Hearthstone servers down for some as new Whispers of the Old Gods expansion goes live

Hearthstone has some new content, but you may run into trouble accessing it.

Blizzard Entertainment’s servers are struggling to keep up with an influx of gamers excited about the Whispers of the Old Gods expansion that launched today, according to complaints on forums and social media. Many players attempting to log into the Battle.net service are finding themselves stuck at the startup screen. This is affecting people on PC, Mac, and mobile. Some reports claim the game will eventually load after a few minutes of waiting — as managing editor Jason Wilson experienced shortly after the launch, waiting 3 minutes before getting into the game.

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Hearthstone is the top game in the $1.2 billion digital card-battler market, and it makes approximately $20 million per month, according to SuperData Research. Blizzard keeps that kind of money flowing in by regularly adding new content like Whispers, and it’s not surprising that fans of the game are flooding the servers trying to get their virtual hands on the new cards. The publisher also announced today that 50 million people worldwide have registered for the free-to-play game.

Now, this outage is not affecting everyone. Some people are able to get online, and they are unlocking their new card packs right now, so don’t give up.

The common advice among fans right now is to wait for the game to load. It can take anywhere from 2 minutes to 5 minutes, but many people are seeing that they eventually get in.

But if you do get in, you may still end up encountering a few other issues. Most notably, players on mobile are reporting crashes and serious lag.