extended-maintenance
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Tuesday Morning Post: Never tear us apart edition
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone! You know, I feel like I really should say something. Blizzard, despite all the rockiness, be it the Real ID fiasco or the huge 31-point talent tree changes, I still love you. I don't think anything can tear us apart. You know, except a 24-hour downtime. Luckily, my server's not in today's batch of downed servers, but Zangarmarsh, home of <It Came From The Blog>, is; yours may be as well, so be sure to check the list. If your realm is listed, that just means you'll have plenty of time to look back all the big news from the past seven days, such as the new 31-point talent trees or the massive Twitter developer chat. And anyway, we do have normal downtime at the somewhat early time of 1-7 a.m. Pacific, so you may still have a bit of a time to read up regardless. With all that in mind, we have the usual roundup of news, opinions and guides from the past seven days ready for your perusal. Once you're done reading those, you can prepare to join all the 24-hour downtime refugees on Shadow Council.
24 hour maintenance for select servers on Tuesday
Blizzard has released the next list of servers that will be unplayable for 24 hours. Starting at midnight PDT (3 a.m. EDT) tonight and ending around midnight PDT tomorrow, a large number of realms will be down for extended maintenance. Included on that list is Zangarmarsh, the home server for WoW.com's guild <It came from the Blog>, which means we'll be hosting our downtime party elsewhere. I'm thinking a Refugee Party (RP) on Shadow Council may be in order. Stay tuned for details coming later today. Click on the link for details. The full list of realms is after the break.
Servers coming back up
Maintenance has been extended until 4 p.m. EDT (1 p.m. PDT). This will give us all more time to debate/rage about the upcoming official forum changes. We'll keep you up to date with any changes to the realm status. In the meantime, let's talk about something nice and calm and not controversial. Which character are you making first? Goblin or worgen? I will be making a goblin shadowpriestess first thing. I haven't decided on a name yet, though. Any suggestions? Update 4:05 p.m.: Servers are being brought up in batches, according to the login screen and all should be up in 15 minutes. [Thanks for the tip, Brandon!]
Breakfast Topic: Where were you on your day off?
When your server is down for extended maintenance or just down for no reason how do you handle it? Being one of the players on the realms which was stuck with 24-hour realm maintenance when Ruby Sanctum came out, I was stuck on a different server for the day. I headed over to our WoW.com guild "It Came from the Blog" and played on my Choose My Adventure character Sandwichdoc and got his fire totem quest finished up and wrote an article my paladin article for today. How do you handle your server downtime? Do you pop over to another realm or just return to real life for the day and head to the park?
Servers are coming back up [Updated]
Blizzard has announced that the realms that are not down for the entire day are down for an additional two hours. They expect realms to be up at 4 p.m. EDT (1 p.m. PDT). This means that you will have less time to level up a character for the Server Maintenance Party we're having tonight. But that's OK because all levels are welcome. We'll update this post with any more server maintenance news. Update: Servers are up or on their way -- except the ones that are down until at least midnight of course.
EVE Online server move delayed by database issues
Last week, CCP Games announced that the EVE Online server was heading for a move and a bit of an upgrade. Hidden within a few cabinets in a single datacenter is everything that makes up the EVE universe, from characters and ships to planets and the market. The cluster of hardware has been expanded over the years and now exceeds the limitations of the hardware cabinets it occupies. Moving the cluster to a new location within the datacenter should help support future upgrades to keep up with the game's growing subscriber-base. The shuffle began early yesterday morning at 09:00 UTC and was planned to be completed by 15:00 UTC the same day. Unfortunately, the transition to a new locale has had some unforeseen side-effects for Tranquility. After a long day of server work, final testing of the cluster revealed database issues that must be corrected before the game can go live. At 03:00 UTC this morning, the estimate for restoring Tranquility and the EVE website was mid-day today. With that time having now passed, CCP has released a new estimate of 16:00 UTC. If necessary, further delays will be announced on the official EVE Facebook page, the CCP Games Twitter page and the game's main website. UPDATE: The server is now up and players can log in again. CCP has explained the reasons behind the long downtime and detailed their plans to reimburse players with skillpoints in a news post.
Tuesday Morning Post: The long downtime of the soul edition
Happy Tuesday Morning, everyone! If you were part of the massive rush to get BlizzCon tickets this past week, I hope your luck was good, because they are now officially sold out. If you didn't get one, there's probably nothing left to do but hope you win one as a contest prize! Whether you were successful or whether your hopes were dashed, you will, alas, have quite some time to brood or celebrate if your characters are on a list of servers slated for a 24 hour downtime today. Of course, even if you dodged the bullet, we still have the normal 5 AM to 11 AM Pacific time maintenance period coming for all servers. Luckily, there's plenty of news to catch up on, including a good selection of official news on patch 3.3.5 and some of the new features of the Cataclysm expansion. Read on for all the latest, and keep coming back all day for the latest news, tips, and guides. Whether your server is down for the morning or down all day, we'll be here for you.
24-hour downtime this Tuesday for 72 servers to make them Cataclysm-ready
Blizzard's announced a 24-hour downtime window for a large group of servers, from 12:01 AM Pacific time on Tuesday, June 8th, to 12:01 Pacific time on Wednesday, June 9th. All other servers will have a normal downtime window of 5 AM to 11 AM Pacific time. The extended downtime, says Blizzard, is to prepare the servers for the Cataclysm expansion. While this should not be taken as a sign that the expansion is imminent, it's at least nice to see that preparations are continuing apace. In addition, it's probably fair to assume that even if your server isn't in this current list, it'll eventually get a day of downtime of its own as Blizzard gets all of their servers in shape. Check the full list after the break to see if your server is in this batch:
EVE database issue causes thousands of items to go missing
When the EVE Online server booted up today from its scheduled daily hour of downtime, GMs began receiving reports of missing items and disappearing market orders. After some investigation, CCP decided to shut the server down for an extended downtime to get to the bottom of the issue. The problem was eventually traced back to a database script responsible for recycling old itemIDs from trashed items and assigning them to new items. It was found that some new items being created in the database weren't getting IDs and so were becoming lost in the system. Up to 114,000 items may have gone missing during the 75 minutes that the server was up.
Maintenance extended [Updatedx6]
Maintenance has been extended until "approximately" 2:59pm EST. In the official post on the forums, Blizzard recommends looking into your account security and making sure that everything is up to date. I agree and to that end, I'll also link you to the WoW Rookie account security roundup. We'll update this post with any changes to the realm status. Update 8:14pm: All realms are up, theoretically. However, many are having severe latency issues and others can't get past the character loading screen. Blizzard says they are working on it. Update 7:21pm: All realms are up, but expect some latency issues. Update 6:24pm: Some realms are up. They will give us another update on the rest of the realms by 7pm EST. Bored? Come visit It came from the Blog, Zangarmarsh U.S. Horde side. Send a tell to Robiness or any Lurker for a guild invite. Update 5:10pm: Even more issues have been found and they'll get back to us at 6pm EST. Update 4:21pm: They are resolving more issues and have extended maintenance again to 5pm EST. Update 3:26pm: Maintenance has been extended to 4pm EST.
Tuesday Morning Post: Vampire morning edition
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. As of this writing, the big news of the week is probably the latest Twitter developer chat. If you missed it, we have the transcript. Topics included the fate of Crystalsong Forest, pet scaling buffs, new warlock pets, personal guild banks and other storage issues, and more. Be sure to check it out, it's good reading whether you're focused on Patch 3.3 or on Cataclysm. Coming up, we have the opening of the Crimson Halls, the next wing of Icecrown Citadel. That means lots of vampires. They're blood elf vampires, sure, but blood elves are awesome, so it's all good. And hey, if you dislike blood elves, at least take comfort in the fact that these vampires don't sparkle. Finally, it looks like advance notice for downtime may be the name of the game after all, as we've know about today's downtime for a few days now. It's 3 AM to 11 AM pacific time, if you haven't heard, which means you should have plenty of time to catch up on WoW news. Check out a list of some of our content from the last 7 days below the cut.
Compensation for last week's extended downtime
In what will surely please anyone who follows or was affected by extended realm downtimes, Blizzard has quietly announced compensation for the realms affected by it last week. We covered the downtime last week as it occurred. Even after having worked at Blizzard, I'm unsure as to how the decision is made to or not to offer compensation for downtime, but I'm glad that it does get offered periodically. It's no fun to have a day off or a light workday and then discover that the realm that houses your main is down, again. Regardless, if you were on any of the realms listed after the cut, you should see that a 24-hour credit has been added to your subscription on your Account Management page. Take this, your blue badge of courage, and hold it high to the heavens, your karmic reward for not pitching a fit. "We cool, Blizz. We cool."
Tuesday Morning Post: Fear and Loathing edition
It was a fleeting dream, but a marvelous one, wasn't it? Attend BlizzCon all day, gamble all night, sleep never. The thought of a Las Vegas BlizzCon pretty much sent us here at the WoW.com into immediate spasms of joy. Unfortunately, they were quickly supplanted by howls of pain and anguish as we discovered that it just the Las Vegas Convention Center jumping the gun, and that we'll probably still be headed to Anaheim for the next BlizzCon. Don't me wrong, Anaheim's pretty cool and all, but it isn't Las Vegas, that's for sure. So unfortunately, I've had to cancel my plans to get a gonzo lawyer and rent an Impala, but what you gonna do? At least we still have the TCG. Maybe one of these years Blizzard will see the light. In the meantime, we'll just continue toiling away in the WoW.com salt mines here as we dream of the big city. This week, there's plenty of news to work through, and with a 3 AM to 11 AM Pacific downtime, you'll have time. Check out the latest gems we've unearthed for you after the break.
Tuesday Morning Post: Identity Crisis Edition
So race changes are finally live, and with that, you can change your characters in just about every way possible short of class. Different faction? Go for it. Different gender? Change your face? Change your name? It's all good. Heck, you can do it every three days now. It's suddenly like we're all these crazy mutable nameless faceless blobs changing at will and at random, until we're practically a sea of shapeless shapeshifters. Or not. After all, there's still the whole money charge and stuff. Of course, that's not the only big news this week. Chill of the Throne, Icecrown's version of Sunwell Radiance, has been evoking a lot of discussion and a lot of unrest. Did Blizzard make the right choice in adding this much maligned dungeon-specific nerf back into the game? There's plenty of other issues as well, and as we have a nice 3 AM to 11 AM Pacific downtime, you'll have plenty of time to catch up with it all. You can start with some of the links below:
Tuesday Morning Post: Cataclysm bombshell edition
So the biggest news from the past week was probably the Cataclysm preview article published in PC Gamer UK, in which more spoilertastic information was revealed about the new races and other storyline minutiae. I have to say, I was surprised. I expected there would be a lot more discussion about the newly revealed level 1-5 stories. Instead, everyone's focused in on one line about... well, some of you probably don't want to be spoiled, so I'll leave it alone. But suffice it to say, if you don't mind being spoiled and you haven't heard the hullabaloo yet, you might want to check out our article and see if you can figure out what has everyone talking. If spoilers aren't your bag, or you already know, don't fear, there's plenty more to keep you occupied as we wait out the 5 AM - 11 AM Pacific maintenance window. For example, you could read up on the week-old Patch 3.2.2 on our guide page. Here's a few more ideas for your browsing pleasure:
Server Status: Coming back online
Not that this should surprise any of you, but the servers are not yet up. 11:00 a.m. PDT has come and gone, and many folks are still staring at a blank screen. A large batch of realms will be offline until at least 12:30 p.m. PDT. That list is after the break.If your realm is offline, I suggest reading up on everything in WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2.2. At least that way you'll be prepared for Ony when the time comes.The full list of realms undergoing extended maintenance after the break.Update 12:20 p.m. PDT: Most realms are now coming back online.
European weekly maintenance: 23rd & 24th September 2009
Many of our characters may be lying face down in the snow, beer mug still in hand, at 3am on a Wednesday morning -- but that's not going to stop the weekly maintenance. Normal scheduled maintenance for most realms means an outage between 3am and 11am, Paris time (CEST).As well as this regular maintenance two English Battlegroups (Reckoning and Ruin) will be receiving optimizations to their instance capacity. This will mean an extended outage on Wednesday until 5pm CEST and also a further outage between 3am and 7am on Thursday. I'm sure players on these servers will be glad to finally join those who have already received this optimisation to help resolve the Door Boss issue. Full list of realms impacted after the break.
Maintenance for Tuesday, September 22nd already announced
Yeah, believe it or not, unlike last week, when Blizzard didn't confirm the lack of maintenance until somewhere close to midnight pacific time, this week we already have confirmation. There will be extended maintenance from 3 AM to 11 AM pacific this Tuesday.What does this early announcement mean? To be fair, it could just mean that they already know they're going to need some extra maintenance time to make up for the complete lack of maintenance last Tuesday. Of course, they could also be planning to push out Patch 3.2.2. Don't take my word for it though, I am 100% just going off a gut feeling. We've been a while without a patch, after all.Just in case, you'll probably want to start reading up on Patch 3.2.2 now, and when maintenance day gets here, you'll have plenty to read right here on WoW.com while you wait for your server to come up, or for news on whether or not we're going to see the patch.
[Updated] Realm Status: All realms to be online by 10:30pm EDT
Happy Tuesday everybody! Maintenance has been extended to 2:00 p.m. PDT / 5:00 pm EDT. Check out the Tuesday Morning Maintenance post for some good things to read while you wait. And we'll keep you up to date, should anything change.With all of the hardware upgrading being done, there are bound to be some DNS issues. If you have trouble logging in when the realms are back up, try the solutions listed here.Update 5:00 p.m. EDT: The realms after the break will be down until at least 4:00 p.m. PDT / 7:00 p.m. EDT. Realms not on the list after the break should be up by 3:00 p.m. PDT / 6:00 p.m. EDT.Update 7:42 pm EDT: People who can log in are having severe issues and the realms after the break are still down. Isradun says they will give us an update in 2 hours.Update 8:18 pm EDT: All realms should be online within the hour.Update 8:50 pm EDT: No really. They mean it this time. All realms should be up by 9:30 pm EDT. Warning!: The ones that are up are sloooooow.Update 10:11 pm EDT: Now they are saying 10:30pm EDT. With all this extended downtime, Mashable has a list of thing you can do while Gmail is down (Gmail is down today too, if you haven't heard). They apply perfectly well to WoW as well.
Realm Status: Coming online
In a move that should be a surprise to no one on a major content patch day, Blizzard has announced that all realms will be down until 3PM PDT for database maintenance.You may have noticed that we've got a lot of patch 3.2 coverage today to keep you busy. Or you could take a peek over at the WoWathon to watch some dramatic readings and support charity.We'll keep you posted on any other changes to the downtime. Update 2:50 p.m. PDT: Realms are beginning to come back online. WoW's Patch 3.2 ushers in the Crusaders' Coliseum, the Isle of Conquest, flying mounts at 60, and much more. WoW.com has all the patch information your Worgen obsessed mind can handle in WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2!
