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Patch 6.0.3 hotfixes for November 15
Another batch of hotfixes for patch 6.0.3 rolled out yesterday, addressing more bugs and issues with Warlords of Draenor. This time around, there are a host of garrison and quest adjustments and bug fixes, as well as some tweaks to NPCs and dungeons. It's not the longest list we've seen so far, but there are a lot of issues being addressed. The Lunarfall Inn and Frostwall Tavern have had a few of their quests adjusted to offer improved rewards. Several quests throughout Draenor have had their spawn and drop rates increased. Warlocks -- you may be tricky with your enslaving of demons, but both Felwrought Annihilator and Xanatos the Defiler can no longer be enslaved. Characters with over 600 skill in a profession should no longer continue to find catch-up items for those professions. Read on for the full list of hotfixes.
Hotfixes for November 14 and realm stability update
Earlier this evening, community manager Bashiok provided an update on World of Warcraft's server stability issues. Warlords Launch Update We're making preparations for the Europe maintenance beginning in just an hour, and along with hardware upgrades we will be implementing some of the performance improvements we've been testing. One of these is a fairly large change to the way the game world is run by the servers-expanding the phasing tech used for the Tanaan intro experience to the entire continent of Draenor. This will allow us to run multiple copies of Draenor simultaneously, spreading out server population, while attempting to keep guilds and parties within the same copy. We're currently running tests of this tech on a few North American realms, and have found we're able to raise realm capacity by a significant amount. We'll continue to provide updates as we progress through the Europe maintenance, and prepare to apply the same changes on the Americas and Oceanic realms. source Running multiple instances of an overworld zone is a long-lived practice in MMO games in general, even dating back to games contemporary with the launch of WoW in 2004. Until now, Blizzard has tried to avoid implementing such a thing to preserve their philosophy of the game's social aspects -- the idea of a persistent world shared with other players. Now, for the sake of stability, Blizzard is finally implementing it. We could debate their philosophy given their implementation of phasing in questing, but that's not necessarily applicable when talking about instancing entire servers. Whether it's a temporary measure or not, time will tell. In addition, Blizzard has released a new round of hotfixes. Like yesterday's numerous hotfixes, many of these are aimed at questflow issues, and others at bugs in gameplay. You can find the hotfixes below.
Maintenance scheduled for November 15
Following today's maintenance and the continuing rocky launch of Warlords of Draenor, Blizzard has announced another round of extended maintenance for November 15 on North American realms. According to the Battle.net launcher, realms will be taken down at 3:00 a.m. PST and Blizzard expects to have them up again at 9:00 a.m. PST. We do hope these launch issues are brought under control soon. Saturday maintenance is, historically, highly unusual -- and not very convenient for players. As necessary as it may be, extended weekend downtime is a hard sell for a brand new release.
North American realms are now coming up
After much downtime, North American realms are now coming up, albeit slowly. If there are further problems throughout the day, we'll have updates here. Expect another round or two of hotfixes today, as well as some additional queues when logging in. While yesterday's server issues were large, we're betting things quite down on that front this evening. To Draenor!
Maintenance extended until 11:00 a.m. PST
Maintenance on the North American World of Warcraft servers has been extended until 11:00 a.m. PST. This information comes directly off the official forums. Previous Blizzard tweets suggested no ETA, however those have been since retracted. It's going to be a bit before Warlords of Draenor is playable again. Best to just sit back and relax. We'll keep this post updated with the latest news as we get it in.
Third round of Warlords of Draenor hotfixes for November 13 now live
After round one and round two of today's hotfixes comes round three. Once again, these hotfixes are aimed primarily at questflow, but there are a few bugfixes in the mix. Highlights include: Artificer Romuul: Resolved an issue where players may sometimes not receive this quest after completing the Embaari Defense Crystal event. These Colors Don't Run: Characters now receive credit towards planting a Frostwolf Banner when they defeat or help in defeating a Bladespire Ogre with the exception of Bladespire Mauler, Chef, Boarbuster, Ogron, and Goresnout. Collision geometry has been added to Drek'Thar, Thrall, and Gazlowe in Frostfire Ridge. Resolved an issue where Keg Smash may sometimes not generate Chi when used. You can find the full list of hotfixes below.
European and North American realms going down for unscheduled maintenance
Update 8:55 p.m. PST: North American realms are now going down at 5 a.m. PST and will be offline for an unscheduled 4 hour maintenance window. Original Post at 8:44 p.m. PST: Only announced within the last few minutes, European realms will be going down imminently for an unscheduled 4 hour maintenance window. [EU] We'll be performing maintenance on all EU realms beginning at 7 am CEST & lasting approximately 4 hours: http://t.co/xMzRuJKE0h - World of Warcraft (@Warcraft) November 14, 2014 Though wholly undesirable by most players, an emergency maintenance period may turn out to be the best way to get realm stability issues under control.
Additional hotfixes issued for November 13
Blizzard has released the details of a second round of hotfixes today to go along with those issued earlier today, the majority of which are aimed at bottlenecks in questing and other questing issues. Highlights include: Dark Enemies: Increased spawn rates for Shadowmoon Voidmancer. [Requires a realm restart.] Gormaul Tower: (Temporary) Completion credit for the quest is automatically awarded once players reach the top of the hill. Toy Train Set has been temporarily disabled. The Shadowmoon Voidmancers were one of the earliest problematic areas in the Alliance questing experience, a bottleneck that caused a severe buildup of players last night and this afternoon. And the Toy Train Set hotfix will surely be appreciated by those stuck standing near a portal or any other bottleneck location. The full hotfixes can be found below.
Blizzard confirms World of Warcraft target of DDoS attack [UPDATED]
Update 5:50 a.m. PST: The servers are now down for maintenance, and the attack is over. If further ones happen, we'll announce accordingly. Update 8:15 p.m. PST The DDoS attacks continue. Blizzard is rolling out updates to the backend services at a breakneck pace right now, some of which are having unintended consequences and further complicating an already messy situation. However, it should be noted that this is to be expected when combating such a large scale attack. In no way is Blizzard responsible for the server outages on this scale -- responsibility rests with the script kiddies and bot net controllers. It's hard to know just how big this attack is, but with the sustained issues it's causing, and the severity of response from Blizzard, it's safe to assume that it's big. Battle.net is a hardened internet service that has withstood onslaughts like this before. For it to fail at such a critical juncture is nothing but catastrophic for the short term, and could have serious long term implications. We have some idea, shown above, of just how global this attack is. We'll update this post as the night continues, providing you with the latest. In the mean time -- we recommend you catch up on your lore, and not concern yourself with logging in. Blizzard also issued the following updated statement at 8:00 pm PST this evening: Blizzard Entertainment Our top priority continues to be service issues impacting performance and long wait times on North American realms. We recently pushed a server change that caused disconnects, and as a result login services are heavily impacted as players attempt to (re)log in to the game. If you experience issues logging in, please be patient and wait a few minutes before trying again. We're continuing to work to address other stability and latency issues as well as make additional improvements in game performance. source Updated by Adam Holisky. Original post follows after the break.
Warlords of Draenor hotfixes and other issues
Like any WoW expansion, Warlords of Draenor has not been without its issues. Garrison services are currently undergoing a restart and a fresh round of hotfixes has been released, primarily aimed at questing content. Some highlights: Back to Work / Looking for Lumber: Greatly increased the number of trees available to mark for both Horde and Alliance versions of the quest. Additionally, Lunarfall Ravens respawn much more quickly now. Ship Salvage / What We Need: Drudgeboat Salvage should now respawn more quickly. Durotan at Beastwatch in Gorgrond is now significantly tougher. You can find the full hotfixes below.
BlizzCon 2014: World of Warcraft Q&A liveblog
Get ready to talk Warcraft! The last World of Warcraft panel of BlizzCon is the Q&A, where BlizzCon attendees can pose any questions they like to the development team. Here's what you can expect: Members of the World of Warcraft dev team tank your questions about the game's lore, zones, dungeons, raids, and more. This free-for-all panel always has some interesting moments, so stay tuned for this year's Q&A, live from the BlizzCon floor. The panel kicks off at 3:30 PM PST (6:30 PM EST), so stay tuned!
BlizzCon World of Warcraft - Items, Class Changes, and More liveblog
The halls are abuzz with Overwatch, but what's in store for World of Warcraft? The World of Warcraft panel, covering items, class changes, garrisons and more is starting up at 4:45pm Pacific time, and we'll be liveblogging it right here. An assortment of WoW devs will be on hand to discuss all the changes in Warlords of Draenor, as well as new features of the expansion that's set to launch next week. Updates will be in reverse-chronological order, with newest updates at the top of the page. If you only want the latest update, you can stay near the top. If you missed the beginning of the panel, scroll to the bottom.
Liveblogging the opening ceremonies of BlizzCon 2014
Dear readers, I am going to be wholly honest with you. When I was asked if I could do this liveblog for BlizzCon, I thought I was being asked if I was capable. Like asking "can you ride your bike with no handlebars" or "can you sing to a cat until it leaves the room in disgust." But here I am now, so apparently the question was significantly less rhetorical than I had originally assumed and now I need to actually do this. You can watch the standard definition feed of the convention's opening ceremonies on the official site for free. I'll be liveblogging the important announcements in the comments if you're in a place where you can't watch along (at work, misplaced your headphones, hiding in an Amish barn and fearing discovery should your phone give away even the slightest beep); highlights will be collected past the break. There will probably be announcements about Blizzard games! Like World of Warcraft and Hearthstone and maybe, if it's very lucky, StarCraft II.
BlizzCon Opening Ceremony liveblog
The opening ceremony will begin at 11 a.m. Pacific and we will be liveblogging it right here. Currently, something is concealed in Hall C, typical of game or expansion announcements. In the past, once the announcement has been made, the black curtains are removed. No doubt, today's opening ceremony will contain something exciting. Updates will be in reverse-chronological order, with newest updates at the top of the page. If you only want the latest update, you can stay near the top. If you missed the beginning of the panel, scroll to the bottom.
Dawngate shutting down in 90 days
We hope you haven't pinned your future MOBA hopes on Dawngate, as EA has decided to take this title out of the running completely. Dawngate, which has been in beta most of this year, said today that it will be shutting down service in 90 days and is refunding testers any money they have spent thus far. "Today, I have the unenviable task of announcing that we've decided to stop development of Dawngate," Group General Manager Matt Bromberg posted. "Dawngate has been in beta for almost 18 months, including a full open beta for the past six months. Through that time, we've taken a lot of feedback from players and delivered lots of new features and innovations. And although the game has grown, we're not seeing the progress we'd hoped for." You can read Massively's hands-on experience with Dawngate as well as our interview with Composer Jeff Broadbent.
Blizzard wants you to update your payment information
Blizzard made a good point today -- you should probably check and make sure all your payment information is updated. If it's not and something goes wrong, now is the time to deal with it, rather than when the assist queues are busy with all the stuff that happens during an expansion release. This probably isn't some evil conspiracy. But for those of you that want to don your tin foil hat and think that Blizzard wants to collect new payment info so that they can do nefarious things with the money, bravo. I salute your conspiracy-ness. To check your payment info, Blizzard has outlined the following steps: Blizzard Entertainment 1. Log in to your Battle.net account at https://battle.net/ 2. From the Settings dropdown, select Contact & Shipping Addresses. 3. Make sure you're seeing your current Contact Address and phone number, and then click Shipping Address to make sure that's up-to-date as well. 4. Return to the Settings dropdown and select My Payment Options. 5. Select Edit next to each payment method, and make sure you're seeing your current information. source
Blizzard announces locally hosted Australian realms
Blizzard Entertainment held a Warlords of Draenor pre-launch celebration in Sydney, Australia last night. To much rejoicing among the Aussies, Blizzard announced Australia will soon have locally-hosted servers. Until now, Oceanic realms were hosted in the US, resulting in consistently subpar latency. Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas has released an FAQ for the transition for those unsure of its ramifications. A few highlights: Oceanic players on North American realms will, for a limited time, have optional character and guild realm transfers available free of charge Players on the new Oceanic realms will still be able to play with friends on North American realms The new realms will ideally be live before the release of Warlords of Draenor Oceanic players on North American realms may remain there if they so choose Let's hear it, Aussies: are you excited?
Metallica to perform at BlizzCon 2014
Blizzard Entertainment has announced Metallica will be performing live at BlizzCon 2014. As with previous years, the performance will take place during the convention's closing ceremony Saturday, November 8. If you won't be attending BlizzCon, you will be able to watch the concert with the BlizzCon virtual ticket. Performances at previous BlizzCons included Foo Fighters, Tenacious D, Blink-182 and Ozzy Osbourne.
Free Character Migrations for select EU realms
Players on EU realms looking for a change of pace or simply a new place to call home should take note -- Blizzard has opened up free Character Migrations for select EU realms. These Character Migrations are a one-time move from a predetermined list of source realms to a choice of a few destination realms. It's a one-time, one-way move, but it's absolutely free of charge for those that want to take advantage of the process while it's available. At the moment, these Character Migrations will be available until October 23. However, they can be closed down at any time, if enough people have taken advantage of the offer. Players may also want to note that this is on an individual character basis only. Any guild leaders looking to move their guilds may do so through the Guild Master Realm Transfer service, which they'll still need to pay for. However, guild members that want to follow to the new realm can do so for free with the Character Migration offer. Please note -- this service is only available to EU realms, and at this time, there are no free Character Migrations available for US players. Read on for the official announcement, as well as the full list of available realms for the Free Character Migration offer.
Patch 6.0.2 hotfixes for October 17
A fresh and lengthy round of hotfixes for patch 6.0.2 have been released and posted to the official blog. Included in this round of updates are a massive amount of class adjustments and tweaks, as well as adjustments to a variety of raids both old and new, bug fixes, quest fixes, and much, much more. Many, many classes have had the damage of various spells and abilities increased. The Undelete Character feature is now in place, and players are now able to undelete their characters. A bug causing Raid Finder, Heroic, and Mythic items from the Siege of Orgrimmar to become Normal mode versions has been corrected. An issue affecting boosted players and their ability to learn talents has been resolved. Read on for the full list of hotfixes.
