Project Lore

Magtheridon, my home server, has been off ever since the Lich King was released upon the masses.  Pings of 100-200ms (56k speeds) have become the norm.  Unplayable pings of 500ms and beyond plague prime time on Tuesday and Wednesday.  As the week moves on the server becomes more playable.  To little to late, as the damage is done to most guilds.  Including mine, which raids on Tuesdays and Wednesdays only. 

After a successful 25-man with my two 10-man guilds last Tuesday, this Tuesday's was an absolute disaster.  While forming the raid we realized that the pings were going all over the place, from tolerable to two seconds of lag.  We zoned in hoping that the instance cluster would be more stable.  It wasn't.  We cleared trash, but could not get past Marrowgar due to the sporadic latency.  After the raid dissolved a 10-man was formed to tackle Ignis, the new weekly quest.  Our assumption was that being outgeared would make up for any lag.  The quick demise of Flame Leviathan gave us hope.  False hope, we wiped.  Repeatedly.  Our failing was chalked up to lag and everyone logged in disgust.  Who knows if my rogue will get his weekly done now...

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Earlier this month two new MMORPGs released, Global Agenda and Star Trek Online.  Both of them saw some hiccups early, and STO still has long queues, but things have settled down and stabilized for the most part.  Over five years ago World of Warcraft launched to a larger mess than either GA or STO.  It wasn't devastating by any means.  In fact, the problems were mostly due to the game's incredible popularity, which caused Blizzard to scramble to put dozens of additional servers online ASAP.  The subscription base has bloated over the 11 million mark forcing Blizzard to continue to add additional servers to the mix to compensate.  Fine and dandy, but what's been going on with the old servers.  The originals, the systems that were put together before the game was even released?  They've been upgraded, but has it been enough?

The past few weeks have been awful for the two servers I predominately play on.  Coincidentally, both server happen to be original.  Things have been so bad on Magtheridon this week that Tuesday and Wednesday were total loses for raiding.  Tuesday was marred by the extended maintenance, which is fine and understandable, but Magtheridon became Lagtheridon immediately after going online.  The entire world, instances and all, was totally unplayable.  A server restart didn't help, and I eventually gave up around 10:30 PM.  Wednesday followed with more of the same, but cleared up much earlier.  The damage had already been done, all the raiders gave up and logged before Magtheridon became stable, so nothing died.

I know my server is far from the only server to connect people to Azeroth, but from what I've heard around the blogosphere and official forums is that something is amidst.  Many people blame it on the new holiday and its mechanics.  Others point out that server instability is not a recent occurrence.

Whatever the reason, it seems that WoW players are giving Blizzard a pass on the issue.  That's partly because we've become somewhat accustom to the day-long hiccups.  I believe it's also because we play so much WoW that we can shrug off missing a day.  We just use the unexpected free time for other forms of entertainment or games.  It's old and busted to us now, not new hotness. 

Imagine if your brand new MMORPG was largely unplayable for two days just after its launch.  If WoW had released alongside STO and GA, that's exactly what would have occurred.  Can you imagine the nerd rage that would have hit the Internet? 

I know WoW's server farm is far more complex than STO or GA, but that doesn't give Blizzard a free pass.  After all, WoW is pulling in a billion dollars a year for Blizzard.  Yet, few players seem the least bit outraged.  I guess that's one of the advantages to having five years behind you?

Patch 3.2 Executing.... Whenever Blizzard decides to lay a patch on us I hold my breath.  Sure, I want the bounty of content, but sometimes that isn't all we receive.  Oftentimes we'll be stuck at login screens, the World Server will be down, our add-ons will cease to work, or worse, fail to do their jobs appropriately.  And that's just some of the "features" that we hope to see on a Tuesday evening.  More painful are the Slowsky approved download speeds, constant reboots, authentication problems, massive lag, or lag spikes, and the realization that nothing is going to be accomplished till Wednesday.  Think I am being a bit dramatic?  Then allow me to refresh your memory of Patch 3.0.8. I was as excited as anyone for Call of the Crusade (the game can never have too many 5-mans), but I had my reservations about the patch actually going live.  Boy have I never been so glad to eat my words before. Blizzard delivered the patch with only slightly extended downtime.  While I didn't login till a few hours after my server returned from dead, I was greeted with a stable, normal latency experience the entire night.  It didn't matter if I was running around the generally packed Dalaran or the newly flooded Argent Tournament grounds.  It was all entirely playable on Magtheridon (NA).  The post-patch trauma has been so negligible that I've been able to run through the dailies, grab a level and change on Solidsagart and tackle the new dungeon (repeatedly), along with some heroics.  And that was just on Tuesday! To round out the objectiveness of the post I should point out that it hasn't been all roses.  Roughly half of my add-ons were broke (and some remain unfixed by authors too busy with content) by Patch 3.2.  I've encountered the Trial of the Crusade opening encounter bug (is there an accepted name for it?) roughly half of my attempts.  Last, but not least, is the ninja change to Malygos, I doubt it's a bug, that gave our raid a bit of pause.  The big blue dragon's Vortex drops players off far farther from their original location than ever before.  And no, I still haven't kill the crazed warmonger. I heard there was something up with Kel'Thuzad, but haven't come across the lich recently.  Has anyone experienced anything wonky with that encounter?  How stable has your server been since patch day?  Have you been able to chain those heroics? All things considered I believe Call of the Crusade was the most expertly executed patch in recent memory.  Certainly since Wrath of the Lich King's launch back in November.  Dare we assume Blizzard is finally getting the hang of the patch spiel?!

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My long-awaited vacation has finally arrived. And one of the top items on my priority list (although I'm sot sure yet whether it will happen) is playing more WoW and getting a feel for all the 3.1 patch changes. The only problem: I'm more than 800 miles from home and in a much different atmosphere than usual. Here, there's no permanent desk setup, which isn't a huge deal since I normally play on my laptop anyway. It's just a bit less comfortable playing from a hard, wood chair than in my much softer desk chair. But since I need my mouse accessible, I can't exactly sink into a couch. I wish I would have remembered to bring my lapdesk - that would have solved that issue beautifully. Thankfully, latency isn't much of an issue. The DSL here versus cable back home both have me hovering at about 200 ms. But I doubt we'd have enough bandwidth here to run two (or three) windows of WoW simultaneously. Needless to say, my escapades with dual-boxing have temporarily halted. I'm just glad I'm not staying with someone who still runs dialup! So it's not quite the same as back home, but I'm able to squeeze in a bit of WoW in between fun vacation-esque stuff. Enough to feed the addiction. For any of you all looking to leave town for spring break or whatever reason and still hope to get in some gaming on a laptop you can travel with, I recommend: find a comfortable spot - bring a lapdesk (do as I say, not as I do). Don't forget your mouse - touchpads are incredibly difficult to use in-game. And if you have anything like a Zboard that you can fit in your luggage, bring it along, too. Even if you can't fit your entire desktop, a keyboard doesn't take up a ton of space. Of course, if you CAN bring a more powerful desktop, that also would be nice. Though it may limit your options for a spot to play. And no matter what the case, remember: You're on vacation! Don't forget to run some RL quests for fun, too! So what's your WoW routine while on vacation - do you still find the time to squeeze in some playtime? And do you have any more tips to offer for those traveling?

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