european-servers
Latest
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!
RuneScape sings, gobbles, and slays its way through November
RuneFest, Halloween, and Bot Nuking Day may be over, but the RuneScape team is far from taking time off for good behavior. If anything, the devs' eyes are as big as their stomachs as they detailed plans for the game leading up to Thanksgiving. Speaking of the holiday, a turkey invasion led by the fearsome Captain Turkerton is imminent and only the players will be able to negotiate a truce before the gobblepocalypse arrives. As incentive for participating in the event, RuneScape is planning to award Thanksgiving crests and turkey pets for the diplomatically savvy. Jagex has a lot more on its plate for November, including revamping elements of the interface, overhauling the website design, and introducing the Slayer-centric Polypore Dungeon. Additionally, the November quest, "One Piercing Note," is a first for the game: a fully voice-acted experience that will incorporate singing and dancing into the story! Following Bot Nuking Day and the resulting dip in population, Jagex has consolidated several servers into new multi-country European worlds. The team is also hard at work addressing some current issues with players having problems logging in and experiencing lag. A fix is scheduled for later today.
Echoes of the Dead update launches on Lord of the Rings Online's Euro shards
Better late than never, eh? Lord of the Rings Online's Update 2: Echoes of the Dead has been out for a couple of days in the States, and Turbine's European servers are finally joining the long-expected party today. Much like its American counterpart, the Euro version of Update 2 will be dropping the reviled radiance system and also spicing up Monster Play PvP with an initial round of tweaks. Minstrels, Burglars, and Hunters have also been given a bit of a facelift, and Legendary Items are on the receiving end of some developer love. Finally, Volume III: Book 3 continues LotRO's epic story quest line, and the Volume II epic arc has been revamped to make it more solo-friendly. These are just a few of the changes in store for denizens of Turbine's Middle-earth, and you can read the full release notes on the official Codemasters forums.
Electronic Arts takes over Dark Age of Camelot in Europe
Dark Age of Camelot is under new management -- sort of. Actually, it's under new management that could more properly be termed old management, or maybe it would be better termed the original management... it's a bit complicated. After many years of the European branch of the dark Arthurian MMO being managed by GOA, the game has come under the direct control of Electronic Arts. Mythic Entertainment will be taking over the game's operation in Europe... which is what they're already doing with the game in North America, seeing as how the game is originally theirs. Like we said, the pedigree is a bit odd. For the many players affected by the change, a pre-emptive olive branch is being offered -- all Dark Age of Camelot players being brought under their aegis will be receiving a free month of play time. The game will also be patched up to match the current North American version. No word is officially given on why the change in management was deemed necessary, although speculation is certainly possible. What this will mean for the game's future is uncertain, but the offer of a free month of play certainly helps take the edge off, as does the promise of improved synchronization between both regions.
Soul of the Ultimate Nation gets a German server
European Soul of the Ultimate Nation players, your lag shall forthwith be reduced! Webzen, the developer and global publisher of Soul of the Ultimate Nation, will be opening a brand new European server for those of you playing on the mainland. Klippe, the new server set to be physically based in Germany, comes in response to the growing European community in SUN. While the server will not be region locked to Europe and will be available for all regions, don't expect a good connection unless you live in Europe. But, on the bright side, you can play with your European pals if you want to suffer the lag. If you haven't played SUN in a while and you were frustrated with connecting to Etherain, the North American server, then perhaps now is the time to jump back in and give Klippe a whirl. It's up right now, for your convenience.
The Zurhidon take revenge on Runes of Magic's European servers
European servers, prepare for war! Runes of Magic is digging deep into MMO playbook history, and they've chosen to pull out a classic move -- the GM controlled event. The mysterious Zurhidon have reappeared in Taborea, and it's up to the players to repel their attacks!Each week, starting tomorrow the 14th and continuing until November 25th, two European servers will feel the wrath of the Zurhidon. Players will be notified what channel the event will be taking place on shortly before the event, and they'll be informed of the event's location at the same time as well. All attacks will take place at 7 PM BST (6 PM GMT.) At least no one can call the Zurhidon unpredictable!Accompanying the waves of spawns will be two Zurhidon generals who will be, of course, controlled by some wrath seeking GMs. Glory awaits those who can hold back the horde, while death will only bring pain (virtual pain) and loss (experience debt!)
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.
UPDATED: European maintenance extended till 3pm CET
Let's get real here for a second. When I signed off at midnight, the US realms were only just started to pop back up. Did you honestly think we here in Europe were going to get away scott free? You did? Oh dear, let's not go there, eh?Folks have been reporting extended maintenance and so we're now looking at 3pm CET. All we need to do now is cross our digits that Blizzard managed to fix whatever was ailing the US realms before starting to roll out 3.1 on our severs. Needless to say. I'll be keeping you guys in the loop should things change.So in the meantime, as your waiting, why not enter our EU loot card competition? Your could also check out our 3.1 FAQ and start planning your new primary and secondary specs using Wowhead's new calculator.Not finished patching yet and having issues? Try this post.Hopefully we should have a smoother ride of it but I'll be keeping you updated nevertheless.UPDATE: As of 3pm CET, the realms are slowly starting to come back up. Some of the most popular ones - Vek'nilash amongst them - keep going offline, probably due to being hammered by players trying to login. Hang on in there.UPDATE: Most of the realms are now back!
Dungeon Runners announces an EU server
For over a year now we've enjoyed Dungeon Runners without a specific European server. This means that Europeans had to put up with Americans for all that time! We're not sure how they did it either, but NCsoft has announced that their newest server -- World 8 -- is optimized for European players. This doesn't mean anyone else from around the world can't play on it, but they might not enjoy the low ping rates as they've had on the American servers, if they are American.This eighth world is a PvP world, making it the second such PvP server in addition to World 5. For PvE players, you have several server choices for free players, plus World 2, which is only open to those who pay the $5 monthly membership fee. One of the beautiful parts of the Dungeon Runners server system is the fact that your characters are available on any of the servers, so you can feel free to check out the new-server smell at the European server any time you'd like.
WoW EU Valentine's card contest is on
World of Warcraft Europe is now accepting entries for its annual Valentine's card contest. European players are invited to create a card using screenshots and/or original art showing their love of WoW. Twenty winners (five per language) will receive a Gurky key. The key can be redeemed in-game for a summonable baby pet murloc. Looking through last year's winners, I'm very impressed with the original art as well as how creatively players were able to modify screenshots. Hopefully this year we will see even more experimental entries. I'd love to see a few done in the visual style of Baron Soosdon (a nonsenscial but stunningly beautiful Valentine's) or Among Fables and Men.Unfortunately, for you pet completists, the reward Gurky is only available through contests. If you're not a player on the EU servers, you'll still be lacking this prized non-combat pet. Hopefully, the US WoW servers will be offering a similar contest in the future.The WoW Valentine's seasonal event, Love is in the Air, begins February 10 and goes through February 15. Love is in the Air and on WoW Insider. Check out our continuing coverage of the event and our guide to earning the achievement. And you better hurry; the holiday only lasts five days!
