Source : Inquirer
Problems of scale blight Blizzard
IN WORLD OF WARCRAFT, Blizzard may have a massively popular online game with up to five million players, but it seems the sheer scale of the game brings problems the company is struggling to cope with.
After I nominated Blizzard Europe for worst tech support in the INQUIRER Gongs of the Year 2005, I expected that my inbox gets flooded with angry Warcraft-fanboys, but comments went in the other direction.
It appears that at least Blizzard Europe has a real problem on its shoulders, since most people who contacted me claimed "they never respond to real issues" and "often have server issues". A common complaint is that players rarely get offered compensatory days of play for the numerous occasions a realm becomes unavailable for a day and so on.
It seems the revenue of around 150 million Euros a quarter from its millions of subscribers is just not enough for the company to start resolving technical issues that are growing as the number of gamers continues to rise.
Being a WoW player myself, I emailed Blizzard Europe's spinolatas on more than one occasion about real issues gamers like me are suffering. I never yet got an answer.
WoW players will be familiar with the fiasco surrounding opening the gates of Ahn'Qiraj, a realm that was added in latest patch.
While servers filled with gamers that gathered on the place of event, some 27 crashed, leaving thousands of gamers stuck in their own realms.
Today, all of the servers in question are downed until tomorrow. Luckily, this time the crash was a major meltdown - a datacenter is on a move - so Blizzard gave from two to four days of free game time.
What happens to all those cases when players are unable to login because the server drops connections in the time between the meltdowns?
While critical posts disappear from official forums (non-official forums are quite filled with complaints), one skeleton being pushed back into the closet is the fact that Realm Status page often offers inaccurate information about the actual status of the realms in question.
It seems that adding new content isn't going without problems, and that servers can't withstand the load of players eager to live their virtual lives.
We wonder how long Blizzard persits in sporting the Sunglasses of Ignorance.
Problems of scale blight Blizzard
IN WORLD OF WARCRAFT, Blizzard may have a massively popular online game with up to five million players, but it seems the sheer scale of the game brings problems the company is struggling to cope with.
After I nominated Blizzard Europe for worst tech support in the INQUIRER Gongs of the Year 2005, I expected that my inbox gets flooded with angry Warcraft-fanboys, but comments went in the other direction.
It appears that at least Blizzard Europe has a real problem on its shoulders, since most people who contacted me claimed "they never respond to real issues" and "often have server issues". A common complaint is that players rarely get offered compensatory days of play for the numerous occasions a realm becomes unavailable for a day and so on.
It seems the revenue of around 150 million Euros a quarter from its millions of subscribers is just not enough for the company to start resolving technical issues that are growing as the number of gamers continues to rise.
Being a WoW player myself, I emailed Blizzard Europe's spinolatas on more than one occasion about real issues gamers like me are suffering. I never yet got an answer.
WoW players will be familiar with the fiasco surrounding opening the gates of Ahn'Qiraj, a realm that was added in latest patch.
While servers filled with gamers that gathered on the place of event, some 27 crashed, leaving thousands of gamers stuck in their own realms.
Today, all of the servers in question are downed until tomorrow. Luckily, this time the crash was a major meltdown - a datacenter is on a move - so Blizzard gave from two to four days of free game time.
What happens to all those cases when players are unable to login because the server drops connections in the time between the meltdowns?
While critical posts disappear from official forums (non-official forums are quite filled with complaints), one skeleton being pushed back into the closet is the fact that Realm Status page often offers inaccurate information about the actual status of the realms in question.
It seems that adding new content isn't going without problems, and that servers can't withstand the load of players eager to live their virtual lives.
We wonder how long Blizzard persits in sporting the Sunglasses of Ignorance.