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Multiple realms offline tonight
Another evening, another set of realms are offline. It appears to be a continuing saga lately. My guess is that Deathwing is a little anxious to get started with his destruction and is causing all these problems.But really, all these realms offline are okay with me -- because I've been engaged in a captivating game of Fallout 3 as I get over some BlizzCon crud I've come down with. Yes internet, you needed to know that.The realms offline tonight are expected to be down until 10:30 p.m. EDT, but I wouldn't count on them coming up on time. They rarely do.It also appears a lot of people are stuck at "Connecting..." Although there has been no official response to this yet, we have been able to verify it happening at least.The entire list of realms currently affected after the break. And while you're waiting, why not look at some hawt BlizzCon cosplay? After all, who doesn't want a little succubus in their evening browsings?Update: Things appear to be coming back online... no promises here though.%Gallery-70720%
The login server is currently busy [Updated]
Many people have been writing into our tip line that they are unable to log in to their servers at this time. Both Battle.Net and non-Battle.Net users are complaining that authentication is down for them. I received the above error message myself, however my husband is able to log in just fine.We'll keep you updated should Blizzard say anything officially or other developments arise. In the meantime, I will be trying again later as the message asks me to do.Update 7:46PM: Most people are reporting that the authentication issues are fixed.Update: The following message is currently displayed upon login.
European weekly maintenance: 26th August 2009
So BlizzCon is over for another year and the road to Cataclysm stretches out in front of us. In Azeroth, things continue as they always do. Wednesday, as every WoW player in Europe knows, is maintenance day and Blizzard have just announced their plans. Tomorrow will see scheduled maintenance, meaning all European realms will be offline from 3:00am until 11:00am (CEST). On top of that, a selection of realms will be getting extended maintenance to hopefully fix that annoying instance-launching problem.Aerie Peak, Anachronos, Boulderfist, Chamber of Aspects, Eonar, Frostmane, Grim Batol, Jaedenar, Kazzak, Kilrogg, Outland, Ravenholdt, Saurfang, Tarren Mill, Vek'nilash and Wildhammer will all be offline from 1:00am to 3:00pm (CEST) on Wednesday, and also from 3:00am to 7:00am on Thursday 27th August. The sheer length of this maintenance means that hopefully Blizzard might be close to cracking it, so hang on in there, okay?
Realm maintenance for August 25th, 2009
Wow, so tomorrow (or today) is Tuesday, isn't it? Personally, I've completely lost any sense of time I once had since BlizzCon kicked off Thursday night with the WoW.com meetup, but my server suddenly going down for maintenance brought me back to reality.Most realms are having regular scheduled maintenance starting at 3:00am PDT, and they'll be coming back online around 11:00am PDT. However, there is a huge chunk of servers that have already gone down as of 12:01am PDT and will be down until 11:59am PDT. My assumption is that the extended downtime will be equipping these servers with the new instance hardware we've been hearing about. You know, the stuff that will soon allow Cross-realm LFG? Yeah, that.Click through the break below for the full list of realms that will be down for extended maintenance, but chances are if you play on those realms, you already know about it.
Weekly Maintenance - August 11th, 2009
This week's routine server maintenance window for US realms has been announced in-game and on the forums. You know the drill! This happens every Tuesday, nothing to see here, certainly nothing to complain about. Downtime is scheduled to start at 5:00AM PDT/8:00AM EDT and end at approximately 11:00AM PDT/2:00PM EST. This is, of course, assuming no extra maintenance time is tacked on due to issues. Disclaimer: Patch 3.3 is not coming out today. But, you can certainly read up on the new additions to the game with Patch 3.2 in our Guide to Patch 3.2 if you need to kill some time whilst you wait for your server(s) to come back up.
UPDATE: European extended weekly maintenance: 5th August 2009
Well, it's hardly a surprise that tomorrow will see European players getting our grubby hands on patch 3.2. That said, there's something almost magical about seeing the Breaking News box change and contain those magical words. And, of course, the added bonus is that our US compatriots get to be guinea pigs when it comes to implementation. Though we have had our own share of maintenance issues over the last couple of weeks.So tomorrow's maintenance is going to be the extended variety (for obvious reasons). Blizzard have announced all the realms here in Europa will be offline between 3:00am and 11:00am CEST. After that, if the gaming gods are willing, we should be able to go explore all the new content and start counting the days till patch 3.3. Personally I'm going to be scrutinizing my new-look Druid forms and, if needed, visiting the barber for a haircut. Don't forget to check out our comprehensive Call of the Crusade guide and the official patch notes while you're waiting.Update: Given all the US issues yesterday, it's really no surprise that Blizzard is taking a little longer with our maintenance. They've now announced all realms will be offline until 3:00pm CEST. WoW's Patch 3.2 ushers in the Crusaders' Coliseum, the Isle of Conquest, flying mounts at 60, and much more. WoW.com has all the patch information your Worgen obsessed mind can handle in WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2!
Extended server maintenance for Tuesday August 4th
There's a detailed server maintenance announcement for tomorrow, Tuesday August 4th. And off the bat: we still don't know for sure if Patch 3.2 is dropping tomorrow. You can bet that we'll be burning the midnight oil waiting to find out, though. (Note, that would be inadvisable. If you attempt to ignite a petroleum product on this ship at zero hundred hours you will activate the fire suppression system, which would seal off this entire compartment.)All realms will be down from at least 3:00 a.m. PDT / 6:00 a.m. EDT until 11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT tomorrow. However a large group of special realms will be down from 12:00 a.m. PDT / 3:00 a.m. EDT until 12:00 p.m. PDT / 3:00 p.m. EDT.Those special realms are those in the battlegroups Emberstorm, and Whirlwind.Check after the break if you need to see a listing of which realms belong on those battlegroups, and stay tuned to WoW.com tonight and tomorrow for all the patch 3.2 goodness.Minor update: The service alert, which is obviously suffering from a typo, now reads in part: "..we expect all realms to be playable by approximately 11:59PM PDT on Tuesday, August 4." Emphasis added. Hey, at least they're honest, right?Update: Blizzard changed their announcement to indicate that only Emberstorm and Whirlwind would be going offline for an extended period.
European weekly maintenance: 29th July 2009
It's the middle of the week again and once more unto the breach, my friends. Yes, tomorrow is maintenance Wednesday for European players. Fortunately, we told you this morning how EU Blue Wryxian had spilled the beans on the reason for all the recent rolling restarts and weeks of extended maintenance for a few select realms. I always find it's easier to exercise more patience once someone proffers a reason.So, this week it's time for some rolling restarts. These will take place on all realms between 5:00am and 7:00am CEST, with the usual fifteen minute warning. The following realms (the same will be undergoing an extended maintenance from 3:00am until 11:00 am CEST.
Login issues reported this evening
WoW.com has been getting a massive number of tips in regarding problems people are experiencing when trying to log into the game. There is no official Blizzard word yet, but I wouldn't be surprised to see one soon.The problems seem to be originating from people who have not yet merged their World of Warcraft accounts with their Battle.net accounts. To do so, go into the account management page and select the appropriate options.There have been some stability issues with the login servers the last few days, and this seems to just be the latest.If you can't get in, check out our Guide to Patch 3.2 - we're expecting the patch to drop within the next few weeks. And if you haven't heard already, the Warcraft Movie has landed a director - Sam Raimi. It's World of Spidercraft, baby.Update: Now there is an official Blizzard response to the problem, although there is no ETA on a solution.Update #2: For those wondering, the issue was fixed overnight.
UPDATE: European weekly maintenance: 22 July 2009
Greetings European WoW players! It's that time of the week once more (where time has flown I have no idea). Tomorrow morning sees all the EU servers coming down to the regular bout of maintenance. This week all the realms will be offline from 3:00am until 11:00am (CEST). Hopefully this means everything will go nice and smoothly but just bear those times in mind if you find yourself watching the clock, waiting for your realm to pop back up.Our very own Daniel Whitcomb has compiled a rather Worgen-heavy post for you all to enjoy during the downtime. Personally, I will be sleeping and replaying the WoW edition of Peggle. If you have an iPhone I'd suggest you download the new (and awesome) Armory app while other phone owners should download the Mobile Authenticator. I'd also suggest listening to this week's WoW Insider Show (and I apologise now for cackling) in which Turpster, the Schramminator and I denounced Brigwyn for his Hunter deletion habits.Oh and in case you're wondering why this post is illustrated by the new T9 Alliance Druid armour, well I think it (specifically the female version) is the best looking armour in the game ever and I really, really want it. What, you have a problem with me drooling over gear during the downtime?Update: Blizzard have announced that the following realms will be offline for maintenance until 5:00PM CEST.Balnazzar, Bloodfeather, Darksorrow, Defias Brotherhood, Earthen Ring, Frostwhisper, Genjuros, Haomarus, Hellscream, Laughing Skull, Lightning's Blade, Magtheridon, Neptulon, Nordrassil, Quel'Thalas, Ragnaros, Ravencrest, Runetotem, Shadowsong, Shattered Hand, Silvermoon, Skullcrusher, Spinebreaker, Stormrage, Stormreaver, Stormscale, Sylvanas, Terenas, The Maelstrom, The Venture Co., Thunderhorn, Turalyon, Twisting Nether and, finally, Vashj. :
Maintenance for Tuesday July 21st
According to the in-game announcement there will be downtime for tomorrow, Tuesday July 21st. Tuesday also marks one month before BlizzCon 2009, where we're expecting to hear lots of major announcements from Blizzard. Something cataclysmic, hopefully.The downtime will be happening from 5:00 a.m. PDT / 8:00 a.m. EDT until 11:00 a.m. PDT / 1:00 p.m. EDT. Unlike previous weeks, there are no additional "special" battlegroups that are being taken offline for an extended period.If there are unexpected going ons with this maintenance, you'll see additional information posted here. And for those of you wondering, we're not expecting Patch 3.2 to drop just yet.Pic for this article is unrelated, but I wanted an excuse all day to use it – and now seemed like the right opportunity.
Update: European weekly maintenance extended
Good morning Europe. While many of you are stuck waiting for a large number of realms to finish a lengthy period of extended maintenance, it seems like the rest of us are going to have to wait a little bit longer to get back into Azeroth. Blizzard has announced that, as well as selected realms getting extended maintenance until 3:00pm CEST, all the non-affected realms will continue to be offline until 1:00pm CEST. These realms were originally supposed to go back online around 11:00am CEST. We'll keep you up to date on more developments as they happen.Update: Blizzard have announced that the following realms will continue to be offline for maintenance until 5:00pm CEST: Auchindoun, Ghostlands, Hellfire, Karazhan, Nagrand, Shattered Halls, Sporeggar, The Sha'tar.
European server maintenance for June 24th
Lesley, our European writer, is out of our virtual office at the moment and isn't available to write up the EU maintenance notice for all of you. So I'm doing it. To try and make the experience authentic, please read this post in a very poor fake English accent. No, wait! A fake German accent. Yeah, that's way more awesome. Do that.Like the (or should I say das) North American realms, European realms will largely consist of rolling restarts with only a few exceptions, which we'll get to in a moment. Rolling restarts will begin at 05:00 CEST and should be finished by 07:00 CEST.However, there is a set of realms that will need an extended maintenance period that will begin at 03:00 CEST and last until 15:00 CEST. The affected realms are: Auchindoun, Ghostlands, Hellfire, Karazhan, Nagrand, shattered Halls, Sporeggar, and The Sha'tar.If you're unsure of what these times are in your time zone, please refer to the World Clock.Should you need entertainment throughout the maintenance period, just take look at Daniel Whitcomb's latest edition of the Tuesday Morning Post, which rounds up our site's best and brightest posts of the week.Au revoir!
Retaliation battlegroup down again
For the second Tuesday in a row around the same time (9:00-9:30 pm EST-ish), the US Retaliation battlegroup has crashed. Blizzard has confirmed that it's performing urgent maintenance on the hardware of the affected realms, and they'll provide an update at 11:00 PM EST/8:00 PM PST. Hmmm. Makes you wonder if whatever caused last week's crash was accidentally rolled back during server maintenance earlier today.The following are the affected realms: Area 52, Auchindoun, Azuremyst, Blade's Edge, Blood Furnace, Coilfang, Dawnbringer, Exodar, Fizzcrank, Galakrond, Ghostlands, Grizzly Hills, Shattered Halls, Terokkar, The Scryers, The Underbog, Velen, and Zangarmarsh. My guild's on Retaliation and has consequently found itself without something to raid for the second Tuesday running. Last week their solution was to take off to Mug'thol and do a level 1 Hogger raid, complete with designated tanks and healers, damage meters, and -- to top things off -- a bonafide ninja looter of the Malachite drop. Our server might be down, but our hallowed traditions remain.
Some realms suffer extended downtime [Updated]
Bornakk hopped on to the forums to confirm the fears of many players who don't happen to have their World of Warcraft clients handy to tell them the same thing: some realms are going to be down for a while and Blizzard doesn't know when they're coming back up. According to Bornakk, they are experiencing "additional issues" with some realms as well as issues with the launcher being unable to update game clients. They currently have no estimate for the return of the realms, which do not appear on the game client's realm list, but will provide more details at around 2:30 3:30pm PDT. A complete list of affected realms after the jump.[UPDATE: Nethaera reports that Blizzard "encountered a serious error" with the listed realms and are working towards a resolution. Unfortunately, there is still no estimate for when the realms will come back up and more details should be available at 5:30pm PDT. The situation has a small silver lining, however, as Blizzard is considering "appropriate compensation" for the additional downtime experienced by players on those realms. Stay tuned to WoW.com for further updates.][UPDATE 2: Nethaera updates her post to explain that the network improvements intended for all realms resulted in a connection error which has taken some time to identify and fix. While she notes that the connection error itself has for the most part been resolved (which is why some of the affected realms now show up on the realm list), the affected realms have yet to undergo the regular weekly maintenance and patching procedure. This means a much, much longer downtime than anticipated. Nethaera hopes to give further updates by 7:30pm PDT. Time to reroll, I guess.][UPDATE 3: Looks like they're doing a little more work tonight on all realms to address a few issues. More information in our post here.]
Maintenance for Tuesday June 2nd
Maintenance, you say? Unheard of! After all, what is wrong with a Paladin standing upright while riding her horse? Or what's wrong with constant errors telling intrepid adventurers additional instances cannot be launched?Well, okay. Something might be wrong with those things. Hopefully tomorrow's maintenance will bring fixes to them. But more importantly based on all account it'll be bringing patch 3.1.3 with it as well.Maintenance will last from 3:00 a.m. PDT until 11:00 a.m. PDT. Unless, of course, you on one of the few dozen realms listed after the break. For those special realms, maintenance will last from 12:01 a.m. PDT until 12:01 p.m. PDT. Why is it starting at the :01? Because Blizzard wants you to have an extra minute to complete raids tonight. That's how much they care. And you know what? So do I... (Click it... I dare you.)The full list of realms under the extended maintenance after the break.
Getting WoW status updates on Twitter
You readers are awesome -- yesterday, when I posted the link to the online server alert page (which, yes, wasn't all that new, but lots of us hadn't seen it before), I suggested that it get hooked up to Twitter somehow, and sure enough, Scyntinth and blkmasta55555 wasted no time creating @WoWStatusUS and @WoWStatusEU, respectively (Ed also pointed out the EU status page). Tsaavik created an RSS feed for the alert as well, if you'd rather use that. And those aren't the only way to track Blizzard's realm status on Twitter -- looks like @wowalerts has been in action for a little while, and @pikestaff pointed out to me that @wowrealms tweets about realm downtime as well. And, hey, even your friends here at WoW.com are on Twitter keeping you up to date with the latest at @WoWInsider.So yes, there are tons of ways to track what's happening on your favorite realms via Twitter or any number of updating services.
Link to the launcher text
Just a quick tip for those of who may be stranded at work and thinking about World of Warcraft (which, during the day, is probably all of you?) I've never seen a link to this page (though we've snuck it in some maintenance posts before), but fortunately the good folks at the WoW LJ community have spotlighted it: Blizzard's welcome screen notice is just a text page online, and it's publicly available. So even if you can't load up the WoW client, you can still keep track of realm downtime on maintenance days, or just keep an eye on what Blizzard is posting about lately.It's a little thing (and truthfully, there's probably not much there that you really need to know anyway -- if you're away from a WoW client, obviously you can't log in even if your realm is back up). But you never know, someday when you're thinking about World of Warcraft, far afield of your installation, and really need to know what Blizzard has to tell you, it could come in handy. Definitely earned a place in my bookmarks, just in case.And having it in quick and easy online text form means we can script it to go elsewhere, right? Anyone want to try hooking a Twitter account up to this thing?
Two more WoW-related iPhone apps off the App Store
Blizzard has laid the legal smackdown on two more WoW-related iPhone apps. As Double Bubble reports, both Warcraft Chest and WoW Realm Status have bit the dust, most likely after Blizzard's legal department sent them a cease-and-desist (that's what recently happened to the popular Warcraft Characters app). We don't know for sure that Blizzard went after them, but considering that Warcraft Chest was completely free, there can't be that many other reasons why it's not on the App Store any more.It's still not clear yet either why Blizzard is doing this -- originally, since they started off going after only paid applications, it was plausible that they just didn't want other people profiting off of their game (similar to the new addon policy). But they've taken down both free and paid apps here so far, and Double Bubble also has a list of both free and paid addons still up. At this point, we have to wonder what Blizzard's real intentions are here -- they're squashing valuable resources that fans have made and are giving away for free. If they were planning an Armory or realm status app of their own, that's one thing, but the only reason we can see so far is that their legal department has decided to act against the company's own loyal fans for their own interests. Not a great strategy for encouraging customer loyalty.And what about sites like Wowhead or the Firefox realm status addon? Why is Blizzard only targeting helpful applications on the iPhone? We can only guess that Blizzard will eventually go after the rest of the apps on the App Store, so if you're working on one or planning to release one soon, guess you might want to think again about how that time might be better spent.
WoW Rookie: Patch madness
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the resources they need to get acclimated. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic.Welcome, O WoW rookie, to patch week madness. If you thought run-of-the-mill maintenance and minor patch days could be dicey, here's your chance to enjoy the epic-level chaos wrought by epic-level content patches. World of Warcraft has evolved considerably since its launch in what's now been almost a handful of years ago. Blizzard regularly releases downloadable updates, called "patches," to add new content and features, fix problems and tweak game play and balance. Through patches, players have gained access to new quests, instances, Battlegrounds, events, items and tools. This week's Patch 3.1 is known as a content patch – a nice way of saying "a ton of new stuff we've added to the game that's going to make all hell break loose." The realms go up, the realms go down. The realms go up. Did we mention they also go down? You may log in only to find your characters nowhere in sight ("Oh #%$&, my characters are all gone!"). You may experience disappearing mail or auctions, random disconnections from the game and insufferable lag. You may find yourself merrily rolling along only to find the NPCs have disappeared, you can't zone in or out of instances or log out of the game, and you and every other player who's trapped in your zone are left with nothing to do but chat about the whole thing. (Almost makes you wonder if the Ice Stone has melted yet.)
