World of Warcraft: Forever Launches With Short Queues

World of Warcraft: Forever launched November 4 with short login queues and generally stable play, while some players said areas felt sparsely populated. Blizzard said it would adjust population settings to make those areas feel more lively.

Players and reporters described brief waits to enter the game and few technical problems. One early issue left some server-selection boxes unclickable; players could resolve it by leaving and rejoining the short queue. Reports also described little server lag and few or no disconnections during initial play.

The launch did not feel equally busy everywhere. World of Warcraft uses layering to divide players among copies of the same game world, and some players said those areas seemed empty. Blizzard developer Josh Greenfield said the team knew that certain areas did not feel as populated as they should. On November 5, he said Blizzard planned to tweak population settings the following day. The change was intended to make areas feel livelier; the specific settings were not announced.

Blizzard’s launch-day performance followed a heavily attended beta. The company said nearly nine million characters were created during testing, according to one...