oceanic-realms
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Updated: All realms now online
Updated: All realms are now available. Re: Rolling Realm Restarts 10/14/2010 All realms are online and available for play! See you all ingame source After announcing rolling restarts on all U.S. and Oceanic realms last night, Blizzard has confirmed that all U.S. realms are currently offline due to an unforeseen technical issue. We will have more information when those issues are resolved. Re: Rolling Realm Restarts 10/14/2010 All US realms are temporarily unavailable due to an unforeseen technical issue. We are unable to provide an estimate on when these issues will be resolved. source
The Queue: The Scantily Clad Edition
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Hello, everybody! I'm going to jump right into things today because I'm sure at least a dozen people will want to shiv me for my answer to our first question, and I'd like to give everyone time to do that.Andrew R. asked..."Why do the females in WoW always wear such scantily clad gear? I don't see how plate armor that exposes half your upper body will do you any good when someone wants to stab you. Isn't it kind of degrading to real women who play the game?"
Breakfast Topic: Realm (in)stability
In general I've been pleasantly surprised at how stable my own realm has been since the launch. Yes, we've had queues, restarts, lag, and yes, we've also had an insanely annoying subgroup of people with absolutely no scruples over stealing quest spawns (to be fair, this isn't Blizzard's fault, unless you count their refusal to allow us to kill members of our own faction. I have been sorely tempted over the last few days). But in general, play has been pretty trouble-free apart from the crowds you'd expect at all the usual quest hubs, and the response to the expansion has been universally positive from everyone to whom I've spoken. Wrath, at least on my own realm, has gone live to a very happy and excited bunch of players.But with a look at WoW Insider's inbox, I'm not sure it's worked out that way for everyone. We've seen a spate of recent complaints about server crashes and giant queues, and this weekend we've gotten a lot of them from people playing on Oceanic servers particularly (one of our readers, James Flannery, wrote in to tell us about an Oceanic server queue that went from 86 to 161 minutes during the half hour that he'd already been waiting). While in general I think it's safe to say that Wrath's launch went much more smoothly than Burning Crusade's did, I'm not sure everyone's benefited despite Blizzard's efforts. Possibly it's a function of Wrath being even more popular than anticipated in certain regions. If you play on multiple servers, which realm(s) seem to be doing best and worst? Have queue times (if they existed) and server lag improved for you?
A new round of free character transfers announced
As of noon today, a new set of free character transfers are available from select realms due to their exceedingly high population. Bornakk says that these transfers will last until Wednesday, September 10th unless their transfer goal is met early. In that case, the character transfers will end early as well. Get in while you can, if you're on one of these realms!The realms Illidan, Mal'Ganis and Warsong have the option to transfer to the Zuluhed server. Aerie Peak, Area 52, Moon Guard, and Zul'Jin have the option of transferring to Muradin. On the Oceanic side of things, the servers Barthilas and Frostmourne may transfer to Dreadmaul if they so choose. Forum links embedded for your new-home-researching convenience.Remember, these transfers are only open until September 10th or until their transfer quota is met. If you're interested in moving, do it as soon as you can so you don't miss out.
Oceanic players get their own forum
Bornakk announced yesterday that Blizzard has launched a new forum specifically for players on Oceanic realms. It is intended to be a "friendly and focused environment" for Oceanic players to discuss WoW. Of course, the Oceanic realms still have their individual forums and this has caused some confusion among the forum posters regarding why the forums were established. And it wouldn't be forums without trolls.I, for one, see the value of a forum for Oceanic players to discuss their specific issues and to be able to find players in similar situations without searching the U.S. forums and without being limited to specific servers. If you are an Oceanic player, please take our poll:%Poll-16596%
Oceanic Alliance characters to get free PvE to PvP transfers
If you're a regular reader of our Guildwatch feature, you may remember hearing about the woes of the Oceanic PvP realm Thaurissan on the last Guildwatch. The server is incredibly Horde heavy, with an estimated 14 to 1 imbalance, and the server denizens say it is genuinely near impossible to get 25 people together to do raid content on the Alliance side. Unfortunately , we also know that Blizzard is still firmly against PvE to PvP realm transfers, which may be preventing Thaurissan from getting the influx of new blood they need. However, for the sake of Thaurissan's Alliance, they have suspended this restriction. Starting today, June 12th, and ending no later than June 19th, Alliance characters (and only Alliance characters) from the Oceanic PvE realms Nagrand, Aman'thul, and Khaz'goroth will be eligible for free transfers to the Thaurissan realm. Blizzard reserves the right to close transfers early if they meet their goals, so if you're eligible and you want to go, you'd better get that request in now. This is not the first time they've done this type of thing. Over two years ago, a large cluster of PvE realms were given the opportunity to transfer to the Black Dragonflight and Dalvengyr PvP servers. Thus, it seems that they can be convinced to waive their restrictions on transfers, but that a chance to do so may only come up once every 2 years. Good luck to everyone transferring to Thaurissan, and hopefully this gives the Thaurissan Alliance the shot in the arm they need to get their end game going.
New Oceanic PvP realm for transfer
Well, now it seems that you can't say Blizzard's ignoring the Oceanic community any more. Starting next Monday, April 21, at 12 PM PST, free character transfers will be made available from the following Oceanic PvP realms: Barthilas Frostmourne Jubei'Thos Thaurissan The destination will be a brand-new Oceanic PvP realm called Dreadmaul. It will be in the Bloodlust battlegroup. New character creation on Dreadmaul will be disabled until transfers are over, and the realm will have its Ahn'Qiraj gates open automatically. As always, transfer early if you want to, because Blizzard may close the transfers before the deadline if there's a mad rush on them. The transfers are scheduled to run for a week, until April 28, 12 PM PST.
Gamers on the Street: Oceanic players persist despite performance issues
Gamers on the Street logs onto U.S. servers to get the word from the front on what's going on in and around the World of Warcraft.Oceanic players continue to snarl this week at continued server performance issues that cramp their play. Oceanic subscribers playing from the other side of the world have dedicated servers, yes – but the servers are physically located in North America, and no consideration seems to have been given to shifting maintenance and resource-intensive background processes to non-peak local hours.Needless to say, a good number of Oceanic players are up in arms over spiraling post-2.4 performance issues. Blue reps continue to take the heat from red-hot flames, reflecting a continued determination to work through the problems. We decided to pop in on a couple of Oceanic servers themselves, away from the heat of the forums, to see what the player temperature seemed to be.
Blizzard tells Oceanic realms they're fixing it
Here's the situation: Many people are experiencing problems with Oceanic realms being offline, having heavy lag, or just general stability issues. These issues have principally appeared after patch 2.4 hit, and are a major pain for those playing over there. Players cannot loot items in a timely manner, they lag out during raids, and playing the new content (or any instance) is sometimes impossible.Players have, for the most part, provided excellent documentation to Blizzard concerning the stability. They have done so in a massive thread over on the Customer Service Forums, and it is actively being monitored and commented on by Syndri, a Blizzard representative. The thread was started on March 31st, with the issues appearing a couple weeks before that, and is still active today. The analysis: There is a lot of Blizzard hate going around about this issue. We've received numerous emails on the subject, and taking a look around the internet and the official forums show the same feelings. This is, in my opinion, unfounded.Blizzard has came out and said that they know the issue is happening, that they're looking into it, isolating it, and attempting to fix it. They're well aware that people are having issues playing the game – and they want to fix that. It's in their best interest as a business, and as good people (the folks working there are good people, remember). However the acknowledgement by Blizzard doesn't seem to stop a horde of people from saying they're being ignored: they're not. Syndri even makes an appeal to the masses: "By all means, vent your concerns and experiences herein; that's what this thread is here for. But don't-and I do ask this sincerely-ignore the attention that this matter has truly received."
Brewfest is still a bugfest
Brewfest bugs continue to infest the live servers. Despite a rolling restart of all the realms this morning, the Barker quest is still bugged on many servers. Blizzard is aware and is currently trying to unravel the latest mystery glitch.Blizzard was increasing the ticket reward for the Barker quest to make up for disabling the Dark Iron attack quest. If they can't get the Barker quest to work properly, they are going to have to think of another plan. There is only a limited amount of time to gather tickets for players who want the permanent rewards. CM Aeus on the European servers nixed the idea of the event getting extended. Oceanic realms are also having Brewfest problems of their own. Because the servers are hosted in a different time zone, the Brewfest events didn't go live at midnight, but many hours later. Blizzard is aware of the time discrepancy problem and is looking into ways to avoid it in the future.For players who intend to do the Barker quest when it is working, Blizzard has pointed out that /waving and /yelling are not necessary. You simply need to get close enough to the flags while on the Riding Ram. The quest updates using waypoint triggers, not emotes. One bit of good news: the always excellent WoW Wiki has a page up on Brewfest listing quests, rewards, etc. This may help answer many questions players have such as, can I get the Ram quest before L40? (No.)
The Plight of Australian Players
Perhaps you're not aware, but Australian and North American World of Warcraft players share the same realms. This has created all sorts of troubles for the Australian player approaching the game. Firstly, sharing a game-space with North American players means that many players are in a time zone far separated from your own, and finding instance and raiding groups during the hours when most of the players are sleeping is a problem. Secondly, regularly scheduled maintenance, set during a low activity time for those on the right continent, hits right during prime playing time. While, more recently, Blizzard has been rolling out realms specifically flagged "Oceanic" and set to Australian time zones, they're still located with the rest of the North American realms and subject to the same maintenance schedule. And with few Oceanic servers available, they've become flooded with players and subject to lag and instability. Whether Blizzard will be able to fix its Oceanic mess or not... well, we'll see.[Thanks, Dave]
New Oceanic Realms Coming
Well, they aren't going to be opened immediately, but there are plans for two new Oceanic realms (one PvE and one PvP) to open mid-May. With only a few existing Oceanic servers, this will hopefully alleviate overcrowding. Of course, this does not much help existing Oceanic players who started out on non-Oceanic realms before there were any Oceanic realms - chances are they'll be waiting for pay-for character transfers if they want to swap.
