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European maintenance extended to 1500 CEST
Blizzard EU has informed us via Twitter that maintenance has been extended to 1500 CEST, which is 1400 UK time. This is certainly not unusual for large patches and definitely not for ones that make such major changes to the game's systems and structure. Edit: Most realms are up two hours earlier than scheduled! Maintenance continues for Nemesis and Pozzo dell'Eternità. Of course, WoW Insider will keep you updated, but in the meantime, why not check out some of our coverage of patch 5.0.4? Release version of the 5.0.4 patch notes Class-by-class glyph changes for 5.0.4 Spellbook changes for 5.0.4 Updated information on the Battle of Theramore What you need to know about pets, mounts and achievements An updated list of addons that are ready for 5.0.4 An addon survival guide for patch day It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
RIFT world event extended due to technical difficulties
It looks as though the end of the world will be postponed -- at least for a week. Due to issues on RIFT's European servers, Trion Worlds has announced that the current world event will postpone moving into its second phase until Saturday, April 16th. In a post on the forums, James Nichols said "With the opening of the final phases of the River of Souls World Event in Europe we have identified several issues that only came to light in a live server environment." Originally, the River of Souls event was scheduled to head into Phase Two on the 9th, but issues cropped up that prevented this from happening. All told, RIFT's first world event will go through three phases before it is through. Because of the delay, Trion said that it is both increasing the event currency players can earn and the amount of rewards available for purchase. These changes will be rolled out during the week.
Free character moves for EU servers
If you play on EU servers, not only are you probably far more handsome and personable than I am (to be fair, so is just about every other human being in existence) but you now have more options as to what servers you can play on. Wryxian posted a list of realms and free character moves available. There will be Alliance and Horde only transfers off of various realms not only to these realms, but to others as well. (It should be noted that Vek'nilash appears to have been open since February, and Boulderfist since March 10th.) The full text of the post will be included after the jump.
European weekly maintenance: 17th June 2009
Happy Wednesday everybody! After the annoying events of last week when the Battle Bots were ripped from the fingers of European players, things have settled down and are back to normal. With that in mind, it's maintenance time. All the realms are going down from 3:00am to 11:00am CEST. As always, there's plenty to do and read during this maintenance. There's a nice round up of news for you to read if you are up. Hint: if you are reading this at 3:00am, go back to bed! Those aren't birds singing but owls. Go. Back. To. Bed.Edit: Our beloved Overlady and Editor in Chief has decreed I also link you to our tattoo, license plate and cake galleries. I don't particularly care for the first two but the cakes are awesome and so delicious. The cake is so not a lie.
European weekly maintenance: 10th June 2009
Welcome to Wednesday in Europe. While the Americans are still sleeping and dreaming of that next boss kill, it's a brand new day and, with it, a bunch of rolling restarts to boot. Yes, rolling restarts: it's a different kind of maintenance this week. We'll be getting fifteen minute warnings before the restarts take place between 5:00am and 7:00am CEST so do bear that in mind when you start that wee-small-hours-of-the-morning raid in Ulduar. The rest of the downtime is forum and website-side with both going offline between 3:00am and 5:00am CEST. So it's a relatively painless bout of maintenance this week, one I fully intend to sleep through. If you're looking for something to read on the bus to school or the commuter train to work, then Daniel W. has plenty for your to browse through. Personally I think it's just an excuse to post that Sailor Moon kitty form although I freely admit the anime fan in me is currently screaming loudly for my own senshi makeover.
European extended and weekly maintenance: 27th May 2009
Good morning Europe. May is almost over and summer seems to be officially here -- at least in the UK. This week we have something different. For most of us, it's the usual bout of maintenance but some lucky souls are getting extended downtime for a very special reason.Basically the Big Giant Heads at Blizzard have decided to merge a couple of Battlegroups. What's so special about that, I hear you cry? Well, it's special because the groups concerned are all in different languages. Yes, this will be the first time French, German, Spanish and English will come together to make multilingual Battlegroups. Lovely EU Blue Wryxian has created a quick FAQ to explain what the heck is going on, though I confess to still being a little confused.This means most of us will have normal maintenance between 5:00am and 7:00am CEST while folks in Nightfall, Crueldad, Nemesis and Hinterhalt (realm-wise, that's Aionsus, Anachronos, Bronze Dragonflight, Burning Steppes, Darkmoon Faire, Darkspear, Kor'gall and Lightbringer) will have extended maintenance between 3:00am and 11:00am CEST.Anyway, my usual motto of 'keep calm and carry on' applies. In the meantime, Daniel Whitcomb has once again provided a feature packed post to keep you entertained. If you finish reading that with time to spare and just happen to be a druid, well you might just want to stare at those lovely updated forms some more. I know I will be.
Updated: European weekly maintenance: 13th May 2009
Greetings folks, it's once again Wednesday and you know what that means? Yes, it's maintenance day once again. Where did the week go? I must be getting older because time is flying by way too fast.Things finally seem to be settling down as we're back to the normal maintenance routine of downtime between 5am and 7am CEST. Of course, our poor American brethren were once again in guinea pig mode. They experienced a rather lengthy period of extended maintenance yesterday afternoon so, as usual, don't hold your breath. As if anticipating the whiff of downtime, Daniel W. compiled a rather extensive list of things do to during the (hopefully short) downtime. See y'all when the servers come back up!Update: All the servers seem to be back up a bit earlier than anticipated. However Blizzard have posted a note concerning 'technical difficulties' relating to the login/authentication servers and promise they're looking into it. Hopefully the problem will be fixed pretty quickly but if you find yourself unable to get into Azeroth, that's why. All you can do is keep calm and carry on, folks.
UPDATE: European weekly maintenance: Wednesday 22nd April 2009
Wednesday is, as always, maintenance day here in Europe and this morning is no different. While any realms escaped last week's post patch chaos, we still had problems so Blizzard are of course keen to fix them so we're going from 3.1 to 3.1.1 and, as usual, we have to wait an extra twemty four hours to get it. With this in mind, we've got an extended maintenance meaning all European realms are going to be down between 3am and 11am CET. However if US maintenance is anything to go by, prepared for it to be extended to 3pm CET.Oh and just cause they're nice (and there were some er issues) everyone is getting a free respec tomorrow. Yep, all your talents get wiped so you get to spend the first half an hour of up-time sorting them all out. This doesn't include gylphs though, just FYI.Anyway, in the mean time, why not check out some of the suggestions in yesterday's US post to kill some time? Alternatively, why not take a peek at the full patch notes here.Update: Having been tipped off by a number of our European readers and just applied the patch myself, it seems while the weekly maintenance is still being listed all the realms are currently up.
UPDATED: European maintenance extended till 3pm CET
Let's get real here for a second. When I signed off at midnight, the US realms were only just started to pop back up. Did you honestly think we here in Europe were going to get away scott free? You did? Oh dear, let's not go there, eh?Folks have been reporting extended maintenance and so we're now looking at 3pm CET. All we need to do now is cross our digits that Blizzard managed to fix whatever was ailing the US realms before starting to roll out 3.1 on our severs. Needless to say. I'll be keeping you guys in the loop should things change.So in the meantime, as your waiting, why not enter our EU loot card competition? Your could also check out our 3.1 FAQ and start planning your new primary and secondary specs using Wowhead's new calculator.Not finished patching yet and having issues? Try this post.Hopefully we should have a smoother ride of it but I'll be keeping you updated nevertheless.UPDATE: As of 3pm CET, the realms are slowly starting to come back up. Some of the most popular ones - Vek'nilash amongst them - keep going offline, probably due to being hammered by players trying to login. Hang on in there.UPDATE: Most of the realms are now back!
LotRO Book 7 arrives on the EU servers
For those Lord of the Rings Online fans in Europe who have eagerly and patiently awaited the new Book 7 content, you can now rejoice in the fact that the Book 7 patch has finally gone live on the EU servers! That's right, no longer will you press your longing face against the front window that reaches across the pond, as you can now enjoy (or at least start the download for) the Leaves of Lorien content patch.If it's been so long and you can't quite remember what this patch has to offer, check out our dev tour, our tag page and the official patch notes containing loads of information on the epic questline, new Lothlorien map, the Spring Festival and more!
EU battlegroups experiencing language problems after mergers
Tipster Nimm writes in to let us know that several EU battlegroups have been having serious issues after mergers that occurred post-patch 3.02. The mergers have seen a number of battlegroups acquiring servers with other language-dominant populations, which has resulted in a number of French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian-dominant servers (among others) all in the same battlegroups. While this is probably necessary to a certain degree to guarantee equal Alliance/Horde populations for quick queue times, it's become something of a communication nightmare in battleground matches, particularly those with lots of players using Cyrillic characters. As the player Thoughtless from the Karazhan realm asks, "Can you imagine how hard it is to organise any sort of teamplay in AB with player ???????? from <????????> guild cha(t)ting "?????? ??? ??????? ??????? ?????" in BG chat?" Nimm also notes that differentiating between ??????? enemy players is a nightmare.We knew that Blizzard was closing four EU realms (Stonemaul, Molten Core, Shadowmoon, and Warsong) and transferring remaining players to other realms in response to Russian player migration to Russian realms opened late summer 2008, and the problem's partially the result of that (which has already resulted in the inevitable "In Soviet Russia, battlegroups merge you" joke). A few amused people are rising to the occasion by translating such phrases as inc 5 schmiede (inc 5 blacksmith in German) or proposing a revival of Esperanto, but the Russian language pack would be the only possible solution for the ???? problem. There's been mention made that this is only a temporary fix on Blizzard's part to faction imbalances on battlegroups, but if you're on an EU realm that's seen a recent battlegroup merge, just be aware that Babelfish might be a useful tool in the near future.
SK Gaming splits into separate PvE and PvP guilds
We received news yesterday that SK Gaming, the multinational raiding and arena juggernaut, has decided to split into separate PvE and PvP branches. Well, perhaps that's a little misleading. SK Gaming had partnered with the famed Curse of EU-Veknilash (the same people behind Curse Gaming and World of Raids), and their combined efforts resulted in three world-firsts in Sunwell under the SK Gaming tag (Felmyst, M'uru, and Kil'Jaeden). That success aside, they reached the decision that the pursuit of competitive raiding and e-sport supremacy under the auspice of the same guild just wasn't working, and that the game demanded an entirely different vision and means of guild organization for each goal.According to Mekon, the guild master of the former PvE branch (which remains on EU-Veknilash but is now renamed "Put Your Name Here" -- you can't accuse them of not having a sense of humor), it was the PvE players' decision to leave, "absolutely nothing changes within the guild," and they will continue to pursue world firsts in Wrath. We interviewed Neg, one of their resto Shamans, not long after they got their world-first Kil'Jaeden kill. This was less than a month after the major U.S. raiding guild Death and Taxes had gone the way of the dinosaur, and Neg had some insightful observations concerning what was happening to raiding guilds with Wrath of the Lich King on the not-too-distant horizon. At the time I privately hoped that other major raid guilds wouldn't suffer D&T's fate, and...well, this isn't really it, I suppose. Both sides of SK Gaming will continue to operate, just independently of each other (from both an organizational and financial perspective). If nothing else I find it a fairly thought-provoking commentary on the degree of Blizzard's success attempting to legitimize arena as a true e-sport, and how the game's top players see the PvP side of the game increasingly disconnected from its PvE counterpart.
Best. Guild. Application. Ever.
I've only ever written two guild applications, but I used to pride myself on writing a damn good one, the sort of application you might see written by the manager of a successful hedge fund, or possibly Mother Teresa. So I had my doubts when tipster Roflharris wrote in to tell us that a friend of his, MsFahrenheit of Sylvanas-EU, had submitted what was possibly the best guild application of all time to Anointed, but it's completely true. You'd have to try pretty hard to top this fully-animated, written and visual joke-infested riot. I just about died when he hit the part about how he got class leader and what attempts on Kalecgos were like.MsFahrenheit applied as a resto Druid and it looks like he was accepted, not that I would have expected anything less. There's not much more I can say apart from please see this; you'll be glad you did. Just so you know, it takes about 6 minutes to play from start to finish.(A non-audio version is here if you absolutely must, but the audio version is funnier).
Olympic battleground rewards appear on European and Chinese servers
Despite the extensive problems and human violations rights perpetuated by the Chinese government, some in service of the Olympic games themselves, most of the world seems to content to settle in and watch the Beijing Olympics one way or another. Apparently, that attitude has spread to Blizzard itself. Currently on the European and Chinese servers, there are NPCs at each major Battlemaster area in the capital cities who proclaim that Battlegrounds are hosting some type of "Spirit of Competition." For simply participating in a battleground, you are sent a Competitor's Tabard, which features 4 multi-colored rings on a white background, a clear reference to the Olympics itself. If you win a battleground during this time period, you may also have a chance at receiving a gold medal which summons a spirit of competition, which looks like a small Chinese dragon according to tipster Ichthallus. This competition does not appear to be live on the US Servers, nor has anyone from Blizzard spoken up to reveal if it ever will be as of this writing. We'll have to watch and see what happens. As Blizzard does not appear to be an official Olympic partner, there is some concern from some quarters that this could simply be a copyright issue. It's also possible that this was meant to be a Chinese servers only event, and it only accidentally got onto the EU servers. Thanks to everyone who sent us tips on this! EDIT: Belfaire has confirmed that this event will be coming to US and Oceanic servers starting at Midnight server time. Thanks to those who let us know in the comments!
Russian WoW in Alpha testing
Blizzard has announced alpha testing for the new Russian version of World of Warcraft. The post on the WoW-Europe forums invitesRussian-speaking layers to join in a technical test connection and latency issues within the new version of the game. This will be followed by a localization beta that coincide with the release of patch 2.4.3. The announcement is posted in . Dedicated forums are slated to be released next week for Russian WoW. Many questions remain unanswered. Hopefully in the coming weeks more information will be released. Currently a number of realms exist on EU servers that are inhabited by Russian-speaking players. Will there be free migrations for players on existing "Russian realms?" Visit the Russian WoW teaser page for more information. (I think) Also keep an eye out for more news on Latin American WoW, which is currently under development.
Playing Cross-Realm: EU and US
While it may not be surprising that the US WoW client does not work for EU servers (and vice versa), some intrepid gamers are bridging the international gap. Gamer Pete Barr-Watson has come up with a simple way to use a single Warcraft client to play on both sets of servers (with active accounts on each, of course!). [Thanks, Pete]
