european-realms
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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!
European weekly maintenance: 12th August 2009
Happy Tuesday to our European readers! We're nearly halfway through August, BlizzCon is just 10 days away and we already know what races we'll be playing in the next expansion. The sun is shining and the internet is thrumming with promise of something Cataclysmic approaching. It can't get any better than that! I'm already thinking of names for my alts. Any suggestions?(Note to self: hyperactivity in posts is not a good thing. You might want to start drinking coffee to mask the new-expansion-news-high.)But back to reality for a minute. As usual, the middle of the week is once more upon us. Fortunately things are starting to calm down. Blizzard have just announced scheduled maintenance for tomorrow with all European realms will be offline from 3:00am until 11:00am (CEST). On top of this, a selection of 'lucky' realms will be undergoing an extended maintenance from 1:00am until 11:00am (CEST): Alonsus, Anachronos, Bronze Dragonflight, Burning Steppes, Darkmoon Faire, Darkspear, Kor'gall and Lightbringer.That said, it's not too bad as extended down time goes. But as always there's plenty to do in the meantime, especially as we've told you which faction will be getting which race in Cataclysm. Daniel W. has a great post summing everything up from news to hints about Patch 3.3.
European weekly maintenance: 8th July 2009
"Cower in fear, puny mortals! Maintenance time is upon you!"Maintenance time ho! Yes Europe, it's nearly the middle of the week again. I'm honestly not sure how that happened but once more unto the breach. Unfortunately the downtime is a little longer than normal this week, hence poor Serisa quaking in fear in the picture above. Blizzard has announced that all European realms will be offline from 3:00am until 1:00pm (CEST) tomorrow. So, that makes a good few hours in which to kick your heels. Kind of annoying but it's a necessary evil. Once more coming to our rescue, Daniel W. has got a nice round up with a heavy focus on the cataclysmic news from last week. Cataclysmic, get it? Anyway, last week was quite news intensive and if you start to get withdrawal, what about hitting the PTR for a bit and trying out all the juicy Patch 3.2 goodness.
European free character migration now open
Good news, Europe is once again feeling some free character migration love. Blizzard has announced a week-long migration event in an attempt to balance out factions on specific servers. So if you've been looking to migrate, this might well be a good time.Free character migration is available from July 1st till the 7th which gives you a week to decide if you make the move or stay put. As usual, Blizzard could well end the migration when their desired faction balance on each realm is achieved.So who can move and where? If you're Alliance and currently playing on the European realms Burning Legion, Grim Batol, Ravencrest, Sylvanas and Silvermoon (PvE) you can move to the Horde-heavy servers of Magtheridon and Vek'nilash. Meanwhile if you're Horde, and on Al'Akir, Kazzak, Magtheridon and Stormscale, you have the option of transferring to the Alliance-dominated realms of Burning Blade, Neptulon, Tarren Mill and Trollbane.
European weekly maintenance: 1st July 2009
The heat is on here in the UK and we've actually got a summer. Shocking, I know. But, rather than send people outside to soak up the rays the blistering heat and humidity has forced most inside. Suddenly Azeroth is that much more appealing, you can't get sunstroke in there, oh no. After Alex's terrible German accent last week (I'm really sorry about that, German readers, it won't happen again), things have settled down and we're back to the normal cycle of weekly maintenance.Of course, this means that rather than rolling restarts, all the European realms will be offline from 5:00am until 11:00am, Paris time (CEST). But that's not all, Blizzard are also going to be performing maintenance on their website (this includes the Armory, the main website, the forums and the Blizzard Store) between 3:00am and 7:00am Paris time (CEST). So if you want to check Turpster's stats, buy Diablo II, whinge about (insert class here) being nerfed or just recruit a friend, you might want to do so outside of these times. Daniel has once again crafted a fantastic little post to keep you entertained and don't forget we'll be giving away some shiny Fields of Honor loot cards in the morning, just for you (don't tell the sleeping Americans). Just keep your eye on the front page and you could win your own chicken mount. In honor of that, I finally met the virtual form of Turpster on the PTR (you can find us both on Fordring). He wanted to practice the lesser known sport of chicken jousting but this mention of that noble and ancient sport caused the world server to crash. As I starred at the blank screen I couldn't help but wonder. Do you think he's trying to compensate for something? What could it be?
Update: European weekly maintenance: 3rd June 2009
It's Wednesday once more in Europe and Blizzard has been busy. After the implementation of multilingual battle groups last week, they seemed to like it so much that they're merging some more, this time on a bigger scale. Hopefully all this should be happening between 3:00am and 11:00am CEST, but judging by some of the problems experienced by Americans yesterday, this could easily changed. Just keep calm and carry on.So during the maintenance tomorrow, we will not only be getting patch 3.1.3, various battle groups will be shoved together and renamed. Bloodlust (hey that's me) and Cataclysme will become Cataclysm/Cataclysme Cyclone and Todbringer will become Cyclone/Wirbeisturm Conviction and Raserei will become Frenzy/Raserei Rampage and Ferocite will become Rampage/Saccage Reckoning and Verderbnis will become Reckoning/Abrechnung Ruin and Glutsturm will become Emberstorm/Glutsturm Vengeance and Schattenbrand will become Vengeance/Rache, and finally Sturmangroff and Represailles will become Sturmangriff/Charge So while you're waiting for all this to happen, there's plenty to do. We've got patch notes for 3.1.3, there are the new Tauren kitty forms to drool over and you could even download the Battle.net authenticator app from EU iTunes stores. As usual one of my American colleagues - this week Alex Z. - has compiled a fun post to read that rounds up all the interesting tidbits which have been happening for your amusement to tide you over until the servers pop back up.UpdatE: Maintenance has now been extended to 1pm CEST.
European weekly maintenance: 20th May 2009
Good morning Europe! How are we all this week? Enjoying Azeroth? As usual, it's maintenance time once more and today there is a little extra excitement in the form of patch 3.1.2.So with this in mind, all the European realms will be down between 3am and 11am CEST. Taking into account past weeks, this can change. The realms could be up by 8am or still down at noon. I will of course have my one eye fixed on the breaking news box and will update if and when one is needed.So to keep you occupied, Daniel has once again come up with a witty morning of the patch post offering things to keep you occupied. Personally I'm rather excited, there's so much in this patch, from the equipment manager (note to self: go dual spec as soon as the realms return), Innervate (Druids FTW!) and those shiny new textures for the Argent Tournament mounts. Lovely. I just wish I could be so happy about the nerfing of the Wintergrasp dailies but c'est la vie.
Instance throttling explained
If you do a lot of instances, you're probably familiar with the error message "Additional instances could not be launched. Please, try again later," and the accompanying dance of spamming the instance portal until it lets you in. For me it seems to happen most at the Azjol-Nerub portal, but that's probably just coincidence. Anyway, although I've been seeing this error pretty much since WotLK launched, Wryxian just made a post today in the European forums explaining what it's all about. Basically, it's an attempt to fix instance performance; if too many instances are running at the same time on the instance server, lag and possible crashes result (and I'm sure we've all experienced that), so there's a limit imposed on how many instances can be up at any given time.
Free character moves for Europe
A new round of free character migrations just opened up for some European realms. Unlike most, these migrations include some faction-specific ones to try and correct faction imbalance. Horde-only: Source: Magtheridon Destination: Haomarush, Trollbane, Zenedar Alliance-only: Source: Aszune, Emerald Dream, Runetotem, Shadowsong, Silvermoon Destination: Magtheridon So, I guess Magtheridon has too much Horde. WarcraftRealms is showing a shocking 1:67 Alliance:Horde ratio. Yikes! There are also several non-faction-specific moves available:
Playtime credit for many European realms
Last Monday, July 21st, many European realms apparently underwent thirteen hours of additional maintenance. Players were understandably upset. Blizzard understands this too, which is why they're giving players with characters on any of those realms a one-day playtime credit, like they do. The battlegroups Cyclone, Nightfall, Conviction, Ruin, and Rampage were affected, which is to say the following realms: Anachronos, Balnazzar, Blade's Edge, Bloodfeather, Bronze Dragonflight, Burning Steppes, Darkmoon Faire, Darksorrow, Darkspear, Defias Brotherhood, Earthen Ring, Frostwhisper, Genjuros, Hakkar, Haomarush, Hellscream, Kor'gall, Laughing Skull, Lightbringer, Lightning's Blade, Magtheridon, Molten Core, Neptulon, Nordrassil, Quel'Thalas, Ragnaros, Ravencrest, Runetotem, Scarshield Legion, Shadow Moon, Shadowsong, Shattered Hand, Silvermoon, Skullcrusher, Spinebreaker, Steamwheedle Cartel, Stormrage, Stormreaver, Stormscale, Sylvanas, Terenas, The Maelstrom, The Venture Co., Thunderhorn, Turalyon, Twisting Nether, Vashj, and Xavius Anyone with an active account and a character on any of those realms will get a free day. That must have been some technical difficulty, since well over half the English-speaking European realms are on that list. Enjoy your playtime credit, my friends across the Atlantic.
Blizzard setting up shop in Ireland
Blizzard is apparently setting up a fourth support center, this one in Cork, Ireland. Currently, they've got bases in Southern California (where the main company and developers are located), Austin, Texas and Paris, France. But now an Irish newswire is saying that Blizzard plans to have another center in Cork, where they'll hire 100 people total over the next three years to support the European realms.And Cork is apparently happy to have them-- Motorola and Bourns Electronics have recently closed up shop there, leaving IT employees looking for new jobs. Ireland is apparently a hotspot of digital content as well, or at least it wants to be. I had no idea-- Irish companies, if you're hiring and willing to fly me out there, let me know! I'd love working in the country of Guinness.
EU Maintenance Extended
Proving that the US isn't the only one with extended weekly maintenance periods, CM Thundgot tells us that EU realms will be down until 16:00 CEST today. Here's to hoping Blizzard figured out something from the many problems with the US patch roll-out and the deployment over the European realms will go more smoothly.
Hardware Upgrades Coming for EU Servers
CM Thundgot has announced plans to retrofit all existing realms with new hardware over the next month - in preparation for the expansion's release. These upgrades should result in an immediate performance improvement - however, the realms involved can expect additional downtime periods in which to perform these upgrades. The realms needing upgrades have been divided into three groups, and will be receiving upgrades group at a time (with specific dates and times to be announced).
Patch 1.10.1 Delayed for EU servers
EU server maintenance is on Wednesday, which I have always guessed provides the EU team with a useful opportunity to observe the US roll-out and possibly make changes. Well, this week they have made a change - because you won't find any European realms running patch 1.10.1. In explaining the issue, CM Vaeras is not clear as to why the patch was not applied (only saying that there were "some issues" that were corrected, but too late to hit this week's maintenance window). Hopefully this means that next week's EU rollout of patch 1.10.1 won't have the same issues that the US rollout did - but who knows, the patch may have been delayed for entirely different reasons.Note: I can't seem to get to the specific post on the forums about this, though the forums themselves seem to be up. The link should be good whenever the forums straighten themselves out.
