World of Warcraft Forever launched with queues and early issues, but the servers held up during the first hour

• In the first few minutes, players reported queues and temporarily unavailable login rules.
• Blizzard reported problems processing payments and heavy traffic on the website.
• An hour later, the blogger hadn’t noticed any lag or outages, though some issues remained.

Launch amid high expectations

World of Warcraft Forever opened on November 4 at 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time, or 3:00 p.m. Pacific, as planned. Even before launch, interest in the new version of Azeroth appeared to be high: according to the developers, beta testing had produced “the wildest numbers” in 17 years. This created high expectations, while also making server stability the main concern on opening night.

Access requirements before launch differed from those in place during the beta. At the time, character levels remained capped at 30 even after the limit was raised, and most people who wanted to play—except participants in certain promotions—needed the expensive Skyborne bundle. Once the servers opened, the barriers to playing were supposed to be an active WoW subscription or an invitation code from a friend. As a result, the number of people trying to log in could increase significantly.

The live-blog author had warned in advance that launch might be rocky: problems had already arisen when the name reservation system opened. At the time, players in Europe were unable to log in for several hours, while players in the US reported long queues and disconnects. These were reasons to keep a close eye on launch, but not proof that the same issues would necessarily happen again. The main test for Forever is how the servers perform under heavy load.

The first few minutes: a queue and unavailable rulesets

As soon as the game opened, the author saw a queue that initially had 128 people. He managed to get in quickly, but then the menu reported that all ruleset options were temporarily unavailable. Later, the queue showed 2,135 players ahead of him, and the official forums were down at the time. These observations show how quickly the situation changed in the first few minutes, but on their own they don’t describe every player’s experience.

The Rulesets menu issue didn’t affect everyone equally, but Blizzard confirmed that it was aware of the problem and had passed it on to the developers. The blog noted that many players were able to work around the error by closing the game and rejoining the queue. This meant waiting to connect again, although the author observed that queues were moving fairly quickly at the time. They added a caveat: queue speeds might change later, so the workaround shouldn’t be considered a guaranteed fix.

By 18:13, the author had managed to get into the game, but according to forum posts, some users were disconnecting at the character selection screen. At around 18:23, they were still seeing complaints about a gray Rulesets screen, and by 19:22, they reported that some players were stuck in the menu; Blizzard had not posted a new update on the status of this specific issue. So, some players successfully connecting didn’t mean the problem had gone away for everyone.

Load, access, and technical complaints

An hour after launch began, the author had a positive impression of the servers: they noticed no significant lag and had not experienced a disconnection themselves. However, the starting area in Tirisfal Glades was very crowded, and they had to team up with four other people to complete one of the first quests. The blog also recounted reports of login difficulties and reserved characters that had disappeared, so the overall picture remained mixed.

Difficulties arose not only when connecting to the game servers. Blizzard reported problems processing payments, which prevented some users from purchasing the subscription required to play. The company also linked website issues to the volume of traffic and advised people to keep trying or wait a few minutes. This matters when assessing the launch: even a smoothly running game world does not solve the access problem for those who cannot complete payment or open the website.

Some players reported that the creation of new Horde characters had been disabled on PvP servers due to high demand. The author also shared a personal observation: there were so many undead in the starting zone that a group was needed for the first quest. In addition, a thread appeared on the forums about AMD driver timeouts, after which, according to the thread’s author, a black screen appeared and a full system reboot was required. The cause had not been determined; it was suggested that the problem might be on AMD’s end.

What the launch revealed and what remains unclear

Not all launch notes were about bugs. After reaching Brill, the author noted the improved lighting and praised the graphical changes, recommending that players with hardware capable of handling them briefly try the maximum settings. This is one player's subjective impression, not a technical performance test. He also reported that the game ran without problems on his computer with an Nvidia graphics card, but that experience does not support conclusions about how the game performs on all systems.

Before the servers opened, Blizzard unveiled a legendary healing weapon—Taldramir, The Whispering Wood. According to the company, it was created in collaboration with Weta Workshop. The pre-launch section of the blog also noted dissatisfaction with the changes in the patch notes: the shaman Discord community shut down in protest. These details show that discussion of the game was not limited to queues, but the source does not say whether the class dispute affected the launch itself or players' reactions after logging in.

The first hour presented a mixed, but not unequivocally negative, picture: the author was able to log in and noticed no lag, while some users continued to encounter rules menus, disconnections, access issues, and payment problems. At the time of publication, it remained unclear how long the individual outages would last or whether queue times would change under increased load. Therefore, the early observation that the servers were operating stably should not be taken as a definitive assessment of the entire launch or a guarantee of the same experience for all players.

Source: IGN