Official Forums Now Read-Only and Help- Center

[Cairenn]

Just got this alert from Blizzard to pass along:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...50534960&sid=1 All forums on the official World of Warcraft forums will be temporarily switched over to read-only mode. While we would like to make every effort to ensure the forums allow the community to interact with each other, the current situation does not allow for this, or allow Blizzard to relay information to the community. Thus, all forums will be available as read-only to allow us to share information with the public. We hope that we can keep the limitation of access to a minimum and revert the forums to full functionality as soon as possible. We have also posted up some information on the Wrath Launch Help Center that can be found here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...765041&sid=1#0

[Mazzlefizz]

I'm confused. What caused this to happen in the first place?

[Hallithron]

I'm similarly confused. I know they did it yesteday because all the traffic was slamming the forums and keeping them down. All I can figure for today is they're concerned that there's going to be a similar rush around LK release, but that seems awfully negative of them, which isn't exactly characteristic. Realistic, perhaps, but they've always seemed quite optimistic about things like this.

[septor]

I'm thinking they should have given a reason for why the did this. Even if it's complete hogwash at least it would keep the speculation down.

"Due to the extreme amounts of server strain we've temporarily switched the forums to read-only. Soon after LK goes live we should be able to revert them to their full functioning state!"

[kasca]

hummm maybe iam overly negitive but. Think maybe it becase they know lich is going to be bad. They dont want to hear it.

I.E. look at what going on the last 2 days.

[Seerah]

...no...

Our thoughts are that they want reduced strain on the forums and site servers for launch and in case they have important news/announcements to go out. If they can't post it or people can't read it because of server strain, then that would be a bad thing.

[Cairenn]

Just got another message from them:

I wanted to provide an update on the Official Forums for you. We have opened them back up for traffic, but if we feel it’s necessary to close them down for the sake of expedient communication again, we reserve the right.

[Mazzlefizz]

It always seemed to me that they have entirely different locations for their forum servers and their Wow servers. I don't remember the forums ever being slammed b/c of network traffic caused by the game. And their forums seemed to handle the BC release just fine. If so, I don't get their rationale. They have the ability to sticky and close important announcements, so I don't see how restricting the ability to post would curtail their ability to communicate.

I wonder if they're taking a page from Mythic, who chose not to have official forums. I suppose it makes sense. Official MMO forums always seem to always turn into into a hive of negativity ruled by a mob mentality.

[Petrah]

Originally Posted by Mazzlefizz It always seemed to me that they have entirely different locations for their forum servers and their Wow servers. I don't remember the forums ever being slammed b/c of network traffic caused by the game.

The forums are on a different IP address than the web site or the servers. When people cannot get on the game, they all flock to the forums to find out what's going on, or to vent their frustrations. With millions of people trying to get onto the forums it causes the site to slow down and eventually not load because of all the traffic. People are angry as hell (and rightfully so), and they were flooding the forums with some seriously nasty posts. Between the nasty posts and the forums being up and down due to the traffic, it makes perfect sense to shut things down or to make them read only. At least until tempers cool off.

Also, yesterday before things got really bad, the forums were experiencing major errors when you tried to post, so they did take them down to fix that. I watched things go from bad to worse yesterday... it wasn't pretty.

[Sepioth]

Originally Posted by Silenia The forums are on a different IP address than the web site or the servers. When people cannot get on the game, they all flock to the forums to find out what's going on, or to vent their frustrations. With millions of people trying to get onto the forums it causes the site to slow down and eventually not load because of all the traffic. People are angry as hell (and rightfully so), and they were flooding the forums with some seriously nasty posts. Between the nasty posts and the forums being up and down due to the traffic, it makes perfect sense to shut things down or to make them read only. At least until tempers cool off. Also, yesterday before things got really bad, the forums were experiencing major errors when you tried to post, so they did take them down to fix that. I watched things go from bad to worse yesterday... it wasn't pretty.

Yeah it did get pretty bad yesterday.

Must have been a nightmare to work at Blizz yesterday.

My only problem is the 'vague" not so helpful excuses they give. Just tell everyone what happened. Last night the the time for the servers to come back up changed 4 times (6 PST, 7 PST, 7:45 PST then it just said when they will have them up as soon as possible with no ETA)

I understand that a game of this size can have issues on a patch. Not everything can be caught by a handful of testers and stuff gets by them ... I get that. I also understand that they have everyone working possible to get the game back on line (imagine the OT they had to pay) I just wish they communicated better with us is all. I hate being left in the dark.

Hopefully in 3 hours the game can handle the Lich King crowd

[Mazzlefizz]

Oh I see. So something specific happened that people were pissed about. It wasn't just preparation for WotLK.

[Republic]

If you can't fix your problems, cover them up.

I'm Republic and I approved this message.

[Jeania]

lol I know part of the problem, as I saw it happening because I was bored lol.

A lot of people were a lil ticked because not more were being offered for transfer server options.

There were so many servers that had over an hour, to an hour and a half, queue line, from everyone coming back to WoW, new players, etc, that it was quite the havoc. And more then a few don't have hours and hours to wait, what with work, school, or whatever, so they felt quite frustrated. In addition, a lot felt, "hey, we pay to play, why can't we actually play?"

I think it's calmed down mostly, at least on my server, which had been having over an hour wait. Haven't checked the forums in a bit, so don't know if the others are settling down. But I did post, one was just a suggestion to Blizz, and kudos on making a expansion that had so few bugs, and was so amazing that people were lining up to play lol, and one was letting them know about the queue problem on Dalaran (before I saw the 3000 other posts that flew past).

Anyways, during that time, if you read the newest posts (in that thread paticularly) when you refreshed (and I'm a very fast reader) you'd see that there were 3 more pages or more to read, just in the time it took you to read what was just posted. Like I said lol, I was bored.

lol someone got into the spirit of things, and started a forum "hangman" which was pretty cool, and some pretty neat/relaxed/funny comments. But those were in the huge minority.

There's now more realms open for transfers, although it appears that some of them aren't going as planned, and some are having issues with them.

Also I was just reading that some are missing gold when transferring gold to their alts. I was just mentioning (and hey, go ahead and check out what I wrote lol...I'm Jeania there, if your searching lol), that one thing I'm going to do is start a thread in my guild forums that updates people to current issues that may be occurring within the game, so that people are aware, and can possibly avoid problems themselves. Of course, I'd update when the situations have been resolved as well lol. Reason I'm mentioning that is...

Maybe WoWinterface (and it's various multitude of forums lol) could do the same as well? Not so much an open topic, people can start new topics or it could be linked "if you wish to discuss this, post in this thread" in the topic. But it could be called (just a hashing of possible thread titles) WoW Current Issues. Especially with your current connections with blizz (congrats on that btw, wow!) you are also more likely to be kept abreast of current situations, and when they seem to have been resolved. But each topic in the thread could mention the newest issue, and then it could be edited when there are updates, and when the issue has been resolved.

Just a thought lol. I do have to say I love this site, and I love the fact that you are all very willing to not only help, but to interact with those who post in the forums. Speaks very well of all of you, and I think a lot of people feel the same. Not brown-nosing lol, just thought it should be mentioned. Sometimes kudos need to be given, where it's applicable, you know what I mean?

Anyways, just an update on this thread, of what I've read, and my thoughts lol.

Laters! ^_^

[Fuhma]

Could it have to do with all the slamming that the new guild between Nehilum and the other one merging and clearing everything in 3 days and being backed by an unknown sponsor to play while others are paying to play not being payed to play? Just my thoughts on the situtation.

[Seerah]

I doubt it, as this was from before wrath launched.