Blizzard is Doomed to fail

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
1

Let me tell you a short story…

SoD released on a very odd day, it happened to be Thursday 23:00 my local time.

As a fan of the game, I was online on time, together with a big group of friends, as soon as server names showed on the list and before they were accessible - we said to each other we are going to play on Living Flame - the first alphabetically which has pvp on.

At 23:15 servers started accepting requests for login, with 3h + queue… I waited out around 2h and at 1am I had to go sleep, because I have work the next day (somehow you need to make the money that Blizzard steal from you every month).

The next afternoon, after work, I immediately started the game, saw 4 hours of queue - no problem! I am waiting to join my friends, who managed to start playing during the night.

Surprise 1: 30 mins before I reach the end of the queue, the server gets LOCKED for new players. I am like …“ok lets start on another server to actually be able to play anything, then I will move over or create new character later”.

Time goes by, I reach lvl 23 and start looking to move to the server of my friends, because the end goal is to play together and experience the content as a guild.

So I decide its my fault I had to go to work instead of waiting to enter server in the middle of the night - thats fine - I will pay with the money I earn from working and get moved. I purchase character transfer, which is AVAILABLE for Classic, I pay EUR25 and wait… They almost instantly deliver the transfer feature, however…

Surprise 2: I can select the character I have but I cant transfer it anywhere… (for the record i am on a lower populated PVP server from SoD and I want to transfer to Locked realm again in SOD PVP).

So, I write a ticket to get a refund or get my character moved over (I hope I get moved over cause I want to play with my friends).

Surprise 3: After several messages back and forth with GM, It appears they don’t plan to ever have character transfers on SoD and there is nothing they can do about it. I cancel my subscription and refund everything I can from this company and write the last message: “If you ever want to get my money for sub and other services, figure out a way to transfer the character”.

Surprise 4: They just respond they dont care and the only way I can play with my friends is to create a new character on their realm… the one that is LOCKED.

Conclusion
In market economy, a company always fails if they cant do simple things like:

  1. Plan well how they will provide the service they want people to pay for - playing the game on the same server.
  2. Take money from clients who are willing to pay to get some minor service - character transfer.
  3. Actually providing competitive service - for now WoW is the only big player… the moment this changes - Blizzard is over, because the rest of their games are pure garbage. D3 is dead, D4 was deadborn, HS is pay to win…

And I hope this happens soon.

P.S. Its much easier to buy an account from a 3rd party site on a Locked server and give the money to actual people rather than trying to beg Blizzard to pay them for basic ability to play their trash game.

11 Likes
2

So true, more than a little annoying to say the least, shame on us having too work.

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I don’t understand Surprise 2 and 3 - that’s how it has been for almost 20 years. Just look at HC: you cannot transfer realms there either.

But why didnt your friends wait for you instead of levelling without you? I mean, if you were truly friends, they would say -“Skip this server, Brian cant get in. Lets pick another one”. So yes, blame Blizzard - but also your so-called friends.

4 Likes
4

You can’t expect a group of 15+ people to wait on a single person who has a working schedule. I told them to carry on there, because I was expecting to be able to pay for transfer or start over lvl 1 and catch up. However, Blizzard doesn’t really care if people are happy with their services or not. For them it is a matter of cutting expenses to minimum, providing cheapest servers on the planet with capacity of an indie software company so they can satisfy Microsoft’s hunger for profit. Ironically, at the same time they can’t even take the money people are offering them.

5

Blizzard announced beforehand they will be more stringent on realm management for SOD here:

While it is true the ingame Classic SOD transfer page uses the same client as Classic, it was never possible to purchase Seasonal transfers seeing SoM for example. I believe this needs additional ingame clarification as well.

The Classic transfer page on the site however does mention this:

Generally GM’s do not take feedback, but you can submit it through the ingame box or at the forums which you did.

For transfers in general not limited to only SOD realms there’s an additional stipulation that you potentially cannot transfer to full or locked realms as then players would just bypass the lock by paying which isn’t the intended option. They refused to take your money you see to allow this to happen.

6

This is on you: why would you expect this? None of the other releases did that.
They don’t even offer (free or paid) transfers OFF the realm.

2 Likes
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Probably, because I live in a world where most companies make money by providing quality services. It costs them 0 (or close to it, the work of one india support guy for 10 min) to move a character cross-realm and they make pure profit out of the service. In this current market recession I would never expect people not wanting to take money… Then again, I forgot it’s Blizzard… my fault

8

Is not Blizzard’s fault you didn’t check the options before you blindly bought a character transfer. Why are all people here playing the victim card all the time?

Yes, Blizzard keeps breaking things but you can’t blame them for every single thing happening inside or outside the game. Look at yourself also sometimes.

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9

Let’s think together for a second, mr Blizzard fan, take out your calculator - you will need it.

They refuse to take EUR 25 per CHAR, considering most players have 5+, they refuse to take up to EUR 125 per PLAYER, because they are afraid what will happen to their server if lets say 10k players want to transfer… But you don’t think what they can do with EUR 125 000 they will take from them?! In a cloud environment I can power the entire garbage collection of Blizzard for that money…

11

So, you suggest you know better then an entire professional staff of server and game managers. If there are openings at Blizzard Careers you should apply and tell them to use or develop Cloud Based solutions.

Very well, what kind of software/hardware does Blizzard use and what kind of Cloud solution do you propose? Do you think there will be no issues using Cloud with decades old tech? Be specific in your suggestion.

On one hand you suggest you can do better and on the other hand you don’t actually have a solution.

12

hello, it’s been several days since I’ve been able to play wow sod! because I can’t join my friends/guild on Living Flame… should I still wait or abandon the idea?

Thank you for your reply…

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Yes, I do - it is literally my job.

And no, for no amount of money in the world I would ever want to be associated with Blizzard, Micro+Soft or Inacti-Vision

14

This isnt the first server or game to be locked. Not even in classic.

Living flame isnt locked because of “poor service” its locked to prevent it becoming a megaserver as blizzard are ensuring servers around it dont die because of it.

Its a terrible situation, and many have been burned by the situation. But we all knew this was gonna be bombed with popularity. It was the server chosen by the streamers.

Most likely knew that late comers were gonna struggle getting into this server, because we all knew they were going ALOT further to protect the population in these servers.

Its annoying, its caused problems. But this aint down to “blizzards servers being bad”. They simply dont want any one server being a megaserver. So their driving population to all servers.

And many disagree with this. Myself included. I think its a wasted effort because a server will ultimately be a megaserver

I hope im wrong but i dont see this server remaining unlocked for a while.

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15

Just make new friends on other servers , pvp is cross realm to play with ur friends.
Bfd lvlin raid is a walk in the park and u will find ppl that are nice and friendly

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16

Basically, however hurtful, the situation is this.

a) Blizzard opens servers, only to see them all dead in 2 months. Although with this seasonal concept they may get alive every phase. In any event, endless complaints about dead servers.
b) Blizzard abandons the idea of servers and shards massively. Hello GW2 (and retail). Endless complaints about spitting upon The Classic Spirit of Social Behaviors.

c) Blizzard somehow manages to squeeze 20-50000 characters into that one server, into those few zones (it’s 1-25 after all). Endless complaints by neurotic players who can’t do anything because of the stupid, outdated tag system, get beaten by literally instant respawns, and it’s not immersive anyway, all the while promoting bots (just tag what you can, keep shooting).

d) Blizzard plays their past game and allows everyone to play the Queue Game. Endless complaints to be had, summarized as We don’t pay to queue, add servers and shards.
e) Blizzard prevents the queues by locking realms. Yes, it hurts, but it’s clear cut. A won’t happen, B or C you don’t play anyway.

There is one certain, definite error on Blizzard’s end. You have to sub to try and create a character. Legalese smartypants comments aside, if one’s only objective is to play with their friends, Blizzard didn’t deliver, full stop.

17 
Open the gates to Living Flame.
18

Can we skip the childish and predictable “if your friends don’t do everything to accomodate you, they aren’t your friend” answer I have seen dozens of times on this forum already ? It’s starting to get boring.

I will try to explain it the best I can. I have video game friends with which I play from time to time. They aren’t life long friends I would sacrifice a organ for but, still, I want to play with them because I enjoy that. I contacted them right before launch, they wanted to play on Living Flame. “Bu- but they aren’t your friends if they didn’t wait fo-” shhhhh. Listen. Friendship goes both way. I can’t force multiple people to wait for me. Plus I didn’t know when I would be available due to irl work hours. So instead of taking many people hostages of my egocentric whims, I told them “go ahead, I will catch up”, as I did many times in the past. Thing is (and by “thing” I mean “the most obvious thing that you seems to forget”), nobody could have predicted that Blizzard would lock Living Flame. We never experienced it. Was my story easy enough to follow ? Yes ? Wasn’t it too complex ? I hope not. Now you understand the simple fact that we didn’t predict a future where Blizzard would lock an entire server for close to 2 weeks.

I swear, some “people” around here sure are lacking, to put it midly. They see Blizzard locking an entire server and not answering their customers, and yet they will find a way to put the blame on other players. “Your friends should have predicted the future and not go on the soon-to-be locked server”, “10+ people should have awaited you, even if your work hours of the week weren’t set in stone, next time make them follow you like the dogs they are, they live for you after all”, “10+ people should all leave their server and say goodbye to their current toons only to play with you, even if it’s not your/their fault but Blizzard’s for keeping that damn server locked down”.

Anyway, I have wasted enough time on that message. Back on topic : Open Living Flame Blizzard !!.

1 Like
19

Cool story, bro.

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20

Please unlock Living flame

21

Unlock Living Flame.