Please support Game Informer. Print magazine subscriptions are less than $2 per issue
World Of Warcraft: Warlords Of Draenor Launch Woes Include DDoS Attack
Yesterday, Blizzard launched its first World of Warcraft expansion since 2012's Mists of Pandaria. Unfortunately, the title is the latest to suffer from online problems, spurred in part by a distributed denial of service attack.
Blizzard says that it began experiencing problems in Europe, the first region to launch, as players flooded the servers. The problem was addressed, but as the North American community began to start playing, Blizzard's servers came under attack.
Problems were compounded by players congregating in huge numbers in the new zones. In response, Blizzard began capping population, which had the direct result of extending queue times significantly.
Late last night, Blizzard implemented an update to the servers that forced disconnections for a number of players. As they tried to reconnect to the game, the login and authentication servers were overwhelmed.
Today, Blizzard is conducting maintenance that has already started and will last until 9 a.m. Pacific / 1 p.m. Eastern. We'll continue to update as we have more information.
[Source: Blizzard]
Our Take
MMO (and expansion) launches are often precarious, with server outages and long queue times. The addition of the DDoS attack in this case has compounded the issue.
Even giving Blizzard the benefit of the doubt though, it continues to be troubling that developers are often unable to launch games smoothly. Blizzard reported on pre-orders for Warlords of Draenor. It's fair to say that the company knew what to expect from server loads on day one and wasn't entirely prepared.
I’d like to ask you to support Game Informer’s continued coverage of games with a subscription. For less than two dollars per issue, we mail you a full year of 10 print magazines, each with cover stories and preview features filled with exclusive details about the most exciting upcoming games. We profile and interview game creators. We look back on the rich history of gaming, and we celebrate what’s next.
Here on the website, we offer much of our content for free, including game reviews, daily news, videos, event coverage, and more – all with minimal ads.
We do so with a small editorial team, alongside contributing paid writers from around the world – over 65 individuals from 9 countries around the world, just in the last couple of years.
It’s not possible without support.
In a time when game makers and games coverage have faced hard struggles and layoffs, the future of this 30+ year magazine and community is at risk. Our new standalone magazine subscription is the number one way you can keep us alive – and we believe you’ll get a pretty fantastic gaming magazine in your mailbox every few weeks for your trouble.
Thank you.
