New content? why not...

We've been undergoing infrastructure maintenance on our various databases to address the instance capacity issues for several weeks now. It's a very involved and complicated process, but a great number of realms have already seen relief. We are continuing to work on the Battlegroups that have yet to see the infrastructure changes necessary to improve the instance capacity available to players on each realm.

With that being said, I have to add that there is little to no art, development, or design involvement in fixing such an issue. They are concerned with developing and designing future content for the game and that will continue as our technical and database administrators focus on their tasks. Developers do not perform the restructuring and maintenance of our realms and databases, particularly given that we're based in California and our databases are in various locations around the world. It's a misnomer to suggest that content design focuses resources away from hardware restructuring.

Our database administrators will continue to work on the hardware structure of each database, also working closely with third parties who are helping in resolving the issue. We're working on gathering a report of the progress we've made thus far, as well as our plans in the coming weeks, and will be providing this information to our players when it is available.

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2. " It's a misnomer to suggest that content design focuses resources away from hardware restructuring. " ummmm,...new hardware costs money,....and you have to pay the developers to design the "new" content. This money comes from the same place,...monthly subscriptions.

We all still get pay checks even when more finances or resources need to be dedicated to a specific aspect of maintaining World of Warcraft's realms. Our developers aren't contracted at irregular intervals to design content. They're full time employees and receive regular paychecks in accordance with our company policies and state laws.

Don't think that the resolution to the instance capacity issue is being delayed because there are people paid to clean our bathrooms and vacuum our floors every night. Business doesn't work that way, nor is money the limiting factor in this situation.

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And, yes, it is our right to complain and demand a better product over and over until we either get the problem solved or get compensated for a product not working correctly.

You are correct. Though for the purposes of these forums, we ask that you do so in accordance with the forum Code of Conduct.

Work on resolving the issue will continue, as it is a high priority, whether or not players continue to create threads about this. We have the numbers and know when instance capacity issues are plaguing select realms. It is our goal to keep players apprised of the trials, the progress and the target time frame for a resolution.

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What I am displeased with is the lack of communication.

Why couldnt they tell us where they were in the process? I didnt see it in any Messages/posts. I didnt see it in the login screen, but I saw it as a response to a post that requests the logic of new content be examined over instance fixes.

Why is it a retort instead of a statement?

While I did already mention that we're preparing messaging to update players about the issue, we did provide information about our process in July: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=18031082483&sid=1

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<montoya> You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means </montoya>

"Misnomer: a misapplied or inappropriate name or designation."

Stop trolling.

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Zar can I just ask why this response was posted in a completely new thread when I'm sure you are aware of the gigantic thread centered around this issue? I mean don't get me wrong I'm glad you guys finally spoke up about what you were doing instead of saying absolutely nothing but it seemed a lot of people were cancelling their accounts due to not hearing anything from blue posters for over a month.

Not flaming just wondering really. I'm glad there is at least hopes that Spinebreaker's instance capacity problems at pretty much every time of day will be addressed rather than not hear anything and just cancel my account since I can't really do anything other than dailies atm.

I hope I'm not misunderstood here. We do try to keep topics limited to as few threads as possible so it's not confusing for players or employees when reading the forums. In this case though, that thread is so long that I was afraid of any follow-up posts by me being lost in the shuffle. As I said before though, we'll be putting up some official messaging with updates about the issue as soon as we can collect the necessary information and verify the status of the steps being taken to address this issue.

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Zarhym, while we appreciate you addressing the issue here, I believe that you are clearly incorrect about one thing. There IS A 100% direct relationship with new content and the instance capacity issue at hand.

You are correct in that patch 3.2 drove more players to instances further impacting the issue, however, I never claimed otherwise. I simply stated that development time doesn't need to be cut or re-focused in order to more quickly alleviate this issue.

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While blizzard may be expanding these database instances on their hardware, the new content may, in fact be, saturating blizzards efforts to increase customer satisfaction by hindering it with "new" instances.

The fact that some realms are experiencing realm capacity issues more frequently due to the patch doesn't mean it's going to hinder or delay our ability to resolve the issue. If I'm understanding you correctly, I think your statement is incorrect.

Just to be clear, most realms are not experiencing this. Some realms that may have been experiencing this in the last few months are no longer being affected. Those realms that are still suffering from instance capacity issues have, in most cases, noticed an amplification of the situation since patch 3.2 was launched. Those are the players we're seeing posting here; and for them, we're working on a progress report so everyone is aware of the steps being taken.