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New European transfers
In their continuing efforts to bring some faction balance to Magtheridon (EU), Blizzard has refreshed free character transfers off of the server for Horde, and onto the server for Alliance. These transfers are scheduled to run from today until Feburary 10: Magtheridon -> Haomarush, Tarren Mill, Trollbane, Zenedar, Silvermoon (Horde only) Aerie Peak, Aggramar, Alonsus, Arathor, Azjol-Nerub, Bronze Dragonflight, Bronzebeard, Eonar, Hellscream, Khadgar, Lightbringer, Kilrogg, Kul Tiras, Silvermoon, Terenas, Turalyon -> Magtheridon (Alliance only) In addition, the following transfers are now open for European players of either faction: Al'Akir, Stormscale -> Vek'nilash, Xavius Burning Legion, Grim Batol -> Boulderfist, Trollbane Crushridge, Sylvanas -> Chromaggus, Haomarush Kazzak, Ravencrest -> Laughing Skull, Sunstrider Outland, Twilight's Hammer -> Daggerspine, Lightning's Blade Ragnaros, Shattered Hand -> Kor'gall, Shattered Halls Argent Dawn -> Steamwheedle Cartel, The Sha'tar These also are scheduled to run until the 10th of this month, and like all other transfers may close early if the desired population levels are reached. Magtheridon players, have you noticed an improvement in the faction balance since they started pumping Alliance in and Horde out? WarcraftRealms is now showing a 1:16 population ratio overall on that server, which is much better than the 1:67 ratio it was showing when the transfers started (but still pretty bad).
New EU PvE Realm: Saurfang
Good news everyone!Thundgot over on the EU forums announced today that there is a new EU PvE server opening named Saurfang. It will be an English based server in the Misery battlegroup. As with most new servers, migration will not be allowed to it for the first 90 days. That means you can't transfer your characters there just yet. For now, Death Knight creation is only possible when you have a level 55 character on Saurfang itself. That restriction will be lifted after the 90 days pass.The realm became open for play just a short time ago, so if you're in the EU and want some new server goodness, head over there now and get started.
Many free transfers for Europe
An extravaganza of free character moves has just been made available for various European realms: Al'Akir -> Bladefist Burning Legion -> Chromaggus Frostmane -> Laughing Skull Grim Batol -> Genjuros Kazzak -> Karazhan Magtheridon -> Emeriss Neptulon -> Shattered Halls Outland -> Auchindoun Ravencrest -> Spinebreaker Stormreaver -> Burning Blade Stormscale -> Boulderfirst Sylvanas -> Jaedenar Twilight's Hammer -> Vek'nilash Argent Dawn -> Darkmoon Faire They will be open from today, the 13th, until Wednesday, November 18th. This is really not your typical character transfer here. Usually there's a group of source realms with one destination realms, sometimes two. I'm not sure I've ever seen something like this: 14 source realms with 14 different destination realms. This may have to do with the more fractured situation in Europe – with four realm types (PvE, PvP, RP, RP-PvP), five languages, and I'm not sure how many time zones, I can see how it might take some juggling to keep moves within one category. As always, if you do want to switch, you're advised to do it early, because transfers can be closed if the realms meet their desired populations early. Edit: I see that all of these realms are English and CEST (thanks, Sethox). No clue why they're so fragmented, then.
Some statistics to be removed from achievement tracking
Over the weekend Thundgot on the EU forums came out and said that the attributes section of the achievements tab will be removed from the game. You can find the attributes section right now by pressing "y" on your keyboard to open up the achievement window, then going to the "Statistics" tab located at the bottom of the window, then the "Character" heading on the left hand side of the window, and finally clicking on the "Attributes" section. Your attributes will look something like the ones above, but much more uber than my priest alt has.Thundgot makes a point of saying this will improve performance. If you think about it, many of these statistics revolve around "best" or "top" attributes from a character's dataset. Collecting this much information for each character will take a few extra process cycles each time an attribute changes, or each time damage is doled out (since many spells / enchants / procs change these numbers). Multiply this by a few thousand times for a character in a given night (due to potential changes via combat), and then multiply it by around 11 million people playing the game... and you get the picture.
Free high pop to low pop server transfers incoming
Thundgot over on the EU forums says there's a pretty drastic solution incoming to the busy servers incoming: Blizzard is going to offer free server transfers from high pop servers to low pop, so if you've really been driven nuts by all the queues and lag lately, this might be just what you need. On the other hand, don't jump into anything too quickly -- traffic problems are pretty common, especially when big patches (and, you know, expansions) come down, and odds are that once the expansion actually releases, things will die back down after a little while.Of course, if you just don't want to wait, and don't have any particular ties to the server you happen to be on, then by all means, keep an eye out for the transfers. We're not quite sure which servers will be affected yet, but We Hate PUGs saw Quel'thelas on the list already along with a long list of high pop realms, so while we'll probably see more servers added to the low pop side, the high pop side there now is probably a fairly good indicator of the realms Blizzard sees as trouble. If you're on one of those realms and ready to transfer, sit tight and wait for the announcement today, help is on the way.
Free EU character transfer destinations revealed
Toward the end of August, European CM Vaneras had announced the closure of a few English-speaking EU servers due to the great success of their Russian localization, with a note that destination realms for free character transfers would be announced later on. Later on is, apparently, last night. Thundgot has posted the destination realms, and each set includes one that is part of the same battlegroup as the realm of origin. From Molten Core you can transfer to Burning Steppes*, Deathwing, Dentarg From Shadowmoon you can transfer to Boulderfist, Spinebreaker*, Xavius From Stonemaul you can transfer to Ahn'Qiraj, Burning Blade, Jaedenar* From Warsong you can transfer to Auchindoun, Bladefist*, Haomarush If you call one of the four closing realms home, I strongly recommend you go research your options and choose your destination while you still can. If you haven't moved yourself somewhere by the time their nebulous deadline (post-patch 3.0.2) hits, you'll have your destination chosen for you when the realms are ultimately brought down. Make sure you end up somewhere you'll like.
New European server, Blade's Edge, opens today [Updated]
The Ruin Battlegroup of the European servers will be getting a new English language PvE server named Blade's Edge, Thundgot has announced. It will be a completely new realm, which means no transfers allowed for the first few months. In addition, the Ahn'Qiraj gates will be closed -- which means this is your chance to get a group over there and start powerleveling toward the Qiraji battle tank and the Scarab Lord title. Apparently, some people have been complaining about queue times in the Ruin battlegroup for some time, so hopefully this should ease those problems once people get on and start leveling. The server will open today at 17:00 Paris time. Good luck to everyone who decides to reroll there! Update: Strike that, it looks like they decided to let the it go live right after maintenance. Thanks for the heads up, Roelof.
Free realm transfers (EU only)
Thundgot, the undead European CM, announced today that there are a few free character transfers amongst realms that will be starting today, and go through March 25th.You can move from Al'Akir, Frostmane, Grim Batol, Outland, or Twilight's Hammer over to Burning Steppes or Spinebreaker. Of course, this only for all our European readers. No U.S. realms are current open for free transfers.If you want to take advantage of this, do so quickly! They often close down these transfers early when they meet their internal goals.Enjoy your new realm!
Paid transfer and name change cooldowns reduced
European CM Thundgot announced today that the cooldown periods for both paid character transfer and paid character name changes have been reduced from three months to one month, effective immediately. The transfer cooldown was originally six months when the feature was introduced in June 2006, but was reduced to three in October 2006. In the intervening time, they've looked at server logs and so forth and come to the conclusion that moving it to one month would not have catastrophic consequences.This change appears to be effective on the US realms as well, so wherever you are, you can hop servers and adopt new aliases every month if you want to pay for it. Also, Thundy clarifies that as long as your last transfer/name change was at least 30 days ago, you are immediately eligible for transfer/name change now. He also said that "moving forward" the price for paid transfer is going to be 20€/£15, but given his phrasing and the fact that I'm on the North American realms, I can't tell if that pricing is new or not. Do any of you know? Edit: Not new; thanks.
Season 3 causes queues
Thundgot, one of Blizzard's European CMs, is reporting that due to the one-two punch of patch 2.3 and Arena Season 3, more people than usual are logging on, resulting in queues on many realms that don't usually have them. So season two is over, and season queue begins (sorry, couldn't resist). I don't know if the North American realms are also supposed to be having queues; none of my regular ones have been, but I tend to play at off-peak times, so perhaps I wouldn't have seen them anyway. Who's been seeing queues, where are you, and how bad have they been?Blizzard says they're holding off on doing anything about the queues, be it free transfers or new realms, but they promise that they're "closely monitoring" things, and if this proves to be more than a transient thing, measures will be taken, as usual. I remember back in the pre-BC days, when most realms had queues most of the time...that was no fun. But it seems that Blizz have learned from that, since I haven't ever faced anything that bad since BC launched.
Three month cooldown on US and EU character transfers (and free transfers in EU)
Thundgot, one of the EU CMs, has confirmed that the character transfer cooldown has been reduced for the EU realms (and raised for the US Realms, as here it was previously one month, and three months, and six months before that). Currently, the cooldown for both EU and US transfers is three months. That means that any character you transfer has to stay put for at least three months before it can be moved again, which most players (and Blizzard, obviously) seem to agree is a good period of time.And on the heels of that news, Thundgot has also posted that free character transfers are available on select EU realms, as listed below:From: Frostmane, Grim Batol, Kazzak, OutlandTo: Boulderfist, Burning Blade, DaggerspineFrom: Stonemaul, WarsongTo: Shadowmoon First free character transfers in a while (the last I can find were these Oceanic transfers). Since BC was released, it seems like Blizzard has a pretty good hold on population control (or maybe it's just that the populations aren't changing that much anymore). I remember when free transfers used to come almost every week on US servers, but nowadays they are few and far between.[ via MMO Champion ]
Are loot drops really random?
If you've been to a few raids, there's no question that you've heard some interesting theories about loot distribution. The drops are determined by the precise time (to the second!) that the first player zones into the instance. Or perhaps the drops are determined by the class of the group leader. Or maybe by the first letter of the group leader's name. Does the current phase of the moon have something to do with it? Perhaps it's a little of all these things!Trust me, I've heard every theory that's tried to make sense of what Blizzard constantly assures us are completely random loot drops. However, EU forum-goer Rooted came across a post by Blizzard employee Issuntril which stated:There are many other variables which effect which items are going to drop. I'm afraid this is information not intended for the community however, and is not something I can comment further on.Other variables, you say? So... loot isn't random? The conspiracy theorists were right all along?!
Blizzard Europe at The Gathering
Blizzard (in the guise of CM Thundgot) will be at The Gathering in Hamar, Norway next Friday and Saturday (the 14th and 15th). He'll be meeting and greeting players as well as taking employment applications (a list of current European openings can be found here). So if you're in the neighborhood or were planning on attending , here's your chance to meet one of Blizzard's own in the flesh!
