Extended Downtime for WoW

Posted by Stropp on December 12, 2006

It looks like the weekly downtime tonight will be extended. I can’t say I didn’t expect this, with the problems that have been plaguing the servers since the WoW 2.0.1 patch.

I had a bit of time on Saturday, so I logged in to Stropp in order to re-assign my talents, pick up a few spells, and maybe polish off a couple of quests. I was in the middle of bartering with the Hunter Trainer ("What do you mean I have to pay for this spell again?") when he stopped talking to me. For a moment or ten I wondered if I had said something to offend him, and then with the sudden disjointedness of doom, I found my self staring at the login screen with a message telling me I had been disconnected from the server. I didn’t log back in, I had other things to do, and it was a hot day (41C).

Hopefully tonight, there will be a new patch applied that will go at least some of the way to alleviating these problems. I know developing software is hard. I know developing software that serves hundreds or thousands of simultaneous users at one time is very hard. And, I know that human behavior introduces all sorts of undesirable side effects into complex systems. I have a lot of sympathy for the World of Warcraft developers, they have a difficult job. It’s one of the reasons I completely support the "when it’s done" philosophy of game development. I want to play stable games.

Unfortunately, these days there are too many games released before they are done. I can’t help feeling that the "Eye of the Storm" patch falls into this category.

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