WoW 2.4 downtime claims even more time

Unless you've been completely ignoring MMO news lately, you know that World of Warcraft has been gearing up for its final large content patch before the release of their upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. This morning, after much watching and many cups of coffee, they announced that 2.4 was indeed releasing today. With it comes a plethora of new content, gear, and much more. Of course, as many veterans to Blizzard's patch-day hijinks expected, 2.4 has claimed its first victim; the WoW servers. Just minutes after bringing up the realms at 2:00 PM Eastern (the originally announced end of the maintenance window) the WoW servers were taken off-line and the downtime was extended to 3:30 PM Eastern.

Now this isn't to say that it will likely slow too many people down. Any time a new content patch is released that includes a raiding instance, there's generally a mad rush to be the first guild to ever clear the new instance on live servers. For the rest of us who, while curious, won't be heading anywhere near those instances tonight (knowing how unstable they're undoubtedly going to be) have no fear! Our sister site, WoW Insider, has been cranking out the 2.4 love all day. If you haven't gotten a chance to check it out, or are afraid you'll be buried in the backlog of postings, don't worry. They've created a handy "All you ever wanted to know about 2.4 but were too busy to look up" page. Curious to see more? Just click on the patch 2.4 Sunwell banner above. You'll be up to speed in no time!