The servers are expected to go live at 6 p.m. EDT this evening, simultaneously around the globe, so you west coasters will still be at work, and the Europeans will be heading off to dreamland, but Classic will be up and hopefully functional when you are. We have it on good authority from a source who happens to be intimately involved with Blizzard’s infrastructure that it’s all hands on deck there and at affected ISPs for this launch, which won’t surprise you since the servers – including the new ones added today – were already flooded with people rolling their characters and claiming names ahead of the release this evening.
“On our backend, we have a number of backup and contingency plans,” senior software engineer Omar Gonzalez told Polygon in a piece earlier today. “We can grow and expand our servers, and we’re ready to adapt immediately, but we want to be very cognizant about how we’re managing our server populations because we don’t want to be disruptive to communities.”
Let’s hope they are overprepared!
Blizzard has already posted up both a known issues list and a “this is not a bug” list for players. For example, “loot sparkles do not scale up with creature size” – that’s a bug. “The chest at the end of the encounter with The Seven in Blackrock Depths does not prompt a loot roll. Beware of Ninjas!” – that’s a feature. Ah, vanilla.
We’ll be updating this thread tonight with the latest, but in the meantime, you can get caught up on all our best WoW Classic coverage to date!
Let’s celebrate with a #ToastToWarcraft and 15 years of epic adventures and everlasting allies. Here's to rediscovering Azeroth and forging new friendships! pic.twitter.com/4Ojgyh8TC6
We suggest that players choosing a realm consider one of these, as other realms currently marked as “Full” population will experience extended queues.”
“We suggest that players choosing a realm consider one of these, as other realms currently marked as “Full” population will experience extended queues,” Blizz writes. Herod is predictably now over 30,000 in the queue.
Update
“The WoW Classic team has been working hard to authentically recapture the original World of Warcraft experience for adventurers old and new,” Blizzard posted this evening. There’s a whole summary of Very Basic account info, like how you access it (pay your sub!), how you secure your account (get an authenticator!), how you get help in-game (call a GM or look it up on the “internet”!), and so forth. There are specific sections on harassment and scamming too. “A silence for a chat violation in WoW Classic will affect characters in World of Warcraft as well,” the studio warns. And while Blizz will deal with scamming, “being a jerk about loot” doesn’t count.
“Scamming other players is a violation of our World of Warcraft game policies. We will investigate any reports of scamming that we receive and take the appropriate action, removing gains and penalizing those who violate this policy as needed. It’s important to note that Game Masters will not restore any gold or items that may have been lost. World of Warcraft loot systems empower players to manage loot directly. For this reason, Blizzard support will not redistribute loot in the event of a dispute between players. If you’re playing with a new group, it’s advised to always be clear on the loot rules before proceeding . Discuss the plans for distributing loot with the raid leader before you become locked into a raid. This will provide you with an opportunity to make an informed decision on whether you want to decline the invitation or leave the group. Multiple loot methods are available in WoW Classic, and we encourage you to group with others you trust, especially when using Master Loot. In some extreme cases, Game Masters may deem it appropriate to penalize a raid leader who fails to adhere to clearly established looting rules. Please keep in mind that looting rules like ‘Main Spec > Off Spec’ are not enforceable qualifiers.”
We're aware of an issue causing boats and zeppelins to go missing on certain servers. We've developed a fix, but it requires realm restarts to take effect. We plan to do restarts early tomorrow:https://t.co/1jmTw5URM8https://t.co/aeVLyj4zkj
