Additional instances cannot be launched, please find something else to do.
by Adam Holisky 
Dec 9th 2009 at 2:00PM
Heads exploded, babies cried, and anarchy ensued as people once again saw this dreaded error. We've been told for months that the cross-server instances and other solutions were supposed to fix this, that they would be the salvation to all our problems.Additional instances cannot be launched, please try again later.
Not so. At least, not yet.
We are told by our sources that the central problem likely lies in there being too many players attempting to run instances. Before, if you had a server-wide instance capacity of say 1,000 instances open at any one time, you now have a battlegroup-wide instance capacity of over 10,000 instances open at any one time (just making these numbers up for the sake of argument here).
Last night, in the rush to try out the new dungeon finder and cross-server mechanics, the battlegroup-wide instance capacity was reached and destroyed in a blink of an eye. You had literally tens of thousands of people running instances in each battlegroup, entirely overwhelming the system.
Because most of the intense interest was due to the newness of the system, we expect – and indeed we're told some within Blizzard expect – the problem to go away by itself. In fact, if you log on during the day you can see that the problem is non-existent. There's no sign of the additional instances error.
But, this is still a mess, and likely will continue during prime playing time for the immediate future. So what does Blizzard need to do to solve this? There are two primary areas focus needs to be put in.
First, the instance capacity needs to be increased. If we're seeing this now, on a patch day, imagine what it's going to be like when Cataclysm hits and everyone of every level of gameplay will be running instances. The game will not be enjoyable for large swaths of the player base if they can't run dungeons, and that's a risk Blizzard probably shouldn't take given alternative games on the horizon.
Secondly, Blizzard PR and Community Managers need to start getting the word out about this now. There is something almost psychologically defeating about seeing this error pop up again after we were told for so long that it was going away. PR and Community need to begin an immediate and massive campaign laying out the issue, what's being done to fix it, and how long the fix might take. They don't need to give a date, but saying something like "in the coming weeks we'll begin expanding instance capacity again" would be a very good thing. Just letting the entire playerbase know they're doing something is exponentially better than what they're doing now (which is just a few blue posts buried amongst tons of others from the past few days).
This is another case of Blizzard being a victim of its own success, but it's still not excusable for these errors to be happening after we were told this very patch was the solution. And in light of these problems, not having any official communication on the matter makes it worse.
WoW.com will be sure to bring you anything else we learn about this problem. In the mean time, just keep trying to enter the instance... it will eventually work.
Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Bugs, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 8)
fearthefireblade Dec 9th 2009 2:02PM
I find it hard to believe that nobody at Blizzard foresaw this happening. It's a disturbing lack of sagacity.
But then again, it's Blizzard, so it's kind of par for the course.
miked Dec 9th 2009 2:19PM
I find it hard to believe that you think they didn't see it coming.
snowleopard233 Dec 9th 2009 2:10PM
Sometimes I feel Blizzard isn’t learning from its mistakes when it comes to server overload. Between massive server ques, Dalaran lag, Shattrath lag, and Wintergrasp lag, you’d think they’d be more prepared what is essentially thousands of players trying to simultaneously fit themselves into a virtual city block.
Maybe it has something to do with how difficult it is to make accurate stress tests on the PTR. You can test out a thousand players spread out a couple of realms but thas nothing compared to millions of people across countless servers.
Chris Anthony Dec 9th 2009 2:14PM
Blizzard almost certainly DID foresee this. The issue isn't foresight. The issue is whether it's an important problem - and frankly, this problem isn't important. I don't mean to say that it's not important to you, the individual player - of course it is. You can't get into an instance, and that's frustrating on a couple levels. But it's not an important problem with the game.
The next couple of days are going to be extraordinary circumstances, as vast numbers of players try to use the new instance feature, and Blizzard is well aware that extraordinary circumstances occur. They've planned for it. You can tell, because the game says "I can't do what you want me to do", instead of just crashing outright and dumping EVERY PLAYER ON THE BATTLEGROUP back to login at best.
The problem this summer and autumn was that the "Additional instances..." error was popping up under ORDINARY circumstances. The change that Blizzard made was meant to fix the problem under ordinary circumstances - and under ordinary circumstances, as Adam points out, the system functions exactly as you expect it to. When the extraordinary circumstances subside, as they will within a few days, you can expect the "Additional instances..." messages to fade away as well.
If they don't - THAT'S an important problem.
Jardal Dec 9th 2009 2:17PM
What do you expect them to do?
Double the number of instance servers so that on patch weeks we don't see this problem? Not a good solution at all, incredibly cost ineffective as usually we don't see these problems.
The other option is to limit the people who can log in.
I'd rather log in, attempt to get into an instance, and instead do something else then not get in at all.
Todd Dec 9th 2009 2:29PM
I concur. "These are not the instances you are looking for."
Once again the Blizzard development team underestimated the demand.
mcgruber Dec 9th 2009 2:37PM
I get the intent of these posts but I'll play devils advocate.
My question is, with Blizzard having virtually unlimited resources, why not expand the infrastructure to accommodate for patch days and extreme activity spikes? This will certainly not be the last time we have a major patch and with Cataclysm we're going to have an even bigger influx of players. Admittedly I don't know the technical ramifications but it's a fair question to ask.
Alchemistmerlin Dec 9th 2009 2:37PM
The longer it takes for you to run instances, the longer you're paying a subscription fee.
I'm just saying.
Deadly. Off. Topic. Dec 9th 2009 2:49PM
I'm sure they're aware of it, but not giving a damn about it and giving token messages to people "You can't do that," seems counter productive to actually trying to improve an issue that is well know.
Patch day = everyone wants to get in.
What it looks like to me is this "Major Patch day, lag issues because everyone is logging in, but WE will do nothing because after a few days it'll just work itself off anyway so why bother. What's a little inconvenience and why waste money to fix this issue when it'll fix itself later."
A lazy solution, but one that seems to be pretty prevalent it seems.
Aykwa Dec 9th 2009 2:49PM
Mcgruber, Blizzard does not have virtually unlimited resources. Blizzard is part of Activision, and Activision is a public company, who's goal is to provide as much gain for its shareholders as possible. Just like any business, just like the one you probably work at. It's not just a matter of throwing a few thousand bucks into a little more hardware. We're talking about adding thousands or even tens of thousands of servers to increase all capacities in such a way that people never have any issues during any of the peak times. The servers cost a lot, plus the software, plus the maintenance, plus the people to run them, the power to power them, the space to house them, the cooling system to keep the buildings cool, etc, etc, etc. Activision barely turned a profit last quarter, and I do mean barely ($0.03 profit per share on a $10 stock). Do you really think they're going to run out and spend many millions of dollars up front and many millions more in future costs?
Grapes Dec 9th 2009 2:51PM
This is normal when estimating bandwidth. You make sure you have more than enough for average case, and are willing to accept the fact that you might not cover worst case. It's a business decision that every company makes.
Example: My company has about 40 phones, each which can make 4 different connections at a time. That means we can make 160 calls at once. But we only have enough bandwidth to support about 16 calls. We are banking on the fact that under normal operating condition we will not need more than 16 concurrent lines. We made the business decision that the few times that we will need more than 16 lines is not worth the extra money. Basically, it's a cost/benefit analysis.
zcubed Dec 9th 2009 2:53PM
While I agree that this occurrence was mostly because its patch day/week and there is abnormally high server usage, Blizz should understand that with their new lfg feature and more new 80s everyday this problem will just get larger over time. New instance servers will HAVE to be put in place to anticipate demand over the next few weeks/months. I personally spent 3 hours yesterday in the dungeon finder system without getting into a single dungeon but I chalk that up to patch day. If this happens Tuesday of next week then I will have a serious problem.
Cataca Dec 9th 2009 3:04PM
I don't believe that things will ever "go back to normal" with this new dungeon finder out now.
Personally, I did very few instances pre-3.3. On a good day I'd only do the daily and maybe one or two more. Just doing those sapped up all of my play time.
But, by using the tool yesterday I managed to squeeze in 8!
And I'm sure I'm not the only one that now has the ability to run many, many more than they used to.
I think the number of people running instances will decrease in the next coming weeks but I believe that Blizz is selling this new system short if they think that things will ever return to normal levels.
Something I'd love to see is an instance launching queue for these "abnormal" day.
Skonged Dec 9th 2009 3:09PM
As an IT pro Blizzard does not get a free pass. Knowing a problem is going to occur means you are responsible to fix it before it happens.
SINisterWyvern Dec 9th 2009 3:22PM
Sorry the largest server farm to have ever existed in the entirety of the world isn't enough to keep up with how many people were playing last night.
Get over yourselves.
Nina Dec 9th 2009 3:41PM
Here here!
I completely agree with the "unusual circumstances" point of view.
I play on a low-pop server, and its *always* low-pop, except on patch days...
And with this patch especially; ICC is a BIG DEAL. Every one and their mother was logged on to see the new content. I saw people I haven't seen online in *months*. Almost every realm was up one level in population density yesterday (low -> med, med ->high, high->LOCKED, you get the idea). Give it a few days, and things will be running smoothly.
Felix_NZ Dec 9th 2009 4:01PM
Simple fix, move Oceanic battlegroup servers to Oceania, and recommission the old Oceanic hardware into the yank battlegroups!
Two continents worth of Angst silences in one fell swoop!
Daethar Dec 9th 2009 4:19PM
Yes, there are an unusual amount of users trying this out on patch day, but this won't necessarily resolve itself.
Why? Because of a potential problem, that I haven't seen mentioned yet: now that realms no longer have their own instance server, and instead instances are cross-realm, this means that all of those heavily populated realms that had the problem before will overflow into the rest of their battlegroup. And, as some mentioned above, with the new tool making instances more popular, it is sure to raise the overall number of people wanting to run an instance from each server in a battlegroup anyway.
Hopefully Blizzard was well aware of the numbers involved in regards to how many EXTRA people wanted in when a server reached it's instance launch limit. Otherwise we might see entire battlegroups, instead of entire servers, having this problem. As someone who never once had the "Additional Instances" error on my medium population server (and I was running instances fairly often), I'm wondering just how dangerous this new Dungeon Finder + overflow might be.
Michelle Dec 9th 2009 4:37PM
At least the ice stone isn't melting!
scotttopic Dec 9th 2009 4:48PM
i find it a little disheartening that any comment on wow.com that is critical of blizzard is immediately modded down, while all blizzard apologists are immediately modded up. it's as if the readers of this site are unwilling to consider the possibility that blizzard is anything but perfect.
you can be critical of something and still love it. you don't have to mod into oblivion anybody who says a something negative about blizzard.