I couldn’t post until now but I have a lot to say here.
I’ll be blunt, honest and I will do my best to remain civil in what I’m about to say, because god only knows how much I want to be rude right now.
I am extremely disappointed and angry. The following:
Is blatantly FALSE. The technology and the hardware both exists in 2022. It is not impossible to have a scalable service within a triple A game that can accommodate far more than the current load of players trying to play the game. How do I know? Because I work in this very industry as a Software Engineer in Online Services. I will not let my profession be disgraced like that with these lies. I know the technology that we have today, the one we had a decade ago and I know exactly what the real problem here is…
Blizzard considers Classic as a side project, a cash cow, and does not provide the necessary amount of resources that the Classic project requires. 2 years of Classic, the issue of queues were there at release of Classic and TBC Classic both, it was obvious to everyone that the same issue would just repeat itself for WotLK, not because it’s an impossible issue to solve, but because of Blizzard’s constant refusal to spend the money to provide a reasonable service to their customers.
And don’t pretend like it’s not true either, we can tell, it’s written on the wall in big bold letters.
From automation of silences/suspensions/bans (Proven by streamers), to the complete lack of communication with the community (Over a week of silence on this topic alone!), to the non-existent customer service (Anyone who opened a ticket knows how bad it is), to the lack of updates on features like your new and updated LFD despite the mountain of feedback pointing out the flaws and the lack of QoL features like filtering, resizing, etc., to the last minute everything. Everything points towards this, a barebone team of developers trying their best to make one of the most popular online game of 2020-2022 work. Like trying to build an entire stadium with nothing more than a crew of a few people and a pack of gum.
And I’m not blaming you, or the devs working on classic specifically, I am blaming the company, Blizzard, its executives, its finance team, whoever is responsible for the complete lack of support for this massive game that is Classic.
I am beyond tired of pretending like Blizzard might care even slightly, that we might get something, ANYTHING, that could be more than the complete bare minimum for a service we pay 15USD a month, that asked of us to spend 25USD per character to fix the issue of our characters being stuck on completely dead realms rather than offer a sensible solution a year ago. When you offered bulk character transfer to retail but said “tough luck” to classic and told us it was single transfer only. How incredibly insulting!
How in the world can I, or anyone, not think Blizzard is purposely treating Classic as nothing more than a joke, than a money printing machine, that you have anywhere close to the amount of developers a project like this actually need.
Pray tell me, why have you not updated your game code to follow the basic standards of online services in the twenty twenties. Why in the past two years of Classic has Blizzard not spend the resources necessary to make this issue never happen on the release of the most anticipated rerelease of the decade.
Why are we playing Classic Reforged? (As in Warcraft 3 Reforged for those who missed the reference here)
I know, you can’t fix your code in such a short amount of time for WotLK release, it’s too late now, that much is obvious, I know how long it takes to make changes. Even if Blizzard magically had an epiphany and decided to provide infinite amount of resources to Classic development, you wouldn’t have the time now. But, for the love of all that is holy, we are tired of being treated like nothing more than walking wallets, second class citizens, by your company when all we ask for is for the service we pay for to receive the amount of support it deserves, the amount of support it NEEDS.
Sincerely,
A disillusioned customer who still remembers the quality service of 14 years ago… when WotLK first released.