Blizzard apologizes for World of Warcraft Warlords of Draenor’s poor launch

As an apology for the poor Warlords of Draenor launch, Blizzard is giving all World of Warcraft players five days' worth of extra gameplay time. Every account in the Americas, Oceania, and Europe, that was active as of Friday, November 14, will receive the extra time.

"I know how much everyone was looking forward to this expansion, and once you were able to get in and start having fun, all the comments I've seen indicate that this is one of our best yet. But the quality of the content does not excuse the subpar launch experience we delivered, and I apologize for that," executive producer J. Allen Brack said in a message to fans.

"The first two days of the expansion were not a great experience, with many of you facing high queues or significant gameplay problems. We worked around the clock to tackle the demand issues and technical challenges, and fortunately things started looking better on Saturday. While millions of you were able to get in and play over the weekend, with many already reaching level 100, others still ran into very lengthy queues, particularly on the highest-population realms," he explained, assuring players that they've expanded the new instancing tech to improve queues.

"This will result in approximately double the prelaunch capacity on each realm, which should greatly reduce queue times for most realms if not eliminate queues altogether," he explained.

"I also hope you'll accept my apology and keep your faith in us. The support voiced by many of you as we worked through the challenges was immensely appreciated. We're extremely grateful to be part of such a passionate community. We love World of Warcraft, and we're very proud of this expansion, so stumbling out of the gates like this was very disappointing for all of us," Brack concluded.

"On behalf of the World of Warcraft development team, as well as everyone at Blizzard, thank you all again for your patience and understanding."

We're still in the process of reviewing Warlords of Draenor. You can keep up with our review in progress here.