As many of you know… yesterday, the Blizzard giveth, and then the Blizzard tooketh away.
For a brief time, getting your own Mojo was as easy as a death run through Eastern Plaguelands and on into the lowbie area of Ghostlands.
But then, the news broke out into the world. First MMO Champion, and then WoW Insider, and I’m sure a slew of others got the word out. “Go, ye mighty craving frog pets, and get yours now while supplies last!”
And then, at about 3:00 PM Central time, the supplies ran out.
Yep, someone at Blizzard saw the news coverage, saw that folks were getting frogs and having fun in IF and Orgrimmar kissing like crazy, and they freaked.
Watch with us, as the scene unfolds….
“Holy Crackers!”, they cried, “We didn’t intend for that many folks to have fun all at once! Something must be done! Fast! You! Boy! Get me that guy we keep chained in the basement for fixing bugs!”
“But sir”, comes the reply, “He’s almost finished writing the code to fix a host of game-balancing issues and Paladin core gameplay issues that the Forums brought up a year ago. Can’t we let this go for a day or two? We can catch it on Tuesday for scheduled maintenance.”
“HELL NO!!! Are you insane?!? By Tuesday, everybody on every server will have a Mojo! They won’t be rare items to show off, to prove how leet the players are! How are raiders supposed to show they’re better than everyone else, without items like this in the game? Shut it the hell down, now!”
“All right sir, if you say so. But aren’t you afraid that rushing a fix through so fast might have unforeseen consequences?”
“Unforeseen consequences? You know what I got to say to your unforeseen consequences? 10 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS, baby! That’s what I got to say to that! Now shut the hell up and shut that Mojo down!”
A poor coder scribbles frantically as a huge, sweaty, bald man stands over him fondling a whip. “Code faster!” “Sorry sir. Speeding up sir.”
“All right sir, the patch has gone out as an unnannounced hotfix. The next person to try kissing Prigmon will get nothing, with no explanation why. It should cause quite a bit of confusion, and lots of wasted time traveling across a dangerous zone for the next hour or so until the word gets out.”
“Good, good. That’ll teach the little buggers!”
An hour passes.
“Sir, bad news.”
“Didn’t you hear me earlier, boy? 10 million subscribers. There ain’t no such thing as bad news. Now tell me what you’re whining about this time.”
“No sir, this looks serious. Ever since the hotfix nerfed Mojo, lag has been increasing across the board on all servers. It almost looks like a memory drain on the servers. And it’s increasing. Reports are coming in from every server that some instances are crashing, and are no longer letting people back in.”
“Who cares about the noobs running instances? As long as the Battlegrounds and the Raids are fine, let ‘em QQ. Now, I’m trying to watch a tape of the new Terminator show here. Don’t come bothering me again unless something brings down the BGs or the Raids.”
“Yes, sir.”
Another hour passes.
“Sir?”
“Dammit, what freaking now?!?!“
“Sir, I’m sorry, I know you like Summer Glau, but you said you wanted to know… all Battlegrounds, instances and Raids are down. Dead. Kaput.”
“Well, okay, that could be bad. But I just got the chips out of the microwave. Hmmm…. Hell with it, screw ‘em. Just ignore it for now; if they don’t like it, they can log off for a change and go see what color the damn Sun is. Do ‘em some good. Hell, they should thank me for giving them a break. Now buzz off.”
“Yes, sir. [sigh]
Another hour passes….. [you having fun yet?]
“Sir? I thought you’d like to know, we don’t need to worry about the instances and BGs and Raids being down anymore.”
“Oh yeah?”, the drunken voice slurs from the depths of the recliner, as waves of cheese-covered nachos tumble from the slumped figures’ belly. On the massive TV in front of him, in the Blizzard ‘War Room’, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is coming on the air. “Problem fixed itself, did it? I told ya we knew what we were doing. Built them servers darn tough! No hotfix can take ‘em down! Now get me another beer.”
“Oh, no sir, the instances and stuff are all still bollixed up. No, it’s just that no one seems to care! The players seem to have taken the opportunity to talk to each other, organize, and find new things to do on their own. They’ve gotten raiding leagues formed, and massive server-wide raids on capital cities are underway even as we speak. The players have never been happier. It’s amazing, the level of fun they can get up to when they don’t have the same old thing to run.”
“WHAT!?!?! The HELL you say! How DARE they have fun in ways I did not personally authorize? That’s it, take those servers down, NOW! I’ll put a stop to that shit!”
“But sir! Well, okay sir, if you say so… I’ll get the notice posted up on the login screen right away.”
“Like hell you will! You must be new here, boy… we don’t warn ‘em, we just put up a rolling timer in general chat… and it shouldn’t say ‘Server Restart’, neither… they can understand a restart. Say ‘Server Shutdown’ instead. That’s nice and vague, it could mean minutes, hours or even days. That’ll panic the little bastards. Now, I said get me another beer.”
“Right away, sir.
This little behind-the-scenes view at Blizzard Weekend Tech Support has been brought to you by Guinness… enjoy a Guinness today!
Entries (RSS)