Ticklefist said:
You mean you feel this strongly about something you haven't experienced first hand?
When it comes to queues, anyone can could check if it was bad or not. Just make a starting edition account - with cap at lvl 20 - and try to join a server.
I haven't seen queues this long since BC release, definitely. WOTLK release was mighty fine by comparison - can't tell for Cata or MoP though, but I don't remember my friends bitching about their releases much (complaints about Cataclysm's content is another matter obviously).
Well, I saw one far worse once, but that was LOTRO when they wanted to test their F2P system; I think I was in a 10K+ queue then.
Thing is, it all depends on the server. If you're on an old server where you've played since Vanilla, you might have a ridiculously long queue. If you're on a low-pop server, you might well not have any queue except the very first day.
I also think that they didn't expect such growing numbers and were unprepared.
The growth actually began before the release; I think many people used the 7-days trial or just got their subscription back 1 to 2 weeks before release, because I actually used my 7-day trial in the very first days of November; weekend went smoothly, but then I had the last 2 evenings, on weekdays, with 500+ queue already.
Though I won't complain, because they had the good and nice sense to update my frozen Cataclysm-level account to MoP, so that I could actually level up all the way to 90.
seditary said:
Well the article fails to mention that was 3.3 million copies on the first day and also doesn't include one of the largest regions for WoW's playerbase, China which got the expansion launch today.
Thanks, that explains it. I was wondering if 2/3 of WOW players had decided to stick with Pandaria for now, because I'd have expected the bulk of paying players to have updated to Warlords.