TBC was delayed but it was announced many months in advance and also it never had a release date. This time it seems the delay caught them by surprise and it seems to be mostly down to these unnecessary systems they can't balance or make fun. One example is that one of the biggest complaints about mythic+ loot is that if you had a bis item in there you have to farm that same item every single time the item level rewards increase, basically every major patch. Now they have extended that to affect every one by adding these conduit gems that you will have to farm every tier. The same ones, over and over. It will be 4-6 hours next week. Just wait.
They could solve it just like in BFA, by capping it and then releasing SL version of essences to make it even more obsolete. Well, duh. Although, I wouldn't be complaining if I had no interest. But somehow with each iteration of their rental power systems that started in Legion, I just want to play wow less and less. I would have actually played classic (and I did at first), but Blizzard doesn't give a crap about it and it's rampant with bots.
Partly due to the XP boost in place. Not a huge fan of this actually, I like that leveling takes some time and that you can go from one area to another, experience some lore and stuff like that. But if you can complete the whole leveling process in one area, that's a bit lame.
You can still go other places whenever you want. But if you stay in one expansion you'll at least get to finish the story. 4 hours is focusing on speed leveling. I asked beta players and they said you complete about 5 zones before dinging 50. The game is just too damn old to have a long leveling process.
I was impressed with the Legion expansion. Lots of different ideas and a great storyline. A few surprises along the way too. The Burning Crusade was horrible to play when it originally got released. I got to skip almost all of it this time around.
¨ Oh, phew Yea, speed leveling is something out of the extraordinary. True that it shouldn't be too long but not too short either. I'm longing for leveling up in Northend, that's where I have my fondest memories.
Found these estimates from Wowhead: Chromie Time Expansion Approximate Pace Warlords of Draenor 12 hours Legion 14 hours Battle for Azeroth 16 hours Mists of Pandaria 16 hours Cataclysm 20 hours Wrath of the Lich King 24 hours The Burning Crusade 24 hours
Some will say it's due to the strike going on at Blizzard France: https://www.pcgamer.com/unions-representing-blizzard-workers-have-called-for-a-strike/ However, in my experience this happened multiple times over the course of BFA as well. And I didn't even play during most of it.
It's just assumptions. We don't know if there even was a strike or who attended it or even what those people do at Blizzard. Something tells me servers technicians are not part of it. Either way, they are working on it: https://twitter.com/BlizzardCSEU_EN/status/1316431894658121729 It's no different than when people were unable to download COD:Warzone because the Blizzard servers were overloaded.
Still showing over 197 minutes for login to Battle.net. No way is there that many people trying to log in at once, unless the queue is intentional.
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Business as usual, a lot of people done with BFA and looking to try out anything even remotely new, try again tomorrow. I doubt the strikes at France affect the services all that much as I would imagine Blizz can control most things remotely.