Midnight Launch!! Oh wait, no....

[clevins]

So Wrath launches at midnight right? Cool! Except... hold it... no it doesn't.

It launches at midnight EST. 9pm PST. Ok, fine. But all of the Pacific time stores are having... you guessed it. Midnight launches. 3 hours after it's actually live.

I do believe the Keystone Kops have taken over Blizzard's product management team. I mean, this just cracks me up so hard. 471 days to plan a launch... and they can't coordinate it correctly. Do I care? Not really. I'm off tomorrow and wasn't planning on pulling an all nighter anyway. But I saw the message about the 9pm launch and couldn't help laughing since if stores hold to a midnight local time release 2/3rds of the country won't be able to go to Northrend when the server updates. .

[elsegundo]

yea its kinda ridiculous. but maybe it depends on server time. so your server may not launch at 9pm PDT... but this has to be confirmed by someone playing in a different server than an east coast sever.

[clevins]

Yeah, the originally said it would roll out at midnight server time. Since I play on a CST server but live on the West Coast I looked for copies being sold early but no luck.

It's no big deal in the scheme of things, but it cracked me up that they'd make such a big deal of the midnight launch, to the point of having stores like Best Buy cooperate... then say "hey, we meant EST!"

[prion]

some idiot made a poor choice of words when they updated the message at 6 pm today. that's all. otherwise as far as everyone else knows the event is taking place at midnight.

[clevins]

RTFS. There are people on my realm in Northrend right now and it's neither midnight server time or Pacific.

http://i520.photobucket.com/albums/w327/pepelepewpew/Picture1-1.png

[prion]

yes i read that.

obviously they just wanted to flip the switch on all the US servers at the same time. They just shouldn't have told anyone. Like I said, for all anyone would have known, the xpac was launching at midnight. and thats whats happening, one way or another.

[clevins]

WEll, even if they'd not told anyone it would have been obvious as soon as the east coast people on your realm started talking about hitting Northrend (though they might not have tried if Blizz had not said anything).

As I said elsewhere, Blizz is showing their roots in a pre-web world. The concept of a midnight launch doesn't really mean much in a hosted, connected world and I really don't need the DVD in any event - I just need the CD key to activate things and they could have given that out online. The entire "ohhh go buy my box!" thing doesn't really map to a world where the game's hosted. But hey, it gives me something to do at lunch tomorrow.

[dwarfenhelm]

it was a bit of a pain in europe from around 9pm game time we had players in northrend yet people living in the uk had to wait till 1am game time. with blizzard being a net company you think they would have staggered the launch so it was actauly sold at same time all over. also having a riolling restart to activate the expansion at a set time would have been better.
but then hey so what im playing now and almost 71 roll on 80

[Clavina]

The first people in our guild to get to Northrend are from the UK and they were there ~9.30pm

[Mollymog]

The first people in our guild to get to Northrend are from the UK and they were there ~9.30pm

I think I'm glad I ordered our two copies online from Amazon. They've been mailed from Jersey (sparing us a little tax), cost less than the in-store prices, will be here probably Saturday (going by previous purchases from Amazon.co.uk Jersey) and we can sit back and read what the rest of you make of the whole thing before installing.

And when I hear on the morning news that the first guy in line at some store in London collapsed from lack of food (he'd been in line since Monday - couldn't he pack a sandwich at least??) and had to be carted away in an ambulance, I'm really glad I didn't get involved in all that hassle. If it's good, it'll keep. If it's a mess, I can wait out the repairs.

[zodiac66]

Considering us east coasters have more maintenance to sit through during awake hours...

I was home and installing the game at 12:07 am. est.

Actually, rather happy that there are no huge issues.

[Twoflower]

i was in northrend at 22:00 yesterday. :D

[clevins]

Considering us east coasters have more maintenance to sit through during awake hours...

I was home and installing the game at 12:07 am. est.

Actually, rather happy that there are no huge issues.

Addict! :)

Yeah, I don't mind the East coasters getting first crack at it. I'll go grab my copy at lunch. Of course now that you're all 80.... what? You're NOT?? SLACKERS!!!!

[Pharoahe]

I think I'm glad I ordered our two copies online from Amazon. They've been mailed from Jersey (sparing us a little tax), cost less than the in-store prices, will be here probably Saturday (going by previous purchases from Amazon.co.uk Jersey) and we can sit back and read what the rest of you make of the whole thing before installing.

And when I hear on the morning news that the first guy in line at some store in London collapsed from lack of food (he'd been in line since Monday - couldn't he pack a sandwich at least??) and had to be carted away in an ambulance, I'm really glad I didn't get involved in all that hassle. If it's good, it'll keep. If it's a mess, I can wait out the repairs.

I saw him being dragged out...wtf
Dont even know why he was there on monday lol, coulda just shown up a on wednesday morning.