realm-status
Latest
Login servers down
We're not out of the woods with this patch yet. I'm seeing this message on a North American realm, and lots of other people are seeing the same thing. At least one of our bloggers is still in the game, though, and Blizzard is saying the Authentication servers are still up and running, so this should be fixed soon.We'll keep you updated, stay tuned.Thanks to everyone who sent this in!Update: A login server died. If you try signing in with a Bnet account, you should be able to get in. Otherwise, everybody PANIC hold on and they'll be back up soon.Update 2: Everything seems back up. That was relatively painless. Thanks for playing, everybody!
Current Realm Status: Up
Please see the updated information at the end of the post for the latest news.Realms have been down today since 3:00 a.m. PDT / 6:00 a.m. EDT. A few realms were up for a short time earlier this afternoon after the maintenance was extended, however they were promptly brought back down.There is no indication as to what problems Blizzard has encountered. While the official forums and account management are often offline right now, WoW Insider has a few sources where we are getting our information from and we'll keep you updated with the very latest.Be glad that at least the in-game mail hasn't gone missing, and did you get that pony Ghostcrawler promised you?Don't forget to check out WoW Insider's Guide to Patch 3.1 for all our patch information, and stay tuned throughout the evening for updates!Update 9:30 p.m. EDT: Current announcements indicate that most realms are up and available for play, and those that are not will be available by 10:00 p.m. EDT / 7:00 p.m. PDT. Enjoy the evening!Older updates will appear after the break.
Rolling restarts, some maintenance
The opening in game announcement tells us that there will be rolling restarts tomorrow beginning at 5:00 a.m. PDT / 8:00 a.m. EDT. Each realm will be down for about 15 minutes, and all the restarts should be done by 7:00 a.m. PDT / 10:00 a.m. EDT.This is important in that shows patch 3.1 will not be going live tomorrow. No server downtime means no patch, so everyone can relax and enjoy the game as is for another week.There is a possibility a few more realms will be down for an extended amount of time – and if that turns into anything major we'll let you know here.
Realm maintenance for Tuesday March 31st
The winds swept across the frozen plains making swirling geometric patterns in the snow laden prairie grass. This was a cold day in the northern land, both in weather and in heart. For it wasn't only the snow, but the chilled waters which were causing the kingdom concern; up and up they went, rising over the rivers banks. The land's people thought they could hold them at bay but none could be sure.The engineers flew over the homesteads of their countrymen, working diligently in their flying machines to hold back the mighty waters. And while things were quiet now, it was predicted by those with foresight to not be quiet for much longer. More movement in the waters was coming, and it was something that no man wanted to see. The kingdom was under the protection of the councilmen and councilwomen, yet they were impeded in their efforts at every turn by the maniacal Lich King, laughing and taunting them with his powers over the frozen wastes. "Petty mortals, do you really think you can withstand the power of the mighty Scourge?" he chided the citizens who dared brave the cold north. Sitting atop his ice crowned citadel there was nothing he couldn't see, nothing he couldn't do. For the domain of the north was his and his alone. Except upon this day the voice of the gods and the wizards of Dalaran opened up their mouths and spoke in unison.
Realms are up
The extended maintenance has ended, and it appears most (if not all) realms are up and available for use.Today's extended maintenance was particularly painful for me. I had to do the following, in order: Wake up and write The Queue Work on a couple other things for WoW Insider Clean the cat's box Go out to Barns & Noble and buy season 3 of Weeds and a couple books Pickup a Strawberry and Cream drink from the Starbucks at B&N Come home and take a nap Wake up from said nap with my cat stepping on my liver Make this post Phew! But now that the realms are up I can get back to the thing I really love... riding in circles around Dalaran on my mount for hours as I wait for groups to form.
YouPlayorWePay goes free with a new plan
As promised, YouPlayorWePay has returned, and they've got a whole new plan in place. Originally, as we reported earlier, they wanted to create a site where players would pay a fee for the opportunity to get reimbursed for lost playtime in World of Warcraft, but after outcries from the community, they have outlined a whole slew of changes on the site.And the biggest of these is that the service is now free. Instead of charging users, they plan to support a limited number of registrants (for March, when they begin, they're opening up 150 spots), and when downtime or queues occur for those registrants, they'll be given "YPOWP credits," which apparently will be used either towards compensation or towards "contest prizes," which will update every month. They've got some new stats on the front page, too, including the realms with the most calculated downtime, and how many compensation and contest prizes they've given out every month.Very interesting. From the beginning, the founders have made it clear that they didn't want to scam anyone (they told us as much in our interview), and they now say that not one person has been charged a cent for compensation. This new model, however, seems much more fair -- there's no cost up front for people who register, even if the "compensation" might not be worth as much as the cash they originally promised. What do you think of the new plan?
Realm restarts to fix Death Knight bug
The Death Knight creation bug, which does not allow some players to create Death Knights on realms which they don't have a level 55+ character on, will be fixed by rolling restarts.The restarts will take place tomorrow (Wednesday January 21st) at 5:00 a.m. PST / 8:00 a.m. EST. Each realm should be down for a short period of time, and the restarts should only take around 15 minutes. Oceanic servers will see their restarts take place at 12:00 p.m. PST / 3:00 p.m. EST.We can safely assume that these restarts will correct the issue. However if they don't, look here for more information.Additional Note: There is no new information on the Wintergrasp bug
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.
WoW Insider interview: You Play or We Pay founders
George Tung and Milos Golubovic have known each other for years, and been Blizzard fans for a long time as well. Around the launch of the Burning Crusade, like many WoW players, they were having issues with queues and server outages. They'd come home at night after work and want to play, but either be locked out of the realm with a queue or not be able to sign on at all. And now, they're aiming to help other players in the same situation, by offering a controversial service on their new site YouPlayorWePay.com.When we posted about the site earlier this week, a lot of readers cried foul. The site's business plan (players pay a fee every month, and then are compensated back money (sometimes more, sometimes less than they originally paid) when their realm is full or suffers downtime. Lots of our commenters called the site a scam (a few of them even suggested, incorrectly, that it was a phishing site), and they all wanted to know more: how could these guys get away with asking for a fee and taking people's money on the promise that they might get some back?And so, when Tung and Golubovic contacted us at WoW Insider, we were anxious to put those questions to them directly. Were they able to justify the service they're providing (and maybe show Blizzard just how compensation should be done), or are they just trying to take advantage of people already losing gameplay to downtime? You can be the judge -- our exclusive interview is right after the break.
YouPlayorWePay claims to offer downtime insurance
I think this is a wild idea (even if it is something I wouldn't actually put my money in). We got tipped about a new site called "You Play or We Pay" and from the looks of it, these guys are offering none other than downtime insurance. That is: you pay a fee to them regularly, and then they "compensate" you for any downtime that your server has. They call it "third-party compensation," but that sounds like insurance to me.At any rate, we wouldn't quite recommend jumping in headfirst yet -- they haven't, as far as we can see, revealed any prices, and while you can register your characters, you can't actually get any sort of payout quite yet, as they say they're still working on the system. For all we know the site could be an elaborate scam at this point. But it is an intriguing idea, and if they're really ready to put their money where their FAQ is, these guys may have an actual business plan that depends on Blizzard keeping the servers up. Just like all insurance companies, they must have figured out that the servers stay up more often than not, and that there was money to be made there.It's quite an interesting plan, and we'll keep an eye on it to see if they ever announce a fee or explain themselves better. The math doesn't quite seem right here, but if somehow their fees are low enough and the payouts are high enough, it's possible that you really could be compensated for downtime by a completely separate company other than Blizzard. Very interesting.Update: The company has contacted WoW Insider, and we've requested an interview. Stay tuned.
Email realm status alerts
This morning, when we started receiving tips that the realms were coming back up early, I eagerly checked to see if my own realm was among those that had been brought up. I have some serious DK leveling to do (75 and my De-raged Waraxe has made the class even more fun). Of course, poor little Shadow Council was not up yet. I didn't want to keep reloading the realm status page, but I did want to know as soon as the server was up. What's a person to do? Enter wowrealmstatus.net. It's a simple service: it sends you one email when your realm is brought up. (It can also be set to send you an email when your realm is brought down, or when its load is low, medium, or high, but I have yet to find a use for this functionality.) Enter your email, pick your realm from the menu, click the "Alert Me" button, and you're done. It only ever sends the one email; if you want another alert in the future, just set it up again then. Simple, effective, not annoying: a great web tool. And if you didn't know already, your mobile phone almost certainly has an email address which translates to text messages (AT&T phones, for instance, are [phone number]@mobile.att.net, like 123456789@mobile.att.net), so you can get alerts that way too, though your carrier will bill you for it if you don't have a text plan.
New PTR build incoming
Maaven posted a short time ago that the 3.0.8 Public Test Realm (PTR) servers are being taken offline for an update tonight. There is no ETA when the PTRs will be back up.There was a recent update to the PTR patch notes, and there has been a lot of activity on the PTR forums from the blues. It should be noted that Ghostcrawler once again today reiterated that dual spec will not be unveiled in 3.0.8.There's a few of us here that will be up tonight, so check back and see what the new build brings. I'm placing my gold on more clam updates.
Free transfers and a new US realm
There was a ton of free transfers announced last night, hopefully some of this will have the effect of freeing up the long queues we've become used to lately.In addition to the normal transfers, a large block of PvE servers have the option to get a free transfer to a new realm, Garrosh.Garrosh is a PvE EST based US realm. It's been placed in the Emberstorm battlegroup. Blizzard's announcement lists next Wednesday, January 14th, at 6:00 p.m. PST as the cutoff date for the transfers. However they will close the transfers early if they meet their internal quotas. Transfer early and transfer often. You can begin the transfers via your account management page at worldofwarcraft.com.The complete list of eligible transfer realms after the break
Blizzard: Comcast issues fixed
Eyonix is now reporting, as an update to yesterday's update, that Blizzard has resolved the issues with Comcast. So to quote the late, great Douglas Adams, "anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem." Which is not quite true -- Blizzard tech support and Comcast are probably still happy to listen to your issues (assuming you can get through their phone system), but the major outages from this weekend are reportedly solved.There are still three stickied threads going in the technical support forums, so you can possibly find help or more information there if you're still having issues: Eyonix encourages anyone still having a problem to go there.I'm on Comcast here in Chicago, but I didn't have any issues connecting this weekend (save for the fact that I was offline for half a day yesterday due to an unrelated computer error I had). Still, though we're not sure just how widespread the problem is, there were definitely some players suffering from lag and disconnects. Hopefully the problem is cleared up for good.
Realms up after extended maintenance
Realms are back up after a bit of extended maintenance this afternoon. There has been no communication from the blues or other Blizzard sources as to why the downtime was extended.But with that said, all the realms are working and things appear to be going smoothly. And by smooth I mean I still have the mail in my in-box from when the servers went down this morning.So that's a good thing, right?
Blizzard gives out a day of compensation for the downtime
Blizzard's been on shaky footing this week with all the downtime, from their forum issues to in-game mail problems, and even their main site has had trouble. But there's good news for those affected by the outages (everybody?): we're all getting an extra day of playtime. Tyren says that they believe the problems are now fixed, and that players will recieve a free day of gameplay sometime within the next two weeks.Personally, I wasn't affected much, but free gametime is free gametime. The real test will be this evening and this weekend -- if Blizzard can keep their realms up even under the pressure of so many people checking out the expansion, it'll be a feat. But odds are that, considering how many players are likely to try checking out Northrend in the next few days, the shakiness is not quite over.
Realms offline until at least 6:00pm EST [Updated]
Breaking news from the service status forums:All realms will be offline until at least 6:00pm EST / 3:00pm PST. They are having to keep the realms down for this extended period due to errors in the mail system.Essentially, every piece of mail that was sent prior to the realms going down at 8:00am EST was lost when the servers came back up. Blizzard has said that they are actively looking for a solution to the problem. We're keeping our mailbox post updated with the latest information on that front.Hopefully this extended downtime is not foreshadowing things to come when Wrath of the Lich King starts to enter circulation tomorrow evening at midnight*. Update: Please see this post for more information concerning the downtime.Stay tuned to WoW Insider for more updates.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. Also, check out our feature on AddOns new, old and outdated and Essential AddOns for Wrath written especially with the expansion in mind.
Rolling restarts to usher in new phase of the zombie invasion?
The announcement on the login screen tells us that there'll be rolling restarts for all realms between 5:00 a.m. PDT and 6:00 a.m. PDT. Each realm should be down for no less than 15 minutes.These restarts have become a common thing in the past few days. From previous information given to everyone from Bllizzard, we know that restarts correct server lag and other connectivity issues. And there have been quite a few of these issues since patch 3.0.2. A restart fixing these things is nothing new. But you have to ask yourself now, are these updates secretly pushing new things onto the server?It seems like for the past few days after every "rolling restart" a new phase or two of the scourge invasion has begun. So I'm going to make an educated guess based on what may very well be completely unrelated variables – tomorrow or Monday we'll see phase five of the invasion, complete with something new we haven't yet seen.Prove me wrong, Blizzard... prove me wrong.
Server restarts for Friday October 24th
While the connectivity and general lag seems to have gotten better in the last day or so, there are still some lingering issues here and there. All servers will be undergoing rolling restarts on the morning of the 24th from 5:00 a.m. PDT to 6:00 a.m. PDT. Each realm is expected to be down only 15 minutes.Ideally this will solve all the issues we've had since patch 3.0.2 hit last week, but more likely we'll just see things be better for a short time.If this temporary down time turns into anything extended, we'll update this post.Of course, this restart might have something to do with Zombies hungry for brains.
Many servers not yet up after all
The previous post about the servers coming back online seems to have been slightly premature. Many, if not most servers are still offline, and the current target for bringing them back is 6 PM PST/9 PM EST. Be aware that this target has been pushed back three times since being originally set for 2 PM PST/5 PM EST today, so I wouldn't count on being able to play any time tonight necessarily. And when the realms do come up, I wouldn't expect them to be super-stable; the few realms that are up right now are having all manner of crashes and other difficulties. That said, I'm can't really be mad at Blizzard for any of this. This is possibly the largest patch in MMO history, as one astute commenter pointed out; it would have been extremely optimistic to expect it to go off without a hitch. We'll be back sooner or later (unless they decide to just leave the servers off until Wrath hits), and we'll have plenty of new toys to play with. In the mean time, why not check out our voluminous coverage of the patch, or our handy all-in-one FAQ? Patch 3.0.2 "Echoes of Doom" has landed and WoW Insider has you covered. From patch notes to talent guides for every class to fixing your addons to 5 easy achievements you can snag right now. Make sure to check out the latest news.
