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World shattering complete; U.S. servers back up
Well, ladies and gentlemen, we have some good news and we have some bad news. The good news: Servers are coming back up, at least for those in the United States! You can log on and enjoy World of Warcraft again, ahead of the previously announced 5 p.m. PST time. The bad news: Some dragon-ish rapscallion has totally shattered the world over the course of the last 12 hours or so. Whoops.
Chronicles of Spellborn servers have one last hurrah
The Chronicles of Spellborn fans have had a confusing week. On August 10th, an announcement was posted on Acclaim's TCoS forums, letting players know that the game would come to an end on August 25th. The announcement warned players to spend all unused Acclaim coins by that time and offered a customer support email address for players with questions. However, the servers were taken offline almost immediately with no word from Acclaim, and after a week of silence from the developers, fans concluded that the game was gone for good. Not so, it seems. A post entitled "The game is up!" appeared on the forums, sending a handful of players rushing to reinstall and enjoy a little more playtime. Unfortunately, there is still no announcement or explanation from the TCoS team, so there is no official word on what happened or how long it will last. For the time being, fans of The Chronicles of Spellborn can enjoy one last chance to play. [Thanks to CowMooFlage for the tip!]
Servers are up
With the exception of a few servers that will require additional maintenance until 4:00 p.m. EDT / 1:00 p.m. PDT, all of the servers are up and ready for action.Last night Sacco talked about how he saw a gigantic dragon skeleton on his screen. I heard from him briefly this morning and he was rather incoherent, mumbling something about "trolls" and "lawlwut." So I have to believe the skeleton actually got him and is slowly devouring his brain.In other news, the realms are up! ...in case you missed that part. Go forth and enjoy Azeroth
YouPlayorWePay claims to offer downtime insurance
I think this is a wild idea (even if it is something I wouldn't actually put my money in). We got tipped about a new site called "You Play or We Pay" and from the looks of it, these guys are offering none other than downtime insurance. That is: you pay a fee to them regularly, and then they "compensate" you for any downtime that your server has. They call it "third-party compensation," but that sounds like insurance to me.At any rate, we wouldn't quite recommend jumping in headfirst yet -- they haven't, as far as we can see, revealed any prices, and while you can register your characters, you can't actually get any sort of payout quite yet, as they say they're still working on the system. For all we know the site could be an elaborate scam at this point. But it is an intriguing idea, and if they're really ready to put their money where their FAQ is, these guys may have an actual business plan that depends on Blizzard keeping the servers up. Just like all insurance companies, they must have figured out that the servers stay up more often than not, and that there was money to be made there.It's quite an interesting plan, and we'll keep an eye on it to see if they ever announce a fee or explain themselves better. The math doesn't quite seem right here, but if somehow their fees are low enough and the payouts are high enough, it's possible that you really could be compensated for downtime by a completely separate company other than Blizzard. Very interesting.Update: The company has contacted WoW Insider, and we've requested an interview. Stay tuned.
