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Guildwatch: "The odor of the stagnant trash"
Don't get us wrong: ninja'ing the guild bank is one thing, but when your guild gets ninja'ed and everyone wonders who the guy who did it is and why he has access to the bank, it might be time to look at your security plans and reevaluate.Lots more drama, downed, and recruiting news in this week's Guildwatch below. If you've got news of drama on the realms, your guild has dived into the endgame with panache, or you'd like some good WoW Insider readers to join your guild, send us an email at wowguildwatch AT gmail dot com. Click below to read on.
First level 70 Death Knight on the realms
Odds are, I'd say, that we'll see our first level 80 sometime this afternoon (and probably in Europe, since they got a little bit of a time zone head start) -- we've had reports come in from one very obnoxious Paladin, but his claims to level 80 aren't actually true. But in the meantime, here's the first level 70 Death Knight we've heard of: Arello of Raptors Open Doors on Shattered Hand dinged 70 as a Death Knight in Northrend's New Agamand. The Armory doesn't have his character in yet, but this seems credible to us.We're not sure he's the absolute first, though, just the first we've heard of -- anyone else have proof of a Death Knight at 70 already? And we'll keep an eye out for (credible) claims of level 80 firsts -- the run from level 60 to 70 took about 28 hours the first time around, so unless Blizzard did things a lot different, we'll probably see it sometime today.
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.
WAR's latest Grab Bag explores Zone Control
Aside from answering a variety of user questions and reporting on the latest tidbits of Warhammer Online news in the usual Grab Bag style, this week's regular feature focuses on the basics of Zone Control.If you've ever made the mistake of assuming that your realm has captured a zone by controlling all Battlefield objectives and Keeps, you'd be wrong. That's exactly what this Grab Bag feature aims to do: help the players understand what exactly is involved in controlling your Zone. Check out the entire article for more on Zone control and the answers to a few important player questions.
Guildwatch: Nowhere's safe from ninjas
Yup, that right there is an Arcanite Ripper ninja. Congrats, Slu, not only did you steal a piece of loot, but you stole a piece of loot that most players in the game will have two or three chances at the most to get. Was the trippy guitar animation really worth ruining your reputation? Maybe so.In other news (and yes, we're running a little late thanks to the historic election results), Guildwatch has all your drama, downed, and recruiting news from around the realms. If you've got a tip to send us, email it along to wowguildwatch at gmail dot com, and you'll probably see it here next week. Click the link below to read on.
3 day credit for NA, EU customers
When patch 3.0.2 hit, we had a very long maintenance, shading towards 24 hours for some realms. And since then we haven't always had the best of realm stability; I know my own realm has had plenty of restarts, downed instance servers, and lag spikes in the past few weeks. It would have made raiding pretty hard if they hadn't nerfed the pants off it.Blizzard knows about the realm problems as well as anybody, and as is their tendency, they're compensating for it by giving us all playtime credits. This time it's a full three days, for anyone with an active account on US, Oceanic, Latin American, European, and Russian realms (so basically everyone except Asia; the Asian realms have a different payment structure). That's one thing I really like about Blizzard. They may mess up, but at least they try to fix it. Now can I have a Squashling, please?
Free character transfers announced for Warhammer Online
Free character transfers were just announced for Warhammer Online, for characters on low population servers who'd like to move to high population servers. The service will be put into place in the coming days. The character transfers will be done in the Mythic Account Center, which will have a Character Transfer button, just below "Activate a Key" and "Validate your Email Address." In addition to Free Character Transfers, Mythic also announced Guild Transfers. This comes with its own set of caveats as the transfer cannot be reversed, with details to be listed on the Character Transfer page.There's an added bonus for characters moved to higher pop servers -- a Realm Population Bonus of 20% experience and renown. The Warhammer Online Herald will update the playerbase once the Free Character Transfer service goes into effect. Until then, see the WAR Herald announcement, which lists further details on the transfers and lists the source and destination servers eligible for Character Transfers for North American and Oceanic regions. Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out our Warhammer guides: Massively's Character Creation Guide and our WoW Player's Guide to Warhammer. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!
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.
Rolling restarts for selected realms this afternoon
Fresh from the news bulletin upon login is an announcement of rolling restarts for a handful of realms this afternoon. At 12:00 noon PDT the realms of Dreadmaul, Caelestrasz, Nagrand, Aman'Thul, Barthilas, Thaurissan, Dath'Remar, Frostmourne, Khaz'horoth, and Jube'Thos will be going down for restarts.Many people have still continued to experience connectivity issues and major lag since patch 3.0.2 dropped nearly two weeks ago. Instances seem to be a particular problem with people not being able to zone in, getting disconnected upon loading, or generally having issues with mobs and other objects appearing correctly.I wouldn't be surprised to see more realms added to this list today, and perhaps some extended maintenance (if not an outright patch) this upcoming Tuesday.
Realm issues for the evening of October 21st
Blizzard is well aware of the realm issues that are plaguing the game tonight, October 21st. They have said in the opening in-game announcement that they're working on it, and now have posted as much on the forums. They will also be restarting all realms shortly.For those of you not experiencing the issue, just about every time you try to enter an instance you receive a "transfer aborted" message or some other such error. This is causing quite a bit of havoc on guild as they try to push hard during the last few weeks of Burning Crusade raiding.We'll update this post throughout the evening when Blizzard releases any more statements.
EU battlegroups experiencing language problems after mergers
Tipster Nimm writes in to let us know that several EU battlegroups have been having serious issues after mergers that occurred post-patch 3.02. The mergers have seen a number of battlegroups acquiring servers with other language-dominant populations, which has resulted in a number of French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian-dominant servers (among others) all in the same battlegroups. While this is probably necessary to a certain degree to guarantee equal Alliance/Horde populations for quick queue times, it's become something of a communication nightmare in battleground matches, particularly those with lots of players using Cyrillic characters. As the player Thoughtless from the Karazhan realm asks, "Can you imagine how hard it is to organise any sort of teamplay in AB with player ???????? from <????????> guild cha(t)ting "?????? ??? ??????? ??????? ?????" in BG chat?" Nimm also notes that differentiating between ??????? enemy players is a nightmare.We knew that Blizzard was closing four EU realms (Stonemaul, Molten Core, Shadowmoon, and Warsong) and transferring remaining players to other realms in response to Russian player migration to Russian realms opened late summer 2008, and the problem's partially the result of that (which has already resulted in the inevitable "In Soviet Russia, battlegroups merge you" joke). A few amused people are rising to the occasion by translating such phrases as inc 5 schmiede (inc 5 blacksmith in German) or proposing a revival of Esperanto, but the Russian language pack would be the only possible solution for the ???? problem. There's been mention made that this is only a temporary fix on Blizzard's part to faction imbalances on battlegroups, but if you're on an EU realm that's seen a recent battlegroup merge, just be aware that Babelfish might be a useful tool in the near future.
Guildwatch: Prime Time Hours!
It's good to know that, whatever changes in the World of Warcraft, be it talents or raids, or pets or mounts, or anything else, there'll always be people that take the game too darn seriously. And when they do, that's usually when Guildwatch shows up, mostly, let's admit it, to point and laugh.Oh, but we also praise those who get things done, too. It's all in this week's Guildwatch, as usual -- check behind the link below for drama, downed, and recruiting news from around the realms. Patch 3.0.2 is here, Wrath is just around the corner, and Guildwatch continues to cover the good, the bad and the ugly in the world of guilds.
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.
Servers starting to come back online
After an epic twelve-hour maintenance today to apply patch 3.0.2, the WoW servers are starting to come back online. As of last count, only a few dozen were up, scattered across the US and Oceanic realms, but the rest of them can't be too far behind (none of mine are up yet). The ETA for maintenance finishing is 2 PM PST/5 PM EST - looks like they beat their maintenance estimates for once, assuming the realms are all back before too long. I'm excited for so many reasons; this is one of the biggest days in WoW history, and there's fun new stuff to try out for every class. The realms coming up will also give us a chance to sort out the saga of the patch notes, and figure out what exactly is being included in this patch in the way of class changes. Is your realm up yet? What are you going to do first when it is? Update: Blizzard is now saying it might take until 3 PM PST/6 PM EST 4:30 PM PST/7:30 PM EST 6 PM PST/9 PM EST for all the realms to be up. 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.
Death Knight character creation FAQ preps players for Wrath
Planning on creating a Death Knight when Wrath of the Lich King comes out next month? Blizzard posted a Death Knight creation FAQ at the EU World of Warcraft forums in an effort to reduce the number of question and answer threads popping up. It's short but sweet.It's so short, in fact, that we can give you most of the info right here. You'll be able to create a Death Knight on any realm on which you already have an level 55 or higher character. Eventually, you'll be able to create one on a different server, but for now the only way to get a Death Knight to a totally new realm is to create it on your current realm and then do a paid transfer.Don't worry -- there's good news too! If your level 55 is Horde, you'll be able to start up an Alliance Death Knight and vice versa, so long as you're not playing on a PvP realm. You're only allowed one Death Knight per realm though.[Via WoW Insider]
Characters for iPhone updated to 2.0
The Warcraft Characters app for iPhone that we reported on a while ago has been updated to version 2.0, and with it come a host of terrific improvements. As we were told last time, gear has been added in, so your iPhone can not only show you information about your (or anyone else's) characters, but it can now also show you all of their gear, and even reputation status. And there's good news for non-US users, too: the app now supports characters from any and all realms, not just US and EU, but Korean, Chinese, and Taiwanese realms as well. The only thing that's still missing is seeing individual talents -- otherwise, it's as featured an app as you can get. Sure, guild search and stats might be nice, and there's always extra features like be.imba integration, or character comparisons, but as a portable Armory, it works great as is. We're not sure if this is all Rudi's work or a result of a teamup with Omen of Clarity (who's been working on an iPhone web app for a while), but either way, great job.And there's a shiny new icon, too (and I like it a lot better). Characters is now available on the iPhone's App Store for the low, low price of free.
Say Hola to Latin American WoW July 25th
Blizzard is once again expanding its World of Warcraft player base. July 25th will mark the launch of Latin American Servers for Mexico, Chile, and Argentina. The expansion will be supported and sold in other countries in the future. New players can also purchase the Burning Crusade and 60 day prepaid game cards. A free trial is available at juegawarcraft.com. The launch will be accompanied by celebratory events with Blizzard staff: July 25 Blockbuster Pilares Av. Universidad #697 Del Valle, July 26-27 Plaza Satelite Estado de Mexico,
Oceanic players get their own forum
Bornakk announced yesterday that Blizzard has launched a new forum specifically for players on Oceanic realms. It is intended to be a "friendly and focused environment" for Oceanic players to discuss WoW. Of course, the Oceanic realms still have their individual forums and this has caused some confusion among the forum posters regarding why the forums were established. And it wouldn't be forums without trolls.I, for one, see the value of a forum for Oceanic players to discuss their specific issues and to be able to find players in similar situations without searching the U.S. forums and without being limited to specific servers. If you are an Oceanic player, please take our poll:%Poll-16596%
Guildwatch: The thread you are looking for has been deleted
There's a disturbing trend happening on the forums lately -- all the great drama threads are getting deleted. It's not like it's not out there -- this week's GW, as usual, is full of good drama, and the truth is that drama threads on guild forums are better anyway. But it seems like every time a tipster kindly sends us a link to an official forum thread, it's mysteriously disappeared? Could someone at Blizzard... not want us to make fun of drama? We'll keep an eye on it.Until we figure that out, keep sending us the tips, whether they be about drama, downed news for your guild or others, or recruiting notices for up-and-coming raiding groups. The place to send it all is wowguildwatch@gmail.com, and clicking the link below will show you just what we heard about from the realms this week.
Extended maintenance tomorrow
All U.S. realms will be offline for extended maintenance tomorrow from 5:00 a.m. PDT until 11:00 a.m. PDT. This came from an announcement via the login screen.Servers have been mostly stable this past week after a series of rolling restarts Blizzard did a few days ago. Hopefully this won't cause too many problems for those hoping to enjoy the game Tuesday evening.Stay tuned to WoW Insider for the latest on realm issues and other WoW news.
