WoW: The Burning Crusade - Was Blizzard Prepared?

A few hours ago, the grand opening of the Dark Portal was supposed to take place, leading anxious players into the Outlands. But much to everyone's disappointment on at least one of the European RP-PvP servers (Defias Brotherhood), the only "event" that took place at midnight was the server crashing down. Luckly, it didn't take long for it to come back online, at which point characters lv. 58 and up were indeed able to pass through the portal. But that was pretty much it, nothing special whatsoever - despite the fact that the end of the Burning Crusade beta this past weekend was accompanied by spectacular events, orchestrated by the game masters. You can read about it on Blizzplanet, and they also have plenty of screenshots and movies to go with it.

A more pleasant surprise cooked up by Blizzard tonight was the opening of several new servers, for those of us eager to start life anew in Azeroth. According to the initial announcement from last week, the new realms were supposed to go up tonight at 00:01 AM, however they went live about an hour and a half early. Luck was on my side this time, with a little help from my friends who were keeping a close eye on the situation (thus making it possible for me to reserve my 10 most-wanted character names, hooray!) - but I'd hate to think about the poor folks who got in later, albeit in time for the supposed midnight opening.

Oh well, I can't complain. And neither can plenty of players from the UK, where the street date for the World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade expansion was broken by several retailers during the weekend - ahead of tonight's official launch. Here's a bit from the report on GI.biz:

"One major supermarket started selling the title on Saturday after taking delivery of stock, and it soon had a knock-on effect as independents and specialist games stores put the title on shelves to defend their positions in a cutthroat market."

At any rate, the Burning Crusade is now if full swing, as players from existing servers are swarming the Outlands, while the new realms are buzzing with low-level draenei and blood elves. The old races' starting zones are also packed full of mini-grinders, since many players (myself included) are still waiting for the delivery of their expansion.

And for those of you who are still uncertain about buying the add-on, Blizzard recently launched a Flashy mini-website for The Burning Crusade, with various media and quests (i.e. mini-games) waiting to be completed, in order to gain acces to special sections on the website. Have fun! I know I am.

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)