Veteran player here, and over the years I’ve seen a lot of changes in the game. Some good changes and some bad. I’ve -as well as many- have been through it all. Out of all the changes (besides the talent changes in Cataclysm) the changes in server downtime is by far the worst I’ve seen to date.
Honestly, it has gotten very bad for it being a subscription based game. I know there’s some who will say that the constant matainence is nothing new, but being a veteran, player, I can honestly say it’s only been “nothing new” since late BFA and Shadowlands. Its like paying $18.00 a month for Netflix only to have it offline for hours 3 days a week. Now thats unfair to those that pay that subscription fee each month, why isn’t it unfair to the WoW community to go through the same thing?
Unfortunately, I saw this coming and it has only worsened over time. The only way this problem and likely post would see any weight put into it is if WoWs playerbase just stopped playing the game because of it. Unfortunately that would likely not happen because of the real-life connections veteran players like myself have made over the years. I still play with some of the people I’ve know since Wotlk. We are at a conundrum.
I can understand that there are bugs in the game that need fixing. I get it. I really do, but if its not game breaking, can’t the downtime wait until next reset (as originally designed)? I heard that these almost daily matainences were to cater to the world first raiders so to make the Mythic content more bearable for them or to fix minor bugs. I remember, in Legion, there being some Mythic hang ups for the world-first teams, but they had to wait until reset just like everyone else so as to not disenfranchise the other 95% of their player base with constant downtime or they did live matainence to fix small issues. Back then, I still felt like Blizzard cared for the majority of their player base, but today I do not.
I affectionately call these constant downtimes “rolling blackouts” - thus the title because people depend on the game as a way to spend time with the friends that they made over the years in a similar way people depend on electricity, but have to deal with rolling blackouts in the summer in California.
I would hate to see this becoming the new “normal” as it disadvantages 95% of WoWs player base. Maybe there will be a breaking point for players Maybe not… I would love for one of the veteran developers to put their foot down in favor of us. To say “enough is enough” lets stop all of this constant downtime for our players because their time matters to us. I guess that’s my hope, but I’m afraid this will fall of deaf ears just like the timewalking ring bug I post about on X, here in the forums, and through an in-game ticket in season one. (still not fixed. I checked). Blizzard, please do right by your players here…
The constant “scheduled” but unscheduled matainence they have been doing. Forcing the game to be down numerous hours a week over the span of several days a week. Thats what im talking about.
They STILL dont fix things that should be fixed to be fair. If you’ve gotten used to the frequent downtime that thats your choice, I’m just speaking up for the people who don’t like this change in recent years, that has slowly gotten worse. Game-breaking mechanics? Yes, fix those, but to do these “small fixes” and have constant downtime throughout the week is getting out of hand.
Yes… One day a week. It was expected. When they put up “Scheduled maintenance” less than 24 hours of the downtime several days a week it starts to wear on people. It makes them think that Blizzard is abusing their power by misusing players’ time.
Some people only get limited time to play the game, because of various reasons. These downtimes may just cut into that time. I as well as many others have a life outside of WoW, and we just want to be able to enjoy the game on our free time as was intended, not to be inundated with matainence or downtime.
Yeah, I’m also a veteran player, and I haven’t memory holed all the maintenance we got from Vanilla and onwards all the way to the current day. Server maintenance happening outside of the normal Tuesday is 100% normal.
When it needs to happen, it happens. Ya’ll want issues fixed? This is the price. Deal with it.
I cannot stress this enough; you need to stop pitching a fit whenever the servers come down for maintenance. You will survive without WoW for an hour or two. Do something else!
Unless it was game breaking, they typically kept it to the weekly maintenance.
And as to another reply. I handle my priorities quite well as I put my real life situation over my personal time to enjoy the game. Oftentimes that leaves me to have free time when these random “Scheduled maintenances” occur.
Exactly. I remember entire server rollbacks happening, servers crashing, bugs that were introduced in patches that forced additional maintenance.
Izume claims to be a veteran player, but they’re memory holing all the maintenance that came with those many, many years of gameplay. This is by no means a ‘since BFA’ thing. It’s been a thing since the game launched in 2004.
