Should the launch have been delayed? What else could be done?

[Moonlite]

Delay an expansion by a whole year? The playerbase had a full on tantrum over ultimate being delayed to 6.1, then add an extra year to that?

Then they could have added a 5.7 and rolled out job changes, ultimates, housing, races, pvp, new jobs maybe(not sure how they tie in). Let us not pretend they had no options. But I will admit this would have been a really tough decision.

[DPZ2]

And if that is the case, if there was no need to upgrade, why was the common argument for the cash shop, so they could do server upgrades? The check engine light came on, and it was ignored while the mechanic charged you each time.

Hmmmmm. Might have something to do with the fact that they built, oh, an entire data center in Europe with the funds, including 12 worlds (at 17,000 population per that's 204,000 additional players who don't have to use the North American data center), and they're opening up a new Oceania data center that will be closer to non-Japanese players in the Western Pacific with the same funds? That particular project was well underway almost a year before WoW turned into a barbeque pit.

[DPZ2]

They know it's wrong, and they do it anyway. A few of those, especially during an event like the pre-release of a well-anticipated expansion, could seriously diminish that behavior. People need to know there are repercussions and that those repercussions will be enforced.

I suspect that if the behavior becomes common again (this is not the first time), they'll do what they did last expansion - reboot the servers at an inconvenient time for the AFK'ers to log back in ...

[Moonlite]

Hmmmmm. Might have something to do with the fact that they built, oh, an entire data center in Europe with the funds, including 12 worlds (at 17,000 population per that's 204,000 additional players who don't have to use the North American data center), and they're opening up a new Oceania data center that will be closer to non-Japanese players in the Western Pacific with the same funds? That particular project was well underway almost a year before WoW turned into a barbeque pit.

Which shows if they had planned for in game growth in NA and EU they would have some new worlds going live. Except either they didn't plan any growth (wow is an anomaly and they don't get blamed for that) or the plan was to see how many more players to stuff on the worlds until the experience started to suffer. You guys believe they don't have road maps planning years down the road?

[Velvet_Lunarfang]

I say if anything rent some servers until the tide of the game dies down again then return the rented servers. I am surprised they didn't think of this at all. At least the rented servers could of helped with the influx of players

[DPZ2]

they could have done a bit more. I cannot speak for ever server. But the log in queue usually is about 30- 60 on my server. But all of a sudden its over 5000. Spend the couple extra bucks and install a few more servers and link them up and let them help with the load.

Do you actually believe that the world servers are white box Intel servers one can purchase on eBay? Join the "just put it on Amazon Cloud" gang. Who appear to be decidedly incorrect about everything dealing with infrastructure.

[Moonlite]

Do you actually believe that the world servers are white box Intel servers one can purchase on eBay? Join the "just put it on Amazon Cloud" gang. Who appear to be decidedly incorrect about everything dealing with infrastructure.

Do you actually believe that they had no other options but to push it out the door and let people suffer? Someone said they have been trying for 9 hours. That is wrong on so many levels(all parties).

[hynaku]

Still see lots of players bypassing the auto afk logout. They should add a report button and have there accounts banned. Keep seeing ones in same place afk and never move at all logout come back the next day and there still there afk.

[Tyssyn]

How would renting servers, then returning them work. I am not exactly sure how it all works but doesn't a server = a world? So say they rented 5 servers per data center, ... how would you convince players to transfer to those new worlds? Players want to play with their friends, with their fcs, and those who have houses sure wouldn't want to move to a new server, especially one that was going to be returned after a few months?

[Moonlite]

How would renting servers, then returning them work. I am not exactly sure how it all works but doesn't a server = a world? So say they rented 5 servers per data center, ... how would you convince players to transfer to those new worlds? Players want to play with their friends, with their fcs, and those who have houses sure wouldn't want to move to a new server, especially one that was going to be returned after a few months?

The worlds are mostly stable as they have been since the split in SB. The problem is login server caps at 17k logins. I don't know if they could rent and get them into the system and running in any decent time frame anyways. This ship has sailed probably, players suffer, people will cry some will get sympathy and some will get blamed.