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The Mog Log: Back in the high life again
The good news is that both Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV should be back online as of Friday. (I'm writing this on Thursday, so watch some last-minute wrench get tossed into the works.) The bad news is... well, really, that's all the news over the past couple of weeks. While the team has been working, it seems like improving a video game hasn't been at the top of anyone's priority list in the wake of the earthquake and subsequent devastation. If I hadn't made this clear enough last week, that's pretty much the only reasonable response to what's been happening. It's astonishing that anyone has even been going on and working on the games, much less actively keeping players up to date about the status of the servers. There's the distinct chance that you weren't able to log in as soon as the servers went live again yesterday, and even if you did, it was mostly a matter of checking back in and lounging for a few moments. So let's take a look at some of the ways to re-acquaint yourself with the games.
Tuesday Morning Post: Valorous edition
The biggest news to come down the pipe this week is probably the valor points change. Have you ever wanted to just get all of your heroic dailies churned out on one lazy Sunday afternoon instead of forcing yourself to queue after a long day at work in the middle of the week? You'll be able to, come patch 4.1. Not only that, but if you queue for the new Zandalar dungeons, you'll come away with 980 valor points when all's said and done, which is nearly enough to purchase one whole piece on its own. If you're not big into the whole heroic-running game, there's plenty of other interesting stuff to catch up on, including some new WoW insights our team dragged out of PAX East 2011. With scheduled realm maintenance lasting from 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. Pacific time, you should have plenty of time to read it all.
Choose My Adventure: And so it began... again
Well, this week has certainly been interesting. And by interesting, I mean not really usual. Then again, if any of you know me very well, that really should not come as much of a surprise; normal and MJ usually do not coexist in the same stratosphere. I am also not one to shy away from the untrodden path, and I tend to take off on my own tangents. Who needs easy when you can have interesting? Perhaps this quality alone made me a decent match for tackling the world of Xsyon for this round of Choose My Adventure. That, and a measure of patience. In my first true week of playing Xsyon, I really didn't get to "play" much of anything. Not in any sense of the word that most MMO gamers would be familiar with. That isn't to say that I didn't have any fun; on the contrary, I really enjoyed the time I did get in, and I look forward to really digging my toes into that rich Tahoe soil. Well, my shovel, really. So what were the unusual circumstances surrounding my first adventures? Hike past the cut for a deeper look at the week and some helpful tips for anyone planning to jump into game come launch.
Tuesday Morning Post: Meanwhile, in WoW edition
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. I have a confession to make. I pretty much logged onto WoW the minimum possible amount of time last week. Now, don't get me wrong, I had a lot of stuff going on in real life too, but my main reason for playing hooky was because I was obsessed with Ezekiel Hawke, the dashing, roguish champion of Kirkwall you see above. That said, having now defeated Dragon Age 2, I am ready to get back into the game and eager to check all the new patch 4.1 goodies being discovered on the PTR by the day (and, of course, reported by us). If you're tired of patch 4.1 news, have no fear, we have some pretty sweet non-patch news too. We had a contingent at PAX East 2011 and got a chance to sit down with Cryptozoic, the makers of the WoW TCG. The developers also recently held a forum Q&A, and the first round of questions and answers was released yesterday. Me, I'm most excited that they didn't completely dismiss the idea of an appearance layer on gear like they have in the past. You should have some time to read up on this and all the rest of the week's news, as we have our usual scheduled maintenance from 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. Pacific time this morning.
Tuesday Morning Post: I'm (not) on fire edition
Happy Tuesday Morning, everyone! Probably the biggest news this week is the state of patch 4.1. Not only will it not include the Firelands, it won't have any raid content whatsoever. Of course, if our first runs are any indication, the new heroics may be epic enough to make up for it, and patch 4.2 will supposedly show up on the test servers almost immediately after patch 4.1 goes live. I'm pretty sure the delay is so Ragnaros can work on toning up his lower body a bit, though, so the delay's for a good cause. We'll only have to deal with rolling restarts at 5 a.m. Pacific time today, so you should be able to hop back on WoW pretty quickly. Still, while you're waiting for things to settle down, you may want to catch up on the latest happenings in and around the World of Warcraft. Check our usual roundup after the break.
Tuesday Morning Post: In the still of the night edition
We weren't expecting it, but it came just the same. Dropping in like a thief in the night, the patch 4.1 PTR showed up early last week and began slowly worming its way into the news cycle and into our hearts. There's a lot of pretty amazing stuff coming in with it. Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman are back as heroic dungeons. You can walk right into Old Ironforge. Hunters can tame hydras. The Wintersaber mount grind is getting easier. There's a whole ton of new pets and mounts, along with achievements for collecting more of them. There's a new looking for guild feature. We may even see a caster legendary. There's also hints of a new Hallow's End, and with it, new lore for the Forsaken and the worgen. That's just the tip of the iceberg, of course. You can check out more articles on all the latest changes behind the break. With realm maintenance lasting from 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. PST this morning, you don't have anything better to do, right? Be sure to stayed tuned throughout the day and coming weeks for more news as well.
Tuesday Morning Post: The love is gone edition
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone! It's been another hectic week of bugs, balance issues, and hotfixes, all of which you can read about after the break in our usual roundup. Other than that, Love Is In The Air is gone for another year. Hopefully, you got what you wanted out of that. On the downtime front this morning, we have rolling restarts beginning at 5 a.m. PST, with all realms expected to be ready to roll again by 6 a.m. But hey, before you leap back into action, why not check out the latest headlines? You never know what you might have missed.
Tuesday Morning Post: Bugged about titles edition
Happy Tuesday Morning, everyone. Hope your Valentine's Day was awesome. Patch 4.0.6 has been out for a week now. Despite a few nasty bugs early on, Blizzard seems to have ironed out most of the kinks, and hopefully by now we've gotten used to the newness. Besides, the ups and downs of patch 4.0.6 are nothing compared to the furor that erupted over the moving of The Exalted title. Blizzard later reneged, of course, but it was a pretty huge storm while it lasted. If you're still trying to get your head wrapped around all things patch 4.0.6, fear not. We have you covered. You can check out our initial guide to the 4.0.6 patch, as well as all the other articles we've been writing this week, after the break. Maintenance this week is from 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. Pacific, so you should have plenty of time to get caught up.
Tuesday Morning Post: Daniel mostly talks about patch 4.0.6 and maybe a little bit of RIFT
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. I heard you were all tired of seeing pictures of Alex's RIFT characters, so I figured I'd break up the monotony by showing you a picture of my RIFT character. But yeah, forget what I said in WRUP. I spent my entire weekend playing RIFT. Specifically, I was playing a ranger/bard/marksman who looks suspiciously like Kevin Sorbo. My opinion of the game is pretty close to Alex's, so I won't say much else except to note that I want Blizzard to steal rifts, and I forgot how much I missed playing a bard. That said, I'm not too bummed that the beta is over (for now), since we got plenty of juicy new stuff coming after today's extended downtime. Patch 4.0.6 should be dropping today, and you should definitely read over the patch notes. There are long-requested (or unrequested) buffs and dreaded nerfs a-plenty. In other news, Love is the Air on the live servers as well, along with quite a few bugs related to said holiday. Luckily, most of those bugs should be fixed in this patch, and we'll be able to stop obsessing over Cairne and Magni's deaths again. We also got a surprisingly early announcement for BlizzCon 2011. All these stories and more await you below. With today's extended downtime of 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. Pacific time, you should have plenty of time to read it all.
NCsoft offers Aion double XP olive branch over server outages
The thunderous roar you just heard was the sound of thousands of Daevas clapping their hands, stamping their feet, and beating the air with their wings in unison. You may have even heard a few huzzahs and hell-yeahs tossed in for good measure. Why all the fuss? Double XP is returning to Aion. In fact, it's already here, as NCsoft turned on the firehose this morning at server restart. The bonus runs through next Wednesday, and instance timer lockouts have also been reset (i.e., if you ran Taloc's Hollow last night, feel free to run it again today rather than 46 hours hence). The sudden rash of goodwill stems from the server outages this past Wednesday, many of which occurred during prime time and forced Daevas to seek their entertainment elsewhere. You can read the official announcement on the Aion website.
Tuesday Morning Post: The waiting is the hardest part
You know, you'd think we could be happy all this shiny new Cataclysm content -- but no, we're all about the future. We are all about what is next. We all want more, more, more. Blizzard's probably going to disappoint us again this week, though, as all we're getting this morning is a set of rolling restarts beginning at 5 a.m. PST. Sorry kids, it looks like we have at least another week until patch 4.0.6 drops in our laps. With that said, we're still digging deep into patch 4.0.6 and general Cataclysm stuff alike around here, and while we wait around for the patch to drop, there's still plenty to read up on. Rolling restarts still require at least a few minutes of downtime, so why not get caught up on WoW news while you wait? We have our usual roundup of the latest stuff below.
Tuesday Morning Post: Lunar lamentations edition
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. I came back from my vacation just in time to start the Lunar Festival, and let me tell you, I was looking forward to it quite a bit. I mean, sure, this means my druid can restock on Moonglow, but the main reason I was hopeful is that I have two characters stuck in the early 70s, and I was sort of hoping that rounding up all the elders would take care of a significant chunk of their leveling and get me out of Northrend that much earlier. Then I visited my first elder and found out that they give neither experience nor money anymore. You may have heard the howls of anguish. So anyway, now I'm thinking I should just level them via archaeology, but doing archaeology a second or third time might actually be worse than doing Northrend a seventh or eighth time. Still, at least archaeology is apparently getting a lot more lucrative in patch 4.0.6. Speaking of patch 4.0.6, no, we do not know when it's coming to live servers. Seeing as maintenance this morning is only from 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. Pacific time, it's probably not that week. That said, we do have plenty of other patch 4.0.6 news for you to catch up while the servers are down. Read on for all the latest.
Tuesday Morning Post: Patch 4.0.6 PTR edition
The past week has been largely dominated by discussion of patch 4.0.6, which isn't completely unexpected. The patch only recently made it to the PTR, and everybody loves talking about the new hotness. Cataclysm is old and busted now, right? Nobody wants to talk about that. All right, all right. I wouldn't call it old and busted, but patch 4.0.6 is bringing a lot of change to an already change-filled expansion. Classes, quests, and dungeons are all being buffed, nerfed, and fixed. Follow us behind the cut below to check out WoW Insider's top posts of the last week -- patch news and otherwise.
Tuesday Morning Post: There's treasure inside
Over the holiday break, thanks to all of the companies that sent merchandise our way, WoW Insider gave away more prizes than we've ever given away for any previous event -- and this comes after our absolutely epic BlizzCon party wherein we gave away tons of goodies, and then the Cataclysm midnight release events where we (nearly) cleaned out the very last of our loot codes. However, now that things have calmed down, we've taken stock of the loot codes that went unused during Cataclysm's midnight release and we just might have some leftovers from WoWTCGLoot.com that we'll be giving away here in the Tuesday Morning Post. However, since these are the precious few pieces of loot we have left for now, we're going to run this thing a little differently. To find out how to enter, you'll need to follow us past the break, check out our top articles of the week, and head down to the end of the post.
Tuesday Morning Post: Festive reflections edition
Happy new year, everyone. The feast of Winter Veil is finally over, and though all I really did for it this year was loot my presents on one or two characters, I have to admit I'm still a little sad to see it go. It was fun to see all the festivities. Even poor shipwrecked sailors huddling in damp caves and praying for rescue couldn't resist putting up elaborate Winter Veil trees. That's holiday spirit, my friends, and we could all learn from that. Luckily, we don't have to wait too long for a new holiday. The Lunar Festival will be up before the end of the month. Will we have to go find dwarven ancestors in the depths of Grim Batol? Will zerging Omen at 85 be any different from zerging him at 80 or 70? We'll find out! For the time being, though, we still have a few weeks free of holiday distractions to continue the Cataclysm grind. You'll be rudely interrupted this morning by a series of rolling restarts at 5 a.m. Pacific time, which gives you some to catch up the latest news right here at WoW Insider. Read on for our usual roundup of all the hottest news and best guides from the past seven days.
Tuesday Morning Post: 'Twas the night after Christmas
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone! With the Christmas holiday in full swing, things were surprisingly short on the new front this past week. Fear not, though, we're making news of our own. With the end of the year fast approaching, we're spending the days taking a look back at our best work from the past year. Is your favorite article on our list? Now that Christmas is over and the presents unwrapped, did you get all the awesome WoW loot you asked Santa for? If not, don't fear, you might just have a second chance. The 12 Days of Winter Veil are in full swing here at WoW Insider, and we're still giving away all sorts of awesome loot. Just keep watching the site. Just because the news was slow doesn't mean the site was, as you can see. Keep on reading for more news and more guides to gearing your class and running the new dungeons. We do have some rolling restarts to deal with this morning, at 5 a.m. Pacific time, but after you've finished reading, you should be clear to jump right back into the game.
Surprise! Urgent maintenance today
Today (well, today if you're reading this on Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2010, which you probably are), there will be some surprise downtime in order to correct a technical issue. There's no indication of a client patch or anything like that, just some good ol' standard downtime from 8 a.m. EST / 5 a.m. PST until 2 p.m. EST / 11 a.m. PST. If things get extended, we'll let you know about it. The full statement by Blizzard is as follows: Blizzard -- Maintenance We will be performing urgent maintenance on all realms to resolve a technical issue. Maintenance will begin at 5:00 AM and conclude at approximately 11:00 AM PST. Thank you for your patience. source Instead of the normal gnome doing her maintenance thing, I've included a video of some of my favorite music out there: Vince Guaraldi's O Tannenbaum, visualized to A Charlie Brown Christmas, of course.
Tuesday Morning Post: For Whom The Barad Tols edition
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone! You know, as things calm down a bit now that we're a few weeks into Cataclysm, I've had time to ask myself one of my favorite questions: What could Blizzard be doing better? Don't get me wrong, Cataclysm's awesome, but there are always a few things to be concerned about. Right now, my big concern is Tol Barad. Tol Barad, as a concept, is pretty awesome. It's an island full of history that old-time Warcraft lore nerds like me can appreciate, and the factions and story are well set up for an epic showdown. Plus, if loot's your thing, the reputation rewards run the gamut from fun to useful. So everything would be great with Tol Barad, except that the mechanics of the battle itself are sort of horrible. Mat's pretty much said what needs to be said on this, so I'll let him tell you all about it. Of course, his wasn't the only awesome article posted on the site in the last few days. As of this writing, there's no scheduled downtime aside from a quick round of realm restarts at 5 a.m. pacific time, but hey, you could stand to take a break and do some reading anyway, right? Continue on for our usual roundup of all the best news, tips, and tricks.
Tuesday Morning Post: Not looking at explosions edition
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone! So hopefully by now, most of us have had plenty of time to get knee deep in the fastest selling computer game of all time. Some of us are level 85, some of us aren't; some have switched over to worgen and goblins or other characters, some of us are too busy not looking at explosions. Whatever your pursuit, we wish you lots of luck and lots of fun. With that in mind, if you're still confused by all the changes in Cataclysm or you're still struggling to level your character, don't worry. We've got you covered. You can always check our Cataclysm coverage page for a roundup of the best guides and latest news, or you can read on now as we cover everything we've reported on since last Tuesday. Don't worry, the servers are down from 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. Pacific time, so you'll have plenty of time to read.
Cataclysm launches in Europe, servers currently down [Updated]
In what may be the least surprising event of the year, Europe's World of Warcraft servers have gone down almost immediately after the expansion's launch in that region. Even Europe's Battle.net web resources appear to be down for maintenance (or are merely offline due to overwhelming load). How long will this downtime last? We're not sure, but we will do our very best to keep you updated on European server status. European players, if you have any tips or updates on your server's status, don't be afraid to contact us via our tip line. We love to hear from you! Update: It appears the culprit is the login/authentication server. Once you beat the login boss, the game realms themselves seem to be running just fine.
