In general I've been pleasantly surprised at how stable my own realm has been since the launch. Yes, we've had queues, restarts, lag, and yes, we've also had an insanely annoying subgroup of people with absolutely no scruples over stealing quest spawns (to be fair, this isn't Blizzard's fault, unless you count their refusal to allow us to kill members of our own faction. I have been sorely tempted over the last few days). But in general, play has been pretty trouble-free apart from the crowds you'd expect at all the usual quest hubs, and the response to the expansion has been universally positive from everyone to whom I've spoken. Wrath, at least on my own realm, has gone live to a very happy and excited bunch of players.

But with a look at WoW Insider's inbox, I'm not sure it's worked out that way for everyone. We've seen a spate of recent complaints about server crashes and giant queues, and this weekend we've gotten a lot of them from people playing on Oceanic servers particularly (one of our readers, James Flannery, wrote in to tell us about an Oceanic server queue that went from 86 to 161 minutes during the half hour that he'd already been waiting). While in general I think it's safe to say that Wrath's launch went much more smoothly than Burning Crusade's did, I'm not sure everyone's benefited despite Blizzard's efforts. Possibly it's a function of Wrath being even more popular than anticipated in certain regions. If you play on multiple servers, which realm(s) seem to be doing best and worst? Have queue times (if they existed) and server lag improved for you?

Queues are the highest most of us have ever seen tonight. On my home server of Eldre'Thalas I was behind over 850 people at one point, and have had over an hour wait be estimated for me more often than not. I maxed out at 115 minutes.

The estimated wait time will fluctuate back and forth depending on the frequency in which players log off or leave the queue in frustration.

Perhaps the biggest thing we need to worry about this expansion is not server down time, but the phenomenal amount of players wanting to get in the game.

If Blizzard has any announcement about this, or solutions (other than transferring realms) we'll keep you updated here. Other than that... good luck getting in.

With the Wrath Beta Opt-in available, we're one step closer to the expansion. We're all anxiously awaiting the time when the expansion is ready. I'm still having fun with the existing World of Warcraft, but I'm a bit antsy. There is a lot of frustration over existing conditions, especially when it comes to PvP.

Chloroform of EU-Magtheridon isn't interested in waiting. He listed his grievances in the EU-PVP Forum, "Balance issues, queue times, destroying premades, AFK problems, uneven teams, world pvp screwed by 9000yd aggro range ultra guards." Like many others, Jasse of EU-Bronzebeard blames the arena for the death of PvP.

It seems to be a complaint that comes up quite often lately: Many people on both sides of the aisle are finding that when they queue up these days and get into a battleground, one side or the other starts at a distinct disadvantage, numbers-wise. Whether it be a 15-7 Arathi Basin, or a 10 to 3 Warsong Gulch, I'm sure most avid Battleground PvPers can tell you that it is extremely hard to recover when you start at a great imbalance in numbers like that.

Zarhym chimed in to offer his own view on the situation on a recent forum thread, and to tell us that Blizzard may still be open to a bit more tweaking to try to solve the problem.

Blizzard has just recently opened a new server over in the EU realms called Molten Core, and not only are they already seeing queues on there (due to all the migration), but Blizzard is thinking about opening the gates of AQ for them.

Which strikes us as a little sad. Admittedly, the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj is a huge undertaking, and it would likely take a long time for the players on the new realm to get the War Effort over and done with (and surely Blizzard wouldn't want that competing for attention with any World Events planned for the next expansion). And even after the gates open, players can still complete that giant quest to get the Scepter anyway (just as they can right now on any other live realm). And as Blizzard says, most of these incoming players are coming from realms where the gates are open already anyway.

But it's still a little sad that Blizzard is stepping in to open the gates automatically rather than leaving the task up to the players. Just like all of the old world instances, Blizzard seems more than happy to leave all their old content and hard work behind, and instead focus players on what's coming out in the future.

Thundgot, one of Blizzard's European CMs, is reporting that due to the one-two punch of patch 2.3 and Arena Season 3, more people than usual are logging on, resulting in queues on many realms that don't usually have them. So season two is over, and season queue begins (sorry, couldn't resist). I don't know if the North American realms are also supposed to be having queues; none of my regular ones have been, but I tend to play at off-peak times, so perhaps I wouldn't have seen them anyway. Who's been seeing queues, where are you, and how bad have they been?

Blizzard says they're holding off on doing anything about the queues, be it free transfers or new realms, but they promise that they're "closely monitoring" things, and if this proves to be more than a transient thing, measures will be taken, as usual. I remember back in the pre-BC days, when most realms had queues most of the time...that was no fun. But it seems that Blizz have learned from that, since I haven't ever faced anything that bad since BC launched.

As I'm sure many of you have noticed, server queues are back in a fairly big way. My own realm (Shadow Council) has been experiencing 500-ish person queues at peak times since a bit before Christmas. I know that's not huge, but we never used to have any queues at all. I've heard similar reports from many other realms, most of them worse than mine. It seems that Blizzard is aware of the problem, and planning on implementing some good ol' free character transfers from impacted realms. In the words of Tseric:

• In the past week, we have seen something of a surge and we are already in the works to provide Free Character Transfers for a number of realms to deal with spiking of queues. Obviously, we will deal with the most severe realms first, so if you do not see your particular realm on the first list, it does not indicate that you will receive no assistance for this in the future.
  
  Keep watch on the General stickies for announcements relating to Free Transfers within the next couple of days.

Edit: Blizz have now announced specific transfers. The transfers will begin at 12 PM on Thursday, January 4, and run to 11 PM on Tuesday, January 8. Those of you on lleria, Anvilmar, Blackhand, Burning Blade, Daggerspine, Destromath, Draka, Durotan, Duskwood, Eonar, Executus, Garona, Greymane, Icecrown, Illidan, Kel'Thuzad, Mal'Ganis, Skullcrusher, Spinebreaker, or Warsong will be able transfer to Nazjatar, Baelgun, Alterac Mountains, or Arygos (as usual, you don't get to choose; it depends on your specific realm). I'm assuming these are new realms, since I don't see them on the realm status page.

Further Edit: Battlegroups have been announced. Nazjatar and Baelgun are in Shadowburn, and Alterac Mountains and Arygos are in Nightfall.

"This PvP thing is quite fun," thought I, several weeks ago.

Time passed. Lured on by cheap combat potions, armour and (of course) glory, I've been spending plenty of time attempting to kill Horde recently. I thoroughly enjoy the niche my druid has found in PvP, and have worked hard to become a better player. By slowly but steadily ranking up, the addictive microreward cycle has worked its magic on me, and what began as an experiment to see how far I could get PvPing when I had the time has become something more permanent.

Of course, such idyllic stories end in tears; the Drums of War have arrived in Azeroth, bringing with them shortened battleground queues. Previously, it was a case of occasional PvP games (usually short losses to elite teams) fitting nicely in amongst work breaks -- a little light relief from a heavy burden. However, now the queues are almost eliminated, and the games are much longer, I can't multitask any more.

All is not lost, however. Despite the joy of being a flag-carrying bear, sometimes it's fun to just get out there and burn faces. My mage alt is old enough to go into AV, and firing pyroblasts with reckless disregard for rank or reputation is a different -- and utterly refreshing -- kind of game.

It was 8PM, local time for me, when I got home.  An hour's drive in traffic.  I hop on the computer, intent on working out the stress of the day in some PvP matches, but there seems to be a 400 player queue to log on to my realm - that's another half hour.  Well, okay - I can go find something for dinner and it will be done by the time I'm back.  All I want is to run a few Warsong Gulch games, and hopefully get my new priest up to friendly with the Warsong Outriders - humble enough goals, right?   But, wait - now that I'm logged on, there seems to be an hour's queue to get in to Warsong at all.  Hmm, I suppose I do have a good book I've been meaning to read.  But, honestly, I have to wonder - when did I start to spend more time waiting than I did playing?  Because this new waiting game is not nearly as fun as the game I used to play.

Of course there's hope - new servers and hardware improvements, as well as the possibility of cross-realm battlegrounds will both cut into this waiting game - but, until then, all there is to look forward to is more of the same.  I know I'm not the only one out in Azeroth who's hit this wall - what do the rest of you do when all you want to do is play, but the game is, for one reason or another, out of your reach?

Remember the slew of new US servers that opened about a month ago?  Well, a lot of players from other servers jumped on the opportunity to start anew - myself included.  The chance to start on a fresh server has been a thrill.  No queues, no lag, and no gold farmers.  But the servers have already started growing up.  Gold and characters are available for purchase on most and queues on my new server have already surpassed those on my old.  After weeks of watching the queues increase, I'm starting to realize that this may not be just a passing thing - people aren't just coming to visit the servers just announced or tagged new, they're sticking around to play.

So what does this mean for population balance?  I haven't heard anything about queues or lag dropping on older servers - though perhaps people are too busy playing to post about it.  Short of establishing draconian policies that force players to one server or another, it doesn't seem like there's much Blizzard can do to normalize server population aside from making new realms and transfer servers attractive options to players.  But a month after a major wave of new transfers, new realms, and new hardware, are we seeing improvements - or are the problems just moving from one server to another?

So Blizzard recently decided to allow character transfers from eight of their most overpopulated servers to a new server, Mug'thol. People on Burning Blade, for instance, were having 700-800 long queues for logging in, to the tune of more than an hour wait to get in. This was a good idea, right? Alleviating some of the strain on those overpopulated servers?

Problem is that too many people made the jump and now Mug'thol has been having 1000 queues during peak time with 1-2 hour-long wait times, and those people who thought they were escaping one aggravating situation now find themselves in the exact same situation, but worse. And they are pissed off.

I have to agree with them. Blizzard seems to have planned this migration poorly and still hasn't posted an update saying they are aware of the issue. I'm a casual enough gamer that I haven't personally been affected by the overpopulation issue on the servers I play, but I can't even imagine having to wait 1-2 hours just to play the game. Sometimes all I have is 1-2 hours to play, and I'm certainly not going to be happy having to spend that time waiting. The bottom line is that Blizzard needs to fix this problem and soon.