WoW Dragonflight is amazing, but the launch was incredibly annoying

The launch of WoW: Dragonflight is over – and it was extremely bumpy. It didn’t really go that well. Many couldn’t play.

Anyone who knows me and my articles knows that I like to praise Blizzard when it’s appropriate, but also to criticize badly when I think it’s appropriate. Unfortunately, the launch of WoW: Dragonflight is nothing to praise. Because for me personally, the release night was a bitter disappointment – one that I was not used to from World of Warcraft for a long time.

I know. There’s this old “Never Play On Patch Day” meme – and in the days of Vanilla and The Burning Crusade it still had some truth to it. But when I look back, the launch days of expansions – apart from small niggles – were pretty solid:

• Warlords of Draenor got off to a smooth start, but the garrison ran into problems – they were hopelessly overwhelmed. But the rest was solid.
• Legion did damn well too. I don’t remember any issues, was able to do my artifact quest and then seamlessly quest through the Broken Isles.
• Battle for Azeroth ran smoothly. In one go, punctually at midnight, I was able to quest through Kul Tiras.
• And most recently, Shadowlands also ran seamlessly. I think there was a few minutes delay before everyone unlocked the starting quest – but by 12:05 am at the latest, all my friends were in the Maw and about to finish their first missions.

Well, let’s get to Dragonflight.

The launch was a disaster – Blizzard had to find an emergency solution

At 12:00 a.m., countless players on my realm were lining up at the Stormwind Dock, ready for the launch. And it came – somehow. The starting quest was unlocked and the boat timer started ticking. In 5 minutes we would all be on the Dragon Islands. At least we hoped so.

However, the boat did not come. Except for the steamer bound for Kul Tiras, no ship stopped. First resentment spread, but due to the full chat it was still halfway funny. “Probably climate activists have glued themselves to the ship” and similar comments caused at least a smile.

Around 12:15 a.m., Blizzard also realized that they would not be able to fix the problem with the ships that easily. Therefore, a portal simply appeared on the jetty that teleports you directly to the dragon islands – a pity, because there should actually be a cutscene that was completely omitted.

At least in theory. Because the portal only worked for a fraction of the players. There were long loading times, at the end of which you got the message: “Instance could not be started, transport aborted.”

It’s a bit embarrassing that the start doesn’t succeed and Blizzard has to establish an “emergency solution” with a spontaneous portal. If the trip to the Dragon Islands doesn’t work out, something seems to have gone wrong during testing. But at least it was responded to quickly. A potential fix in 15 minutes is pretty solid.

This problem dragged on for… a full hour. Every now and then, a few players would come to the Dragon Isles while others were digging their heels in Stormwind.

All sorts of tricks were tried:

• Toggle war mode on and off
• As an Alliance, take the Horde Zeppelin
• Log in again

Nothing helped – except luck that you got in at some point.

I’ll be honest, I was pretty crushed. The release of a new WoW expansion is always a highlight for me that I really look forward to. A day that I plan well in advance so that it doesn’t bother me at all and I can just “search hard” – once every two years it’s one of my recurring highlights. Not being able to play then frustrates me.

At 1:15 a.m. my mood changed – because the 32nd click on the portal finally brought me to the Dragon Islands. I was still heartbroken that some of my friends were level 62 and raving about dragon riding, but at least I could catch up.

Long story short, Dragonflight is a lot of fun when it’s running. The quests are terrific, kite flying has replaced flying mounts forever for me, and the game world is just beautiful. You will read more about this here in the coming hours and days – because I really have a lot to report that stands out and makes it clear: Dragonflight is not Shadowlands and at least in the level phase it is significantly better.

How did you spend the first few hours? Were you able to go straight to the Dragon Islands? Or did your boat and the portal also strike?