Blizzard Post on Very Extended Burning Crusade Classic Pre-Patch Maintenance

[Stoy]

Blizzard Post on Very Extended Burning Crusade Classic Pre-Patch Maintenance

No one on the WoW team that I’ve talked to this afternoon can remember a maintenance that took this long. It looks like that’s because we’ve never done anything like this in World of Warcraft, where we’re basically turning one game into two games and we need every player-character in both games to be perfectly playable as they all were just before maintenance started.

Please know this: there’s a good reason for how long it’s taking, and our live operations team are making solid progress toward a resolution.

There are jobs that copy data and jobs that check the integrity of data and there’s an immense amount of data to process before we even begin the steps that we take to check everything manually. It’s not possible for us to lose anything, but it is possible for us to have an issue that requires a step to be repeated. In today’s case, the step we had to start over was a big one. While performing data integrity checks on the Burning Crusade Classic and Classic Era realms, we discovered an unfortunate issue with all player mail. The nature of the issue necessitated that we restore the portion of the database that contains that information in order to ensure nothing is lost. We’ve been in progress on this restoration for quite some time, but as you can imagine, it’s a huge amount of information.

We apologize for the delay in getting you back into Azeroth. We’re pretty sure we’ll be done in a few hours. It’s impossible to know with certainty, but our understanding of how long it’s going to take is coming into focus.

[Moozart]

Looks like Pallies and Shaman going to get even less time to level

[Logwyn]

Looks like Pallies and Shaman going to get even less time to level

They could just fix it by allowing them to be boosted.

[Bigcountry11782]

They could fix it by not trying to get the game out before its ready.

[Ham on Rye]

They could just fix it by allowing them to be boosted.

Won't happen, and it shouldn't happen. A better idea would be just to give blood elves and draenei a +XP boost until launch - nothing major, like 5% or 10% or so - solely to make up for the lost day.

[Pons]

They could make a more authentic BC experience by not allowing anyone to roll a blood elf or draenei until June 1.

[Zyky]

They could fix it by not trying to get the game out before its ready.

But how else can they please investors? They need a Q2 release to boost "time spent in game" metric otherwise investors are going to start asking questions.

[Aurabolt]

I do think giving everyone in TBC Servers under level 58 a +100% EXP Boost until June 1 would be a good start personally.

[Sensa1]

I do think giving everyone in TBC Servers under level 58 a +100% EXP Boost until June 1 would be a good start personally.

that's just ridiculous...one lost day isn't worth a 100% EXP boost for 13 days...

as to the other responses so far it's quite obvious that this delay has little to do with the game not being ready and everything to do with a corrupt data file that occurred in a process they really have never done before (splitting servers/games - classic vs tbc classic) and couldn't realistically test beforehand.

[Deathtalk]

We unfortunately forgot our cash shop as that is essential to the wow classic tbc experience...blizzard was not prepared!
What about the marks in the mail from bgs that expire in 24 hours.............. could it be that?

[Machismo]

that's just ridiculous...one lost day isn't worth a 100% EXP boost for 13 days...

as to the other responses so far it's quite obvious that this delay has little to do with the game not being ready and everything to do with a corrupt data file that occurred in a process they really have never done before (splitting servers/games - classic vs tbc classic) and couldn't realistically test beforehand.

This could have easily been tested (and should have).

Any company will have test and development servers, for exactly this. Any patch, any update... will first be tested on them.

[Vampyrr]

They could make a more authentic BC experience by not allowing anyone to roll a blood elf or draenei until June 1.

Yea I dont understand this mentality. It is fine for literally any other class/race but these one specifically are unworthy of a boost. Maybe if this was fresh new content and not something that already existed I could see the point. But at this time there's really no reason to restrict.

[BetrayedOf52]

Took outriders 4 weeks to give me back my character and the gear he was wearing. They stated it was an insane amount of work, so I can only imagine losing peoples mail is also a lot of work. Good on them for informing people the actual problem. Im sure most of you will still cry.

[Machismo]

We unfortunately forgot our cash shop as that is essential to the wow classic tbc experience...blizzard was not prepared!
What about the marks in the mail from bgs that expire in 24 hours.............. could it be that?

Not sure if it was those, or not... but there's going to be a lot of players who are out those marks. Unless they managed to pause the timer on those bad boys (which they may have done with the copy), then they are sacrificed to the computer gods. And no, I don't think they have the GM manpower to restore them one by one.

[Kokolums]

Look, I just want to be able to use summoning stones regardless of if someone has war mode on or off. That fix is taking 1.5 xpacs.

[TragedyAnn]

Honestly a ridiculously long maintenance that keeps you from playing the entirety of patch day on the release of a new expansion is what I remember to be authentic to the classic WoW experience. As someone who's played this game since launch day - This all sounds perfectly correct to me.

[aceperson]

call me skeptical but i think it's more of them losing all their good devs. probably looking into it too deeply but i think by the phrase "It looks like that’s because we’ve never done anything like this in World of Warcraft, where we’re basically turning one game into two games" means that most of the experience they had on the team has left because of how bad it has gotten.

just using context says that when dozens of figureheads are leaving blizzard, it's likely many non-figureheads are too.

[Daevied]

Honestly we as a community should demand Blizzard to start every maintenance at 00:00 instead of 7:00 am, by now we could all been playing and this is not the first time that an entire day of playing is screwed by these extended maintenance

[Yizu]

Is the 1-60 leveling speed still classic speed or 2.4? Coz i remember they increased leveling speed in the middle of TBC.

[asd12a1]

Well they started @ 01AM in EU but something tells me it will not end any time soon

Anyway, somebody really failed to do a proper test on the whole process. If you work in IT you know shit happens. Simply the amount of little shits ( mailboxes ) is just overwhelming I guess.