The World of Warcraft Forever beta has just kicked off, and it’s been quite the rocky launch. Day-one server stress and login queues are difficult to avoid completely in MMORPGs, but given that Blizzard put access behind the $60 / £52 Epic Edition ($30 / £26 more than the basic pack that gives you the new Skyborne race), there’s understandably been some frustration with the hours of downtime. While most people are now able to log in and play, the complaints continue, and are mostly focused on Blizzard’s US-based servers.
I certainly don’t envy the people responsible for handling MMO launch servers. “We’re seeing a lot of people waiting to get into the beta,” Community Manager Randy ‘Kaivax’ Jordan wrote on the forums shortly after World of Warcraft Forever went live. “We’re working through a couple of final issues, and we hope to throw the doors open soon.” Queues climbed gradually up into the tens of thousands, and often players reaching the front were then quickly disconnected and sent to the back of the line.
Fast forward a couple of hours, and more players started getting in and making new characters. That was only the beginning, however, with many running into long stretches of lag while trying to explore, or further disconnects sending them back to the start. While that has continued to improve as time has rolled on, one particular sentiment has continued to grow in the background – complaints that all the beta servers appear to be US-based, leaving anyone outside of North America with high ping and a rather poor experience.
Blizzard has run betas exclusively on US servers in the past, but joining this particular test is only guaranteed for players who spent the extra money on that Epic Edition. “We paid €60 for access to the Forever Beta, but there isn’t even a proper EU server available,” one European user writes. “That is honestly hard to understand.” They add, “If this was simply a free PTR, nobody would have a problem with it. We all know what a PTR is and what to expect from it. But this is paid beta access.”
If you’re still struggling, some players report that using a VPN set to a US location can help reduce those large ping times. Still, it’s not a guaranteed solution, and involves having to resort to another paid service to improve the beta you spent money to join. Others claim that disabling the ‘Optimize Network for Speed’ option in the game’s settings menu helped them. Still more, however, simply remark that they’re asking for a refund on the package.
This stumbling start certainly isn’t what Blizzard would have wanted for its grand new project – a fresh take on World of Warcraft that has certainly generated plenty of hype, and could bring both old and new players alike into the fold. At the same time, issues like this are one of the many reasons to hold a beta test. The full launch should avoid the regional server gripes, but if we run into a repeat of the long queue times and severe in-game lag on November 4, it could put a serious dampener on the excitement for WoW Forever.