Blizzard has announced plans to offer World of Warcraft subscribers free game time to appease those affected by the server issues brought about by Warlords of Draenor.
The recently-released expansion caused a significant spike in users on the MMO’s servers, resulting in egregious load times as budding explorers attempted to venture back into Aezroth once again.
Taking to the official Battle.net forum, World of Warcraft‘s executive producer J. Allen Brack offered his solidarity to subscribers, stating that the quality of the content doesn’t excuse the problematic launch.
The first two days of the expansion were not a great experience, with many of you facing high queues or significant gameplay problems. To help address this, we’ve expanded the new instancing tech we used to improve queues on Saturday and we’re continuing the process of applying that to raise the capacity of all realms again.
In recognition of the difficulties so many of you ran into when trying to play over the first few days, we’re adding five days’ worth of extra time to every subscription in the Americas, Oceania, and Europe that was active as of Friday, November 14.
To make matters worse, Blizzard revealed that it suffered a DDOS attack during the launch of the expansion last week, which only added fuel to an already tenacious fire, with players reporting lag and other in-game bugs. Still, the fact that subscribers will be entitled to five extra days free of charge is a nice tonic to what has become a hectic few days for video game launches in the industry.
Have you been affected by these server problems when trying to join a match in Warlords of Draenor? Share your experience in the comments section below.