As a general rule, if you’re launching an online service, especially one that you expect many of your customers to pay $50 a year on top of paying for Internet access on their console, especially one tied to the sequel to one of the highest-selling video games in the entire history of the medium, especially one that, in the near future, you’re hoping to turn into a freaking televised sport, you should make sure your customers can actually log into the service.
Not Activision, baby. Activision rolls to its own drummer. Or apparently Activision just wasn’t expecting hundreds of thousands of gamers to give them an extra $50, because their Elite servers crashed pretty much within minutes of the game legally hitting the market. And when “Battlefield 3” hit earlier, the exact same thing happened with Origin, so at least it’s not limited to one huge media conglomerate.
Hey, guys? You merged with Blizzard. Talk to them. If anybody knows how to herd swarms of foaming-at-the-mouth gamers, it’s the guys who run WoW.