Maintenance
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Up Again, Down Again
The same 20 realms that were pulled offline last night for maintenance have gone offline again this afternoon (at 1:20 PM PDT to be precise) due to issues with the in-game mail system. Blizzard's technicians are currently working to correct the problem, but there's no ETA on restored service at this point. So If you usually play on the following realms, well, now's just not a good time: Andorhal, Anetheron, Archimonde, Black Dragonflight, Dalaran, Daivengyr, Dentarg, Duskwood, Executus, Haomarush, Khadgar, Mal'Ganis, Norgannon, Scilla, Steamweedle Cartel, Thrall, Turalyon, Ysera, Ysondre, and Zuluhed.
20 US Realms Down Friday Night
Just after 9:00 PM PDT, twenty different US realms received a 5-minute reboot warning. It was for the best, really, as everyone in my guild seemed to be able to chat, but very little else. Even the "quit" option didn't seem to do anything - the realm was an unplayable mess. However, after going down, neither my realm nor any of the realms that went offline with it, have come back. A message on the login screen vaguely states that Blizzard's technicians are working with a vendor in order to resolve the matter, but there is currently no ETA on the realms coming back online. So if you play on any of the following realms, my apologies - but playtime tonight has been interrupted: Andorhal, Anetheron, Archimonde, Black Dragonflight, Dalaran, Daivengyr, Dentarg, Duskwood, Executus, Haomarush, Khadgar, Mal'Ganis, Norgannon, Scilla, Steamweedle Cartel, Thrall, Turalyon, Ysera, Ysondre, and Zuluhed.
Extended Maintenance for Many US Realms
Well, the maintenance window for numerous realms has been pushed back to 1:00 PM PDT. Some of the realms on this list were the ones undergoing hardware maintenance today, but not all of those are of those are still offline. Further, some realms that weren't having any sort of special maintenance today have extended downtime - so it's difficult to say what's causing the delay. Affected realms include Argent Dawn, Aggramar, Arthas, Azgalor, Bleeding Hollow, Bloodhoof, Burning Blade, Burning Legion, Durotan, Earthen Ring, Elune, Eonar, Eredar, Gilneas, Gorefiend, Kargath, Laughing Skull, Lightning's Blade, Llane, Lothar, Magtheridon, Malygos, Mannoroth, Medivh, Muradin, Shadow Moon, Shattered Hand, Skullcrusher, Stormrage, Thunderhorn, Thunderlord, Warsong, and Zul'jin.
Extended Maintenance for Select US Realms
38 US realms will be offline for an extended period during regular Tuesday maintenance. This additional time accounts for additional hardware and ISP maintenance. The affected realms will be taken offline two hours earlier, and thus will be down between 2:00 AM PDT and 11:00 AM PDT. The rest of the realms will be offline during the usual 5:00 AM PDT to 11:00 AM PDT maintenance window. The realms with extended maintenance will include the following: Aggramar, Argent Dawn, Arthas, Azgalor, Bleeding Hollow, Bloodhoof, Burning Blade, Burning Legion, Cenarion Circle, Cenarius, Durotan, Earthen Ring, Elune, Eonar, Eredar, Gilneas, Gorefiend, Hyjal, Kargath, Laughing Skull, Lightbringer, Lightnings Blade, Llane, Lothar, Magtheridon, Malygos, Mannoroth, Medivh, Shadow Moon, Shattered Hand, Skullcrusher, Stormrage, The Forgotten Coast, Thunderhorn, Thunderlord, Uther, Warsong, and Zuljin.
Emergency Database Maintenance Tonight
Seventeen US realms were taken offline tonight for urgent database maintenance - including the brand-new realm Tanaris. No real news as to what the root of the problem, but the realms appear to be back online for the time being. The service interruption seems to have been brief, but I can't find a specific time when these realms went down. Affected realms included: Aerie Peak, Altar of Storms, Anvilmar, Blackwing Lair, Deathwing, Demon Soul, Doomhammer, Gnomeregan, Icecrown, Jaedenar, Kel'Thuzad, Lethon, Onyxia, Sentinels, Tanaris, The Venture Co, and Uldaman.
Yet Another Yasu Update
Unlike Windows, OS X is great at taking care of itself. Built in periodic maintenance such as cron jobs (a holdover from the FreeBSD on which OS X is based) and on-the-fly disk defragmentation of the journaled file system make OS X essentially self sufficient when it comes to keeping itself running smoothly, so much so that many users never even consider running third party maintenance tools. However, for older systems and systems in special usage cases such as computer labs, the built in tools aren't always enough to stop system slowdown and other issues. That's where programs like Yasu come in. Yasu, standing for Yet Another System Utility, is a donationware utility designed for administrators of large groups of systems and allows easy running and automation of cache and log cleanup, permissions repair, and other similar activities. YASU 1.3.9 fixes some early issues with Intel/PPC compatibilities, and is availalbe from the developers site.
Update on Offline Realms
Apparently the realms currently offline - Cenarion Circle, Cenarius, Hyjal, Lightbringer, and Uther - are suffering from hardware problems and will require replacement parts. They're expecting the parts to arrive at 5:00 PM PDT, but are working on a temporary fix to bring these realms back up by 3:00 PM PDT (though this time-frame is just an estimate, and sometimes Blizzard is good about meeting these estimates and sometimes not). However, a temporary fix just suggests that there will need to be additional downtime later...Update: Blizzard is giving a free day to the afflicted servers.
Everything you need to know about Repairing Permissions (and more)
The 'Repair Permissions' function of Disk Utility has been under quite a bit of speculation as of late. There are those in one camp, such as John Gruber of Daring Fireball, who believe repairing (restoring, resetting, etc.) permissions is not much more than voodoo, while others in the support end of the Mac OS X community swear by it as the first line of defense. So what's a confused Mac OS X user to do when trying to draw up a formidable troubleshooting game plan? Heading over to Dan Frakes' Repairing permissions: what you need to know article at Macworld is a great first step at trying to cut through all the confusion. Dan dissects virtually every aspect of the permissions repair process, from explaining what exactly 'permissions' are, to a few specific situations when it's a good idea to add the operation to your troubleshooting tool-belt. It's an informative read that helps demystify this much-debated aspect of Mac OS X.
Select US Realm Maintenance Friday
You know the hardware upgrades mentioned on Thursday? Well, some of them are already becoming reality. Three US realms will be brought down at 4:00 AM PDT for a scant two hours in order to install short-term hardware upgrades. There's no detail on what exactly is being upgraded, or what precisely the upgrades are expected to accomplish - though all must hope for overall performance improvements. The lucky (or unlucky?) realms in question are Arthas, Bloodhoof, and Stormrage. The response to this upgrade seems mixed - many with the opinion that it's too little too late, and many more complaining that their servers need upgrades more urgently. However, what performance improvements even these servers will gain is still left to see.
US Test Realm Maintenance Today
Not long after the live realms come back online, the test realms are scheduled to go offline. They'll be down between 2:00PM and 4:00PM PDT for some maintenance. Also, one of the realms will be moving to the "Oceanic" tab (no news on which realm will be making the move) for further cross-realms battlegrounds testing. Haven't had your chance to test yet? Well, you've got at least another week before there's a chance to roll out the patch on the live realms, and the test realms are a great opportunity to give new talent builds - or entire classes - a good try to see how they work out. Plus, it has the potential to be a lot of fun.Update: The test realms were late coming back online, but they all seem to be back online as of 5:42PM PDT.
Slightly Extended US Maintenance Tomorrow
Tomorrow's regularly scheduled maintenance has been extended to open up a window for some required ISP maintenance. Nothing else exciting to expect, and patch 1.12 is still a ways out, considering the test servers are still online. However, tomorrow all US realms will be offline between 2:45AM and 11:00AM PDT. I know a lot of people play at that time, especially those in Oceanic time zones, so now's the time to make new plans. (Though fishing isn't really an option for those playing in North America...)
Extended Weekly Maintenance for US Realms
This week's maintenance has been extended - and will be starting at 3:00 AM PDT and lasting until 11:00 AM PDT. Yes, that means additional downtime for all US realms. There's no news as to why maintenance needed to be extended, but if you're thinking this may be a sign of patch deployment, that's highly unlikely. The test realms have always been taken offline before the patch has been deployed on the live realms, and they're currently still up and running. But as to what's actually happening, no one really knows.
Rolling Restarts Friday Morning
All realms will be going offline starting at 4:00 AM PDT Friday morning (that's seven hours from the time of this post). They should all be back online by 5:00 AM PDT, with an expected downtime of about 30 minutes per realm. There's no real information on why the restarts are necessary - Drysc only says they're being done to address a server-side software issue. (Perhaps this is connected to last night's database maintenance - though that was only on a few realms, rather than all realms.) So if you usually play during that time, you'll need to find other distractions.
Emergency Database Maintenance on Select US Realms
The title says it all. At 4:00 AM PDT today (Thursday), a number of US realms will be taken offline for database maintenance. If all goes as planned, it shouldn't last longer than two hours. So if you play on any of the following realms during that time, you'll need to make alternate plans: Andorhal, Anetheron, Archimonde, Black Dragonflight, Dalaran, Dalvengyr, Dentarg, Duskwood, Executus, Haomarush, Khadgar, Mal'Ganis, Norgannon, Scilla, Steamwheedle Cartel, Thrall, Turalyon, Ysera, Ysondre, and Zuluhed.
Downtime Compensation for Select Realms
If you've been on the forums at all lately, you understand that a number of realms - including two brand new realms - have been offline recently due to hardware failure. While the servers are now online and functioning, uptime has been spotty since Wednesday afternoon. As compensation for the downtime, however, Blizzard is crediting all players with accounts on these servers with an extra day's play-time. So if you have characters on any of the following realms, expect a credit on your account: Aerie Peak, Altar of Storms, Anvilmar, Blackwing Lair, Deathwing, Demon Soul, Doomhammer, Gnomeregan, Icecrown, Jaedenar, Kel'Thuzad, Lethon, Onyxia, Sentinels, Uldaman, and Venture Co.
Additional Downtime for Sixteen US Realms
The sixteen realms (including the two new realms - Sentinels and Venture Co.) that were having hardware problems yesterday have been brought offline again as of 11:44 AM PDT. While a work-around was used to bring the realms back online last night, the problem that caused the failure still remains, and needs to be addressed. The following realms are offline for now, with no current ETA on being brought back up: Aerie Peak, Altar of Storms, Anvilmar, Blackwing Lair, Deathwing, Demon Soul, Doomhammer, Gnomeregan, Icecrown, Jaedenar, Kel'Thuzad, Lethon, Onyxia, Sentinels, Uldaman, and Venture Co.
Additional Downtime for Several US Realms
While I wrote earlier that these realms, which had some unexpected downtime, were brought back online at 11:51 AM PDT, apparently additional technical problems brought them down again at around 2:21 PM PDT. The two new realms - Sentinels and Venture Co. - have gone offline as well, leaving a total of sixteen realms offline, including the following: Aerie Peak, Altar of Storms, Anvilmar, Blackwing Lair, Deathwing, Demon Soul, Doomhammer, Gnomeregan, Icecrown, Jaedenar, Kel'Thuzad, Lethon, Onyxia, Sentinels, Uldaman, and Venture Co. The trouble has been isolated to a hardware failure, and downtime is expected to last until 11:59 PM PDT while the hardware is replaced and brought back online.
Urgent Maintenance: Several US Realms
Fourteen US realms were taken offline at 11:07 AM PDT in order to "troubleshoot technical issues." While Blizzard hopes to have the realms back online as soon as possible, there's no current ETA. Impacted realms include Aerie Peak, Altar of Storms, Anvilmar, Blackwing Lair, Deathwing, Demon Soul, Doomhammer, Gnomeregan, Icecrown, Jaedenar, Kel'Thuzad, Lethon, Tanaris, and Uldaman. Comments on the realm forums seem to mention recent lag and stability issues, but CM Tseric mentions no specific reason for the realms being pulled offline.Update: These realms should be back online as of 11:51 AM PDT.
Rolling Restarts Wednesday Morning
All US realms will be restarted starting at 5:00 AM PDT Wednesday morning. The servers should only be offline for about 15 minutes, but you should be prepared for a bit of downtime if you play at that that time of day. The restarts are required in order to fix what CM Eyonix refers to as a "minor technical issue," though I can't find any further information on what the trouble may be. I haven't personally seen any problems in playing since today's patch deployment, but perhaps others have. If anyone has the scoop on what's requiring these restarts, do share in the comments!
Lag Monster Respawns Again
As you have all probably noticed, and as we've been reporting, there has been a mysterious increase in the amount of server downtime lately, with official "maintenances": being scheduled with little notice & players becoming incresingly more disgruntled as visions of outages from months past creep back into their brains like carrion worms...I guess it was only a matter of time before the ubiquitous "SERVER OUTAGES CAUSE MASS CHAOS" news posts started to creep up, and Gamespot is one of the first major sites to renew the scrutiny.Apparently, the official story from Blizzard is that server upgrades in June, undertaken to increase stability, have in fact done the exact opposite, and let loose some more ghosts in the machine. There is an official thread on the subject over at the Blizzard forums as well, with plenty of rabid responses to the boys in blue. Have you all noticed the recent increase in downtime? Has it affected your playtime? Does it seem as bad as it was before? Chime in...
