Warlords of Draenor Launch Updates, Nov 15 Hotfixes

[chaud]

Warlords of Draenor Launch Updates
Blizzard has been posting hourly updates on steps they are taking to improve stability and reduce queues. Recent updates include:

• US and EU maintenance was completed and added capacity by phasing all of Draenor and upgrading server hardware.
• Realm population caps were raised to normal levels in the US and EU once again.
• Realm population caps were then increased above the old normal capacity in the US, with testing of the same solution coming to the EU soon.

4:00 p.m. PST
All North American and Oceanic realms have now had their population caps increased. We are continuing to monitor realm stability, and plan to begin testing the increase on European realms soon. In addition, we’re making progress towards correcting an issue that would occasionally cause players to get stuck on flight paths when flying to their Garrison. Our next update will occur in roughly one hour.

3:00 p.m. PST
Our initial tests to increase realm capacity were successful, so we’ve continued to roll out our testing of increased population caps to additional North American and Oceanic realms. We’re also making steady progress to resolve the issues causing instance, world, and Garrison server crashes in Europe. We’ll provide another update approximately one hour from now.

2:10 p.m. PST
After carefully monitoring server performance for the last few hours, we are now testing raising realm capacity above normal population caps. We’re going to temporarily increase the population cap on a few realms in North America, and observe them closely. Our next update will be in approximately an hour.

1:00 p.m. PST
We are continuing to optimize servers and address additional performance issues. Realms appear stable with the increased population caps. We are monitoring server stability as Europe continues through peak play time and populations increase in the Americas. We’ll provide further updates in approximately one hour.

12:00 p.m. PST
As previously posted, both Europe and the Americas/Oceanic realms went into an off-peak maintenance to upgrade realm hardware, and implement a new Draenor-wide instancing tech to improve game performance. Both regions’ maintenances concluded successfully, and so far we’ve seen very positive results, allowing us to dramatically raise the realm population caps for all realms. We’re going to continue optimizing the in-game experience, focus on the new instancing tech, and hotfix gameplay issues as they come up.

We’re currently seeing a very high demand on the game and game services due to the exceptionally large number of people excited to play Warlords of Draenor. We’re focusing on a few specific issues, one of which is a group of realms in Europe that are seeing increased instance, world, and Garrison server crashes. That’s being addressed as an isolated issue and we’re investigating the cause to ensure it doesn’t occur elsewhere.

We’ll be looking into the possibility of Free Character Transfers for our highest population realms, but first we need to get the service to a place where we feel it’s also able to process a potentially large number of transfers while not adversely affecting service stability.

Our next steps are to continue working on the few performance issues we’re tracking in Europe, and continue maintaining and improving the level of service in the Americas and Oceania. We’ll provide another update in an hour.

11:00 a.m. PST
We’re working to mitigate some localized instance and Garrison server crashes in Europe. We’re still seeing what we would expect to see in the Americas/Oceanic region for high queues on very populace realms, and for Europe there are queues across the majority of realms during their peak play time. We’ll provide a more comprehensive update in an hour on where the service currently stands as a whole, and what else we’re working on.

10:00 a.m. PST
We’re continuing to monitor the realms post-maintenance. Realms are being maintained at their raised population caps, and while many realms no longer have queues, we do expect that high population realms will still see a wait to log in. We’ll continue to provide updates throughout the day.

9:00 a.m. PST
We’re continuing to monitor realms and track any individual issues as they occur. We’re still seeing some issues occurring now that Europe is in their peak playtime, but with greatly reduced frequency compared to before maintenance.

All realms are now set back up to their normal population caps. Queues being experienced now are due to demand beyond what the realms are normally capable of handling, and we’ll be looking into how to reduce them further.

8:02 a.m. PST
All Americas and Oceanic realms are live. We are continuing to monitor these realms for reports of any ongoing stability issues.

The EU website and forums issues are being investigated as are reports of "World Server Down" issues and Garrison accessibility.

Thank you for your continued patience and ongoing reports.

7:10 a.m. PST
All Americas and Oceanic realms are now live. We will continue to monitor these realms closely.

Thank you for your continued patience and ongoing reports.

7:00 a.m. PST
We are in the process of marking all Americas and Oceanic realms live and will continue to monitor for reports of any additional stability issues.

All EU realms are live and currently stable. We are continuing to monitor them for any additional reports stability issues.

6:00 a.m. PST
All Americas and Oceanic realms maintenance and internal testing continues as scheduled.

EU realm rolling restarts are in the process of being completed and we will continue to monitor reports for additional recurrences of realm stability issues.

Thank you for your continued patience. Our next update here will be in approximately 1 hour.

5:00 a.m. PST
All Americas and Oceanic realms are in maintenance and continue to progress as scheduled. We are working as quickly as possible to deploy hardware upgrades and code fixes that are intended to improve both access to the game and experience while playing.

Across our EU realms, we're monitoring reports of scattered stability issues and have been performing restarts to pick up hotfixes.

We continue to deploy hotfixes for specific gameplay issues through the night. These are often fixes for quests that are not working correctly or not completing, as well as unexpected behavior of various game elements.

Thank you for your continued patience. Our next update here will be in 1 hour, unless there is an urgent need.

3:00 a.m. PST
All Americas and Oceanic realms are now in maintenance. We are working as quickly as possible to deploy hardware upgrades and code fixes that are intended to improve both access to the game and experience while playing.

Across our EU realms, we're monitoring reports of scattered stability issues. We've seen further "world server down" issues, and are working to correct that.

We continue to deploy hotfixes for specific gameplay issues through the night. These are often fixes for quests that are not working correctly or not completing, as well as unexpected behavior of various game elements.

Thank you for your continued patience. Our next update here will be in 2-3 hours, unless there is an urgent need.

2:00 a.m. PST
Our EU realms have been up with maintenance completed, and players logged in and playing, for over an hour. We've gotten reports of some 'world server down' issues during that time, and we're looking into the situation.

We will begin maintenance on our Americas and Oceanic realms in one hour, at 3:00 a.m. PST.

Patch 6.0.3 Hotfixes - November 15

Garrisons, Followers, and Outposts

• Lunar Fall Inn/Frostwall Tavern: Improved the rewards for completing Budd's Gambit, Go Fetch, Ogre Ancestry, and Sky Dancers.
• Stables Level 2: Resolved an issue where characters were not remaining mounted while interacting with herb nodes.
• Trading Post Level 2: Multiple items for Auctioning for Parts should no longer be dropping at the same time.

Quests

• A Collection of Coils: Increased the drop rates for Coil of Sturdy Rope.
• A Feast of Shadows: Increased the spawn rate for Face-Stealers.
• Bonus Objective: The Howling Crag: Increased the number and rate of Rylak Egg spawns.
• Core of Iron: Core of Iron should now only be found on Heroic difficulty Grimrail Depot.
• Icespine Stinger: Increased the number of Icespine Stinger spawns.
• In Need Of A Hero: Completion credit for the quest is no longer shared amongst party members. This was causing other party members to be placed into an incorrect phase.
• Legacy of the Apexis: Increased the drop rates for Apexis Core.
• Ogre Diplomacy: Increased the spawn rate for Ango'rosh ogres.
• Strike While the Iron Is Hot: Resolved a situation where the Activate Primal Device button doesn't go away after completing the quest.
• The Battle of Thunder Pass: Players joining a party that have already completed the quest should now be able to complete the quest and should no longer get stuck in an incorrect phase.
• The Eldest: Players joining a party that have already completed the quest should now be able to complete the quest and should no longer get stuck in an incorrect phase.
• The Master Siegesmith: Master Siegesmith Uratok now scales his health based on the number of players engaging him.
• The Traitor's True Name: Resolved an issue that could cause players to be unable to complete the quest.
• Wanted: Maa'run's Hoof should no longer incorrectly reward the exact same rings as Engorged Goren.

Creatures and NPCs

• Increased the spawn rates for creatures in the Shivering Trench area in Frostfire Ridge.
• Felwrought Annihilator is now immune to the Warlock's Enslave Demon ability.
• Mandragora now spawns more frequently and can be tapped by multiple players.
• Mor the Dominator can now be tapped by multiple players.
• Xanatos the Defiler will never be a slave and is now immune to the Warlock's Enslave Demon ability.
• Resolved an issue where Thaelin Darkanvil may not be visible as a quest giver to players that have rescued him.
• Resolved an issue where Warriors using Charge against some Grimfrost Lavaslingers could become stuck in the world geometry.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios

• Dungeons
  
  • Increased the frequency of loot awards for Normal difficulty Auchindoun, Bloodmaul Slag Mines, Iron Docks, and Skyreach.
  • Heroic Dungeons should correctly have a daily lockout once more.
  • Auchindoun: Players should now be able to take a Soul Transporter to get back to Teron'gor if the entire party died after defeating him.

PvP

• Coliseum Champion's Spoils and Gleaming Ashmaul Strongbox should no longer incorrectly have a chance to contain Epic quality PvP weapons.
• Bonus Objective: Kill Warspear Priests no longer awards a Gleaming Ashmaul Strongbox.

Professions

• Characters with over 600 skill should no longer continue to find catch-up items for the respective profession.

Items

• Excavated Highmaul Thingamabob, Fungus-Infected Hydra Lung, Pulsating Brain of No'losh, and Thornmother Eye can now trigger its effect from non-healing spells as well.
• Resolved an issue causing the Mists of Pandaria Legendary Cloaks and Metagems to remain effective for level 100 characters.

[Cyzen]

How can they say tests were successful when the only thing accomplished is increasing the latency lag?

Queue times on large servers haven't gone down, and the latency lag has gone up. Yet they post these tests have been successes? It most certainly is not, at least not on larger servers.

[Duster505]

Really sad to see how fansites are trying to make it look like Blizzard is working on things. Maybe those ppl need to ask themselves .. what was Blizzard doing in the 14 months before when the offered their subscribers big fat ZERO in terms of content?

There is ZERO excuse for what has been going on in the past 3 days. If more players are playing than Blizzard expected.... Sorry.. but is there no quality control when it comes to how many digital copies are allowed to be sold before they realise that sever stability will be compromised? DId they even close down new players joining the most populated servers with their bought lvl 90s ?

[kamuimac]

everything is super ok in blizz hq - sadly EU servers experience 9+ hours long ques - but who would be counting that with such spectacurarily succesful launch like this one

[Souse]

Yeah all of these special updates aren't doing a damn thing. My que is over 4000 still. I havent been able to play at all for 3 days now.

[Duster505]

How can they say tests were successful when the only thing accomplished is increasing the latency lag?

Queue times on large servers haven't gone down, and the latency lag has gone up. Yet they post these tests have been successes? It most certainly is not, at least not on larger servers.

They are grasping at straws now.. Trying to put famous PR worlds into every sentence like "carefully", "exceptionally", "greatly", " isolated issue"... not forgetting to mention all the " people excited to play Warlords of Draenor"...

Ofc .. not talking about all the players that are sitting in queues .... feeling everything but excited at this point....

[cthoma13]

Blizzard is refusing to acknowledge a bug that is affecting many people. Those that boosted characters to 90 with xp turned off are unable to turn xp back on. Those that wish to turn off xp at 90 are unable to. Trying to spread this into the public eye as the hot-fixes for today don't include a fix to our issue. Theres a rather large thread forming on the battle net customer support forums about our issue yet blizz is still ignoring us. They wont make a public blue statement about the issue. Please help to spread this into public eye.

[Deleted]

How can they say tests were successful when the only thing accomplished is increasing the latency lag?

Queue times on large servers haven't gone down, and the latency lag has gone up. Yet they post these tests have been successes? It most certainly is not, at least not on larger servers.

On EU Hellscream here lag has totally gone away on our server and we are able to play fine now. So the updates have done a lot for our server the day before it was unplayable. Though we didn't have that big population on our server only few minutes queue.

[Blazum]

what about oceanic servers.. what we just get dealt with last? :S not even a mention about whats happening to those servers when they're all locked and still have the same queues as yesterday

[Deleted]

I've wasted a whole day through being stuck on the FP hovering over my Garrison. Then getting stuck again, once I got my character free, coming out of a dungeon with the " world server down" bug. I can't write how annoyed I am because surely I'd be banned off mmo champion's forums. But those of us in the EU suffering from garrison problems and those poor souls stuck on over populated realms are quite frankly fed up of this now.

[Cyzen]

On EU Hellscream here lag has totally gone away on our server and we are able to play fine now. So the updates have done a lot for our server the day before it was unplayable. Though we didn't have that big population on our server only few minutes queue.

Well they also haven't applied these "fixes" yet on EU. So enjoy it while you can. My server had next to no lag yesterday until they applied these "fixes" Now the queue time is still as high as it was yesterday and the people that do get to play lag like crazy, npcs don't spawn, and phasing doesn't work.

Don't worry though. Testing was a success.

[Symmone]

Still experiencing insane queues on Mal'Ganis. Started at 4300 and got to 3300 after an hour and 45 minutes.

[Phaelia]

Still experiencing insane queues on Mal'Ganis. Started at 4300 and got to 3300 after an hour and 45 minutes.

I knowwww I've been waiting for 4 hours :'( and I'm still only 1195 or something!

[Narshe]

4 hr queue and still 1337 in it, cute.

[Mcsheepy]

This is all BS!!!!!! Blizzard dropped the ball on this x-pac and they don't know how to fix it!! I don't believe a single word Blizzard is saying at this point. I have been playing since the beginning and what is happening right now is lack of intelligence!

[Kolvarg]

This is all BS!!!!!! Blizzard dropped the ball on this x-pac and they don't know how to fix it!! I don't believe a single word Blizzard is saying at this point. I have been playing since the beginning and what is happening right now is lack of intelligence!

They should hire you

Serious now, do you really need to act like that? 99% of what happened was having too many players. They EXPECTED X (based on sales etc), planned for well more than X, still had a lot more than that. It just happens, chill down

This is probably due to the sheer ammount of people who ordered their WoD keys on G2A and alike and only registered them 1 day before release.

[thedogmode]

They should hire you

Serious now, do you really need to act like that? 99% of what happened was having too many players. They EXPECTED X (based on sales etc), planned for well more than X, still had a lot more than that. It just happens, chill down

This is probably due to the sheer ammount of people who ordered their WoD keys on G2A and alike and only registered them 1 day before release.

So what you're saying is we should ignore logic and just believe your conjured up excuse? Actually, you're they one they should hire. Please tell us more about how Blizzard did a good job with WoD launch?

[enfermera]

Blizz is like me and the gym

They tell everyone they are going to do something. but nothing happens and no results are to be seen

[Arbs]

The upgrades & maintenance has helped alot with the lag we had 2 days ago. But now on Illidan the game runs smooth, no lag or crashes. All that really remains for US is the Queue Boss that does need to get fixed hopefully soon. But also it doesn't surprise me the High/Full pop realms have such high queues times as this should of not only been seen by Blizzard. But players themselves & prepared themselves for it, like many guilds on those servers did.

- - - Updated - - -

Blizz is like me and the gym

They tell everyone they are going to do something. but nothing happens and no results are to be seen

But going to the gym once you will not notice a difference, it may take a couple times before any results actually show .

[Kolvarg]

So what you're saying is we should ignore logic and just believe your conjured up excuse? Actually, you're they one they should hire. Please tell us more about how Blizzard did a good job with WoD launch?

No I'm not, because I'm merely wondering and expressing MY opinion, not claiming to know better than them, or saying they "lack intelligence" because of ONE mistake which is prone to happen sooner or later to anyone in the software business

How exactly is it ignoring logic? Why would Blizzard lie? They have no reasons to make excuses, they had no reasons to not prepare whatever they needed according to their predictions. But predictions can go wrong.

You have people possibly buying the game one day before launch, you have people who've been inactive for long suddenly coming back and adding another active character to an already high pop realm... So many variables that can't be safely predicted, it just is very likely it's what happened.

Sure, some flow design flaws helped make it worse, but most of the problems people are complaining about were directly related to the ammount of people on the servers - If you actually played on launch day both on dead time (say 4~6am) and on peak time, you would have noticed the difference. At peak time it was nearly unplayable near the garrison (which was even worse since you need the garrison early for progression). At dead time it was completly smooth, not a single issue.

Try to calm down and be patient, and you'll actually come to enjoy what is an amazing expansion By being toxic and by conspirating agaisnt blizzard you're only creating a bad atmosphere and making the problem worse than it is. They've been working hard on it, and many players have already seen great improvements, and overall even with this launch you can't complain much about Blizzard. They're not perfect, obviously, but they still are one of the videogame studios that offers the most polish and quality of service out there overall