What is the plan to resolve the issue with the long queue times on Benediction?
Queue times last night at 5pm Central time were 406 min. We only schedule 120 min of gaming per week. My friends and I are all working adults with families. For us the queue times make the game unplayable. This really is an issue that stops us from enjoying the game we all love because we literally cannot login to play the game.
I see the option to move my character for free – My friends and I have been on Benediction since day one of Classic WoW. Why should we be forced to move off our home server?
Layering is turned on – Layering is the technical solution to the problem. There are layers turned on. Why are there not enough layers to handle the player load on the server? Does Blizzard plan to increase the number of layers on the server? If not please explain why. Is it a technical reason? Is it a financial decision? Is it Blizzard trying to force characters to move for some other reason?
Financial issues - Does Blizzard plan to offer credits to us? We are paying for a monthly sub so we can play WoW Classic but due to Blizzard artificially limiting the number of players on our server we are not getting what we are paying for.
The plan is they opened free transfers off of Benediction to some other servers. Unfortunately, players don’t seem to want to use the free transfers as they think other players should and they shouldn’t, so there is really nothing Blizzard can do.
I am hoping that a Blizzard support agent does respond to the post. Blizzard already has a technical solution to the long queue issue that would not require anyone to move to another server. Its called layering. Blizzard even has layers enabled on Benediction. They just do not have enough layers to support the crush of players the server is getting right now.
There’s not much else they can do that they’ve not already done. They have locked your server so no one else can transfer in and they’re offering free transfers.
Those are concerns for max player count. Other concerns with max player count have to do with the game design side of things. If a zone was only designed to handle X number of players then the game play suffers when they get more players than it was designed to handle.
That’s where layering comes in. Players on different layers cannot see each other. They dont interact with the same instance of the zone so there is not competition for resources in the same zone. There is also not an issue with forcing game clients to render too many models at once.
Blizzard has layering enabled on Benediction. I would like to know why they dont have enough layers enabled to handle the load. I would like to know why Blizzard is not able to or is choosing to not enable additional layers to match player load.
To make a long story short: a server is a physical item. Trying to make it work overtime to handle 200x times its max load won’t make it work any better or doable. No amount of money can make it better, because they’re top of the line as is. If no one want to move off server, then there isn’t anything Blizzard can do.
I’m sorry, Pizzasauce, but Support wouldn’t really have any information on realm management. Other than what is already public, such as the Free Character Moves availability you already mentioned.
Anything else would come from our Community Team, who would post in the Wrath of the Lich King General Discussion forum.
What about the players using automation to get around afk in game. People are to scared to log out so they afk run/macro whatever. And I have been waiting to play the game for 2 hours. These people are never going to log out.
If you feel someone is using automation, right click them and select report for cheating. Blizzard will go over their logs to determine if such is actually occurring.
WoW is mostly automated so I doubt it would make much difference. You never get to talk to a real GM. I played in Vanilla when they actually had customer support. Those days are over.
@tolna I have been a server admin and programmer for over two decades now. Designing and running server infrastructure that can scale up and down due to user demand was a problem solved 15 years ago.
For instance Kubernetes with Docker will automatically watch server loads, network loads and spin up new server infrastructure and deploy new instances on the fly and downscale server side infrastructure when user load drops. Its been a very very long time since server side infrastructure has been confined to the limits of an on-metal server. For over a decade and a half its been the standard to design server infrastructure to span as many virtual machines, on-metal machines, private-cloud instances or public-cloud instances as needed.
For example, that’s how one would implement layering to scale to as many layers as needed to meet player loads at any given time.
I am so glad I didn’t waste 80$ on the WOTLK expansion package. I can’t even log in to play the game. How would I even enjoy the cool stuff? Money saved. Thanks Blizz.
Very much not allowed. If you know of anyone doing it, or ways they are doing it, you can email hacks@blizzard.com. They won’t reply, but that gets the info to the proper team.
There was a thread about it the other day here, and the Blues reminded the person that they really can’t use ANY form of automation to stay logged in.
@vrakthris Thanks for the response. Who do we talk to about getting a credit? We are paying for something that we are not getting. Blizzard does not have phone support. Blizzard does allow us to open tickets on the website. Blizzard does not offer live chat support. This public forum seems to be the only option to get a Blizzard employee to even hear that we have concerns. I am not sure what workflow is available to us as Blizzard’s customers to have these issues addressed if you are not able to assist.
Best,
David Brooks
P.S. – Great, and now the Blizzard Support Forum is not letting me respond to the post because I am responding too often. All I am doing is responding to the replies that have been directed at me and now the Forums is rate limiting me for literally using a Forum like its a forum.
Activision is not about to approve any substantial increase in their server budget until the deal with Disney goes through.
The price of the Activision purchase included an amount for X number of servers and supporting hardware and comms. It would be irresponsible for Activision to undertake a substantial upgrade at this time and start changing the parameters of the deal.
Activision is part of a capitalist world and keeping Disney stockholders happy is important at this time.
Latest estimates for the Disney deal to get all the international approvals needed are “by” the summer of 2023. I would expect that the earliest there would be a major infrastructure upgrade would be within a year after that. Disneys plans to use Activision to develop Disney titles, may well take precedence.
You’re paying to being able to play the game, not a given server, nor at given time. Blizzard has other servers to play on, more so when no one want to play on other servers. Blizzard can’t really give anything for something no one want to take what was offered.
To be frank, I’m not certain credit or compensation would be offered by Support at this stage. Generally speaking, as long as you have access to the game, you have access. I understand that access to most means access to the characters you’ve been working on and want to play, but just giving the technicalities and what Support may do is usually based on policies that have been set for us.
With that said, the ticket system is really the only means of contact if you wish to inquire about receiving credit.
The Wrath of the Lich King Classic General Discussion forum is the best means for feedback to be seen by our Community Managers and Game Developers. They may not always respond, but they do review those forums specifically for feedback.
Really I am here to talk to Blizzard support since this is the only way Blizzard offers customers to interact with them.
@Tolna Your position is silly though. That would be like Netflix claiming each show on their service can only be watched by so many people at once and its my fault for wanting to watch my favorite show on Netflix between when I get home from work and my bed time.
@Nok… Blizzard is not being bought by Disney. A Disney stockholder back in 2019 said it would be good for Disney to buy Blizzard but nothing ever came of that…
That may be, but Customer Support is a forum for players to assist other players. There is never a guarantee of one of our SFAs popping in, but you lucked out. And too, this is a public forum. Anyone with their account in good standing may post in any thread, so long as they abide by the CoC and all of that.