Trouble in the World of Warcraft
Technical and support 'issues' leave MMO fans raging
The most successful MMO of all time has had its ups and downs just like any online game, yet recently things have taken a bit of a nosedive. Since last Wednesday's regular maintenance a large number of players had been experiencing internet lag of nightmarish proportions. For six days WoW was practically unplayable on a large number of the European servers. Frequent lag spikes were accompanied by sustained periods of astronomical latency with many players experiencing ping times well in excess of 15,000. Not only did this make for an incredibly frustrating gameplay experience but it also led to a large number of expensive in-game deaths and to the cancellation of almost all raiding activity in the game's high-end content. Many servers were temporarily shut down with barely any notice during this period and the number of disconnects reached what must have been an all time record.
On numerous nights the affected servers just disappeared from the realm lists, in effect ceasing to exist to the outside world because the lag was so bad that all communication with them timed out. Many other servers continued to function as normal, leading many players to abandon their normal characters to go off and play alternatives and have some fun with the now besieged local residents. A small number of players had become so disillusioned that they sought to cancel or suspend their accounts only to find out that the malaise extended to the billing section with many people locked out of the accounts page, unable to alter their subscription. This last problem is not in any way new; previously many players have been unable to renew their monthly subscription and earlier in the game's life every player was mysteriously charged the subscription fee by one of a number of European hotels, one of the more bizarre billing issues to beset WoW.
As of yesterday the lag problem has apparently been fixed. Blizzard had initially claimed victory against the evil forces of lag last Friday, citing a faulty piece of hardware as the cause of all the woes. Its replacement was meant to usher in a new era of peace and prosperity. Unfortunately no such thing happened and players continued to be denied the service that they were paying their monthly subscription fees for. Blizzard then asked players experiencing problems to aid them by filling out a traceroute form. The more tech-savvy amongst the player community looked at these published reports and came to the conclusion that the problem lay with Telia, an ISP that Blizzard uses to provide the backbone from the Paris datacentre where the European realms are housed and the rest of the internet. Blizzard continued to offer up a range of other possible reasons, up to and including the proposition that it was individual player's internet or computer settings causing the difficulties even though entire servers were experiencing the lag. Any and all queries to Blizzard's technical support, either in-game via GMs or via the forums and telephone support lines were met with 'cut & paste' answers, none of which seemed to tally with the experience of tens of thousands of increasingly annoyed and angry players.
The goodwill that Blizzard has generated through providing such a wildly popular and much loved game has suffered greatly as a result of both the technical and support issues that have been so apparent this last week. WoW players are used to the occasional technical problems, although for a number of servers affected by the lag the effects of these issues have recently increased in frequency and scope. WoW players have been somewhat spoiled by the relatively high standard of connectivity and stability, with many players initially heralding WoW as the first MMO to be released to the public in non-beta form. Yet as the number of subscribers has sky-rocketed so the number of technical issues have also risen. Queues have become a major problem on a number of servers, with wait times just before the start of last week's lag often exceeding an hour on the more crowded realms.
None of these myriad technical and population issues are news to the tens of thousands of gamers who call these servers home. For months they have been informing and petitioning Blizzard to do something. And this is where things go from bad to worse. While it is understandable that MMO titles can and will suffer from technical problems and the occasional internet-related setback beyond the developers control, the relationship between the paying players and the game's support team is wholly determined by the efforts of that team. And it is here that Blizzard have been haemorrhaging support from the community. The responses on the official forums to previous problems have often been haphazard, with many posts being routinely ignored while other more trivial posts get the hallowed 'blue' treatment (all posts from Blizzard employees are coloured blue). Calls to technical support lines are often answered with the same lack of care and attention and when these problems extend to sensitive areas like billing and accounts the general consensus is that Blizzard's high command needs to do something, and quickly.
Comments
"Unfortunately, the majority of players on the affected servers are at level 60"
Any evidence to back this statement up?
A quick /who at 2.15 this morning listed 50 players. 15 were not level 60. This is standard on my server.
Blizzard has stated that about 20% of all players have a level 60 char.
Of all players maybe. Not on the high population servers where many lower level characters are lvl 60's alts.
The fact reamins that for a hug chunk of these servers they are being discriminated against even though the lag has affected them a lot more then lower level charatcers.
Yeah 20% of players, BUT they count also alts into this, I have 2 lvl 60 chars and about 12 alts (I and my gf share accounts)
i dont care about the server Isue WoW suck its a pve game i mean wtf make instances people can pvp in??? and make it so only the players whit 24/7 no life can get the high warlord?? wtf WoW isn't a game for pvp'ers WoW is a game for carebears thats afraid of loosing stuff and die
damn pve'ers
An insightful and knowledgable post there. I'm sure if you were to drop Blizzard a line they would consider hiring you on to their corporate planning department.
At least right now the lag has been solved. Unfortunatley this is because the authentication server is down :D
A M E N
I'm glad Blizzard's WRETCHED customer service is no longer being met with praise.
dude i have it all the time ive met the requirements i still got i try to fix it still have it god its gona go on and on and on
dude i have it all the time ive met the requirements i still got i try to fix it still have it god its gona go on and on and on
Is their a sufficiently appropriate name for people like Mystic? I mean, who cares how people spend their time? Playing carebear video games pale by comparison to people with tubgirl activities. And yet, here's Mystic spitting white flecks of foam at his monitor in hopes his fury manifests physically into a bus and collides with passive RPG'ers.
Honestly, where does that kind of aggression come from? He seems frustrated that he can't pwnz0r teh careb34rz0rs whenever he feels like it. To me, it's just some angry goth boy who's mad at the world for all the lemonade toilet bowl swirlies he had to endure. So now he wants to get back at anyone, preferably obese MMO socialites who couldn't hit back with all the dangling jiggling flesh under their arms even if they were face to face. Bravo. WTG. You fail at life.
Mystic you are a sad individual... I bet you have a subscription to WoW, or is it that you got banned for macroing your Night Elf Hunter named RoXxOr 5uPoR 5tRlKe?
A'men to your article
es bacan
Lag problems by Telia are back since Friday afternoon, no answer from Blizzard yet, no answer from Telia yet. The only thing some "blue" said about it: "It's your ISP" (even when we are several players from several servers... different countries, ISPs, etc, etc)
Welcome to what the American servers have experienced since launch.
This is unplayable. Blizzard is stealing our money.
Well... a quick review of what has happened since last friday for all those of u that desire to know.
A lot of european wow players (mainly from Spain, but also affecting Italy, Portugal, Poland and England I believe) started having continous lag since last friday 30/09 in some realms (servers).
After reporting the problem to blizzard´s technical department (even giving trace routes) they told us that the problem was with our ISP provider. We doubted this since we could play without lag in other servers; If my connection is the problem I would have expected lag in all realms, not only a few of them. Anyway we contacted our ISP provider and in my case they checked line speed an all seems fine.
Then finally Blizzard announced in a post that they acknowledged the existence of a problem affecting spanish customers and that they were trying to solve this problem with their partners (I guess Telia).
Then today there is a new post that states "At the moment we are not aware of any connection problem" wich sounds like mockery on the hundreds of ppl that have been posting in the official forums trying to help their technicians.
Now things are the same that they were on friday with no information about what is happening, many of our posts being deleted from the forums, etc...
I hope that these problems start appearing on games magazines and start giving Blizzard the popularity they deserve...
Actualy the lag has only recently been fixed, on some servers WoW has been inaccessible for more than 2 weeks over-all.
About the statement that the majority of players are at lvl 60, it is true, based on the grounds that Blizzards statement concerning only 20% was lvl 60, is based on the total number of characters, and EVERYONE got a million lower leveled characters.
Blizzard really did lose a lot of their good reputation on WoW, specialy towards European players, and noone will ever buy another MMORPG from Blizzard without thinking twice.
I installed it ok and it loads up fast but when i play it its very slow even though the latencie is green, please help me, please.
Yeah, I agree whole-heartedly with this email. I've had periods where I can't get to the account section to manage my billing (for a week .... not days or even hours). This is happening more often than not. I'm really getting annoyed. I was told that I would have 4 weeks gametime added - which wasn't. Only to be told I have to re-activate my account (which I did and can't do again as the site is down).
What are they playing at? They've made millions so it's time to spend some sorting this horrible mess out. The game is great, the support sucks. Not even a small post on the US site (which always works fine for me) to say they're having problems. Yet again, the paying subscriber is left in the dark. They've had the best part of £100 from me over only a short term ... and what do I get? Grief. I hope they sort this soon otherwise I'll give up - and that means throwing away all those hours spent .... but that's a different matter.
..hmmm....i can only say i am happy i aint workin at Blizzard....or i would suffer from a major ulcer....;)
"WoW players have been somewhat spoiled by the relatively high standard of connectivity and stability" is absolute BS. I stopped playing WoW 5 months ago because of the terrible playing conditions and finally started again last week after being told by alot of my old guild mates that things had improved. I had one day of ok play and now its back to the usual lag spikes and blizzards normal denial of there being any problems. (Oh and the usual "Do a traceroute and post it on the forums" answer to all lag questions.)
If previous problems are anything to go by, this could take another 4 months to fix. Oh and my new character is lvl22 so its NOT limited to lvl60's. Rubbish statement.
To make things wors, even links to this article are deleted from official forums.
i need help to get my delete rogue back name alinne lvl 31 plz help blizzard
yeah, i still get really bad lag and i am starting to give up on the game now, the whole server is really badly affected
this sucks ass it has been down all this week c'mon man!!!!!!!!!!
Lag issues, cut and paste responses, lack of true information, paying customers being blamed for tech issues, lack of real customer support, blues answering trivial questions sometimes, and let's not forget a total banning from the forums if said customer dares to say anything against blizzard or W.O.W and esp if you should dare to compare it with another game on the market (which incidentally is still on the top ten list, while W.O.W has dropped off),....
sounds like the same thing americans have been having for some time now. Evidence shows blizz has gotten too big for it's britches, and they've made enough money, now with a movie deal in the works, that they don't really care if they loose even several customers. They think they'll bounce back with new ones and they believe the expansion will bring everyone who's quit, crawling back anyway. Same thing that Turbine did with Asheron's Call, and I'm sure Blizz will lie to themselves just the same and continue to feel they're doing a great job.
It won't get better, not until they loose more than half their customers and it actually hurts them, but then again....they just might say it's run it's course and close it all down, pat themselves on the back and begin anew with something else. Either way, welcome to WOW. I'm just glad to see it's not just us who's been having these problems.
major lag is back and no help from blizzard no suprise there
I pray this story travels around other news/gaming sites too. They shouldn't get away with this unbelievable arrogance/ignorance. I'll have a shot at getting it on digg.com/gamespot, I urge others to post it around too, whether you're effected by it or not. No company should think they're bigger than their customers.