How did the WoW Forever launch go?
WoW Forever went live on November 4 at 3:00 p.m. PST in every region at once, and Warcraft's official account posted "You can play WoW: Forever starting NOW!" half an hour later. Compared with the hours-long beta queues, launch night was calm; the day-one trouble was mostly the faction lock, boats and a few quests.
Source / rights
WoW Forever launched in every region at once on November 4 at 3:00 p.m. PST. Blizzard gave no player count; its only numbers are infrastructure: 3,924 virtual machines and 70,480 CPU cores. Players praise the smooth launch and complain about the faction lock.
How many people played WoW Forever at launch?
Blizzard hasn't released a player count. The only official numbers are infrastructure: on November 5 Warcraft said the game runs on 3,924 virtual machines, 251,136 GB of memory and 70,480 CPU cores.
The hints about demand come from the beta. In September interviews, Blizzard developers said the beta hit the biggest numbers they'd seen in 17 years, and the beta population cap was raised twice. There's no new official figure for launch.
Which regions is WoW Forever live in?
It's live in four regions: Americas & Oceania, Europe, Korea and Taiwan. Launch times from Blizzard's launch announcement:
| Region | Launch |
|---|---|
| Americas (PST) | Nov 4, 3:00 p.m. |
| Brazil (BRT) | Nov 4, 8:00 p.m. |
| UK (GMT) | Nov 4, 11:00 p.m. |
| Europe (CET) | Nov 5, 12:00 a.m. |
| Taiwan (CST) | Nov 5, 7:00 a.m. |
| Korea (KST) | Nov 5, 8:00 a.m. |
| ANZ (AEDT) | Nov 5, 10:00 a.m. |
Source / rights
What are players saying about WoW Forever?
On the official forum, day one's hottest threads cut both ways. On the positive side are "Thank you for the best launch in your history!" and "Was this a perfect launch?!", and Windows Central reported that players are calling it the smoothest launch in WoW history.
- Faction lock: one side closing on PvP was the biggest complaint of day one, with the thread passing 300 replies. Details: This faction is currently unavailable.
- Mega-servers and layers: some players said cities looked empty and there were too many layers; Blizzard said it would tweak the numbers.
- Difficulty: "Is WoW Forever way too easy?" is a hot thread too.
- Class balance: warlocks report that the Voidwalker has too little health.
What got fixed on day one?
In the first 24 hours Blizzard fixed Invite-a-Friend players getting stuck at level 10, added portals by the docks for lost boats and zeppelins, and opened its known issues thread. The list and workarounds: WoW Forever known issues.
Share your experience