Today on November 5, the global release of the World of Warcraft: Forever was kicked off. The well-known MMO got a new breath of life. At 2:00 am Moscow time, players logged in and saw that the servers were up, with few large scale problems.
Blizzard avoids typical launch chaos as WoW: Forever goes live globally
Surprisingly smooth release was in stark contrast to numerous recent industry launches, which were often plagued by server issues and payment problems. Players who wanted to go back to the game could do so under the best conditions. Everything was up and running. There were no typical queues or other things that one has to go through every time after the release.
Blizzard was quick to deal with any issues that popped up early. The fact that they pointed out and quickly dealt with temporarily unavailable messages was telling. There are various faction-based restrictions on PvP servers, as well as a significant mob competition.
All these factors contribute to the overall player experience at the start of the game. A newbie has to catch on quickly and adapt to social conditions on the server and the level of mob competition. Blizzard promptly fixed issues that arose. This meant better handling compared to past game releases.
The queues themselves settled to a decent 5-10 minute level. No large-scale server disconnects typical for many releases. There were some crashes, payment issues, etc. during the first hours.
However, nothing grew into a large scale problem. Players were also reporting that pre-made characters sometimes disappeared, but this is not confirmed by the developers as a general issue. AMD users experienced driver crashes, black screens and reboots of their PCs. However, it is not clear that this was caused by the game at all.
Recall our last World of Warcraft: Forever update. The familiar story of balance and stability emerges again. A key message here is that Blizzard is still focusing on game stability as much as on content.
The game is out. It is now available to the whole world. The players started playing the game without any server issues caused by the initial player rush.
Source: IXBT
Finally a launch that does not crash. The queues were short. This is how you release an MMO.