Tens of thousands of World of Warcraft players flocked to their keyboards when WoW: Classic launched on Monday. Unfortunately, many of those players found themselves waiting... for a really long time. Blizzard clearly did not anticipate just how high in demand the game would be, and every single World of Warcraft: Classic server was full at launch, leaving players with estimated wait times of over five hours.

Blizzard had set the servers up weeks in advance, encouraging players to sign on early and create their characters in order to be prepared for the day of release. Nothing could have prepared them for the incredibly long queues, and it quickly became clear that there were not enough servers to meet the high demand of the game. Despite this, players waited, waited, then waited some more until they eventually got in. Adding gasoline to the fire, some servers crashed even after players waited hours to play, forcing them to start all over and sign in again.

via InvenGlobal.com

I experienced one of these insanely long queues personally, and spent most of my Monday evening waiting just to get a chance to play the game. I signed onto the realm where I had pre-made my characters, just to be notified that I was the 12,000th person in line, and that I was facing an estimated wait time of about 240 minutes. The fact that over 10,000 people had been waiting in line on just one server serves as an example of how high in demand this game is, and how much Blizzard underestimated the hype.

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Luckily, Blizzard did come up with a solution. They opened brand new "emergency" servers mid-launch, where players could bail on the server that they originally intended playing on in order to avoid a long wait time. I was one of those players, opting to play the game right away instead of waiting hours every time I wanted to log into my original server. This worked for the most part, and gave players who didn't feel like waiting an opportunity to play. Still, the wait times for other servers barely decreased.

via ProgressionAnnexe.Blogspot.com

Even days after launch, especially during evening hours, most of the World of Warcraft: Classic servers are still experiencing insanely long wait times. I have a longtime friend who wanted me to play with him on the Skeram server, but every time I try to log in, I'm faced with at least a three hour wait time. He told me that he spent the other evening waiting five hours to play, and when he finally logged in, he only had enough time to play for twenty minutes. As you can imagine, I was discouraged by this and continued to play on my emergency server so I could avoid waiting all evening. I haven't talked to this friend in years, and it would be great to reconnect over some World of Warcraft: Classic, but unfortunately, long wait times are preventing that from happening.

Overall, I'm happy that World of Warcraft: Classic has been released, and I've been having a great time playing it so far. It feels exactly the way it did back in 2006, and it's just as addicting as it was all those years ago. Unfortunately, the experience has been tainted a bit by just how high in demand the game is, and the lack of preparation Blizzard made in anticipating that demand. Myself, along with other World of Warcraft players, are hoping that once the hype dies down and more casual players stop playing, these wait times won't be an issue any more.

NEXT: World of Warcraft Classic Review: Putting The RPG Back Into MMORPG