emergency-maintenance
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The Daily Grind: Does major downtime impact your opinion of a game?
If you haven't noticed, Lord of the Rings Online has been offline for a while. Like, a long while. It's the sort of thing that can produce a lot of ill-will from players despite the fact that technically the game itself hasn't changed in the slightest. The fact that the game has been down solely to address back-end issues is irrelevant -- players can have long memories and can be quite bitter about not being able to play their favorite games. Back when World of Warcraft first launched, many players were equally angry about the game's long periods of unexpected maintenance. Obviously it didn't have a long-term effect on the game's overall popularity, but it was an early blow to the game's population. So do extended downtimes impact your opinion of a game, or do you understand that it's a real possibility in any genre with so many moving technical parts? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
PSA: Emergency Nintendo Network maintenance Jan. 28 and 29
Various Nintendo services, as well as a small handful of specific games, may experience issues of varying frequency and severity from 3 p.m. Eastern on Monday, January 28 through 8 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, January 29, as Nintendo will be conducting emergency network maintenance.The full maintenance schedule, which can be found here, includes work on Wii, Wii U, DS and 3DS eShops, as well as matchmaking for Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper and network services for Pokemon Black & White and Pokemon Black & White 2. We're not tremendously sure what kind of emergency can be caused by Pokemon networking issues, but we assume someone left a Voltorb in the server room and things went south.
SWTOR shuts down servers for most of the day for emergency maintenance [Updated]
According to the official Star Wars: The Old Republic Twitter feed, all servers will be offline until about 7 p.m. EDT following an emergency maintenance. Yesterday, Update 1.2: Legacy dropped to live servers with next to no hiccups. But this morning, BioWare brought down the servers for a very minor patch. In fact, the patch notes contain only two lines. However, several players began claiming that they were unable to access their characters when the servers were restored at about 9 a.m. EDT. Other players reported quest givers and even the new guild bank were missing. At approximately 10:30 a.m. EDT, BioWare shut down the servers for emergency maintenance, explaining the situation on the forums as follows: During last night's maintenance, some areas of the game were reverted to pre-Game Update 1.2 status. Some areas were 'missing' and characters that were in those areas would be unavailable. We took the live servers offline at approx 9:30AM CDT (Austin time). Our server and deployment teams are now working to rebuild assets for the live servers, but this is unfortunately not a quick process. We currently estimate that our downtime could be up to eight hours, but that time may be extended. Look for updates on this article if the maintenance time happens to be extended or if more information surfaces. [Update: BioWare has informed us that it will compensate everyone with a day of game time because of these issues.]
Maintenance for several realms tomorrow morning
Blizzard poster Rishgur has announced emergency maintenance for select realms, starting at 3:00 a.m. PDT / 6:00 a.m. EST Friday morning and lasting approximately four hours until 7:00 a.m. PST / 10:00 a.m. EST. There is no indication as to what this maintenance corrects, and there hasn't been any widespread reports of realm or connectivity issues (at least that we've heard). So who knows why the realms are getting fixed tomorrow morning, but they are. The realms will remain active and playable during this maintenance, but some stability issues may occur! The maintenance appears to involve multiple battlegroups. The specific realms include the ones listed below and after the break.
Updatedx3: Urgent maintenance complete
Blizzard has announced that they are conducting urgent maintenance on several realms. Though the official Warcraft twitter account announced it would only go on until noon PST (the tweet was about account maintenance), the in-game and forum messages state that they do not know how long the maintenance will take. They expect to have more information by 12:30 p.m. PST / 3:30 p.m. EST. The list of affected realms is after the break (which includes Zangarmarsh, the It came from the Blog server). We will keep you informed as the status changes. 3:25 p.m. PST: All realms are (supposedly) online and playable. Update 3 p.m. PST: More info at 3:30 PST. Update: More info at 1:30 p.m. PST.
Emergency European maintenance this evening
A little while ago, 2 am Paris time, servers went down in the EU for emergency maintenance. More specifically, "emergency database maintenance." They're estimated to be down until 4 am Paris time, which by my estimate is another hour or so. Should that maintenance be extended any further, we'll be sure to let you know right here on WoW.com. Many thanks to our followers on Twitter for alerting us of this downtime, because our European staff members are apparently off doing silly things like sleeping. Thanks a lot, guys. Because of that, I'm now inflicting cultural stereotypes on you all in the form of the picture at the top of this post. Don't take your rage out on me, take it out on the warlock.
Emergency maintenance for several realms
Many servers have just been taken down for "brief additional maintenance". As you can see above, the realms are due to be back online by 2:15 pm EDT. The list of realms are after the break. We'll keep you up to date if anything changes.Update 2:29 pm EDT: They are bringing the realms back up now.Thanks to all of the tipsters who sent this in!
Retcon changes in today's Champions Online patch
Today brought a short emergency maintenance followed up by a small patch to Champions Online. It appears Cryptic held some discussion yesterday on what to do with the state of retcons for players affected by the much more significant launch day patch yesterday. Let's take a look at the results.So here's the biggest improvement: Players can now Retcon as far back as they'd like regardless of level. There's been significant changes to the inner workings of the system, but for details on that we suggest you look for the official explanation.Looking at the the cost of a full level 20 retcon, it still seems a little higher than it should be -- or is it? Unlike pretty much any other MMO, Champions Online doesn't restrict your ability selection based on a class. The problem Cryptic is facing is that if they allow for cheap 'n easy respecs, players may never want to roll a new character, which would kill the replay value of any MMO significantly coupled with the fact that you can also redesign your character as well. Retcon prices will probably still receive tweaks and changes, but when and to what extent is hard to say.
Emergency maintenance for several U.S. realms [Updated]
As you can see, Blizzard is performing urgent maintenance on a few servers tonight with no word on when they will be done. Included on the list is the realm in which my Tauren druid resides -- so I still have no idea how her new forms look.Also included on the list is Bronzebeard, the realm that WoWathon has been leveling on. Last I looked, they were holding Hogger raids on another server.Readers have been sending tips about many realms getting stuck on loading screens and other issues, but only a few of these realms are listed on Blizzard's urgent maintenance list. The full list is after the break.Update 2:43AM: Crygil confirms that they are bring the realms back online at this time. And my new Tauren drood forms are so gorgeous, I may have to go feral.
Wintergrasp bug plaguing servers after 3.1.2
We're getting tons of reports in of Wintergrasp behaving a bit oddly today, and I can confirm them to be true on my home server of Cenarion Circle. Wintergrasp battles are lasting, at most, 5-10 minutes with no more than 10 minutes between battles. Good for farming Marks of Honor, not so good for trying to kill Archavon and/or Emalon.If this is how you try to lower the lag Wintergrasp causes on servers, I think the quote "ur doin it wrong" applies. In all seriousness, I'm kidding about that and this is obviously not working as intended. Considering the Mark and Honor gains people are getting from this, I wouldn't be surprised if we see some emergency maintenance and rollbacks soon. I wouldn't get too attached to your gains this afternoon.
Shadowburn BG down for emergency maintenance
We've received a lot of tips in the past few minutes, and now it's official: the Shadowburn battlegroup is down for emergency maintenance. The realms are estimated to return in two hours, around 3:30 EST, but we'll keep you posted if we hear anything new. The affected realms are Agamaggan, Azshara, Baelgun, Dark Iron, Detheroc, Emerald Dream, Greymane, Kalecgos, Lightninghoof, Maelstrom, Malfurion, Moonrunner, Nazjatar, Sargeras, Staghelm, Twisting Nether, Ursin, and Wildhammer. What are you guys going to do in the mean time? I hear there's a good WoW blog around here somewhere that you might enjoy browsing through. Update: The realms are back up.
Realms now online after emergency maintenance
I mentioned it in an update to the previous post on today's emergency maintenance, but for the convenience of those of you following by RSS (or simply missed the update): Most realms are back online, and have slowly been coming up for the last 10-15 minutes or so.The emergency maintenance ran a little over the given estimate, but not terrible so. The four hour maintenance lasted for about four hours and forty minutes, which is certainly an annoyance, but here's to hoping that extra time actually gave them the buffer they needed to do what they needed to do.
Servers still down for emergency maintenance this morning [UPDATED]
Realms were taken down for emergency maintenance early this morning, with a 2-4 hour estimated window of downtime. I woke up this morning long after the maintenance had started, so my assumption was the servers would probably be up pretty quickly. That was not the case, unfortunately! Luckily I have other things to do today (like write all of this stuff for you), so I'm not terribly broken up about it, but I'm sure a lot of you were planning to get some gaming in this morning.It's currently a little after 8 am in Irvine, and assuming the maintenance started at the intended 5 am, we only have a little under an hour left of the estimated maintenance duration. Here's hoping that's actually the case, and we see servers coming up within the hour. If that's not how today plays out, we'll be sure to let you know.Update: We've hit the 4 hour mark and run over, it's been just shy of 40 minutes past the estimate. We'll see how much longer this goes on. Personally, I'd be fine if the servers were down all day long if it meant the rampant lag across many servers was resolved because of it... but that's just me! Either way, we'll be keeping an eye on it.Update #2: Servers are starting to come back on, ladies and gents.
36 realms down for maintenance
We started getting a few tips about realms going down about half an hour ago, and Blizzard's now confirmed that 3 dozen realms are down to address "some instancing issues." Interestingly, the brand-new realm Borean Tundra is among them, and I recognized a few others that are relatively new, as well as the usual forum whipping-boy Misha.2 hours is the estimated downtime, so if you're on one of the affected realms, I'd start checking back around 2:45-3:00 pm EST. We'll keep you up to date if maintenance is extended. Read on for the list:UPDATE 2:03 pm EST: Anub'arak is now listed as the only realm affected.UPDATE 2:32 pm EST: Looks like all the affected realms are back up early.
Many realms back online after emergency maintenance
Realms are finally starting to come online after today's emergency maintenance. Most servers seem to be up and available now, though whether that will be the case for the rest of the day remains to be seen. It looks like they actually did manage to make progress on the issues, too.Obviously, the free PvP gear is gone. The prices have been fixed and the purchased items removed from players' bags as expected. They've also made progress on the mail issue. Many players logging in now are finding their mailboxes packed full of the things they were missing after yesterday's extremely extended maintenance. Not everyone has received their mail yet (I haven't), but it's going to take some time as Blizzard mentioned. It's just nice to see they've made progress even with all of the other problems going on.Now that they're up, let's hope they stay that way and Wrath of the Lich King has a clean, smooth launch.Edit: Thank you to MechChef for reminding me about the official realm status page. It looks like only a small handful of servers are still down.
Realms down for a three-hour maintenance
It doesn't happen often, but when Blizzard breaks something, they seem to break it in a bad way. The recent Tuesday maintenance resulted in problems with in-game mail, forcing an extended downtime of several hours. Eventually, Blizzard decided to bring the realms back online while resolving the issue at the same time, allowing players to play the game before Wrath of the Lich King's release. In lieu of restoring lost mail, Blizzard sent in-game mail to players about problems with, uh, in-game mail. However, when the realms finally came online, a pleasant surprise greeted excited players upon logging in -- PvP gear was seemingly being given away for free. Ratings requirements were removed from some Season 4 gear, while a few Season 2 items were being sold by the vendors for absolutely nothing. For a short while, major cities were filled with players in full Season 2 Honor gear without any gems or enchantments. Not enchanting or socketing epic gear seems rather newbish, but it should be the wiser thing in hindsight. Blizzard stated that they were aware of the bug and advised players against purchasing the gear.Blizzard's Cinterome explained that the downtime was intended to correct the PvP gear issue and that all players who purchased items should expect that the items will be removed from their inventories and any currency used to purchase said gear (Arena points, Honor, and Marks of Honor) should be appropriately refunded. Now we've all got a more pressing issue ahead: what are we going to do for the next three hours?Are you ready for the challenges that await you in Northrend? WoW Insider has you covered with our 8-day guide to Preparing for Wrath and Wrath 101. Also, check out our feature on AddOns new, old and outdated and Essential AddOns for Wrath written especially with the expansion in mind.
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.
Breakfast Topic: Dealing with downtime
We've all had to do it time and time again -- the servers are down for regular or emergency or just plain unscheduled maintenance, and your evening plans are suddenly ruined. So what do you do about it? Spend the evening trying repeatedly to log on to your realm? Troll the forums? Switch to a different realm? Roll a new alt? Fire up a different game? Go out for dinner? Go outside and try to remember what the sun looks like? Or something else entirely?
Downtime for select US realms today
Sixteen US realms are being taken offline for urgent maintenance early this morning -- that is to say, Thursday, November 30th at 5:00AM PST. The maintenance period is expected to last approximately one hour and, no -- there is not the faintest clue as to the reason for the maintenance, other than the indication that it is "urgent." So if 5:00 AM PST falls into your usual playtime, and you play on any of the following realms, you're going to be forced to take a nice breakfast break: Azjol-Nerub, Bloodscalp, Boulderfist, Bronzebeard, Crushridge, Daggerspine, Darkspear, Draenor, Dragonblight, Dunemaul, Feathermoon, Perenolde, Stonemaul, Stormscale, Suramar, and Uldum.
Wednesday Maintenance on US Realms
Numerous US realms were pulled down starting this morning because of unspecified problems which may be related to the cross-realms battleground system. Tseric only provided us with the information that the realms were remaining offline because they were undergoing battlegrounds testing, but this may have something to do with the problem of missing characters as well (as the final realms offline for maintenance seem to match the realms with missing characters). However, all realms should be back online and running as of 3:10 PM PDT. If you're still having problems, however, you may wish to page a GM or post about it in the customer service forums.
