I’m in San Francisco on business for a few days.

Don’t worry, I’ll still make the Wednesday night raids … well, y’know, assuming the Warcraft servers have been revived.

I’m not so out of the loop that I didn’t hear about how Patch 1.10 soloed the servers and wtfpwned the server spawn for many hours. Announced player compensation for the inconvenience: 50 cents.

Blizzard’s Drysc: “An issue occurred while applying the 1.10 content patch yesterday that prevented the realms from going live at the end of our scheduled maintenance window. To compensate players for any inconvenience caused by this extended downtime, we will be issuing a 24-hour time extension to all players with an active account. Thank you for your patience during today’s maintenance; we hope you enjoy all the new content in patch 1.10!”

How sweet is that? I wasn’t inconvenienced AT ALL, and I’ll get the 50 cents credit too. Also, I can say I told you so:

Any wagers on how fast they’ll push Patch 1.10 to live? how much downtime for hotfixes/server crashes? how much forum screaming? And the million-dollar question: Will this patch attract or drive away our priests?

(March 28th, 3 hours on 3/28, it will be thunderous, they’ll be happier post-1.10 but not ecstatic.)

I was a little optimistic about that additional downtime, but I’m still refining my prognosticative techniques. Honestly, I know of no other industry that would push several major system and code changes all at once and hope for the best. Only in gaming is this considered standard protocol.

Other Warcraft News: Blizzard announces new patch delivery system
Players’ UIs may be broken after Patch 1.10 (No! That’s hard to believe!)
Official Patch 1.10 notes (Patch notes Furl archive. Permalinks, wru?)