Outland, you'd think they could do better than this." Pessimism scores 5
The disconnects are annoying, sure..it's the rollback that really kills me. 5-10 minutes of playtime, 10 minutes to wait for the server to start accepting players again. 5 minutes of lag. 5 minutes of play time. Lag out, disconnect. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Pessimism 8, Blizzard 2.
Blizzard did well starting out, but lost all their steam before the first round was even over. Tomorrow's a new day.
crimsonhavoc Jan 17th 2007 1:48AM
UPS dropped off my copy at 11am was up and running by noon, on spirestone, i had 1 hiccup where i couldnt turn a quest. so i logged off and back on and has been smooth until i had to go to work at 9pm...
my score: 2 under par for the win
crsh Jan 17th 2007 12:14AM
I'm a total cynic, but I was amazed at the quality of the content so far. Fucking great soundtrack in Outland, and even in the newbie areas for Draneis and Belves, the graphics are amazing and I even got to say, wait for it, the lag was there but bareable, my realm didn't crash, and while it was tedious to find mobs to kill for the initial quests in Hellfire (to be expected), it worked out a lot better than my cynical self expected.
GREAT JOB!
Rich Jan 17th 2007 12:33AM
Pessimism 1, Blizzard 0
The game isn't fun enough to warrant a expansion that is more of the same stuff. Cancel a month ago, the expansion wasn't even a factor since in 2 months there'd be nothing to do again except repeated raids on the same 5 places.
Jason Jan 17th 2007 12:55AM
@arras
You, like so many other people who play this game, have entirely unrealistic expectations of what blizzard should do and what is actually possible. What's sad, is that you strike me as the type who has complained endlessly about their plans ot implement server splits, which IMO is the single best way to handle realm population issues. Forget new realms from scratch, which may temporarily alleieve the issue by getting people from other realms on the new realm only to have them go back. It gets their mains to a new server, which means alts will generally folllow.
As to the reality of what blizzard 'had 9 months to do', Yep, it was only 9 months. Do you seriously think that's a long time in that business? It takes most companies a year or more to stand up the kind of hardware you're complaining about, and blizzard does it PDQ. To shorten a long story, you're complaining about things that are beyond the scope of possiblity to effectively protect agains.
Kloud Jan 17th 2007 4:53AM
Bronzebeard EU
Friend installed it while i was at work.
I came home loaded TBC up... downloaded the patches in record time an logged my warrior.
Then proceeded to escape the few world server crashes Bronzebeard had by grabbing some guildies an going into Hellfire Rampart straight away and sat safe an sound in the instance server. Did it 3 times an really enjoyed it.
Flawless imo. For such a major content upgrade etc Blizzard have done a really good job (for my server at least).
Druid dude Jan 17th 2007 5:00AM
I was pretty certain that today was going to be a complete disaster. I have been playing WoW since release day, and have been through overcrowded play on first generation hardware, massive login server problems, patch disaster after patch disaster and tons more. If you have been around, you know what I mean.
All previous history pointed toward an all time high epic disaster day.
Other than queues, I have been shocked how well this has gone. There have been some issues of course, but a lot more isolated than I thought. Its astounding that people are even able to play at all today. Many people were able to play normally after getting past the queues, maybe even most people.
I have blasted Blizzard many times in the past for very bad decisions and brainless screwups. But this time, I have to take my hat off to them. All things considered, very well done.
Amaris Jan 17th 2007 4:57AM
My server EU-Earthen Ring made me actually cry. The world server was up 5 minutes at a time and then it crashed again. All evening. In 5 hours I leveled a draenei to lvl 4 :( And got to Honor Hold with my main (didn't do any questing since the world server went down).
It was horrible.
Dave Jan 17th 2007 5:39AM
Besides the overcrowding, Steamwheedle Cartel-US has been great. It hasn't crashed since I've been on (and off), and I am pretty impressed. No queues either. Thank you for medium population servers.
Nanako Jan 17th 2007 9:09AM
Had installation problems, tried 3 times each time getting to around the 90% mark, checked the official forums to find that I wasent the only one with a dodgy cd4. Ripped the cd's to my hdd and installed at last.
Then the patches, the massive one was fine, I had it on the hdd so it was fairly swift. but the 2-3meg one was a pain. took about 50 minutes to download and install it.
Finally into wow, random disconnects. Made it to outland with a huge ms. Especially with the huge amount of people present. The lag spikes along with the mass of players made questing impossible.
I started chatting with a friend, mid conversation the world server died. I couldnt be arsed to try again that night.
All in all, im not happy.
Especially seeing people at level 62 before I was even able to get into the damn game.
Seper Jan 17th 2007 9:31AM
Venture Co. didn't have any lag issues last night. The Draenai area was a tad laggy but nothing noticible and it was to be expected.
The blood elf area on BloodFurnace lagged me out twice but my friends were fine. It could have been because their were 25 naked female elfs dancing. *rolls eyes*
James Jan 17th 2007 9:33AM
@ #8:
Um, hate to break it to you, but since you cancelled your account a month ago, you're not really qualified to be weighing in on how the new content rollout went. Yes, your pessimism beat Blizzard--but you gave up too soon, and have missed some really great stuff.
Profit Jan 17th 2007 10:26AM
BURNING BLADE server:
Installed and got everything up and running by 7pm...
Ran to the dark portal, jumped in and was DC'd. Outlands were down I'm told.
Hop on my other 60 char and start running around burning steps and no mobs load up. All players did and had some nice pvp action until another DC.
Created a Draino-Shaman entered the starting area and saw, no kidding, nearly 200 Shamans dueling... A site to see. After a few minutes gawking and fighting realized that their were no mobs, no npcs and within a few minutes was DC'd.
Hop on my level 40 toon and immediately hit with server going down in 5 minutes, dc'd after 1 minute.
Hop on another server in which I have toons and create a BE mage and then a BE hunter. LOVE their racials. Got both up to around 10 before I went to bed, nice and tired at 1:30... oh and no dc's on that server with everything running smoothly.
Rich Jan 17th 2007 10:56AM
@17
Played in beta... Not impressed...
Sergio Jan 17th 2007 4:58PM
Kilrogg server alone should add at least 4 towards the pesimism score. First, the lag was terrible, adding at least one second to every action. Second, we couldn't do an instance, since the instance server kept going down when we would try to go in to get away from the lag on the server. Third, when we gave up on doing an instance and decided to suffer through the lag doing quests, the world server would repeatedly go down, over and over again, that I lost count. Fourth, when we gave up on Outlands, I tried leveling up my Draenei mage, and the world server went down yet again, wiping the levels I earned back to level 1.