Nov 12 2008
WoW: The Eve of the Lich King
Wrath of the Lich King, World of Warcraft’s second expansion, has officially launched. But on the eve of its launch - that is, Tuesday, the dreaded maintenance day - the Lich King had other plans for the World of Warcraft servers.
During its routine maintenance yesterday, Blizzard found an error with the in game mailing system, causing players to lose all mail in their inbox. In an effort to fix the problem, they extended maintenance, but were unable to restore the mail system. Finally, they gave up and allowed the servers back online, while continuing to work out the problem behind the scenes. [source]
When the servers came up after over 12 hours of downtime, thrifty players soon discovered that for many classes, their S2 gear had no cost (and there were also a few accessories as well.) In haste, all levels began rushing to their PvP halls to grab their free epics. Battling the trade and general channels were the “Get your free epics here!” heralds and the “Don’t omg you’ll get banned!” police. For a number of hours, Blizzard stayed silent on the subject - probably too busy pressing their faces to the desk - but then decided to bring down the servers for another three hours at 4 am Pacific to reverse all PvP purchases while the cost was wrong for items. Naturally, Blizzard promised a refund for anyone who bought items legitimately with honor and marks; unfortunately, only the honor and arena points were refunded, the marks were still missing.
Blizzard has come forward and offered a 1-day gametime compensation for all the problems, at least. I can only imagine how many people were working yesterday at Blizzard, cursing about Murphy’s law and offering sacrifices to the gaming gods that their expansion would launch OK tonight. So far, so good, Blizz. But if a Death Knight knocks on your door late at night, don’t open it. Trust me.
