WoW Offline, Unavailable, Down
I think it’s unacceptable for any MMORPG to ever have “down-time,” and especially World of Warcraft, the most advanced of its kind. Consumers are paying $15 or so a month, and they have the reasonable expectation to be able to play their game whenever they wish, and for how long they want. Of course, Blizzard can do whatever it so desires, but it would be nice if WoW’s maintenance were seamless, such that it never interrupted or disturbed actual gameplay. You can check the status of your realm here.
Above is a screenshot of WoW as of this morning, with its notification of a 6-hour downtime for today. That means the masses of eager gamers cannot play for 25% of today, yet they are paying the full subscription fee. Fans, however, are for the large part used to this. It’s a phenomenon that occurs with great regularity; think once-to-thrice weekly. Ultimately, the ethical question is this: how much disservice are we willing to take with our monthly bill for our favorite MMORPG? Blizzard needs to make a non-intrusive method by which we can play WoW night or day, 24/7 if we want, and still have all the subtle benefits of a well-maintained game.
Update: Much to my chagrin, but not to my surprise, Blizzard has delayed the maintenance an additional two hours today. That makes the amount of game time lost to performance-tweaking maintainance (or whatever they do in the down-time) 8 hours, or 33% of today.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 27th, 2006 at 2:01 pm and is tagged with intrusive method, game time, maintainance, disservice, subscription fee, chagrin, regularity, blizzard, mmorpg, downtime, expectation, world of warcraft, tweaking, gamers, screenshot, phenomenon, consumers, surprise. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.
17 Responses to 'WoW Offline, Unavailable, Down'
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on June 29th, 2006 at 9:29 am
Now that’s just rude… people pay $1 every 2 days… and expect the sit to be online. WoW should announce this type of downtimes much earlier, and they should give people something for free (either extra funds, or free expansions). 8 hour maintenance seems quite long for a game as popular as WoW.
on August 14th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
I fully agree with this. Blizzard IMHO has a responsibility to take care of these issues It bothers me greatly that after paying roughly $30 per month (my wife and I both have an account) not to mention the initial $100 ($50 per copy) to play the game that EVERY single week without exception the servers are shut down for a minimum of 6 hours (maybe once or twice in the almost 2 years the game has been out this wasn’t the case). That doesn’t even include the numerous times that the servers were just borked for 2-3 days at a time. For the amount of money they are raking in from us (the consumer) as a whole Vivendi/Blizzard could spend a small amount of the money and correct these issues. Especially with their first expansion to the game only a couple of months off. Which, if I want to continue to play with and hang out in game with my friends I pretty much am required to buy. Figure another $80 for me and my wife. How long is it before they up the monthly fee do you think? With no end of these issues in site or ever being properly addressed.
on September 4th, 2006 at 6:02 am
You faggots, you think that they can fix the server quickly? You bitch about percentages and whatnot but you’re forgetting one thing, 50c Is a small price to pay to get rid of glitchs and to get updates.
So when you still their with all your fucking bitching just remember they made the game and $100 + $30 a month is a small fee for the amount of work that went into the game you wankers.
on September 14th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
no man, 30 bucks a month is way WAY to much for this game online, people pay for final fantasy 11 2-4 bucks a month per character slot … the effort put into this game wasn’t all that much… the graphics are the almost the same as Warcraft 3 just blown up … and more to that is the enviroments don’t take 4 years to make … it takes a month or two with a good team… and it’s the patchs that cost the real money … whatever i’m no Expert but i don’t want to pay 60-70 CND dollars and then pay 35 every 2 months following cause i’ve played guild wars and factions and they have free online. Think about that
on October 17th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
Lol, you obviously have a feeble mathmatical abilty.
15 bucks is not cheap for a whole lot of work.
IT IS 15 * millions of userd * 12 months a year.
We’re talking billions of dollars for the lifetime of WOW.
I beleive they should spend quite a bit of the massive income making their users happier. And I think they will. It’s just a matter of priorities. Blizzard is trying to increase their profits. We powerless users just have to wait. . . and wait . . . and wait . . . and
on October 23rd, 2006 at 8:51 am
The fact that the perform these updates is convincing enougth that they do there job thoroughly, without updates the game will stay the same and be boringn one the less degraded and crash, i would rather 8 hour down time than 3 days. nothings perfect and anyone expecting continual play should get them self in check and realise its a game with real people working on it all the time to make it better for everyone not just the people who play”24/7″.
on November 3rd, 2006 at 9:08 am
in runescape it’s $5.00 a month per person.. and in WoW I have like 20 ppl and if ur like me its cheaper to play WoW than it is to play runescape, final fantasy, or almost any other game that makes you pay per person that might be worth playing… and also running WoW takes tons of work.. imagine how busy the GM’s are and how many people blizzard has to put into work just to keep the game up……. so if u think about it…. blizzard might need $10 a month… $15 is a bit over i must say but i know lots of ppl that would have to pay more to play lots of other MMORPG’s than to play WoW just because they have so many characters…. so plz consider that before you start whining about how much it costs to play WoW….
on December 14th, 2006 at 11:45 am
Blizzard has refunded game time on numerous occasions. The billing dates of all accounts affected by an unexpected crash or lengthly update have all been postponed an appropriate ammount of time. They will push your billing date back - so you dont pay for the day - check your bank statements for draft times they are frequently different. And they have also offered full rest xp to players before.
They do they’re job quite well.
on December 25th, 2006 at 9:54 pm
hey, how about if you dont like it dont play. i enjoy new content, i enjoy stuff getting fixed. they cant put in thoes updates while we are online you know. if your going to do nothing but bitch about WoW, my suggestion is to not play it at all. christ, get a life.
on January 2nd, 2007 at 12:42 am
Look………….I have played many games before……..and WOW SUCKS SHITE………what the hell…………….I mean………….the battlesystemn sucks money shit and its full of crap…………….you press 1 and the guy attaks automatically……………………wow…………………..thats the worst game ever…………………. even DIABLO was much better than this crap…………………………..YEAH……….. I WANT TO PAY MONEY TO WATCH SOME FUCK NUT WACK A STICK AROUND (WHEN I PRESS 1)……………….WHAT THE FUCK………….this game blows crack and shit…………………this game shouldv’e have a battle system like SW: Battlefront 2 or something……………plus the character and all the other crap………but this just sucks………..to watch your character do all the fighthing and all ytou need to do is press 1 ……………….. WOOPDEEDOOOOO I DONT give a crap………………this game bnlows
ITS A POS…………..WHAT THE HELL WAS BLIOZZARD THINKING and what are all these lozers paying money to play such a mother fucking POS game………………………….ITS ALL BULLSHIT
on January 10th, 2007 at 11:49 am
you “A Plzzed dude” didn’t understand the game… wtf if u think clicking a button is enough u are a fool, maybe at the firsts 5 lvls… try to click a button and see the fight against a player of the opposite faction and let’s see who is going to win… SW:battlefront is a totally different game (and more boring than wow IMO), you can’t compare these 2 games
on June 27th, 2007 at 8:20 am
Dear mister Pizza, as ErPiotta said “You wont get far using only one button against enemies”
I have to agree with that.
And may the force be with you where the sun does not shine.
on September 7th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Fully agree with the 2 above comments, Plzed dude, your an ass. You see the game of wow is much more then clicking a few keys, though it hasn’t got the full action that Battlefront has such an idea is stupid for example, with a point n click sort of game (to be derogatory) the characters have few animations. In battlefront the characters arms, legs and head are all animated so as they can move realistically according to where they’re aiming, now here’s the tricky bit douche bag and keep your tiny brain ready for this, that sort of animation and detail is fine for 40 players at once, now lets imagine it at 400 players in somewhere thats pretty graphically detailed with particle effects for fire, somewhere like Ironforge (Game players know what I mean) dick-wod, correct, very few computers could handle that, very few game engines could handle that and thus wow instead rewards players for ’speccing’ there characters right, playing the role in the team and having tactics. Where I won’t deny that I love Battlefront 2 I have to say this, the 2 games are not alike, they’re not even in the same Genre for god sake thats like trying to compare Alien and Romeo and Juliet for god sake. Don’t like this? I don’t care, I couldn’t care less okay because your 10 IQ opinion could not matter less to me.
on January 8th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
hahahahaha pizzed dude you are the stupidest person ive ever seen and your a moronic bitch with no logic or basic thoughts whatsoever. quite frankly you need to cut your wrists and strangle yourself with your mouse wire because you dont deserve to live in a world that requires atleast basic thought processes. concluded.
on January 8th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
i agree that it takes a large amount of work to keep a game as big and detailed as wow up and running but cmon cant the split the downtime up to like a couple hours a day when the most ppl are offline instead of almost half a day every tuesday many times extended an addition hour or 2 or 5? i think they do a good job for the most part it just blows on tuesdays cus i cant play on my lunch break anyhow i just seen ppl bitching and figured id join in on the fun.
on June 25th, 2008 at 3:49 am
WoW isn’t expensive if you think about it;
In Europe it is 10€ a month, 15$ in america. That’s 50c in America a day. I could go for a walk outside for 30 minutes and pick up 50 cent off the ground, if you have a job even with the minimum wage you should still afford that easily.
A visit to the cinema is around 15$ and that lats three hours.. you don’t get your money back if you disliked the movie.
on September 9th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Until Microsoft reinvents the wheel, and Im pretty sure WOW runs on a windows server platform….. you will always have downtime when patches are implemented…
Im pretty sure the author of this post has no background in IT due to the nature of what he/she wrote…
Its easy to bitch when youre the consumer and you have no idea what really has to go on in the background.