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Emberstorm and Whirlwind battlegroups down
We're receiving reports that servers on the Whirlwind and Emberstorm battlegroups, located in the Seattle datacenter, are currently experiencing downtime. These were the same battlegroups that were scheduled to recieve their local power supply upgrade today, so there may have been some unanticipated issue in the process.Don't panic! It's likely only temporary and they should be back up soon.We'll update you guys with more info when we get it. The full list of affected realms is under the cut -- feel free to hit us up on Twitter @wowinsider if yours comes back up and we haven't reported on it yet.UPDATE 4:18 AM EDT:Blizzard has posted a thread regarding the issues on the Battlegroup forums.
Apple Store is currently down
Yes folks, it looks like the online Apple Store is currently down. Given that it is 10:00 PM on a Saturday night over in Cupertino, I'd say chances are pretty good that it could just be some simple maintenance, but you never know. We'll keep an eye out for any changes and post an update if anything exciting happens!
iTunes Store & App Store problems
With the App Store celebrating its first birthday, there is a fair amount of news coverage, and with Michael Jackson's memorial service being broadcast, his fans are sure to be hitting iTunes up for some of their favorite songs. So it stands to reason that today is probably not a good day for the iTunes store to be having problems. Don't you just love Murphy's Law? Reports have been steadily coming in for the past few hours that users are unable to download songs, searches are timing out, and the App Store is not working properly from the iPhone. Several users have also posted threads on the iTunes discussion board with connection problems. I myself had troubles with searching for music from iTunes earlier today, but things seemed to be working better a short while later, so I figured things were fixed. Since then, however, we have received several other reports of troubles, yet things are working fine for me still. So it seems that this could be chalked up to routing troubles depending on your location, or it may just be intermittent and I've been lucky.Either way, it's safe to say that there is definitely something going on, although exactly what it is remains a question. Searching seems to be working, albeit a bit slowly, and downloads are working fine for me, but others have reported not being able to download at all. As they say, YMMV (your mileage may vary).Are you having troubles with either of the stores? Let us know in the comments.Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
Counting down to WWDC: The store, as they say, is down
As the sands flow through the hourglass, so appears the yellow sticky. If you doubted that we would see some sort of new product today, well, time to get with the program. C'mon back at 1pm ET for all the latest updates from the keynote.
Maintenance for Tuesday June 2nd
Maintenance, you say? Unheard of! After all, what is wrong with a Paladin standing upright while riding her horse? Or what's wrong with constant errors telling intrepid adventurers additional instances cannot be launched?Well, okay. Something might be wrong with those things. Hopefully tomorrow's maintenance will bring fixes to them. But more importantly based on all account it'll be bringing patch 3.1.3 with it as well.Maintenance will last from 3:00 a.m. PDT until 11:00 a.m. PDT. Unless, of course, you on one of the few dozen realms listed after the break. For those special realms, maintenance will last from 12:01 a.m. PDT until 12:01 p.m. PDT. Why is it starting at the :01? Because Blizzard wants you to have an extra minute to complete raids tonight. That's how much they care. And you know what? So do I... (Click it... I dare you.)The full list of realms under the extended maintenance after the break.
Apple Store down on a Sunday?
Well, that's unusual. Price drops? New gear? Regular maintenance? We'll know soon enough.Back up now... no visible changes reported and the main difference appears to be an enhanced UI for the shopping cart screen. Before & after pics below (thanks Joachim).Old cart UI:New cart UI:Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
T-Mobile Germany's network plunged into darkness
It seems that large swaths of T-Mobile Germany's network have been down for much of the day today, which -- in our books, anyway -- is as good a reason as any to flip cars and light things on fire (thankfully, though, it seems they've restrained themselves so far). Only voice and SMS are affected, which is pretty cool since there are other ways to text and talk using data alone; that said, it's still a major bummer, and T-Mobile's currently investigating the cause of the outage. Remain calm, everyone -- remember, ganging up on that cell tower and knocking it over only makes things worse, not better.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
WoW Rookie: Patch madness
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the resources they need to get acclimated. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic.Welcome, O WoW rookie, to patch week madness. If you thought run-of-the-mill maintenance and minor patch days could be dicey, here's your chance to enjoy the epic-level chaos wrought by epic-level content patches. World of Warcraft has evolved considerably since its launch in what's now been almost a handful of years ago. Blizzard regularly releases downloadable updates, called "patches," to add new content and features, fix problems and tweak game play and balance. Through patches, players have gained access to new quests, instances, Battlegrounds, events, items and tools. This week's Patch 3.1 is known as a content patch – a nice way of saying "a ton of new stuff we've added to the game that's going to make all hell break loose." The realms go up, the realms go down. The realms go up. Did we mention they also go down? You may log in only to find your characters nowhere in sight ("Oh #%$&, my characters are all gone!"). You may experience disappearing mail or auctions, random disconnections from the game and insufferable lag. You may find yourself merrily rolling along only to find the NPCs have disappeared, you can't zone in or out of instances or log out of the game, and you and every other player who's trapped in your zone are left with nothing to do but chat about the whole thing. (Almost makes you wonder if the Ice Stone has melted yet.)
Login servers down
We're not out of the woods with this patch yet. I'm seeing this message on a North American realm, and lots of other people are seeing the same thing. At least one of our bloggers is still in the game, though, and Blizzard is saying the Authentication servers are still up and running, so this should be fixed soon.We'll keep you updated, stay tuned.Thanks to everyone who sent this in!Update: A login server died. If you try signing in with a Bnet account, you should be able to get in. Otherwise, everybody PANIC hold on and they'll be back up soon.Update 2: Everything seems back up. That was relatively painless. Thanks for playing, everybody!
BlackBerry BIS drama today?
We've been getting tipped left and right that BIS outages are affecting BlackBerry customers on many carriers today, meaning your hands have probably become progressively twitchier over the last couple hours as they've become further and further removed from up-to-date email access. Horrifying, isn't it? Our own Jacob tells us service has already been restored for him, so hopefully everyone out there in RIM land is in good shape; of course, if you're still having issues, drop a line in comments.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Petopia down, working on getting back up
You may have noticed in the past day or so, as a few of our tipsters did, that Mania's great Hunter pet site, Petopia, has been down for the count lately. Loading up the main page gives the message above, and going straight to the redirect gives a "this site has been suspended" notice.But don't worry -- Mania says over on her forums that she's aware of the issue and working on it. It's an issue with the site host, and not any sudden plan on her part to dismantle the site (good thing, too, because losing two great WoW community sites this week would be too much for us).So hopefully, the problem will be solved soon and the database will be back up and running. We'll keep you posted if there are any more problems, but don't panic, Petopia is not gone forever.
Realm maintenance for Tuesday February 24th
"I'm not looking forward to this," Fargor grumbles as he rests his heavy two-handed Paladin mace on the side of his legs. "I know that when I awake tomorrow things will not have improved." He shuffles his chest plate around, getting more comfortable for the forced sleep ahead of him."And damned if I do even wake up!"Fargor slams his hairy Dwarven fist down on the wooden table, angry at the ruling Wizards of Dalaran for their impositions on him and everyone else.All Osull and Marcella can do is look back and nod in acknowledgement, as they too feel more and more angst at the Wizards for their mysterious ways. "At least it will only be part of a day," Osull offers up in comfort of the Dwarf. Marcella lays a supportive hand on the Osull's shoulder and nods her head in agreement, "Indeed kind Dwarf, it's only for eight hours."The platitudes seem to do nothing for Fargor, as he shakes his head and says "Eight hours or eight years, it doesn't matter lass. No one should have a right to tell a Dwarf what to do!"And as he says that the Wizards can suddenly be heard throughout the city, "The realms will be down from three to eleven in the morning, as the mighty pacific clock tells time. Sleep well now citizens of Azeroth, for when tomorrow you awake things will be fresh and new..."The voice trails off into nothingness and across the realms everyone stops what they're doing and falls asleep as they are.The Wizard's maintenance has begun.One week ago...
Blizzard gives out a day of compensation for the downtime
Blizzard's been on shaky footing this week with all the downtime, from their forum issues to in-game mail problems, and even their main site has had trouble. But there's good news for those affected by the outages (everybody?): we're all getting an extra day of playtime. Tyren says that they believe the problems are now fixed, and that players will recieve a free day of gameplay sometime within the next two weeks.Personally, I wasn't affected much, but free gametime is free gametime. The real test will be this evening and this weekend -- if Blizzard can keep their realms up even under the pressure of so many people checking out the expansion, it'll be a feat. But odds are that, considering how many players are likely to try checking out Northrend in the next few days, the shakiness is not quite over.
Yes, the Apple Store is down
With today's Apple event right around the corner, Apple has just taken down the online Apple stores around the world. Thanks to everyone who sent this tip in! We'll be providing coverage throughout the day, so be sure to check back often. If you notice any new changes, send us a tip.Don't miss our meta-liveblog coverage of the event, it will begin shortly before the event is scheduled: 1:00 p.m. Eastern time (10:00 a.m. Pacific time).Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
AT&T maintenance tonight to cause connection issues
A news announcement on the login screen is letting us all know that AT&T, the people who provide data center service to Blizzard, will be performing maintenance tonight from 12:00 a.m. EST until 5:00 a.m. EST. This will likely cause problems with both being able to login to the game and stay connected. This is an odd maintenance announcement, and one that I don't recall seeing before.Hopefully this will not develop into anything more serious – such as extended network outages or other such issues.
Guildwatch: "10 guilds kicked me in a row"
The above screenshot is a little hard to read, and for that we apologize. But it comes from Diablo of Stormscale -- apparently they had a healer who /afked in the middle of a raid for about 30 minutes, and when he got switched out of the raid for a Resto Shaman got a little testy. He says he's going to go do his dailies while he adds up the "pros and cons" of staying with the guild, and the GM solves his problem fast: "Here's the con." /gkick.We have to admire that kind of quick decision making. After the break, more stories of guild drama and woe, and some good news, too -- downed reports and recruiting notices. Make sure to send in any guild news you see to wowguildwatch@gmail.com, and click the link to see this week's GW.
AVSForum suffers database failure, loses "tens of thousands" of posts
Generally speaking, we don't much cover forums 'round these parts, but the AV Science Forum -- better known as AVSForum -- is the place to go to converse about all things AV-related. In what can only be described as a dramatic bummer, the website suffered a "a major failure in the database and backup storage." Due to the catastrophe, "tens of thousands" of posts were lost over the past week, and the boards have been restored to how they looked on August 2nd, 2008. We get this weird feeling the administrators will be implementing enough backup solutions to keep things humming along 'til the end of time after having this happen, though.[Thanks, Big Wizz]
Rolling restarts
Between 5:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. PDT today (Sunday July 27th) all U.S. realms will be undergoing a rolling restart. Each realm should be down for about 15 minutes, though these things have a tendency to last longer than scheduled.The login announcement tells us that the servers are getting a hotfix applied to them, however there is no indication what the hotfix is for. If anything does happen to extend this restart, you'll see it here on WoW Insider.
Realms are up
Good news, everyone! Several realms are up and running, with more coming online shortly I'm sure. This means you can get your World of Warcraft fix for the week starting now. And lets be honest, for any serious WoW player the week starts on Tuesday afternoon when the servers go up, and lasts until Tuesday morning when they go down.There is no patch 2.4.3 on the live servers yet - expect that in the next couple of weeks. Additionally, if there are any server stability issues to report on throughout the day you'll see a couple posts go up here.Happy Tuesday!And for the record, I've been wanting to use Buddy Christ in a post for a while, but haven't been able to find an excuse yet. Him seeming all happy for something (like the realms being up) felt like a good enough reason for me.
Extended maintenance tomorrow
All U.S. realms will be offline for extended maintenance tomorrow from 5:00 a.m. PDT until 11:00 a.m. PDT. This came from an announcement via the login screen.Servers have been mostly stable this past week after a series of rolling restarts Blizzard did a few days ago. Hopefully this won't cause too many problems for those hoping to enjoy the game Tuesday evening.Stay tuned to WoW Insider for the latest on realm issues and other WoW news.
