The Queue: What’s in a name?

I have a headcanon that intrepid explorer Brann Bronzebeard is also by necessity a polyglot. He is the first one to make contact with all these new races and factions we meet, so he quite painstakingly tries to preserve things like their place names and such so that the Champion can have a touchstone. Unfortunately, Brann isn’t so great with punctuation or sometimes even the precise spellings, so sometimes the maps and names will change over time. It’s kind of his YOLO nature that it’s important to just get it down first, and edit later if it’s important.

Anyway, just in case you’re having a time removing the apostrophe from Nerub-ar Palace (yes, it is now officially Nerub-ar Palace), you too can feel free to blame Brann.

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us questions and we’ll scapegoat somebody into being an answer.

Yep! Maintenance will extend from 7 am until 11 am PST today. And of course, that’s just an estimate — with the new season launching, it’s always possible that there’s some kind of kooky coding interaction or something that needs a little extra time to work out. If it ends early, it’s a pleasant surprise.

Yes. All of Normal and Heroic Nerub-ar Palace, and the first wing of LFR, are live when the servers come up today. Next week, Mythic and Story modes debut, and LFR wing 2 opens.

As per usual, have fun storming the literal castle!

I believe Kihra in a vacuum — they’re reaching a conclusion based on the data available to them, and the data available seems pretty staggering. They’ve talked at length over the past few weeks about having to spin up servers, server loads, and all that. They’ve frequently said their site is getting tens of thousands of unique visitors per minute for the past few weeks, which from my seat is enviable.

Of course, the “available data” part is doing a bit of the heavy lifting. Warcraft Logs was started in 2013, in the midst of our year of Siege of Orgrimmar in Mists of Pandaria, and likely only reached saturation an expansion or two later. Blizzard stopped releasing official numbers in that exact timetable, which we weren’t surprised with at the time, since that year of SoO was rough for the numbers.

So, we can’t be sure in concrete numbers. But given Kihra’s experience, both from the log tail of a decade of data and a decade of analyzing that data, I’d believe them. I’d also add that, even if the superlative is off — if we perhaps aren’t seeing THEE biggest spike in users ever — it’s still fairly indicative that we’re seeing a huge spike of interest in WoW. While there are certainly extenuating circumstances as cited by Red in the question, especially with regards to China, it’s kind of wild to think about.

I mean, it’s a little late now, but I’ll always hearken back to our friendly shrimp mascot. Make sure you’re taking care of your flesh prison, because not only is that just good for you as a whole, but it actually lets you game longer, and better.

Stay hydrated, have some well-rounded snack options, take a quick walk every so often, and check your posture. xoxo, your Queue mom.