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Tuesday Morning Post: Adventures in beta patching edition
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. The big news this week has the been the beta test of the new patch process and launcher, which allows you to play even when your patch is only partially done. I've tried it out myself, and I must say, it's quite a feeling logging into Acherus to see nothing but the Eastern Plaguelands spread out below you for miles as the hold itself shifts into being around you. It's sort of crazy. Still, I imagine most of the time I'll just wait for the download to finish. There is, of course, plenty of other news to catch up on. If you're waiting out this morning's rolling restarts, why not check and see if you missed anything from the past few days? Our usual roundup awaits after the break.
ArenaNet announces planned server downtime for Guild Wars
Last year, Massively took a look at the top five features that make Guild Wars a great game. The first thing on the list was a near-total absence of server downtime. In the five-plus years the game has been around, incidents of server downtime are practically nonexistent. For this reason, Guild Wars players were surprised to see an announcement of planned server downtime: "On Tuesday, August 10th, we will be moving the Guild Wars live database to a new data center. This will require a temporary interruption in service beginning at 12:01AM Pacific time on that date. Service may be suspended for up to 24 hours, although we will do everything we can to expedite the process. Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding during this rare interruption!" The fact that it's such an unusual occurrence will likely prevent it from being a frustrating one, and players should be back in Tyria in under 24 hours. [Update: The move has been delayed until Wednesday, August 11th]
Tuesday Morning Post: Suspect timing edition
Happy Tuesday Morning, everyone! In what may or may not be a mea culpa for the massive amount of downtime, both expected and unexpected, last week, Blizzard's announced that there will be no downtime this morning. That's right, we won't even get rolling restarts. Now, usually I'd be pretty grateful for this. It's always nice to know the server's going to be up and ready for you when you get a chance to play. But today, of all days, is the day they chose? Honestly, I wouldn't even be phased if they put my server on the 24-hour downtime list for today, because I'm just going to spend all my free time playing Starcraft 2. Actually, never mind. It's pretty clear to me now why they're keeping the servers up. Obviously, the server maintenance team would rather take the day off and play Starcraft II too. If you're still agonizing over whether to play Starcraft or log on and do your dailies, maybe you should stop by WoW.com while you think. We have a lot of juicy Cataclysm news for you to catch up on, and more coming throughout the day.
For Gnomeregan!: Refugee Party live stream
For Gnomeregan! is where the members of <B.L.O.G.> on Shadow Council (US-RP-A) roleplay guild meetings as part of an in-blog and in-game RP campaign. The rules for this campaign are: no ERP (Erotic RolePlay) and no vampires (though death knights are welcome). Everyone is invited to participate. Assume that to get into the guild, you at least pretended to be in full use of your faculties and are willing to fight for the cause. You are all welcome to join us here in the comments and those who wish to play with us in-game should friend Peenk and ask for an invite on Shadow Council (US-RP-A). Hello! Peenk Sparklebolt here. In order to efficiently lead tonight's Refugee Party, the Operation Gnomeregan engineers have provided me with this gadget thingee. I'm not sure how it works, but it seems that people outside of our guild can actually hear me and see what we are doing tonight. Fascinating. I will be dismantling it to see how it works after this shindig is over. Anyway, you can hear and see what is happening on my gadget thingee right now, or you can join us at the Refugee Party in Coldridge Pass. But hurry! We're starting immediately. (( Watch the stream above or at WoW.com's Justin.tv channel. If you wish to join us on Shadow Council (US-RP-A) for tonight's RP event, please read the details and rules for the Refugee Party. ))
Tuesday Morning Post: Never tear us apart edition
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone! You know, I feel like I really should say something. Blizzard, despite all the rockiness, be it the Real ID fiasco or the huge 31-point talent tree changes, I still love you. I don't think anything can tear us apart. You know, except a 24-hour downtime. Luckily, my server's not in today's batch of downed servers, but Zangarmarsh, home of <It Came From The Blog>, is; yours may be as well, so be sure to check the list. If your realm is listed, that just means you'll have plenty of time to look back all the big news from the past seven days, such as the new 31-point talent trees or the massive Twitter developer chat. And anyway, we do have normal downtime at the somewhat early time of 1-7 a.m. Pacific, so you may still have a bit of a time to read up regardless. With all that in mind, we have the usual roundup of news, opinions and guides from the past seven days ready for your perusal. Once you're done reading those, you can prepare to join all the 24-hour downtime refugees on Shadow Council.
Refugee Party: Roleplay server maintenance event
For Gnomeregan! is where the members of <B.L.O.G.> on Shadow Council (US-RP-A) roleplay guild meetings as part of an in-blog and in-game RP campaign. The rules for this campaign are: no ERP (Erotic RolePlay) and no vampires (though death knights are welcome). Everyone is invited to participate. Assume that to get into the guild, you at least pretended to be in full use of your faculties and are willing to fight for the cause. You are all welcome to join us here in the comments and those who wish to play with us in-game should friend Peenk and ask for an invite on Shadow Council (US-RP-A). Thank you for coming to this emergency meeting. Our representative with Operation Gnomeregan has contacted me with the news that many new refugees are about to arrive at Coldridge Valley. They have requested that we accommodate them by incorporating the refugees into our guild and feeding them. Hands Springsprocket has also contacted me. It seems that he needs to get a large number of supplies to Thunderbrew Distillery. So we are not only going to allow these refugees to join us, we are going to put them to work. And then we'll sit down and have a party, to relax and welcome our new members. I know this is short notice, but we must mobilize! Meet at the Coldridge Pass in Coldridge Valley at 9 p.m. on Tuesday. I will give further instructions at that time. ((Full details in non-RP format are after the break.))
Tuesday Morning Post: Real ID ruckus edition
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. It's been a surprisingly busy and controversial week in WoW. The ill-fated Real ID forum integration has come and -- after extensive community outcry, rampant rumors and multiple attempts to explain themselves on Blizzard's part -- gone again, and we're all hopeful that we can go back to the carefree slaughter of internet dragons. In actual gameplay news, everything we know about our classes may be changing with the extensive new talent revamp that limits trees to the 31-point tier and gives level 10s signature abilities from their chosen tree. There's plenty more beta news and (for those of you avoiding Cataclysm spoilers) Ruby Sanctum guides to browse through, and since we have the usual 5-11 a.m. Pacific downtime coming down the pipe this morning, you'll have time to tackle it, I'm sure. Read on for all the latest from the past few days.
Tuesday Morning Post: The coming Cataclysm edition
Happy Tuesday Morning, everyone! With the closed beta beginning and the NDA lifted, the floodgate of information fresh from the Cataclysm beta servers continues to gush forth. There's plenty of analysis and opinion to be had on the changes as well. You can look below for the usual list of stuff, including a special beta information section. Of course, this beta, so expect things to change pretty quickly as the days and weeks go by, and expect us to be here, keeping abreast of it. Of course, if you have any burning questions we haven't answered yet, remember that The Queue is now taking your Cataclysm Beta questions. The usual 5 AM to 11 AM Pacific downtime will be upon this morning, so now's a good a time as any to catch up on the latest beta news and happenings. Read on for the roundup.
Servers are coming back up [Updated]
Blizzard has announced that the realms that are not down for the entire day are down for an additional two hours. They expect realms to be up at 4 p.m. EDT (1 p.m. PDT). This means that you will have less time to level up a character for the Server Maintenance Party we're having tonight. But that's OK because all levels are welcome. We'll update this post with any more server maintenance news. Update: Servers are up or on their way -- except the ones that are down until at least midnight of course.
Tuesday Morning Post: Return of the 24-hour downtime edition
It's back! 24-hour maintenance day returns today, this time for a different batch of realms. Everyone else still has to deal with the normal 5 a.m.-11 a.m. Pacific downtime label. Whichever group you fall into, don't despair. It was a pretty busy week news-wise, so we have plenty of stuff for you to catch up on, and we'll have more fresh news throughout the day. Let's start the roundup. Hot news and features Still have trouble keeping up with Ahune? Check out our video guide. Patch 3.3.5 has hit live servers. Here are the patch notes. Getting errors with the new patch? You aren't alone. Patch 3.3.5, as you might expect, isn't bug-free. Check out this list of new and existing in-game bugs. Blizzard has announced its intent to begin throttling inspect requests from addons such as GearScore. The Ruby Sanctum isn't activated yet, but Blizzard has released more information, including the storyline. Director Sam Raimi's been talking about the upcoming Warcraft movie. Our Wrath retrospective series continues with some opinions on death knights.
Early maintenance announcement includes 24 hour downtime for select realms
Blizzard's already let us know the scheduled downtime for Tuesday, June 29th, quite a bit ahead of their usual late Monday night announcement time. Right now, most realms can expect a normal downtime window of 5 AM to 11 AM Pacific time on Tuesday, June 29th. However, it is time for the next batch of US servers to go down for 24 hours, from 12:01 AM, June 29th to 12:01 AM Wednesday, June 30th. As with the first batch, the 24-hour downtime will likely be used to get the servers in shape for Cataclysm's launch, and if we're lucky, should mean less downtime in the first few days and weeks as everyone comes in to check out the new content. Check out the full list of servers with extended downtime behind the break:
EVE Online server move delayed by database issues
Last week, CCP Games announced that the EVE Online server was heading for a move and a bit of an upgrade. Hidden within a few cabinets in a single datacenter is everything that makes up the EVE universe, from characters and ships to planets and the market. The cluster of hardware has been expanded over the years and now exceeds the limitations of the hardware cabinets it occupies. Moving the cluster to a new location within the datacenter should help support future upgrades to keep up with the game's growing subscriber-base. The shuffle began early yesterday morning at 09:00 UTC and was planned to be completed by 15:00 UTC the same day. Unfortunately, the transition to a new locale has had some unforeseen side-effects for Tranquility. After a long day of server work, final testing of the cluster revealed database issues that must be corrected before the game can go live. At 03:00 UTC this morning, the estimate for restoring Tranquility and the EVE website was mid-day today. With that time having now passed, CCP has released a new estimate of 16:00 UTC. If necessary, further delays will be announced on the official EVE Facebook page, the CCP Games Twitter page and the game's main website. UPDATE: The server is now up and players can log in again. CCP has explained the reasons behind the long downtime and detailed their plans to reimburse players with skillpoints in a news post.
Patch 3.3.5: Servers coming online
It looks like the long wait may be over, as US servers appear to be slowly coming back online from a lengthy extended maintenance. For now the list of servers up is small, and there's been no official confirmation from Blizzard as to whether or not the downtime is over -- however most servers that are up and live are experiencing queues in the thousands and are locked from further character creation at this time. We'll update this post when the servers are officially back up and running -- until then, why not check out the Tuesday Morning Post for reading material you may have missed? Update #1: The official Warcraft Twitter just noted the following: #WoWInfo - We are continuing the process of marking realms live. We will provide an update on our progress at approximately 7:00PM PDT. Also, all servers that are currently live appear to be locked. Update #2, 7:21PDT: The official Warcraft Twitter just noted the following: #WoWInfo - We anticipate all remaining realms will be brought online within the next hour and appreciate your ongoing patience.
Tuesday Morning Post: Burning for you edition
Happy Tuesday Morning, everyone! Rumor has it that Patch 3.3.5 may drop this morning, and with a 3 AM to 11 AM pacific downtime coming our way, the points are racking up in favor of such a conclusion. Either way, you'll probably know by the time you read this, and either way, the downtime's coming, so either way, you'll probably want to settle in and join me on catching up with the latest WoW news. It's been a relatively slow news week the past 7 days, but the Midsummer Fire Festival is in full swing, complete with a level 80 Frost Lord Ahune bearing new ilevel 232 loot -- and lacking his scorchling pet, sadly enough. There's more news to peruse as well, and you'll want to keep an on eye on the site throughout the day and coming weeks for more news and guides on the coming Patch 3.3.5 content.
Tuesday Morning Post: The press gang edition
Happy Tuesday Morning, everyone! The past few days have been pretty busy as far as shiny new Cataclysm news goes. First we saw the first few class talent previews go up for druids, rogues, priests, and shamans. We, of course, have analysis of all the ins and outs of the new trees, as you'd expect. But the big news of the week was, of course, the Cataclysm press event. We got a massive info dump of juicy information, including interviews with Ghostcrawler. Among some of the other highlights: New juicy lore tidbits, including information on the Archeology skill. New raid lockout mechanisms. A complete overhaul of the guild leveling mechanic. The complete scrapping of the Path of the Titans system, and some adjustments to glyphs to compensate. Video previews of the new Orgrimmar and Stormwind. Confirmation of a War of the Ancients raid. In addition to that, there's plenty of other awesome news tidbits to catch up on this morning. You'll have the usual 5 AM to 11 AM pacific downtime, so you'll have the time to do some reading. Read on for a list of the latest stuff.
Tuesday Morning Post: The long downtime of the soul edition
Happy Tuesday Morning, everyone! If you were part of the massive rush to get BlizzCon tickets this past week, I hope your luck was good, because they are now officially sold out. If you didn't get one, there's probably nothing left to do but hope you win one as a contest prize! Whether you were successful or whether your hopes were dashed, you will, alas, have quite some time to brood or celebrate if your characters are on a list of servers slated for a 24 hour downtime today. Of course, even if you dodged the bullet, we still have the normal 5 AM to 11 AM Pacific time maintenance period coming for all servers. Luckily, there's plenty of news to catch up on, including a good selection of official news on patch 3.3.5 and some of the new features of the Cataclysm expansion. Read on for all the latest, and keep coming back all day for the latest news, tips, and guides. Whether your server is down for the morning or down all day, we'll be here for you.
Fallen Earth patch 1.5 drops tomorrow
If you enjoy the post-apocalyptic environment that Fallen Earth offers, you can't help but look forward to each new patch as it comes along. Patch 1.5 promises to bring fast travel systems for higher-level characters, a new Blood Sports combat type, and the new "serendipity" system to generate more varied and interesting equipment drops for players. They're all enticing additions, and as a result it should be welcome news that the patch is slated to go live tomorrow. Naturally, this comes with a bit of extra downtime for the servers -- in this case, between 6 AM to 11 AM EST. There's also a warning that any clones in the Deadfall region tomorrow might want to keep their eyes open for Outsider activity or other suspicious goings-on. Take a look at the full patch notes if you're logged in to the Fallen Earth forums, and get ready for tomorrow's patch and all the associated festivities.
24-hour downtime this Tuesday for 72 servers to make them Cataclysm-ready
Blizzard's announced a 24-hour downtime window for a large group of servers, from 12:01 AM Pacific time on Tuesday, June 8th, to 12:01 Pacific time on Wednesday, June 9th. All other servers will have a normal downtime window of 5 AM to 11 AM Pacific time. The extended downtime, says Blizzard, is to prepare the servers for the Cataclysm expansion. While this should not be taken as a sign that the expansion is imminent, it's at least nice to see that preparations are continuing apace. In addition, it's probably fair to assume that even if your server isn't in this current list, it'll eventually get a day of downtime of its own as Blizzard gets all of their servers in shape. Check the full list after the break to see if your server is in this batch:
Turbine announces individual fix for Dungeons and Dragons Online account downgrades
A large number of Dungeons and Dragons Online players have had a frustrating week. First, a glitch in Turbine's system caused some unexpected downtime. The servers were back up the same day, along with an apology and a loot boost through June 6th to thank players for their patience. Not everyone has been able to take advantage of that, however. Once the servers returned, premium players began logging in to find that their accounts had been downgraded to free. At best, this meant no more access to purchased adventure packs. At worst, it equaled locked characters, loot and gold caps, and restrictions to auction house access. Turbine communicated fairly regularly with the playerbase as days passed, reminding everyone that they were working on it and it was a frustrating situation on both ends. The core problem remains a mystery, but Turbine has offered up an individual fix for players while they work on things. Senior Community Representative Tolero has posted some very detailed instructions on what affected players need to do to get their account restored. The Dungeons and Dragons Online staff will presumably be inundated with these requests, and it's safe to assume that those who followed the instructions to the letter will be dealt with first. If you're an affected player, look over it carefully before submitting your ticket, and note that it could be 24 hours before you see results.
Tuesday Morning Post: Gnomeregan rising edition
Good Tuesday morning, everyone! It's been a surprisingly slow news week as far as new Cataclysm stuff goes, but luckily, we have the PTR to keep us busy anyway. With Operation: Gnomeregan and Zalazane's Fall active for testing on the PTR, now's the perfect time to go test out some fun new world events and show your own patriotism for your favorite refugee race. If you'd rather stay on the live servers, we do have a nice picture gallery of the Zalazane's event for your perusal. The PTR is also being used to test the new Real ID functionality, which makes it an excellent time to caution you: Be careful who you trust with your Real ID. Perhaps the most "surprising" news this week may be the fact that there is absolutely no downtime anticipated for today. That's right, early morning pacific coast Tuesday players, you can keep right on trucking. But just in case you need a break, or you're stuck at work or school and can't play, we've got the usual roundup of all the good news from the past 7 days or so after the break.
