It’s nearly World of Warcraft Cataclysm time, so welcome, and if you would, please take a ticket. The line starts around the half million mark.

That’s my spot in the standing, anyway, with a queue time reading 2 hours and 38 minutes just to log in to Battle.net. I was hoping to do something decidedly un-World-Warcraft-like this morning. You know, download a copy of Diablo II, fiddle with my account settings, finally figure out how to register my StarCraft II collector’s edition WoW pet. Stuff like that.

But no, I’m stuck standing at the window looking in. Actually, the window on the building down the block from the bus stop a couple miles from that other building somewhere in the general continental vicinity of Blizzard’s Battle.net servers.

“It’s a busy day for Battle.net!” reads the vaguely cheerful error message you get after trying to log in from the homepage. If I don’t close the window or refresh my browser, Blizzard promises I’ll hear a noise (that sounds like the WoW launch clip) indicating it’s my turn.

At least my World of Warcraft server itself isn’t throwing up queues this morning. I play on Kil’Jaeden, a high population PvP server that’s been kicking up login queues since last week. I suppose that’ll change for the worse as the day goes on, through tonight’s midnight launch of the expansion and the rest of the month’s mad scramble to explore the new content and level Worgen and Goblin ‘toons.

So if you waited to order Cataclysm online today, kick up your heels and grab a book. It’ll be awhile.

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