#0 - Aug. 6, 2009, 8:52 p.m.
Dear Blizzard Entertainment, GM's and Forum Moderator's,
Can you please pass on to the people at the top of your company the fact that the aformentioned issue (in thread title) is seriously harming a lot of peoples enjoyment of the product you have created. We're in a Global Recession and the general populace don't have a lot of money to throw around. A tip from one business person to another here, in times like this it doesn't pay in the long term to upset your customer base through an incomplete product. The average Joe/Jane coming home from work wanting to sit down, maybe with his/her partner, on an entertainment medium of choice isn't going to fork out monthly to sit at an instance portal in a virtual world all evening simply because it is 'peak time'. He/she will change the entertainment medium of choice and there are a lot of current different choices with many more on the horizon in the future.
I have read about the issue. I am fully aware of why it has to be done. However I am not fully enlightened as to why a fix cannot be quickly implemented. Back in TBC during patch 2.4 when everybody was farming Karazhan like mad for badges I never ever ever recall instance lag. In fact during my whole time in TBC on this and other characters I never came across instance lag even in 25-man raids. I appreciate there may now be additional players because of the launch of Wrath of the Lich King but seriously what additional strain can 1 more person in Wailing Caverns do to harm the instance servers for example?
As a recommendation may I suggest instance 'throttling'. Surely you have some measure of knowing when your instance servers are reaching capacity? If so what you should do is allow people to enter but put a discrete disclaimer stating that they may indeed suffer from lag because the server is at capacity and if they wish to play without it then to do so at a different time. Server priority could then be assigned to the instances that were launched first so that they would still receive no lag, but additional instances launched after the cap limit would suffer but could at least get things done whilst you sort out the long term fix.
It's either unfair to the people sat outside the instance waiting or it's unfair to the people inside the instance.
As business people turning a profit I understand why you made this move, however closing the doors and saying 'no more instances' seems a tad extreme.
I'd rather play with a tiny bit of time delay than to not play at all.
