realms-down
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New Year's Eve server connectivity issues
If you were planning to ring in the New Year by leveling up or running some LFR, you may want to think again -- realm connectivity issues have abounded over the past hour, bringing numerous realms offline. Customer Support is looking into the problem and on the official forums the Blizzard reports that "some realms have recovered." For realms that haven't recovered -- or realms that are hopping online and off -- we don't have an official ETA, but keep your eyes on this post for further updates. For the official word from Blizzard, follow @BlizzardCS on Twitter or watch the forum thread on tonight's connectivity issues.
Maintenance downtime extended
Blizzard's Customer Support Team has announced via Twitter that maintenance downtime has been extended to 1 p.m. PST for both World of Warcraft and Diablo 3. #WoW and #D3 #Maintenance has been extended until 1PM PST. We'll provide additional updates as they become available to us. - BlizzardCS (@BlizzardCS) December 11, 2012 As always, WoW Insider will keep readers abreast of any new updates to the situation, but if you're at a loss for what to do while the servers are down, Daniel Whitcomb put together this morning's Last Week In WoW, in which he predicted some downtime, as well as putting together the best of this week's news in one handy article. If that's not enough reading for you, WoW Insider has just put out a call for writers, and, of course, posted last night about the latest set of hotfixes. Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Updated: All realms now online
Updated: All realms are now available. Re: Rolling Realm Restarts 10/14/2010 All realms are online and available for play! See you all ingame source After announcing rolling restarts on all U.S. and Oceanic realms last night, Blizzard has confirmed that all U.S. realms are currently offline due to an unforeseen technical issue. We will have more information when those issues are resolved. Re: Rolling Realm Restarts 10/14/2010 All US realms are temporarily unavailable due to an unforeseen technical issue. We are unable to provide an estimate on when these issues will be resolved. source
Emberstorm and Whirlwind battlegroups down
We're receiving reports that servers on the Whirlwind and Emberstorm battlegroups, located in the Seattle datacenter, are currently experiencing downtime. These were the same battlegroups that were scheduled to recieve their local power supply upgrade today, so there may have been some unanticipated issue in the process.Don't panic! It's likely only temporary and they should be back up soon.We'll update you guys with more info when we get it. The full list of affected realms is under the cut -- feel free to hit us up on Twitter @wowinsider if yours comes back up and we haven't reported on it yet.UPDATE 4:18 AM EDT:Blizzard has posted a thread regarding the issues on the Battlegroup forums.
Shadowburn BG down for emergency maintenance
We've received a lot of tips in the past few minutes, and now it's official: the Shadowburn battlegroup is down for emergency maintenance. The realms are estimated to return in two hours, around 3:30 EST, but we'll keep you posted if we hear anything new. The affected realms are Agamaggan, Azshara, Baelgun, Dark Iron, Detheroc, Emerald Dream, Greymane, Kalecgos, Lightninghoof, Maelstrom, Malfurion, Moonrunner, Nazjatar, Sargeras, Staghelm, Twisting Nether, Ursin, and Wildhammer. What are you guys going to do in the mean time? I hear there's a good WoW blog around here somewhere that you might enjoy browsing through. Update: The realms are back up.
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.
Of unstable servers, MIA pets and one Scarab Lord Dinosaur
As I mentioned earlier, my server Silver Hand was down Saturday night. All night. I gave up trying around midnight. Friday night, when I was actually able to log on, the Heroic Instance servers went down catching many in my group in a neverending loading screen that forced them to restart the game only to find their toons were not logged out, blocking them from getting back in. Other reports have been pouring in, not only of servers down, but entire Battlegroups, laggy geographical regions and in one case, the disappearance of all of Outland itself.On top of that, strange bugs have been appearing in the game such as zone-wide Wrath buffs appearing in Shadowfang Keep and Northrend lockboxes dropping off of Karazhan mobs. On the Silvermoon realm, the raid instances crashed. When the GMs reset them all they inadvertantly closed the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj as well. A packrat on the server named Dinosaur claims he had a Scepter of the Shifting Sands squirrled away in his bank and he was able to use it to bang the AQ gong to get the Scarab Lord title and claim the Scarab mount. Speaking of mounts, how many of our trusty steeds and non-combat pets were eaten by the servers when we tried to utilize the new storage options implented in Patch 3.0.2. Many players have been petitioning to get those back. Today, Blizzard confirmed what we had been hearing in our tip line: missing mounts and pets are being mailed to characters who lost them. The process isn't complete, but it's happening. They also recommended going to any Stable Master (ask a Hunter) to claim any pets or mounts you deleted yourself before the patch.In the same thread, class balance was addressed as well. It boils down to yes, some classes are OP and others are out of whack. Suck it up til Wrath hits and it will all smooth out. I don't know about you, but I'm going back to my OP Boomkin now. If my server is up.
Should L70 players be able to start a L55 class of their choice?
Like many servers since Patch 3.0.2, mine went down for the count last night. I had planned to explore the Hallow's End content that just went live with my guildies, but spent the time instead commiserating with them via Instant Messenger while waiting for Blizzard to combat rez my realm. One suggestion brought up in the conversation was to play on another server for the evening. A guildmate of mine had a brother with a high level toon on another server, but because we could only roll new characters, that didn't help either.That's when my guild brother (heya Taiglin!) made what I thought was a brilliant suggestion: since level 70 players will be able to roll a brand new level 55 Death Knight when Wrath launches, why not roll any class at level 55? I was going to explain to him why that wasn't a good idea, but honestly, I thought he had a point. I already know how to play a Druid (well, I'm relearning with the new talents from Patch 3.0.2 and my new found love of Balance specs), why can't I roll a level 55 Druid on a new server to have an alternative place to play? Or even just to join friends who rolled toons on other servers.You may argue against players rolling a class they don't know how to play then bungling through pick up groups, but isn't that exactly what's going to happen with the flood of DKs about to hit every server? Blizzard is poised to open the door to this option with their new Hero class, why not every class?
Launcher updated again, 3.0.2 soon?
The Launcher "and its related tools" have gotten another upgrade today, even though the realms haven't come up yet, which tells us that the Background Downloader probably has more work to do, which itself means that we probably won't see 3.0.2 today. Not really a surprise -- it's early by anyone's predictions for sure -- but the Downloader has had a full patch out for a while, so the update is primed and almost ready.Today's downtime is all about hardware upgrades, apparently, so Blizzard is definitely gearing up for Wrath. We saw lots of hardware upgrades in the months before the Burning Crusade launch (people who were playing back then will remember all of the horrible queues and population issues before servers got expanded), and while Wrath probably won't be as big a jump, Blizzard is still getting ready.Which just leaves the question of when we'll see patch 3.0.2. Considering the BC content patch came just about a month before release, we're still looking for it in mid-October (likely after all the ruckus of BlizzCon has died down).
36 US realms down
Starting at least half an hour ago, and continuing through to now, 36 US realms, comprising the battlegroups Rampage and Shadowburn, are down. Blizzard notes that they are "currently unavailable and are being worked on," and that they don't have an ETA right now, but will give us an update around 8:50 AM PDT/11:50 AM EDT. So we should hear more about this in 15 minutes or so, at which point I'll update the post with any new information.The affected realms are: Agamaggan, Alexstrasza, Alleria, Azshara, Baelgun, Balnazzar, Blackhand, Cho'gall, Dark Iron, Destromath, Dethecus, Detheroc, Emerald Dream, Garona, Gorgonnash, Greymane, Gul'dan, Hellscream, Illidan, Kael'thas, Kalecgos, Kirin Tor, Lightninghoof, Maelstrom, Malfurion, Moonrunner, Nazjatar, Ravencrest, Sargeras, Spinebreaker, Staghelm, Stormreaver, Twisting Nether, Ursin, Whisperwind, and Wildhammer.[Thanks, Laz]Update (12 PM): Blizzard provided an update to let us know that they will provide another update at 10 AM PDT, which is in an hour. They're working on it and appreciate our patience.Update (1 PM): Now they think they've figured out what's wrong, and they're saying the realms should be up by 10:30 PDT/1:30 EDT.
Maintenance extended for some realms to 12:00 Pacific
Okay, I have no idea who Hello Kitty is. I barely know what Sanrio is because I have nieces. Anyway, for those of us who intent to keep playing World of Warcraft (seriously, Hello Kitty Online? I have to start reading the memos Mike sends out) most of the realms are still down and maintenance is being extended to 12:00 pm Pacific. Like many, I've been haunting the realm status forums since 11 Pacific waiting for news, and I hope Malfurion or Norgannon come up soon.In the meantime I've been reading about a new console version of Molten Core coming out (sounds so sweet, and no downtimes!) and considering whether or not I'll reroll Bard for the expansion. I think not; I'm a warrior till I die, but the "Metal" tree does intrigue me.I have no idea if I'll be making that many more posts here, because I am so not even trying to write the "How to tank with hugs" column.Editor's Note: We apologize for letting this non-HKO post get through. Blogger Matthew Rossi is being dealt with accordingly.
Massive amounts of realms offline [UPDATED]
The realms were up for a bit, but several have come down rather quickly. There is a news alert when you log on giving a long (very long) list of realms that are offline.Blizzard says that they're performing additional maintenance to resolve some issue. However, unlike most every other time they've taken down realms, this time there is no ETA on when they'll be back up.We can only hope that this will be a quick fix problem. I had a dream that Kaz'rogal will be dropping Kaz'rogal's Hardened Heart for me finally, and I'm going to be mighty disappointed if I can't raid tonight and get some of that phat lewtz.Take a look after the break for the long list of realms that are offline. And remember, stay tuned to WoW Insider, we'll let you know when these realms are back up!Updated 8:01 EST: The realms down are now only as follows: Alextrasza, Balnazzar, Blackhand, Cho'hall, Destromath, Dethecus, Garona, Gorgonnash, Gul'dan, Hellscream, Illidan, Kael'thas, Kirin Tor, Ravencrest, Smolderthorn, Spinebreaker, Stormreaver, Whisperwind. The rest of the realms are back online!
Yes, it is Tuesday, whatever shall you do?
Well, it is maintenance day again. Tuesday is the Hump Day (i.e. Wednesday) of WoW players everywhere. The realms are down, and the children are home from school on March Break (at least in Canada). Fortunately, this past week has been a busy one, and there is plenty of material for you to catch up on while you're bemoaning the maintenance, scheduled from 5:00 a.m. PST to 11:00 a.m. PST.First of all, you won't want to miss any of our coverage from Sunday's stress test of the TTRs. The GMs were out in full force, pulling all sorts of nonsense. My coverage of the event, signed in as <Vehn>. Alex's coverage, signed in as <Insideralex>. The team's private photoshoot with <Englewood>! Our live blogging coverage, hosted by Adam, signed in as <Insideradam>. Now that I have dutifully promoted WoW Insider the arena team, I'll point you to other fabulous articles of note. First and foremost, I'll direct you to everyone's favorite controversy of the week. It all began as part 2 of Alex's latest Hybrid Theory column, and the frenzy that followed resulted in a follow-up post that somehow has not eased the debate. For other articles of note, make the jump!
