Okay, you people. Calm down, step off your high horses, and listen.
If you haven't already, go read the Penny Arcade interview with Blizzard. you can find it here:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php3?date=2005-01-24
Scroll down to see it.
Simply put, since day one Blizzard has been trying to manage a firehose aimed at a teacup. If they had predicted before hand the number of players they actually got,
they would have been laughed at. They had to expect the game would be popular, but the reality was simply beyond reasonable expectation. It's their job to make the game work right, I agree; but when the unexpected happens you have to cut people a little slack. Besides, humans are fallible, and it's better to judge them on how they deal with their mistakes than on whether they make them at all.
Yes, they did print enough copies for all these unexpected players, because manufacturing costs per unit go down the more you make at once. Vivendi probably decided to print the largest quantity they could for a single run to save money, because they had faith in Blizzard and knew they'd sell eventually. That's the key word:
eventually. The same principle applies with the servers. They'd planned to roll out those extra servers gradually as more players joined over the coming months; if they'd lauched with all of them, and even their most optimistic estimates were true, either half of them would go unused or they'd all have too few players for any sort of community to form.
And from what I've seen, Blizzard has been busting their collective hump to fix the problems that have arisen. Do you honestly think they don't care about their customers? People who didn't just buy the software, but are continuing to pay a monthly fee to use it? When the game has been unplayable for too many for too long, they've credited players' accounts with extra time, and that's money out of their own pockets. They put a freeze of distributing more copies to keep the population from getting bigger and harder to handle, which is even more money lost. And beyond the money, there's the egoes of the creators: They put all their creative energy and talent into making this game, and to some of them it must feel like a personal failure on their part that it doesn't work. You can't honestly tell me that they don't want the game to work right at least as much as you do; for you it's just entertainment, but for them it's their livelihood and their professional reputation.
And no, they haven't been terribly forthcoming with status reports and explanations of the problems, but that's probably for three main reasons: One, they're afraid of making promises they won't be able to keep because of problems they haven't forseen yet. Two, when you're trying your hardest to fix something, it's annoying and frustrating to have to stop working on it to explain what's wrong and what you're doing about it. And three, they know that most people simply don't care
why they can't play, they just want to be able to.
We would'nt be so frustrated with these problems if the game wasn't so awesome. With that in mind, and the knowledge that Blizzard is doing the best they can in a difficult situation, I'm willing be lenient in my criticism for the time being.
