Well, isn't that just great.
It certainly puts the icing on the crap cake. And yes, that is both a crappy cake and a cake made out of crap.
I'm not sure whether it's a load of bad karma that the karma fairy has been loading up for some time to dispense upon me with added zeal and immense gratification. Or the Gods have had enough of playing chess and sipping on their Cosmopolitans and have instead turned their attention to a game of Punish The Human because they got a real kick out of playing the Sims 2. Maybe the planets and ocean tides are working in cahoots to see what trouble they can get up to before Mother Nature catches them fucking around when they should be doing their homework.
For you see, it seems I spoke too soon.
After a lovely train ride yesterday afternoon which involved the guy behind me laughing about brown paper bags, I had to pause in my attempt to log into World of Warcraft for a session of "telling the Auction House dwarf to hurry up and list items" when a number greeted me.
Now, normally a number wouldn't cause me to pause. I won't normally walk down to the street, eating my ice cream, and stop in my tracks to watch the number 12 go riding by on its unicycle. But this number was different. It was something I hadn't seen before. This number was evil.
This number was 893.
That's right, the number of the Beast's second cousin or something. This number, looking up at me from the foreground of the World of Warcraft login screen, was the position I was sitting in as I waited to actually log in for some Azeroth action.
One dinner and literally a full house worth of cleaning later, my character looked around his surroundings and said "Well, that was a fucking long stretch and yawn". However, my celebrated record was to be beaten. Guild mates logging into the game following my gracious entry were quick to report their eye gougingly crawling queue of the numbers 1000-and-something and 1100-and-something.
This of course leaves me with a question. Only one question mind you, but a question of worth. And I shall ask this to you, because Cthulhu knows I won't get any fancy blue glowy answer with a stamp of official approval. Did Blizzard in all its illustious wisdom, after fiddling around with the servers and not being able to even apply a band-aid, do the unthinkable much-thought-about-but-never-acted-upon-because-the-decision-ranks-right-up-there-with-fly-screen-doors-on-a-submarine and decrease the server population cap?
Have a think about this for a moment, because it's not like everyone on my server suddenly said "Hey, I loved the server crashes and lag on the weekend so much, I think I'll log in again for some more head meets desk action!". It seems my sickly server is not the only one refusing to take people for a ride.
Meanwhile, Penny Arcade also believe taking the servers down should, you know, actually fix things, have revoked World of Warcraft's Game of the Year 2004 status, and ask their own question.
If this happened in Galaxies, or Dark Age, or AO, of course it'd be everybody everywhere piling on. But it's Blizzard, and since they made a few good games years ago now they can do whatever the fuck they want to. Great policy, and it totally serves consumers. Good job. Where's Lum The Mad when you need him.
My bet is on him being stored away behind the speech proof walls of a competitor. Rest assured though, there is a chance he is at least having a smile. Unless he plays World of Warcraft, that is.
Of course, not everyone believes Blizzard has been skipping down the garden path and giving everyone roses.
But hey, these people are no Lum. So why take any notice of them?
I'd suggest they upgrade their hardware, improve their bandwidth... oh, wait, they have eighty-eight frickin' servers, that'd be EXPENSIVE...
Maybe they should license Cryptic's instancing technology ;-)
Posted by: Malderi | January 17, 2005 at 08:24 PM
I'd settle for a server split EQ-style...without the paying through the nose for it.
Posted by: Cosmik | January 17, 2005 at 08:25 PM
It's cool to see gaming passion again. WoW must be really good.
Posted by: D-0ne | January 18, 2005 at 05:11 AM
THis is the way the world ends D-One. People do not quit mmorpgs in a rage and fury over some nerf or rule change. They just get tired of it. They miss raids and find that they did not rally miss being on them. Their houses decay and they find that they don't really mind. Have a hard time remember when they logged in last. Eventually, they decide to stop paying the mothly fee. And they don't miss it when it is gone.
Let it go. There is a Next Big Thing (tm) right around the corner.
Posted by: =j | January 18, 2005 at 09:17 AM