Blizzard awards free WoW game time to players after troubled update, but issues persist

The launch of the World of Warcraft The War Within pre-patch hasn’t gone quite as smoothly as Blizzard might have hoped. Despite running a beta that began in early June, the launch of the WoW The War Within pre-patch on Tuesday July 23 has run into several issues. Chief among those was a period of extended downtime at launch, which primarily affected players in North American realms. As such, Blizzard is handing out some free game time to compensate for the trouble.

“We wanted to take a moment to recognize that the first day of the pre-expansion content update for The War Within resulted in extended downtime for many players in North American realms,” the World of Warcraft maker writes in a post to the game’s official website. Given the inherent always-online nature of MMORPGs, there’s no workaround to play when servers are down, which can be particularly galling if you’ve set aside time specifically to dive into a new update.

“In recognition of this, we’re adding one day of extra game time to every subscription in North America, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand for accounts which were active as of July 23, 2024,” Blizzard states. “We anticipate providing this compensation to affected players on or before August 15, 2024.” If you’re unsure whether it’s gone through, you can check your current game time via the account page on Battlenet.

World of Warcraft cross-realm trading is disabled at the moment while Blizzard investigates a bug causing game lockups. A separate issue causing currency to be lost when trading it between characters with the new Warbands feature has also seen WoW Warbanks disabled. As of today, Saturday July 27, Blizzard has still not indicated when these features will be reinstated, although it notes that both are high priority.

“We appreciate your continued patience as we navigate through any lingering issues to ensure that player experience going forward into the launch of The War Within expansion goes smoothly starting with Early Access on August 22 and the global launch on August 26,” Blizzard concludes. With the WoW The War Within release date fast closing in, players will have to hope most problems are ironed out by then.

If you happen to be playing, you’ll want to make sure you’re running the best WoW addons in 2024. Or check in with the best new MMOs on PC to see what else is out there.

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