World of Warcraft: Forever came out last night. Those who stayed up were prepared for the usual fare for major WoW releases: long queues, disconnections, and server delays. However, apart from a few minor hiccups here and there, everything went smoothly. Eurogamer can report firsthand that for European players who stayed up, say between 11pm and 3:50am last night, the login queues were short and constantly moving. Those who were very keen to get in at the time the servers were up ran into unclickable server selection boxes, but going back and rejoining the short queue quickly fixed this issue. Here’s the general launch trailer for World of Warcraft: Forever. Watch it on YouTube Once you logged in, there was very little server lag other than one or two missed spells, nor were there constant random disconnects that would knock you out of action (I didn’t disconnect even once, a record). As far as WoW releases go, an incredibly smooth first day. This was recognized by World of Warcraft developers, such as executive producer Holly Longdale, who wrote in Josh “Aggrend” Greenfield, Senior Game Designer for World of Warcraft Forever, addressed some minor issues that arose. These include a zone population problem: in basic terms, megaservers divide players into different fragments, and some of them feel a bit empty of players. There was also a quirk with the various large ships and zeppelins scattered around the map, which were destroyed. Added temporary portals to provide an alternative solution. “Thank you all for making this a great and super smooth release,” Greenfield wrote. “I’m going to go home and ‘go to sleep’ now. Yes, sleep. I totally won’t be playing WoW Forever until 3am. No.” The reaction to this soft launch has left some players dumbfounded. “I can’t believe how smooth this launch is” is the title of the post by Reddit user Arizhela, who currently heads the WoW Forever board. They continue: “I was hoping I wouldn’t be able to play today, but I logged in without any queues or delays.” Another post, created early this morning, is titled “Never take a day off for launch, they said,” in which a WoW player regrets not booking time off work this week, expecting trouble. “You’ve been very clever, son,” replied user SnooWalruses3948, while SirePuns shared his surprise: “The advice was spot on, but this time the developers hired a witch, I assure you. The code must have been witchcraft, the hardware must have been blessed by a witch too.” It’s unclear how well World of Warcraft: Forever launched, given the unsocial and job-averse launch time in the dead of night for us Europeans, but it follows an unprecedented beta period that saw many return to the MMO. Impressions of this beta were largely positive, apparently the magic of the old MMO has been restored.
