Ordinn wrote: We wanted to let you know that we are aware of the performance issues some players have been experiencing recently, including: realm queues, slow character-list retrieval, and loot lag, and keep you informed of the steps we’re taking to alleviate the problems. During the holiday season, thousands of new players created accounts and many players reactivated their dormant accounts, pushing our daily concurrency to the highest levels we have seen since World of Warcraft launched. This increase in concurrency increased pressure on our systems, causing the issues listed above.
We began preparing for this increase in players prior to the holidays, and we would like to share our plans with you. The first step is to target some of our ongoing code improvements specifically at decreasing pressure on World of Warcraft’s system infrastructure. We have been making and will continue to make code improvements throughout the life of the game, but our goal with these specific changes will be to help streamline how item creation impacts the database, which will help mitigate some of the issues. The second and more impactful step will be to add new hardware to increase performance. This increase will significantly improve the current level of performance, and, combined with the code improvements, should alleviate the issues listed above.
In order to accommodate the further growth of our player base, we have plans in motion to open a new World of Warcraft site a few months from now. This will allow us to bring a large number of new realms online for the new players, as well as any players who join in anticipation of The Burning Crusade. In addition, we will begin to replace our current systems with the newest top-of-the-line components, with the goal of further increasing performance across all realms.
As always, we remain committed to delivering the best possible service for you, and we will do everything necessary to ensure that World of Warcraft continues to provide an experience that you have to come to expect from all Blizzard games. We appreciate your patience as we work to make the changes discussed here over the weeks and months ahead.