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Some EU realms get a free day
A bit over a month ago, all the realms in the European battlegroups Crueldad, Hinterhalt, Némésis, and Nightfall suffered some extra downtime, and players on them received a credit for a free day of playtime to compensate. Looks like it's happened again. In exchange for for six hours of downtime on April 6, members on those battlegroups will once again get a free day. Here's a list of the affected realms: Crueldad: C'Thun, Dun Modr, Los Errantes, Minahonda, Shen'dralar, Tyrande, Uldum, Zul'Jin Hinterhalt: Arygos, Der Mithrilorden, Dethecus, Forscherliga, Norgannon, Teldrassil, Todeswache, Un'Goro Némésis: Arak-arahm, Confrérie du Thorium, Eitrigg, Garona, La Croisade écarlate, Medivh, Uldaman, Vol'jin Nightfall: Alonsus, Anachronos, Bronze Dragonflight, Burning Steppes, Darkmoon Faire, Darkspear, Kor'gall, Lightbringer, Molten Core Enjoy your free day, folks. I'm just glad I get to use my "1up" image again.
Microsoft, Activision aware of Xbox Live Issues [Update]
Update: As of this morning the Xbox.com support page says the service should be back up to speed.Updating you from our story a few hours ago comes new information regarding the state of Xbox Live. A little under an hour ago Microsoft and Activision have acknowledged the issues that have plagued the Xbox Live and Xbox Live Marketplace services. A notice was posted on the Xbox.com support page as well as the above message found on the Game of the Year Map activation page for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.While no formal reasoning is given the community finger has points squarely on the Variety Map Pack for Call of Duty 4 that released earlier today. Even though we're assured via Twitter, "the team is aware of issues w/ LIVE" from Xbox Live's Major Nelson, we wonder how the service will cope on April 29 as the world attempts to experience Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV.
Xbox Live hits the slow setting
We go ahead and announce a social gaming night and Xbox Live goes and hits the slow setting! According to some readers, Xbox Live is experiencing slowdown reminiscent of the Holiday '07 debacle. The general guess is that the popularity of the recently released Call of Duty 4 map pack may have a hand in the current network situation.While some readers are experiencing login issues, download errors and general feeling of the service being dragged through molasses, we've been receiving friend requests for the last hour and a half for tonight's big game while connected to Xbox Live without any issues other than a slow performance from the Xbox Live Marketplace.Even though Xbox Live is acting up we're still trucking along with tonight's X3F Live! So make sure to add the gamertag X3FLIVE to your Friend's list. Hey, now that we think about it, maybe the lag will help with our sniping![Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Server downtime troubles continue [Updated]
In yet another sure sign that we're all ready for the refreshing changes that Sanrio will bring to the online gaming world, Extended Maintenance continues. Right now, Bornakk's telling us that we'll have to wait until 2pm PDT for the realms to be bought back online. The Realm Status page reveals that a few realms have come back up, but it remains to be seen if they're stable. We'll keep an eye out for you and tell you what WoW's up to. Hopefully we'll be back on the flipside in 15 minutes or so. Of course, we all know that WoW is just filling that empty void in our souls that will only be truly healed when Hello Kitty Online is finally released, or at least put in Open Beta.Update: While a few more servers are up, almost none of them are anything close to stable, and many servers remain down. Bornakk is currently promising another update at 3:00 PDT. Update 2: It looks like at 4:40 PDT, all realms are up and ready for play again.
Extended PotBS downtime yields player compensation
A recent period of extended downtime in Pirates of the Burning Sea, caused by an issue with the latest patch, has left a mob of very angry pirates to placate. Thankfully, most pirates will forget why they were angry if you can toss them a handful of doubloons, and so Flying Lab Software has dug up a few treasure chests in order to give compensation for the lost play time.Players will be receiving 6 Bonus Loot Books, which give a 20% chance to get double loot from enemies for two real-time hours, and 6 Bonus Experience Books, granting a 20% experience boost for two hours. These goodies will be put straight into player's inventories when they log in, after a small patch this Wednesday.
Xbox Live gets downtime on April 1
According to a post on Gamescore Blog and the message we got when we logged onto Live, Xbox Live and Xbox.com will be down for maintenance on April 1 from 2-5am PDT. Before you start making your "Spring Dash Update is Nigh!" signs, we're being told this is a routine process that will go on in the early hours of the morning. In the meantime you should play the Battlefield: Bad Company beta or Halo 3 online or Call of Duty 4 multiplayer. Wait. Oh no! What will we do?![Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Rolling restarts extend; multiple US servers down
Bornakk posted on the forums about rolling restarts for all realms to affect an issue that was preventing the proper display of realm names in the Battlegrounds. Instead of realm names, players from other servers would have their names displayed with cryptic tags such as US1B-BG, which -- aside from being unintelligible -- prevented identification of premade groups. The issue had reportedly been present in the PTR builds but seems not to have been addressed completely when Patch 2.4 went live.Although the rolling restarts were estimated to affect each realm for approximately 15 minutes and take a total of around 2 hours for the entire process, some realms -- roughly half of all US servers -- continue to experience further issues, necessitating more downtime. As of this writing, Bornakk reports that Blizzard estimates that all realms will be available for play at 4:30am PDT. Interestingly, it seems that the issue is not Battlegroup-related as some Battlegroups have both up and down servers.
Patch night connectivity issues may be over soon [UPDATED]
We've gotten quite a few tips and reports that there have been some issues with connectivity this evening. It seems many people have been getting disconnected upon leaving an instanced dungeon or battleground and are unable to log back in on that character.We don't have much solid information on what's causing it, but the theory so far has been an ISP issue. I'm not very tech savvy when it comes to that sort of thing, so I can't really say how true that may or may not be. However, our buddy Belfaire seems to be doing what he can to take care of it. He just posted that they think they've found the issue and may be rolling out a fix.So, you guys with characters stuck in limbo? Hopefully your problems will go away very soon.Updates behind the cut as they come.
WoW 2.4 downtime claims even more time
Unless you've been completely ignoring MMO news lately, you know that World of Warcraft has been gearing up for its final large content patch before the release of their upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. This morning, after much watching and many cups of coffee, they announced that 2.4 was indeed releasing today. With it comes a plethora of new content, gear, and much more. Of course, as many veterans to Blizzard's patch-day hijinks expected, 2.4 has claimed its first victim; the WoW servers. Just minutes after bringing up the realms at 2:00 PM Eastern (the originally announced end of the maintenance window) the WoW servers were taken off-line and the downtime was extended to 3:30 PM Eastern. Now this isn't to say that it will likely slow too many people down. Any time a new content patch is released that includes a raiding instance, there's generally a mad rush to be the first guild to ever clear the new instance on live servers. For the rest of us who, while curious, won't be heading anywhere near those instances tonight (knowing how unstable they're undoubtedly going to be) have no fear! Our sister site, WoW Insider, has been cranking out the 2.4 love all day. If you haven't gotten a chance to check it out, or are afraid you'll be buried in the backlog of postings, don't worry. They've created a handy "All you ever wanted to know about 2.4 but were too busy to look up" page. Curious to see more? Just click on the patch 2.4 Sunwell banner above. You'll be up to speed in no time!
Extended maintenance extended
A fresh popup from the in-game breaking news section tells us that the extended maintenance has been extended until 12:30 p.m. PDT. They are hard at work getting patch 2.4 ready.If Blizzard is actually able to pull this patch off with these short down times, I believe it'll be the first one that they've not had to extend maintenance by hours and hours and hours. I for one am hopeful that they'll be able to do this, and am looking forward to some afternoon romping around Sunwell Isle.Our coverage, and your comments and tips, have been non-stop today! Keep checking back with us throughout the day and the evening for the latest. We'll be sure to post and let you know when the servers are up – whenever that may be.
Widget Watch: Apple Store status widget
In February we covered Pingdom's release of a website badge and monitoring service that tracked the status of the Apple Store. A lot of our readers were resourceful enough to make their own widgets from the banner, but Pingdom has polished up and released a widget for everyone who looks forward to the excited anticipation of downtime hysteria. The widget, and Pingdom's service in general, have the potential to be a blessing to Apple's servers. By pinging once and distributing the results to the masses, it could prevent thousands of simultaneous connections from refresh-happy Apple fans. Not that the servers haven't always handled the traffic with a fair amount of aplomb; it's just that much more breathing room. Software releases (Safari 3.1 and a Security Update) marked this Tuesday, but without the bated-breath downtime we'd begun to expect. A little element of scheduling surprise, such as the 802.11n Airport Express release on Monday, makes this widget significantly more useful. So, grab the widget from Pingdom and enjoy future frenzies!
EVE gets a Boost on Tuesday
In case you've been too busy ratting, mining, or you've been offline training up those long-duration skills, we thought we'd point out that there's a new patch for EVE Online coming this Tuesday. The patch, called "Boost", is chock full of database fixes from what we've been given to understand. Sadly, the patch notes aren't currently out according to the official thread, or we'd have them for you here.As to why they're doing such a long downtime this Tuesday, Erlendur S. Thorsteinsson, EVE's Software Director, jumped out to answer:
More realm issues today
Bornakk announced today on the general discussion forums (why he didn't do this on the tech support forums, I don't know...) that they are having a number of realms randomly drop people. Indeed, this happened to me over on Eldre'Thalas this morning.If you are having issues, remember that you can go to the Blizzard's tech support forums and ask a question there. You can also check out our guide for solving all these connection issues, if Blizzard doesn't come through with a solution for you.We'll keep you updated on this weekend hiccup – stay tuned to WoW Insider for the latest!
Playtime credit for some EU realms
Apparently there was some extra downtime (7 hours!) for some of the European realms on Wednseday. To compensate, Blizzard is giving a one-day playtime credit to anyone with an active character in the affected battlegroups: Crueldad, Hinterhalt, Némésis, and Nightfall. That's one of the things I like about Blizz -- they may mess up, but when they do, they try to fix it (except when it comes to Life Tap).In case you're not sure what battlegroup you're in, here's the realm listings. If you have an active character on any of these European realms, you will be credited a day of playtime. Crueldad: C'Thun, Dun Modr, Los Errantes, Minahonda, Shen'dralar, Tyrande, Uldum, Zul'Jin Hinterhalt: Arygos, Der Mithrilorden, Dethecus, Forscherliga, Norgannon, Teldrassil, Todeswache, Un'Goro Némésis: Arak-arahm, Confrérie du Thorium, Eitrigg, Garona, La Croisade écarlate, Medivh, Uldaman, Vol'jin Nightfall: Alonsus, Anachronos, Bronze Dragonflight, Burning Steppes, Darkmoon FaireDarkspear, Kor'gall, Lightbringer, Molten Core So are all the Spanish realms really in that one battlegroup? The things you learn researching blog posts...
PTRs going down for another new push
The public test realms have really been going offline a lot over the past week or so. Though it seems like they just came back up, and we don't even know what the current changes are, aside from a Shaman de-nerf, they're going down again, as of a few minutes ago (noon PST). Hortus merely says the downtime is "to apply a new build," and the patch notes still haven't been updated, so I can't tell you what's coming, although tipster Khanmora's guess that we may see the promised Life Tap modifications is one that I share. The downtime is expected to be between four and six hours.
Special maintance for some realms tomorrow
Because Blizzard loves you so much, the following realms will get a brief, exclusive maintenance period tomorrow morning, February 26 27, from 5:00 AM PST to about 6:15 AM PST:AgamagganAzsharaBaelgunDark IronDetherocEmerald DreamGreymaneKalecgosLightninghoofMaelstromMalfurionMoonrunnerNazjatarSargerasStaghelmTwisting NetherUrsinWildhammerPrepare your emergency Caturday festivities. Or you could always visit another realm or the PTR, or make some breakfast. May I suggest these popovers? They are easy and delicious. If you start them when the realms go down, they should be ready to pull out of the oven for fresh play-snacking when the realms come back up.
PTRs down for new build
About three hours ago, Hortus announced that the patch 2.4 PTR would be going down for four to six hours to apply a new build. So they ought to be down for another one to three hours. In the mean time, we all get a break from beta-testing the patch to get some food, watch a movie, do some homework or -- let's be honest -- gripe about the patch.What will this new build contain? Well, since they haven't updated the PTR patch notes yet, we can't be certain, but it would be reasonable to guess they'd be fixing two outstanding bugs: huge stats and huge NPCs. Other than that, we'll have to wait and see what Blizz brings us.
Dear Blizzard : Server issues
Dear Blizzard,For whatever reason, your game has been experiencing multiple server related issues in the past few weeks. Many players have seen themselves offline an abnormal amount of time, and for no apparent reason. Some realms have been brought offline for emergency maintenance and stayed that way for nearly a day. Other realms are seeing themselves either reset or become sundered down with mass disconnects that make any serious play almost impossible. Just the other night I was happily grouping with some friends over on Eldre'Thalas, when all of the sudden the server decided to boot me, and only me, from the game. Lo and behold, when trying to log back in I get stuck on authentication. My other two accounts would not work either. What makes this even better is that Eldre'Thalas wasn't even on the list of realms under emergency maintenance.You've been giving us all this downtime lately, so I'm wondering, what are you going to do to fix it? Or baring a fix, at least make our $15 a month worth it.
Rolling restarts for most US realms this morning
It's Tuesday, and you know what that means: weekly maintenance! This week most realms are getting rolling restarts instead of a full maintenance -- which means the vast majority of US players won't notice a thing. (Sorry, Australian players, as the restarts still fall dead in your prime evening hours.) For rolling restarts, Blizzard brings down all of the realm servers for a quick reboot (no longer than 15 minutes of downtime) one by one. (The restarts no doubt follow some kind of pattern which we are not privy to.) The restarts will begin at 5:00 AM PST, and though your realm may not be restarted exactly at five, the whole thing should be over by six or so. A handful of US realms will have a brief maintenance: an hour of downtime between 5:00 AM PST and 6:00 AM PST. Sounds like a good time for an powernap for players on: Area 52, Auchindoun, Azuremyst, Blade's Edge, Blood Furnace, Coilfang, Exodar, Ghostlands, Shattered Halls, Terokkar, The Scryers, The Underbog, Velen, and Zangarmarsh.
Happy Tuesday, everyone!
Ah, Tuesday! And as usual, all US realms are down (extended maintenance this week -- it started a few hours early), the official World of Warcraft website is extremely sluggish, and the forums are jumping on and offline... What's a player to do!? (To European players in the audience, you're probably looking forward to the same on Wednesday.) The realms are scheduled to come back up in about an hour and a half (presuming maintenance runs as scheduled, but I suggest being prepared for the worst), but while we're waiting, it seems like a good time to chat about what we're all up to during these downtimes. Do you run to other MMOs? Pull out your copy of Starcraft? Take the dogs for a walk? (Sorry, cat owners -- I don't know what you would do.) Stare at the breaking news box in hopes that it will change? And maybe some of you out there have even better ideas... so tell us, how do you spend your downtime hours? %Poll-8785%
