World of Warcraft Dragonflight's servers collapse as fans rush to play the new expansion

World of Warcraft Dragonflight
(Image credit: Blizzard)

World of Warcraft Dragonflight's servers are crashing as a plethora of fans rush to play the new content.

Dragonflight, the latest expansion for World of Warcraft, whisks fans off to a new area known as the Dragon Isles and introduces the series' first ever playable race and class combination, the Dracthyr Evoker, as well as unique flying mechanics for dragon riding. Released yesterday, November 28, it's an ambitious package that WoW fans have been eagerly awaiting, but as with every new expansion for the MMO, the launch hasn't exactly been smooth sailing.

To reach Dragon Isles, players must catch a boat or zeppelin from one of the game's cities, but many have been struggling to get aboard, and those that managed to have found themselves unceremoniously booted from the server before arriving at their destination or shortly after.

"Smooth launch! Oh wait," jokes user Mephasto on the World of Warcraft subreddit. Describing their experience, one Dragonflight player says, "I managed to grab the first zeppelin to DI. There were probably like 300 people with us, only 4 of us made it to DI, then my game crashed a few minutes later." User blackflag209 fared better, but only slightly, "I got all the way to flying my dragon and was just about to start going for all the glyphs when it went down for me."

Unsurprisingly, WoW fans are less than impressed at the situation. One player writes, "You'd think they would know how to launch an expansion by now." An equally ticked-off player says, "If only a multi-billion dollar gaming company that has launched 7 previous expansions and multiple other games would have been able to predict server stress and bolstered their back-end infrastructure."

The official Blizzard Twitter account has yet to say anything about the server issues, so we currently have no timeframe for when things might be running normally. Here's hoping it resolves the issue soon so we can all soar around the Dragon Isles to our hearts' content.

The Dragonflight expansion is quite a departure for the massive franchise, so much so that Blizzard devs are calling it the "third era of Warcraft".

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Anne-Marie Ostler
Freelance Writer

Originally from Ireland, I moved to the UK in 2014 to pursue a Games Journalism and PR degree at Staffordshire University. Following that, I've freelanced for GamesMaster, Games TM, Official PlayStation Magazine and, more recently, Play and GamesRadar+. My love of gaming sprang from successfully defeating that first Goomba in Super Mario Bros on the NES. These days, PlayStation is my jam. When not gaming or writing, I can usually be found scouring the internet for anything Tomb Raider related to add to my out of control memorabilia collection.